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Death in Western History
This is a comprehensive survey of one thousand years (longer, really) of western attitudes towards death. By "western" were mostly talking "French", although Aries does include digressions into German, Italian, Spanish, English and American culture. I didn't find the intense focus on France to detract from the overall majesty of this 600+ page opus. For most of the thousand years, the "attitude towards death" that Aries is describing crosses national boundaires.

Aries divides his study into four overlapping historical periods: "The Tame Death", "The Death of the Self", "The Death of the Other", and "The Invisible Death". The Tame Death roughly corresponds with the pre-Christian and early middle ages. This period was characterized by a meek acceptance of passing into a long period of sleep. Death is social, and the death ritual has a central place in the society.

"The Death of the Self" is moves more into the middle and late middle ages. Here, death is used by the mendicant orders of Christianity to convert a quasi-pagan population. Thus, there is a corresponding rise in individual's concern with their own death. Also during this period, there is a rise in materialism, which creates a duality between the love of things and the renunciation of the material world which is supposed to preceed death.

The Death of the Other and the Invisible Death are familiar to most modern folks. The Invisible Death is corresponds with the post WWII American model, and the Death of the Other largely corresponds to the romantic movement (lots of weeping, lots of drama).

Aries basic thesis delves into "the Invention of Tradition" territory, i.e. that modern attitudes towards death are just that, modern, and largely without antecedent in history. Aries also points out that pre-Christian traditions of death have persisted far longer in the west then one might suppose. His main illustration for this contention is the observations that the concept of "purgatory" was not fully accepted until well into the 17th and 18th century (purgatory being an exclusively Chrisitian concept).

The research and execution can only be considered awe inspiring, but the thesis less so. Any modern reader of history is aware that "tradition" is invented. Aries is less concerned as to why this might be the case, but for me, the "why" is the interesting question.