The Hour of Our Death (Philippe Ariès)
OVERVIEW
“The Hour of Our Death – The Classic History of Western Attitudes Toward Death Over the Last One Thousand Years” is a 600+ page literary opus that took author Philippe Ariès almost two decades to research and write. It covers the thousand-year progression of every mortal facet: afterlife beliefs, superstitions, the role of religion, rituals, death care, cemeteries, wills, funerals, art, and the ever-changing collective perception of death. In short, everything you wanted to know about death over the last millennium.
Ariès’s original hypothesis, formerly voiced by Edgar Morin, was that there was “a relationship between man’s attitude toward death and his awareness of self, of his degree of existence, or simply of his individuality.” But over the course of his research, Ariès added three other guiding principles that contribute to death attitudes: how society feels about nature, belief in the afterlife, and belief in the existence of evil.
Looking back over the last thousand years, death has progressed through five themes:
The Tame Death
Death, like life, is a communal act, not just an individual one. The man/woman/child knows that they are dying, and are surrounded by family and community (literally… anyone could walk in off the street to attend the deathbed). Death is not a personal drama, it is more a social issue (each death in these small communities was destabilizing). The common belief is that death always gives a “warning” when it is near, and no one goes to their grave deceiving themselves. Everyone knows when they are dying. The most feared death is the sudden death, the one that gives no warning. The afterlife is simply a period of waiting (for the last judgement), characterized by peace and repose (the idea of death as an extended sleep is probably the most ancient conception of death).
The Death of the Self
As the community begins to fracture under the rise of individuality, as individuals start to gain autonomy, the perception of death changes too. Wills become popular, not just to prescribe inheritances, but to atone for sins and make religious proclamations. The individual is no longer his/her body, but split in two – a body that dies and an immortal soul that persists. The afterlife is no longer a long, collective slumber.
Remote and Imminent Death
Where once death was familiar, ordinary, it becomes violent and savage. Death and violence are a fascination, curious and perverse. Death is macabre and erotic. It’s wild and sexy. And suddenly, everyone is terrified of being buried alive (something that never concerned us before).
The Death of the Other
The belief in hell, and death’s connection to sin and punishment, begins to wane. No one worries anymore that the dead might be eternally damned. Our social circles restrict, and so the death of any close loved one becomes a dramatic crisis (hence, the death of the “other”). The fear of one’s own death takes a backseat, it’s the death of a loved one that people fear most. Death is a painful separation, but now emerges the belief in a personal afterlife where loved ones will be reunited (not sleep, not collective merging into an eternal godhead; death promises paradise, an infinite after-party with friends and family).
The Invisible Death
This brings us to our modern view: the hidden or invisible death. Death is private. It is also somewhat indecent, impolite, inelegant. As advances in comfort and hygiene become more common, we can no longer tolerate the sights or smells of disease, illness, and suffering – they are an unwelcome intrusion, no longer a fact of our daily life that’s characterized by its control and cleanliness. Death is now the ultimate indignity, not something to be tolerated by polite society. And it’s also something that can’t be handled by one or two family members. What used to be the purview of the community, the care for the dying person, now falls on the shoulders of a few (who probably have full-time jobs). Coupled with medical advancements, it’s much easier to outsource dying to doctors and hospitals, so that’s what we do. Death is medicalized, hidden away. And because the role of medicine is to keep people alive, death is failure, a blemish. It’s taboo to tell a dying person they are dying; it’s taboo to admit it. Death is fearful but also shameful, and although it’s a catastrophe for the close circle of loved ones, it’s a non-event for the community.
What is crystal clear by the end of this massive book is that death can be (and is) whatever society wants it to be. There is nothing fixed about our perceptions, they are shaped and filtered through whatever cultural, political, and economic lenses are available. Our attitudes toward death are just as fluid and changeable as any other cultural element.
I want to underscore my astonishment at just how malleable our attitudes have been. What has changed over the last millennium are our funerary/burial practices, our wills, our inscriptions (from tombs to sarcophagi to monuments to headstones to plaques), religious practices, our mourning/treatment of the bereaved, our depictions of death in art, our familiarity with death – the publicity or privacy of it – our concept of the “good death,” etc. etc. etc.
The pendulum of popular opinion has swung back, and forth, and back, and sideways. Cemeteries used to be avoided at all costs, until they became the centre of the city (with food and vendor stalls)… until they went back to being “unhygienic.” Bodies on display, bodies being buried horizontally, and then vertically, and then horizontally again… dumped in mass graves, entombed in sarcophagi under church floorboards, or concealed in coffins that were reused (until re-using them became a horrible offense… but we still re-used graves, until we didn’t, but now we do again). Death was ordinary, then violent, then sexy, then beautiful, then shameful. It was public, then private. It was communal destiny, then personal destruction. It was feared when it was sudden, then feared when it wasn’t. Wild displays of mourning and customs for public bereavement gave way to solemn funeral processions. The dead were sleeping, then they were in purgatory (and needed intercessory prayer to escape damnation), then they were merged with the divine godhead, then they were waiting for you to join the after party. Where you were buried was incredibly important, until it wasn’t. Ghosts didn’t exist, until they did – and when they appeared it meant misfortune… until it instead meant your loved ones were watching over you. Wills contained a list of your wishes for inheritance, until they also contained a catalogue of your sins and prayers for absolution, until they contained no religious messages at all. It was fashionable to wear jewelry that reminded you you would die (memento mori), until it was preferrable to carry around souvenirs made from your deceased loved ones (memento illius).
The point is that nothing about death has remained immutable. Everything about death has changed. What I take away from this is that our views about death (and all its accessories) are shaped by culture and the general psychology of the time. That means you can choose whatever story you like for death. It doesn’t mean that your culture will share your view (and of course that’s how beliefs gain power and credibility, when they are shared by many others), but still, this teaches us that nothing about death or how we think about it is fixed or inflexible.
WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)
Maybe step outside your present-day perspective. What seems right and proper today was the opposite a thousand years ago. And this is just the history of Western attitudes toward death. We may look across the world and see “bizarre” customs, strange beliefs about the afterlife, and wholly unfamiliar death practices (e.g., living with mummies, digging up the bodies of loved ones, decorating skulls, removing bone fragments from cremated ash with chopsticks), but these are just as abnormal (just as normal) as our own practices. Our attitudes toward death reflect our culture, the zeitgeist. Nothing is set in stone. With this information you can be more open-minded and more compassionate. It also means that things can change – for the better. Death care can return to a community effort. The bereaved can be better supported. Our burial practices can be more environmentally friendly. Truly, death is whatever we make it.
IN SUM:
Is this book entirely secular? Yes (in that none of the supernatural content is presented as truth, only as history).
If I had to describe the book in one sentence? Everything you could ever want to know about the attitudes toward death over the last thousand years.
Who should read this book? Death scholars.