A Descent Into The Midwit Mind of Marcus Aurelius: A Polemic Against Stoicism, and A Primer For An Alternate Conception of Discipline.
A close reading of 'The Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius, perhaps the most over-hyped book ever written. To reply, I need to engage with the text. Join me as I set the stage.
In this piece I wish to show you that I have done my homework. The true intention of mine is to reply with an alternative to what I think many view as Marcus Aurelius’s philosophy’s practical applications in the modern age. There are innumerable apostles of his creed in 2023, and this is a sign of concern considering both the original text and its application.
It is my belief that his beliefs have been even further manipulated to justify inequality, misery, and the veneration of imperial enterprise. Both Nazi Germany and The United States reach for The Roman Empire when they wish to mythologize their project. Why might that be the case? Here we engage with the primary source before jumping even further into my next piece about Neo-Stoicism, and how socialist writers such as Antonio Gramsci propose an alternative discipline that seeks to benefit the collective in a more authentic manner. The centered quotes in italics are quotes from the text. The non-italic words below each quote are my commentary on it. Sometimes I cite the notations of Martin Hammond with a block quote to help paint my interpretation. Hopefully this handy guide helps as we both hold hands and walk through the musings of a dim emperor.
When Howard Zinn wrote The People’s History of The United States, it was considered a seminal work of leftist critique because of the viewpoint from which it was constructed. Zinn believed in a “bottom up” conception of American history, that sought to undermine and critique the preeminent historical method still employed and applauded to this day. The idea hinges on the notion that history is comprised of swarthy lever-pullers who unilaterally gripped the rod, and with the ground beneath their feet as a fulcrum, shifted the orbit of macro-human-narrative to suit their ends. Beyond the vaguely gay imagery conjured forth, which is fitting considering the actual nature of both Greek and Roman society, Thomas Carlyle was quoted as saying "The History of the world is but the Biography of great men."1 Contrary to this notion, Zinn pursued a different conjuration of what American history was. The masses, as he thought, were the true locomotion behind unfolding events. It is not the just the President, or King, that is the determinate of how things play out, but the political activity of the masses who were constantly striving for a better world, whether they achieved the vision of it or not. For this perspective, Zinn takes the vantage point of The Quakers, Black Americans, Native Americans, as they witnessed and participated in seminal moments in American history. As I seek to explicate the book of Marcus Aurelius, I imagined each aphoristic saying being spoken aloud to one of his slaves.
Aurelius became emperor in 161 AD, and had a tenure marked by some extreme difficulties for the Roman state. As Diskin Clay points out in the introduction, his rule was marked by “the flooding of the Tiber, the famine that inaugurated his rule, and the plague that reached Rome with the return of some of Lucius Verus’ eastern armies.”2 Through this turbulent age, Aurelius’ rule came to be venerated in Roman statues and coins, helping to preserve his legacy and fame for generations. Despite his routine invective against the very nature of fame, The Meditations serves as a bit of further immortality to the man. Crucially, it has a very modern context that I would like to follow up on for a subsequent piece in which I propose a different consideration of the sort of personal responsibility and proscriptive philosophy of self-improvement that Aurelius deposits here. The people who cheer on the emperor of Rome are as important a consideration to me as the author himself. You may notice that my situating of Aurelius in a historical period is mild, there are certain facets I find important and others that I do not. As with ancient text, the words themselves mean little if we don’t examine their pliability to those who wield them. As also with ancient history, there are immense gulfs of precise knowledge on what Aurelius was thinking or intended to mean. Occasionally he appeals to and quotes a non-existent text, lost to historical record. Sometimes, due to the gaps imbued by the nature of translation, it is unclear to whom or what about Marcus is speaking.3 Where many Type-A personality types would find frustration, I find immense fascination. Several hanging moments of absence provide a perfect perch for a speculator such as myself, where one can harness the momentum of analysis to make an exciting argument about the nature of a man from the past. Pathetic as it may seem, these neat little vacuums are some of the best evidence I have for the image of Aurelius I wish to portray.
As the modern scholarship clarifies, The Meditations was a book that was not written with the express intent of being published. It functioned mostly as an introspective journal for Marcus Aurelius, who wrote some of the beginning passages during “the Northern campaigns of the early 170’s on the frontiers of the Roman Empire”4. An innate militarism carries itself through The Meditations, and is a touchstone of my understanding of both the book’s, and stoic philosophy’s, purpose in reifying a state backed philosophical model. The key here is the total discipline of oneself, and the natural applications that flow from such a way of thinking. How does a belief system such as this view justice? How might one deduce, in the absence of a full explanation, how a man so fervent in their belief in the “kinship of man” find comfort with the institution of slavery? What does it mean to view all of existence through a deterministic lens of nature? This meaning that whatever happens, is a natural output of a system humming along as it should, something that is so beyond good and evil because it manages to encompass them.
I am a person of broad strokes, a feared general reader because I do not possess the reverence towards any arbiter of empire past or present. For this analysis of quotations below, I wish to be a jester that would surely be killed for the commentary I profess about the ‘masters of fate’ that western civilization so foolishly dignifies.
“[Marcus Aurelius’s] Meditations… are devoted to power and submission to power: the power of what he calls the ‘directing mind’ (to hegemonikon) over impressions, impulses, desires, and passions.”
Diskin Clay: Introduction to Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. pg.xv
Even more so than this, it became ever clearer to me that Stoicism is a crucial disciplinary tool of creating the ideal subject of rule, the slave who is able to whip themselves.
Remember how long you have been putting this off, how many times you have been given a period of grace by the gods and not used it. It is high time now for you to understand the universe of which you are a part, and the governor of that universe of whom you constitute an emanation: and that there is a limit circumscribed to your time - if you do not use it to clear away your clouds, it will be gone, and you will be gone, and the opportunity will not return.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 11
The Gods are an important point of reference in The Meditations. Here, Marcus uses them to remind the reader of their mortality, a specter that haunts Aurelius throughout his visitation to this self-addressed journal. A man such as him would have seen a great amount of death, both that which he had direct control over (wars waged by him) and a vast amount that was out of his hands (disease). A routine consideration of mine was the idea of a certain practicality of a fixation on the shortness and ‘inconsequentiality of life’ in the midst of determined natural occurrence. Wouldn’t a position such as emperor, be ultimately assuaged by the idea that any suffering that was caused by mistake or intention was just a phase of some higher order? Would it not bring you easier sleep at night to view life as some fickle thing that “will be gone, and you will be gone?” To me, such a consideration could just as easily indicate carpe diem as it could a vague nihilism. Where the Stoics often see the highest order of thought in accordance with an almost sacred sense of Justice; I see the laws of The Jungle, an acknowledgement of an innate horror to human life that the idea of ‘civilization’ should endeavor to move beyond. Nihilism is a fantastic weapon of the state that can cast a spell of passive justification, the idea that the suffering that shall befall your enemies is both ‘only temporary’, and ‘only natural.’ This disaffected nihilism is another crucial touchstone of Stoicism’s evolution into what I shall call a Neo-Stoicism, where the version of Stoicism as portrayed by Aurelius is further sharpened into a moulder of imperial hegemony. Even from the very first few chapters of Marcus work, I see dangerous seeds planted.
Every hour of the day give vigorous attention, as a Roman and as a man, to the performance of the task in hand with precise analysis, with unaffected dignity, with human sympathy, with dispassionate justice - and to vacating your mind from all its other thoughts. And you will achieve this vacation if you perform each action as if it were the last of your life: freed, that is, from all lack of aim, from all passion-led deviation from the ordinance of reason, from pretence, from love of self, from dissatisfaction with what fate has dealt you. You see how few things a man needs to master for the settled flow of a god-fearing life. The gods themselves ask nothing more of one who keeps these observances.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 11
Upon reading the lines ‘the performance of the task in hand with precise analysis, with unaffected dignity, with human sympathy, with dispassionate justice - and to vacating your mind from all its other thoughts’ I consider that almost all of the most evil acts that have ever occurred arrived because of meticulous detail. Genocide is a precise procedure full of what to one party might very well seem ‘dispassionate justice.’ It is in the best interest of the state that you lead to view your actions as those of a higher rationality, the enemy as chaotic hordes who are consumed by ‘passion led deviation from the ordinance of reason.’ These observations seem evidence that Aurelius’ brand of stoicism is not just a state-backed philosophy, but his philosophy of The State itself.
Such a man will take no less delight in the living Snarl of wild animals than in all the imitative representations of painters and sculptors; he will see a kind of bloom and fresh beauty in an old woman or an old man; and he will be able to look with sober eyes on the seductive charm of his own slave boys. Not all can share this conviction - only one who has developed a genuine affinity for Nature and her works. For him there will be many such perceptions.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 17
This quote is a true doozy to me. If the translation is to be trusted, then Marcus own semantic choice is a bit of a betrayal to the very point he is trying to make. If one has such sober eyes, would notating how seductive they looked matter to the observation? For example, if I told you “I look with sober eyes upon that fucking delicious doughnut, glazed ever so perfectly with the sheen catching mine fiending eyes?” Would you not think I would cave to the impulse of that donut I found so seductive? The point continues to here, wherein Marcus is giving a bit of a Shakespearean idiom ‘Thou doth protest too much.’
Beyond the more silly point of analysis, lies the more sinister one. Slavery in Ancient Rome was abundant. The British Museum website has this to say about it:
Scholars estimate about 10% (but possibly up to 20%) of the Roman empire's population were enslaved. This would mean, for an estimated Roman empire population of 50 million (in the first century AD) between five and ten million were enslaved. This number would have been unequally distributed across the empire, with a higher concentration of enslaved people in urban areas and in Italy.
Slaves can not consent, nor can someone who is the suspected age range to warrant a description such as “boy.” The idea of being seduced by someone who is unilaterally devoted to you regardless of the fact that to be a slave for specifically the literal Emperor, is pretty grotesque stuff when you think of the actual reality of what slavery means in every society in which it is allowed to exist. Stoicism is made easier because of slaves, and it also can be used to make ‘better’ slaves. To make more productive slaves.
Aurelius also pats himself on the back here and a few other times for saying that he didn’t have sex with slaves when he could have. This passage and an earlier one where he makes reference to two people named “Benedicta [and] Theodotus” who Hammond relays are ‘presumably slaves,’5 and how he exercised patience by not having sex with them. As Clay later notes, Marcus had some volatility in how he described others, which suggested that maybe the master of self-control and the worshipper of ‘rationality’ may have been a little less stable than his philosophical aphorisms indicate. One wonders, maybe Marcus felt the need to remind himself of not indulging in slave sex after he is able to clear the fugue of the “reprehensible passions?”
Nothing is so conducive to greatness of mind as the ability to subject each element of our experience in life to methodical and truthful examination, always at the same time using this scrutiny as a means to reflect on the nature of the universe, the contribution any given action or event makes to that nature, the value this has for the Whole, and the value it has for man and man is an inhabitant of this highest City, of which all other cities are mere households.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 21
The emperor makes routine reference to The Whole, his catch-all term for his sort of unitary natural-determinism. Although in a religious sense Aurelius is a polytheist, he had a more unitary idea of the world’s existence as evidenced by this term. Likening the totality to a ‘city’ the specter of a slum comes to mind. The city seems a fitting metaphor for how Aurelius sees the nature of group existence, because of both its ills and its benefits.
Wherever it is in agreement with nature, the ruling power within us takes a flexible approach to circumstances, always adapting itself easily to both practicality and the given event. It has no favoured material for its work, but sets out on its objects in a conditional way, turning any obstacle into material for its own use. It is like a fire mastering whatever falls into it. A small flame would be extinguished, but a bright fire rapidly claims as its own all that is heaped on it, devours it all, and leaps up yet higher in consequence.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 23
I find nothing enlightening about this quote.
All's right that happens in the world? Examine this saying carefully, and you will find it true. I do not mean 'right' simply in the context of cause and effect, but in the sense of 'just - as if some adjudicator were assigning dues. So keep on observing this, as you have started, and in all that you do combine doing it with being a good man, in the specific conception of good man'. Preserve this in every sphere of action.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 25
Again, we visit what will be a frequent refrain of mine. Here, Aurelius makes it emphatically clear that he views all that happens6 in the world as being ‘just’ in a moral dimension. Later we will see him further encourage people to circumvent unnecessary toil by accepting ones’ ‘lot in life.’ Let’s combine these proscriptions and observe them from our chosen vantage point.
If a slave is to complain, it is due to the fact that they are unable to understand The Gods higher calculus that they must be oppressed, that their misery emerges from a lack of understanding on their unique presence in The Whole. I care not what Aurelius deems ‘being a good man,’ for everyone else except himself, one must be a good man to ‘Roman State’ and by proxy to Marcus himself. They must learn to live with the harsh reality of domination, that the ‘goodness’ he had in mind is often implacably locked to a condition of imprisonment.
Love the art which you have learnt, and take comfort in it. Go through the remainder of your life in sincere commitment of all your being to the gods, and never making yourself tyrant or slave to any man.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 29
Hammond has nothing to say to further shine a light on this quote. Where there is a lack such as this, I dance. Does not being an emperor encompass tyranny innately? They would call you supreme, and to be supreme one must inherently be tyrannical. Don’t be a slave to any man? Would this make you more than a man Marcus? What of the slaves of men? Should they rise up? No. It is on their backs that The Whole is sustained, they must cheer that they have the honor of carrying Roman destiny though it turns their spines to dust.
You should always look on human life as short and cheap. Yesterday sperm: tomorrow a mummy or ashes.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 32
To feel better about grinding spines to dust for the sake of imperial destiny, view life as expendable and reducible down to bodily excretions, and the idea of returning to the same dust. Another quote that furthers the idea of a sort of cloaked nihilism present in stoicism7. Stoics can be quite empowered killers if they impose their valuation of human life onto others. Some of them most certainly did.
Realities are wrapped in such a veil (as it were) that several philosophers of distinction have thought them altogether beyond comprehension, while even the Stoics think them hard to comprehend. And every assent we may give to our perceptions is fallible: the infallible man does not exist. Pass, then, to the very objects of our experience - how short-lived they are, how shoddy: a catamite, a whore, a thief could own them. Go on now to the characters of your fellows: it is hard to tolerate even the best of them, not to speak of one's difficulty in enduring even oneself.
In all this murk and dirt, in all this flux of being, time, movement, things moved, I cannot begin to see what on earth there is to value or even to aim for. Rather the opposite: one should console oneself with the anticipation of natural release, not impatient of its delay, but taking comfort in just these two thoughts. One, that nothing will happen to me which is not in accordance with the nature of the Whole: the other, that it is in my control to do nothing contrary to my god and the divinity within me - no one can force me to this offence.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 39
Marcus had clear difficulty in persuading himself into any respect, let alone admiration, for his fellow men, whether ordinary citizens or close associates. The Meditations are peppered with expressions of indifference, suspicion, fastidious distaste, or overt contempt, even hatred. His approval is limited to those (evidently few who live their lives in agreement with nature' (3.4.4) - i.e. those who share and evince in their lives Marcus' own philosophy.
a catamite:.. Marcus seems to reserve a particular abhorrence for catamites… [he also has] specific approval of Antoninus’ putting a stop to homosexual love of young men.
~notes on page 39~
So the same guy who mentions that slave boys have a seductive charm, also hates them intensely to the point where in his private diary, he feels the need to mention it multiple times. These are the actions of someone who is entirely straight and never had any sex with slave boys at any point. Why even think that? He already told you that he doesn’t do that even when they look scrumptious to him. The Gods cheer every time those tempting catamites, who are specifically prepubescent boys who were meant to accompany fully grown men, act all seductive around those who literally own them and the owners with their temperate mind are above such influences.
Accustom yourself not to be disregarding of what someone else has to say: as far as possible enter into the mind of the speaker.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 57
This quote is important as I am sure my detractors would claim that when it comes to The Meditations, I am engaged in a long campaign of Ad Hominem. You would be valid in this critique, but with each Tony Robbins-esque utterance of Marcus I feel the need to yell “SLAVES” “SUPREME EMPEROR” as a refrain of intellectual necessity. Context is crucial and I seek to “enter into the mind of the speaker” perhaps ever more than he even anticipated. How might the world appear if I was the closest to thing to God on earth? I am not disregarding what Marcus has to say, I am achingly listening to it. This is imperative because all of my ideological enemies find Marcus an arch-stone of their practice.
Is my mind sufficient for this task, or is it not? If it is, I use it for the task as an instrument given me by the nature of the Whole. If it is not, I either cede the work (if it is otherwise my responsibility) to someone better able to accomplish it, or do it as best I can, calling in aid someone who, in cooperation with my own directing mind, can achieve what is at this particular time the need and benefit of the community. Whatever I do, either by myself or with another, should have this sole focus - the common benefit and harmony.
How many who once rose to fame are now consigned to oblivion: and how many who sang their fame are long disappeared.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 59
The master may cede the work however they see fit, and if they enlist the work of others that is for “the benefit of the community” then this is its own reward. The reward of duty to Rome, duty to ME. For in a system where you must go about the “benefit of the community”, in a hierarchical model, only one individual has the final say as to what the “community needs.” Keep this in the forefront of your mind for the next piece.
If the community believes they need a new ruler, then you shall meet death for this most insubordinate consideration. Such a suggestion is to impugn The Gods, who I alone know the will of.
Standing straight or held straight
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 60
As Hammond notes, this a marked difference of expression versus his typical more austere self-reliance. He appears to imply that the help of others is as important as being able to ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.’
Do not dream of possession of what you do not have: rather reflect on the greatest blessings in what you do have, and on their account remind yourself how much they would have been missed if they were not there. But at the same time you must be careful not to let your pleasure in them habituate you to dependency, to avoid distress if they are sometimes absent.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 62
For this I further enter the mind of the speaker.
“The greatest blessings that you, as a slave, might have, is the guarantee of the rising sun and the barley in front of you in the sodden chambers beneath the Gladiatorial Arena. You have great blessings dear slave, for you are the ruled subject of an emperor such as myself. I am not the temperamental tyrant that has plagued this great empire, and now you are under the auspices of someone who will rule for twenty years of peace. A peace not too different from wartime, for thou art still in chains.”
- A fictitious Marcus Aurelius, probably.
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The above quote by Kwame Ture comes to mind.
The truth of the matter, my fellow Athenians, is this. Whatever position a man has taken up in his own best judgement, or is assigned by his commander, there, it seems to me, he should stay and face the danger, giving no thought to death or anything else before dishonour.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 64
As Hammond indicates, this is Aurelius quoting Plato’s Apology. As was revealed in some of the historical research I did concerning this piece, ritualized suicide was a practice not incredibly common to Stoicism but still permissible under certain circumstances. Therefore the reverence to the idea of ‘death before dishonor’ could have all manner of significance underneath the militarized ideas of Stoic belief. Charging head first into death for the sake of the dream of the ruler is something absolutely crucial to have subjects ready to do. For the mind of a soldier, one must have regimented thoughts. Questioning leadership could endanger your squadmates, and it could also embolden the commission of atrocity. Consider all the modern fields that are being made to be like the military, and how quickly The Meditations could be used to advise the contract killer as much as the business student. Past and present have never stopped being connected.
The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in that it stands ready for what comes and is not thrown by the unforeseen.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 67
An important quote, building off of the analysis just above. Considering Aurelius is more directly linking stoicism to a sort of self-imposed militarism. Of course it would be contradictory for Marcus to view life as being something as frivolous as dancing. He shall leave such silly endeavors for the Catamites as they are over there, menacing and tempting in equal parts who I observe being tempting with sober eyes. Kidding aside, another bit of idiomatic analysis comes to mind that I shall leave you with, dear reader.
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
-Abraham Maslow
Do what nature requires at this moment. Start straight away, if that is in your power: don't look over your shoulder to see if people will know.
Don't hope for Plato's utopian republic, but be content with the smallest step forward, and regard even that result as no mean achievement. How worthless are these little men in the public eye who think their actions have anything to do with philosophy! They are full of snot. And who will change their views? Without a change of view what alternative is there to slavery? Men groaning and going through the motions of compliance? Go on, then, talk to me now of Alexander and Philip and Demetrius of Phalerum. I shall follow them, if they saw the will of universal nature and took themselves to her school. But if they simply strutted a dramatic role, no one has condemned me to imitate them. The work of philosophy is simple and modest. Do not seduce me to pompous pride.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 89
It’s no surprise that the prime benefactor of an iron-clad imperial hierarchy, wishes us to be content with incrementalism.
This vigorous chapter, with its strong undercurrent of emotion (which seems a characteristic blend of anger, frustration, and self-contempt), is the closest that Marcus comes in the Meditations to a statement of political philosophy (other than, indirectly, in his detailed appreciation of Antoninus Pius [earlier in the work]) There is no room for large ambition- neither the big idea' nor the 'big stick'. No point in abstract and impractical theorizing (as in Plato's Republic), the attempt to change society by changing minds: no virtue either in dramatic conquest and the mere imposition of power unguided by reason, which leads to a nation of ostensibly compliant slaves. One rational step at a time: 'simple and modest.8
A perfect discontent management system, whereby you rule in such a way that your subjects should ideally have the Big Stick inside their own head. Domination perfected, an implantation of a cop inside your consciousness a la Michel Foucault or Gilles Deleuze. Every time the image of a slave is conjured, the irony I find biting. It is seen as an eternity of penance to Aurelius. Yet I imagine if he had to defend such a belief, he would speak to the paramount utility of the slave to the project of Rome.
The ultimate disciple, a person you have contempt for, whose existence is nearly meaningless to you, who you believe should still strive for unwavering compliance.
All that you see will soon perish; those who witness this perishing will soon perish themselves. Die in extreme old age or die before your time - it will all be the same.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 90
Another bit of nihilism that is very useful. If life is ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ as a Hobbesian might say, why weep for the deaths of anyone? In particular why weep for those dispatched, displaced, and destroyed by your dreams? I have The Whole in mind, and you are nothing but a dirty slave to the passions. Walk along the hallowed ground of rationalism with me.
A slave running from his master is a fugitive. Law is our master: the law-breaker is therefore a fugitive. But also in the same way pain, anger, or fear denote refusal of some past, present, or future order from the governor of all things - and this is law, which legislates his lot for each of us. To feel fear, then, pain or anger is to be a fugitive.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 100
Justice is linked to the law of nature. Slavery used as a metaphor for the ebbs and flows of a universal fate, testifies to the depth of belief in the institution of slavery due to how routinely it is used as a metaphor for the folly of not following Stoic determinism.
The mind which says 'my children must live, or there must be popular acclaim for all I do', is the eye demanding pale or the teeth demanding pap.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 103
Is there anything that could be better evidence to the perverted ethic of a Stoic than to equate the desire for a healthy life for your child to the shallow desire for constant praise? Infant mortality would have been a both routine and inescapable horror of Ancient Roman times.9 Such a moral proscription tracks for the type of individual who would view human life as implacably fickle. Yet it is also in stark contradiction that life could be cherished in an emotive way based on this criteria.
This is one of two passages in which Marcus seems to underscore the idea of wanting your children to live being something that is an errant request. It is situated in the idea that this is something you cannot control, therefore why should it concern you? Then one wonders, would an emperor feel the same way about his own children in particular those who stand to inherit the throne. Minimizing the value of human lives, helps justify military conquest, and functions as supplementary evidence to viewing domination by the few as a natural human process.
How clearly it strikes you that there is no other walk of life so conducive to the exercise of philosophy as this in which you now find yourself!
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 107
Marcus Aurelius, addressing himself, and acknowledging the hypocrisy and ease of exercising stoicism, when one is the supreme ruler of an extremely militarized state.
‘You were born a slave: you have no voice.’
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 113
Marcus Aurelius quoting some unknown poet with no further comment. The author/commentator leaving notes is audibly silent on trying to position this quote as being compatible with the Brotherhood Of Man quotations in previous chapters. In this delightful vacuum of the text, which I am sure other historians have tried to answer as well, is to try and guess what some guy was thinking in the Mediterranean almost 2000 years ago when this was written. One reading is the idea that when one is born, you are a child and cannot speak or seek to ‘stand straight’ of your own accord. Thus, maybe Aurelius was considering the idea that you should try and develop yourself into a citizen of ‘The Great City’ through accepting your lot in life. Or one could take the least charitable reading possible, which is my express preference.
You have been placed into your station in life, you may weep and your days will be dark. Yet if you choose to smile, your master may look upon you with more glee. Isn’t it pesky to dream of liberation when you know it will never arrive? Know your place.
When you fret at any circumstance, you have forgotten a number of things. You have forgotten that all comes about in accordance with the nature of The Whole; that any wrong done lies with the other; further, that everything which happens was always so in the past, will be the same again in the future, and is happening now across the world; that a human being has close kinship with the whole human race - not a bond of blood or seed, but a community of mind. And you have forgotten this too, that every man's mind is god and has flowed from that source; that nothing is our own property, but even our child, our body, our very soul have come from that source; that all is as thinking makes it so; that each of us lives only the present moment, and the present moment is all we lose.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 120
It is very difficult to take passages such as this seriously. If one believes in an Alan Watts-esque unity, the touchy feely sentiments of a Grateful Dead concert met with the horrifying sprawl of the concert-venue parking lot, that every “human being has close kinship with the whole human race;” does this not make imperative the persistent questioning of the very nature of your present society’s valuation of human life? How can life be so inconsequential and dismissible, where you feel that one must be content with how things “perish,” and also believe in vivacity?
Often I wonder if the austere Aurelius is sober Aurelius, and psychedelic Marcus is Aurelius after some wine and hole access.
Mortal man, you have lived as a citizen in this great city. What matter if that life is five or fifty years? The laws of the city apply equally to all. So what is there to fear in your dismissal from the city? This is no tyrant or corrupt judge who dismisses you, but the very same nature that brought you in.
Marcus Aurelius, Pg. 122
From dust unto dust. A knowledge that I take to necessitate a very different responsibility than Aurelius would encourage. The idea that the natural connection of human species should encourage and determine the necessity of a collective. Society shouldn’t simply function with an acknowledgement of our interconnectedness, society must be rebuilt with this in mind. If one, through their probing of their place in society versus the universal nature of kinship, finds that they are unfree then they should not be content to ‘accept their lot in life.’
Stoicism is helpful if you need to inspire yourself to get the laundry done. It is a remarkably destructive weapon of undervaluing the very nature of human life that it claims to revere. Many of my comments are repetitious, the same could be said of The Meditations, and stoicism more broadly. Epictetus, considered the godfather of Stoicism, never wrote down any of the teachings of the philosophy in an applied sense. The biggest boon of this philosophy and one of the hallmarks of its widespread appeal is how the medium of the ideas suit the message of them; stoicism is as simple as it preaches simplicity.
Yet all I see are the foundations for a state that must justify slavery and domination, and the casting aside of human life. I see self-imposed slavery and the stabilizing buttresses of using Rome as a template for militarized fascism. The shadow of discipline is domination, and if we are unfree we should never accept our lot in life.
I see Marcus as temperamental and irascible, someone who is a hypocrite and unable to answer his belief’s own contradictions. It matters little that this diary was not meant to be published, for everyone knows that the emperor believed that the citizen should follow in his image. In this book I see a guilty conscience attempting to reconcile with and rationalize their crimes. Empire is as empire does, and what better model for the imperial view of the world than the pseudo-philosophical aphorisms of a Mediterranean murderer?
Thank you for reading what I consider a prologue to my next piece, concerning how Aurelius views were inherited by many who use them even more as a tyrannical cudgel on behalf of The State. In the next piece I will build off of some the themes present in this analysis, and use some of the same quotes themselves, as I discuss a new Internet-Content economy for a rising modern-philosophical figure, The Neo-Stoic. Stay tuned, and thank you for as always your continued readership.
‘The Hero as Divinity’ in: Heroes and Hero-Worship
Diskin Clay, Introduction to Meditations pg.xiii
This is acknowledged several times not only by Clay’s introduction, but also in the very helpful footnotes found throughout the various ‘chapters’ of the Meditations Martin Hammond. A book which echoes the gospel both in how it is broken up and in how it is manipulated.
Diskin Clay, Introduction to Meditations pg.xxi
Martin Hammond notes on Meditations pg.131
'All's right that happens in the world: This appears to be a quotation, or at least a popular saying, but the source is unknown. For the 'justice of men's allotted experience, and the obligation to accept it gladly - a very frequent theme in the Meditations.
Martin Hammond notes on Meditations pg.25
You should always look on human life as short and cheap: A constant theme in the Meditations, treated starkly in vigorous language. See 2.17.I, 5.IO ('all this murk and dirt), 5.33, 7.47 ('the filth of life on the ground?), 8.24 (the image of bath-water, 8.37 (*It is all stench and corruption in a bag of bones'), 9.28, 10.31 (In this way you will always look on human life as mere smoke and nothing'), 12.27 (smoke and ashes), 12.33 ('corpse and smoke').
Martin Hammond notes on Meditations pg.152
Martin Hammond notes on Meditations pg.192
And present times if you aren’t white, if one is honest.