Concept
Eternity
Overview
Eternity, also sempiternity or forever, or perpetuity, is time with no end i.e. infinite.
In the context of human life, eternity and death are co-existing realities.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Eternity is discussed.
But as whatever is wholly immutable can have no succession, so it has no beginning, and no end. Thus eternity is known from two sources: first, because what is eternal is interminable--that is, has no beginning nor end (that is, no term either way); secondly, because eternity has no succession, being simultaneously whole. Reply Obj.
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph
Eternity is ascribed to existence, in agreement with Hegel, what Hegel calls "tiresome (schlecht) eternity," and this eternity is now investigated. "The plainest form of an incontrovertible idea of eternity is the piling up of numbers unlimitedly in arithmetical progression.
Friedrich Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
'God is eternal; in this judgment all rational beings agree. Let us, then, consider what eternity is. For this word carries with it a revelation alike of the Divine nature and of the Divine knowledge. Now, eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment.
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph
PROP. XXX. Our mind, in so far as it knows itself and the body under the form of eternity, has to that extent necessarily a knowledge of God, and knows that it is in God, and is conceived through God. Proof.--Eternity is the very essence of God, in so far as this involves necessary existence (I. Def. viii.). Therefore to conceive things under the form of eternity, is to conceive things in so far as they are…
Benedictus de Spinoza, Ethics
names the idea; states what it is
But those things which are conceived in this second way as true or real we conceive under the form of eternity, and their ideas involve the eternal and infinite essence of God.
Benedictus de Spinoza, The Philosophy of Spinoza
names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Eternity
- Maimonides
- Augustine of Hippo
- Anselm of Canterbury
- Will Durant
- Julius Evola
- Plotinus
- Michael Oakeshott
- Alfred North Whitehead
- Islam
- Abu Bakr al-Razi
- Pherecydes of Syros
- F. C. S. Schiller
- Atticus (philosopher)
Related ideas
- Macmillan Publishers
- Washington, D.C.
- Jesus
- Afterlife
- Athens
- Book of Genesis
- Homer
- Western philosophy
- Future
- Ashgate Publishing
- Physics (Aristotle)
- Immortality
- London
- Livy
- Los Angeles
- Harvard University
- Columbia University Press
- Boethius
- Infinity
- Historical Vedic religion
- Augustine of Hippo
- Thomas Aquinas
- Old Testament
- Oxford English Dictionary
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Eleatics.