Memento mori, literally “remember to die”, is the Latin admonition to keep one’s own mortality in mind: remember that you will die. The philosopher Gwendolin Kirchhoff comes to memento mori in her 2024 SYMPOSIUM lecture “Nachdenken über den Tod (1)” (Reflecting on Death, part 1) at the point where death appears as a threshold that surfaces acutely in life (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2024, Nachdenken über den Tod (1), 17:00–18:03).
#What does memento mori mean?
Memento mori means “remember to die” and is usually rendered more freely as “remember that you will die”. Memento is the imperative of meminisse, to remember or be mindful of; mori is the infinitive of morior, to die. An imperative tells you nothing you did not already know; it calls something back to mind. Memento mori is therefore less a doctrine about death than a call to the one who is alive.
An older relative of this call is recorded by the Church Father Tertullian in his Apologeticum (around 197): the man celebrating a triumph in ancient Rome, high on his chariot, was told from behind: “Respice post te! Hominem te memento!”, that is: Look behind you! Remember that you are a human being! (Tertullian, Apologeticum 33.4). What it recalls there is being human, not yet explicitly dying.
#How are memento mori and carpe diem related?
Memento mori and carpe diem are two Latin phrases that answer the same finitude: one recalls the end, the other the day that still remains. Carpe diem, literally “pluck the day”, comes from an ode by the Roman poet Horace (Horace, Odes I.11) and is usually translated as “seize the day”. Gwendolin Kirchhoff names the two together in her lecture. With memento mori, she says, there always comes the theme of making use of the day (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2024, Nachdenken über den Tod (1), 19:01–19:05), and she adds: “make use of the day, but recognise that it is a gift” (ibid., 19:06).
This addition sets recognising beside making use: the day is not only used, it is recognised as a gift. What sets this off, in her words, is “having this awareness that this threshold is there” (ibid., 19:09). Then she says: “And you can actually also deliberately place yourself before it, for once.” (ibid., 19:15). As a rule, Gwendolin Kirchhoff says, we do not do this, or only very indirectly, in the form of a risk that we try to avoid and that pushes us around (cf. ibid., 19:19–19:24).
#What happens when death appears as a threshold?
When death appears as a threshold, according to Gwendolin Kirchhoff, the terror tests how one’s life force is aligned (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2024, Nachdenken über den Tod (1), 18:08–18:15). In the lecture she first describes how this threshold appears to her: like a kind of cut in space that she cannot see behind, and behind it total unknowability, the absolutely unknown (cf. ibid., 17:15–17:34). Shrinking back from this incision “can take on two components” (ibid., 17:40): that of a reminder, a memento mori, or that of a real incision that sets something irreversible in motion (cf. ibid., 17:44–17:56; 20:01–20:49).
Before she moves on to this second kind, Gwendolin Kirchhoff describes what happens when the threshold surfaces acutely in life. Before the threshold of death it becomes acutely clear what is a waste of time; one becomes aware of what one’s deeper, actual wishes are and where one may be investing one’s time wrongly (cf. ibid., 18:15–18:33). “And from this nearness of death, life aligns itself” (ibid., 18:45), and human activities fall into order: “They do not become arbitrary; instead there is the feeling of something meant” (ibid., 18:53).
Something else happens in the immediate nearness of death. There, “truth becomes more important than self-deception” (ibid., 19:38). For Gwendolin Kirchhoff, the will to truth is perhaps a child of this awareness of death, because before death there is suddenly a sharp distinction between the real and the unreal (cf. ibid., 19:43–20:01).
How this acute fear of death differs from the night-time fear of one’s own mortality is the subject of the essay Fear of Death. The clinical experience at this threshold is covered in the entry Near-Death Experience.
#What is the opposite of memento mori?
The counter-phrase to memento mori is memento vivere, “remember to live”. In 1874, in the second of his Untimely Meditations, “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life”, Friedrich Nietzsche sets the two phrases against each other: “Once, this memento mori, called out to humanity as much as to the individual, was a constantly tormenting sting and, as it were, the peak of medieval knowledge and conscience.” (Nietzsche, 1874, Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben, 8). “The word of more recent times called out against it”, memento vivere, still sounds rather timid by comparison and has something almost dishonest about it, Nietzsche writes (cf. ibid.); humanity is still sitting firmly on its memento mori (cf. ibid.).
A sentence from Baruch de Spinoza’s Ethics (1677) sounds almost like an objection to every memento mori: “A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.” (Spinoza, 1677, Ethics, IV, Prop. 67, trans. Elwes). Gwendolin Kirchhoff opens her lecture with this sentence (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2024, Nachdenken über den Tod (1), 00:59–01:11). Free, in Spinoza’s sense as she renders it, is the person who sees reality as it really is and is no longer dragged around the ring by the nose-ring of their confused affects (cf. ibid., 01:11–01:29). In a state of joy and presence, death holds no terror; even so, the series is called “Reflecting on Death”, and so her first question is what relevance concerning oneself with death has for life at all (cf. ibid., 01:29–01:53). More in the entries Spinoza and Amor Fati.
#How do you practise memento mori without frightening yourself?
Memento mori can be practised without frightening yourself when it arises as a question rather than as an image of terror, for example in a philosophical conversation. Where do your time and your strength flow, and where do you waste them? Where would truth matter more to you than self-deception if you stood at this threshold? And what in your day do you recognise as a gift, rather than only making use of it? A conversation like this is no substitute for psychotherapy when the fear of death dominates everyday life; when it belongs in a psychotherapist’s hands is set out in the essay Fear of Death.
In a conversation with the channel Everlast AI (2025), in which she criticises transhumanism, Gwendolin Kirchhoff ties life to the body and so to transience (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2025, 29:00–29:04). Then she says: “Transience is what gives life a preciousness and a goal.” (ibid., 29:04). And: “Before the sword of death, and also before looking at death, it is decided how we invest our time.” (ibid., 29:14).
How philosophy from Socrates to Heidegger has thought about death is the subject of the entry Death in Philosophy. Why Gwendolin Kirchhoff thinks of death from the standpoint of birth is explored in the essay Reflecting on Death.
#Sources
- Horace (23 BC). Odes (Carmina) I.11, line 8: “carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero”. Quoted from The Latin Library, https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/horace/carm1.shtml.
- Tertullian (c. 197). Apologeticum 33.4: “Respice post te! Hominem te memento!”. Quoted from The Latin Library, https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/tertullian/tertullian.apol.shtml; English our own translation.
- Kirchhoff, G. (2024). „Nachdenken über den Tod (1)“ [Reflecting on Death, part 1; video, in German]. SYMPOSIUM, YouTube, 1 November 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSltRJB88jg (cited 00:59–01:53, 17:00–20:49).
- Kirchhoff, G. (2025). „Sie BELÜGEN dich über das WAHRE Ziel von KI!“ [They are lying to you about the true goal of AI; video, in German]. Everlast AI, YouTube, 17 July 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ktkeUNHeaM (cited 29:00–29:20).
- Nietzsche, F. (1874). Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen. Zweites Stück: Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben [Untimely Meditations II: On the Use and Abuse of History for Life], section 8. Quoted from the German text at zeno.org, http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Nietzsche,+Friedrich/Unzeitgem%C3%A4%C3%9Fe+Betrachtungen; English our own translation.
- Spinoza, B. de (1677). Ethics. Part IV, Proposition 67. Translated by R. H. M. Elwes, The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, vol. II, London: George Bell and Sons, 1883; Project Gutenberg #3800.
