Sub specie aeternitatis

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Sub specie aeternitatis, from the Philosophical Dictionary,^[1] Latin for "under the aspect of eternity"; hence, from Spinoza onwards, an honorific expression describing what is universally and eternally true, without any reference to or dependence upon the merely temporal portions of reality.

In clearer English, sub specie aeternitatis roughly means "from the perspective of the eternal". Even more loosely, the phrase is used to describe an alternate or objective point of view.

[edit] Usage

Michael Martin, in Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, wrote:

Unlike animals and inanimate things we can transcend our own limited perspective and see our lives sub specie aeternitatis. From this perspective, Nagel says, all we do appears to be arbitrary.

What Michael Martin is conveying is that

From the objective perspective, what we humans do on a day-to-day basis seems meaningless.

Or even further, since we humans are capable of looking at our own actions from an outsider's viewpoint, we can see that our own, individual actions are arbitrary.^[2]

Viktor E. Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning, wrote:

It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future—-sub specie aeternitatis.^[3]

[edit] References