Ariès's Social History of Death

Social attitudes and cultural responses to death have varied over time. Nowhere is this change more apparent than in the social history of death documented in the work of the French historian Philippe Ariès. Ariès's analysis of the social meaning of death in Western societies reveals that from the 18th to the mid-20th century in particular a cultural shift from collective social rituals of mourning to a less visible individualized appearance of death had taken place. Ariès argued that in the contemporary Western experience, death has become invisible and is not a topic that should be a matter of public discussion. Ariès's social history of death demonstrates that the historical public attitude toward death changed from that of a “tamed death,” the view that death is open and should be anticipated and prepared for, to the attitude that death is forbidden, the modern view that death is a nondiscussed topic.

It was this thesis promulgated by Ariès of a forbidden public view of death that led to an increasing interest in the teaching and a proliferation of research in the area of death and dying that began during the early 1970s. Inspired by the meticulously documented work of the French historians Ariès and Michel Vovelle, during the final 3 decades of the 20th century and well into the 21st century, scholars and practitioners alike have addressed this important de-emphasis of death-related mourning rituals and the evolving role of hospitals, nursing homes, hospice organizations, and even funeral homes in the dying and death experience.

The published work of the French historian Ariès provided significant evidence that supported the common belief among intellectuals and scholars [Page 66]that a profound cultural meaning had been lost in that the physical act of death and the fact of death were disappearing from public view. In Ariès's historical accounts covering 1,500 years, death indeed ended up being “invisible” and “wild,” in contrast to its earlier “public” and “tamed” counterpart. Sorting out the chaos of the past, Ariès's vivid and comprehensive narrative of shifting attitudes toward death inspires many researchers to this day. However, since both the discipline of history and the social context of dying and bereavement have changed since his death in 1984, Ariès's history of death has recently also been criticized and supplemented.

History of Mentalities

Being a political reactionary and remaining long without academic position, Ariès remained in the ranks of French historians until the 1960s. Although he called himself a “Sunday historian,” he not only gained a broad readership but also stimulated scholars to break new grounds. Touching upon formerly unexplored topics, such as the child, death, or sexuality, and using new approaches to the relationship between private and public life, Ariès indeed came to be respected as a pioneering and provocative figure in historical scholarship. He specifically contributed to a cultural approach within the Annales School, whose practitioners' aim was to lay bare underlying and long-term structures in history. For Ariès, these structures consisted not so much of socioeconomic realities, as stated by many of his contemporaries, but rather of mentalités: mental lives and attitudes that tacitly shaped the daily lives of particular groups or whole societies. His attempt was to grasp these fundamental aspects of the human experience that until then were largely considered without a history.

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