Talk:Sub specie aeternitatis

Needs a lot of work
This article consists mostly of irrelevant quotes using the phrase and has nothing about its history. Languagehat (talk)


 * That's at least half true, Languagehat. In the absence of reliable sources tracing the development of the sub specie aeternititus concept, I think the quotes are very useful, but while each seems to capture a different nuance of the phrase, some are close enough that the less interesting of a similar pair might be dropped. Another approach might be to segregate the "pro- sub specie aeternititus" thinkers (let's call them the 'Platonists' and the "anti- sub specie aeternititus" thinkers (the 'Aristotelians') for purposes of comparison. The "pro-" thinkers would be in the majority, I assume, largely because only a few of the 'Aristotelians' would mention the 'other-worldly' concept by name but proceed to make their 'this-worldly' points straight away. Within the "pro-" camp are apparently two major schools of thought, the first being that seeing life sub specie aeternititus shows its meaningless absurdity and the second being that such a perspective lifts the mundane to the plane of the eternal. I hope my summary shows that the quotes are not useless for understanding the issues involved. I have today added a quote from Stephen Halliwell referring to Aristotle's changing thoughts on the subject.


 * I agree that this article needs a historical survey as well a philosophical one and I have found one scholarly paper on the subject which may contain references that can take us further: "The Meaning of Life Sub Specie Aeternitatis" by Iddo Landau, from the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 89, 2011, Issue 4. Unfortunately the full paper online is behind a pricey paywall, but other editors may have access: "The Meaning of Life Sub Specie Aeternitatis"


 * Update: I found a page at philpapers.org cataloging Landau's paper with a bibliography including Landau's references and other books and articles on the sub specie aeternititus concept: "Iddo Landau, The Meaning of Life Sub Specie Aeternitatis - PhilPapers" —Blanchette (talk) 20:46, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Talks with T.G. Masaryk by Karel Čapek:
This bit is in almost comically ungrammatical English - even google translate does better these days, so I have no idea _what_ happened there! 2A01:CB0C:1704:9A00:9464:82B0:BAC4:D7C6 (talk) 07:45, 14 February 2024 (UTC)