A Word that Conquers Death

• Stories about True Greatness
• Rob Riemen

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In The Word That Conquers Death, Dutch intellectual Rob Riemen writes about people whose courage, humanity, and moral steadfastness embodied the very best of what it means to be human. Their lives affirm that even in the darkest of times, hope does not disappear, and that there are always those willing to defend humanity and the dignity of human life without compromise. How can we leave behind this age of anxiety and open the way to a world in which people can once again live freely, justly, and meaningfully? Riemen finds the answer in Machiavelli's thought: we must return to an original understanding of our humanity and rediscover what it truly means to be human. Thomas Mann, George Orwell, Robert Oppenheimer, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry are just some of the figures whose life stories Riemen transforms in this compelling book into a powerful call for the renewal of European humanism. The Word That Conquers Death argues that only hope grounded in humanism and a profound concern for the human soul can serve as a true counterforce to war, fascism, and every other form of inhumanity.

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In its original meaning, culture is a moral concept. It provides us with the grammar of life, with language—the poetic language we must learn in our search for the truth about ourselves and the human condition. Every person possesses the capacity to live truthfully, to create beauty, to act justly, and to show compassion. This spiritual capacity shapes our true identity, and this humanism—a culture of care for the soul—forms the foundation of a civilization in which every individual can live in freedom and dignity. It is the civilizational ideal of humanism that Europe was meant to bring to fruition. 

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Only human beings possess ideas; only they can conceive of a spiritual realm that transcends human nature. Human beings know love, freedom, friendship, justice, beauty, goodness, courage, boldness, wisdom, and truth. These ideas, these qualities, are real, and they are values or virtues because they give life its vitality. For a life without these values and virtues is no life at all—it is stripped of the dignity of existence, or it neglects it altogether. The sources of European culture bear witness to the belief that these values and virtues are eternally true, absolute because they are timeless and universal, and therefore meaningful for all humankind.

Rob Riemen

• ISBN: 978-953-369-077-3
• Dimensions: 125x200 mm
• Number of pages: 136
• Cover: paperback
• Year of the edition: 2026
• Original title: Woord dat de dood verslaat. Verhalen over ware grootheid
• Original language: Dutch
• Translation: Svetlana Grubić Samaržija