MARCUS AURELIUS: MEDITATIONS

Marcus Aurelius  Meditations , Translated by Robin Hard, Oxford World's Classics 2011



There are worse ways of spending a few days than sitting on the back deck, enjoying the Autumn sunshine and reading Mencius and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.  Both books were new to me and were a wonderful surprise.  I enjoyed Mencius but towards the end I was feeling a bit bogged down by the structured formality of the rites and courtesies as well as by the plethora of Chinese names that looked very similar to my western eyes (Chou, T-chou, Tsou, Ch’i, Chi, Ch’iu, Ch’u, Chieh, Chiao etc).  When you add in nicknames and honorifics etc, it left me quite lost.

 I really enjoyed Marcus Aurelius.  First of all, the thought that these meditations were written by the emperor of the Roman Empire, while he was fighting in Northeastern Europe to fend off the German hordes, is awe-inspiring.  He wrote as thoughtfully as the scholar-writers I’ve been reading during the previous weeks (Lucretius, Mencius, Plato).  Incredible.  I found his words very accessible and much of it still valid today – in that if you tried to follow his advice, you would probably be considered a good person, a moral person.  It was also interesting as I read through the book to see how his attitude or mood would alter in various sections.  Some of it was quite full of hope, in other sections he seemed quite down-hearted and cast down.  His words created a picture of a man who had spent his lifetime thinking about the meaning of life, how to live a moral life – and reading various philosophers and the writings of other thinkers that came before him.  It was hard to think of him as a man of action, of warfare.

 Marcus Aurelius lived from AD 121 to 180.  He was adopted by his uncle (emperor in AD 138-161).  He himself became emperor in 161, co-emperor with another adopted son, Lucius Verus until Lucius died in 169.  Marcus Aurelius died in 180.  During his lifetime he was a follower of the Stoic teachings.  Stoicism was started by Zeno and greatly expanded by Epictetus who wrote the discourses.  It was very interesting reading about the Stoic view of the world a few days after reading Lucretius, the Roman scholar-poet from the 1^st century BCE who followed the Epicurean school of thought.

The Stoics practiced 'practical ethics'.  For Marcus Aurelius this involved stripping down things to their essential reality, deciding what was really necessary, avoiding rash judgements or reactive emotions.

There were 3 branches of the teachings:

• logic (dialectic)
• physics (the study of nature)
• ethics

Marcus Aurelius covered 5 Stoic themes in his writings:

1. Living a virtuous life led to a happy life (virtue was all that was needed to ensure happiness).
2. Emotions and desires depend directly on beliefs about what is valuable or desirable.  Stoics should avoid reactive beliefs and be wary of judgements (as these may be inappropriate or misguided).  Consider priorities.
3. Humans have an inbuilt natural instinct to benefit others and all humans are capable of progressing towards the ideal state (complete virtue and happiness).
4. The natural world or Nature, has an inbuilt purpose or plan (or meaning).
5. Philosophy is a unified and systematic body of knowledge about the universe.

In much of his writings you can see a man trying to remind himself to do the right thing, to live a good life and avoid descending into pettiness or misguided emotion.  In Book 1 he describes what he has learned from various people (men) in his life:

Some of them could be written by any teenager struggling with how to grow up and become a good person.  Book 1.5.

[...] to endure hardship, and have few needs; to do these things for myself and not meddle in the affairs of others; and to turn a deaf ear to slander.

Some of them are reminders that life steadily moves on.  Book 2.4
Remember how long you have been deferring these things, and how many times you have been granted further grace by the gods, and yet have failed to make use of it.  But it is now high time that you realized what kind of universe this is [...] and that your time here is strictly limited and, unless you makes use of it to clear the fog from your mind, the moment will be gone, as you are gone, and never be yours again.

He revisits this theme in Book 10.16
No more of this talk about what a good man should be, but simply be one!

Though the Stoics are considered to be somewhat austere and not pleasure-loving (as compared to the Epicureans), Marcus Aurelius shows a slightly rosier view of life's possibilities.  In Book 5.5 he lists qualities he admires:

• disdain for sensual pleasures
• sincerity
• dignity
• endurance
• kindness
• freedom
• frugality

It's a somewhat austere list but in Book 3.2 he describes many simple daily aspects of life and the pleasure they can provide.  It reminds me of Lorna Crozier's new book "The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things" which celebrates the ordinary everyday things in our lives.  Marcus Aurelius notes many banal things and their beauty (such as the crack that develops on the crust of a loaf of bread during baking) and says:
[...] So if a person is endowed with sensibility and has a deep enough insight into the workings of the universe, he will find scarcely anything which fails to please him in some way by its presence [...]

Like the Epicureans, the Stoics felt that we should not worry about or fear death.  Similarly lusting after fame is useless as eventually no one will remember.  Aurelius spends many pages writing about death, fame, the expanse of time in which the universe exists etc.  I can't help but remember that he is writing these words towards the end of his life, and as he is facing battle and warfare daily.  He is constantly warning himself about how fleeting our time on earth is.  Aurelius counsels [himself?]  to remember (Book 4.3):
[...] that things of themselves have no hold on the mind, but stand motionless outside it, and all disturbances arise solely from the opinions within us; and secondly, that all that you presently behold will change in no time whatever and cease to exist [...]
'The universe is change, and life mere opinion.'  - Democritus No. 85

Book 4.35
All is ephemeral, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.

For Marcus Aurelius, intelligence and a sense of law were 2 qualities characteristic and universal to mankind.  Like Lucretius he feels that nothing proceeds from nothing, though where the Epicureans feel that the universe is random, the Stoics believe in Fate, in Nature's plan.
"Providence or atoms" (Book 4.3).  Marcus Aurelius frequently wrote about the fact that we don't know what Nature's plan is, what the big picture is - but Nature isn't wrong and so nothing that happens is wrong, it's all part of Nature's master plan.

LIke Mencius, Marcus Aurelius warned about being narrow-minded or having tunnel vision. 
Book 4.12
[...] be prepared to change your mind if someone is at hand to put you right and to guide you away from some ill-grounded opinion.  But this change of view must always be based on a conviction that it serves justice or the common benefit; and this or something like it should be the sole reason for your choice, rather than the impression that it would be pleasant or popular.

Book 6.21
If anyone can give me good reason to think that I am going astray in my thoughts or in my actions, I will gladly change my ways.  For I seek the truth, which has never caused harm to anyone; no, the person who is harmed is one who persists in his self-deception and ignorance.

Marcus Aurelius writes about Reason.  Book 6.23
[...] Towards irrational creatures and material things in general, act in a generous and liberal manner, because you have reason and they have none [...]

He also rejects imagination - because it leads to desire.  Book 7.17
[...] my imagination.  Go away in the name of the gods [...] for I have no need of you [...]

Book 9.7
Blot out imagination; put a curb on impulse; quench desire; ensure that your ruling centre remains under its own control.

In this he is much like Krishna in the Gita, recommending to let go of desire and of wanting. 
In Book 9.40 Marcus Aurelius gives advice on how to turn your prayers around. Don't pray for your desires to be fulfilled, pray to not have those desires, to release them, pray to not be afraid of losing things (even a child).  Pray to be released from these emotions and needs.  Importantly the Stoics advised to avoid over-valuation of non-important things (they call them 'indifferents').

He has a couple of great lines that would be wonderful to pull out in an argument:
"an abscess on the body of the universe" and a line from Epitectus "You are a little soul carrying a corpse around".  But I digress.

Reassuringly Marcus Aurelius feels that we all contain the possibility of these virtues and strengths.  Like Mencius he feels that we need to look within ourselves for the answers and solutions.
Book 10.33
[...] But mind and reason can find their way through every obstacle as their nature and will dictate.[...]

In Book 12.1 Marcus Aurelius says not to be afraid of dying but to be afraid of not living your life.  This book is full of bits wise advice and insight.  It is hard not to feel jaded about it and cynical.  The last few decades have been so full of self-help books that it is hard to read advice such as this without feeling a bit sceptical or even disparaging.  It helps to remember that this was written by a man who was leader of the Roman Empire and who had spent decades fighting battles for the survival of his empire.  This isn't Dr. Phil.

Mediations is a book I want to reread slowly and think about.

DISCUSSION Plato's Symposium and Sappho's poems and fragments

We had our 2^nd class yesterday and discussed Plato’s Symposium and Sappho’s poems and fragments.  Though Plato’s book was all about Eros (love and desire) and contained no less than 7 separate speeches about Eros, the few poems and scraps of Sappho's poetry that have survived make you FEEL passion, love, desire.  The dominant motif of Plato’s work was Reason and the dominant motif in all Sappho’s words is PASSION.

Roberta led the discussion on Sappho.  Prior to the class and leading right up to the class, she had tweeted fragments from Sappho which was a fun way to read some fragments and think about them individually. We had a round table session where we each read a fragment and tried to be aware of what our immediate sensation was after hearing Sappho’s words.  Everyone seemed to have enjoyed her poetry.  When we got into a later discussion about what some of the fragments might have meant, it became bogged down for me in discussions of how literally to interpret the following 2 fragments:

“and for you I make an offering

of a white goat”

(which sounded to me like something Leonard Cohen might have written)

“Sweet mother, I can no longer work the loom.

Slender Aphrodite has made me fall in love with a boy.”

This is one of those situations where the words themselves are enough for me without analyzing it too closely but at the same time, it would be interesting to find out more about that time, what the rites would have been to worship Aphrodite, gender roles, people's relationships with the gods they worshipped – not to flesh out the poem itself but just to delve into a world I know nothing about.

It was very interesting to read Plato’s Symposium on Eros the same week we read Sappho’s work.  Someone mentioned that several speakers in the Symposium note that Eros is a neglected god whom no one has written about but Plato does not mention Sappho, a Greek poet from 2 centuries earlier who would certainly have been known in Athens in Plato’s (and Socrates’) time.  The two texts were such distinct examples of Passion vs Reason with the additional irony that Plato’s logical discussions were on the subject of Eros: Love or Desire, yet compared to Sappho, his work lacked passion.

Byron led the discussion on the Symposium.  There were several interesting themes in this work which we had a chance to discuss.

One was a brief discussion of Plato’s Theory of Forms:

There exist out there in the universe forms for everything that are the perfect versions – people may get a glimpse of these perfect forms and then once you’ve seen it you’ll never be satisfied with the imperfect forms i.e.: love is not just sexual satisfaction, it’s also a beautiful ideal.

I wasn’t aware of this theory before and don’t really have a good understanding of the concept – again something I would like to read more about when I get the chance.

We discussed the idea that what we see is not necessarily what really is – you have to work at things as they are not necessarily what they 1^st appear.  This, in my limited understanding of Socrates, seems to sum up his method: to challenge the other person on what they think they know and by questioning them and discussing their ideas, show them that their understanding is imperfect BUT help them towards a better understanding through the discussion.

We also discussed one of the recurrent themes: duality.  The speeches contained many examples where things were mentioned and categorized into 2 opposing categories:

Heavenly Aphrodite/Common Aphrodite

Young/old

Good love/vulgar love

Wisdom/Ignorance

Health/Disease

Lover/Beloved

Male/Female

Sappho by contrast did not seem to use duality in her work.  It's more centered on the person, the connection, the passion, the natural world around her.

Socrates speech was interesting as Diotima brings in the idea of a spectrum – that extremes aren’t the entire story – many people fall in the middle (the “enlightened” people?)

202a – Diotima (Haven’t you realized that there is something between wisdom and ignorance?)

“It’s having right opinions without being able to give reasons for having them” –

There are also some devastating characterizations in Plato's speeches:

204a  “The problem with the ignorant person is precisely that, despite not being good or intelligent, he regards himself as satisfactory.”

We also discussed the question of whether we should be concerned about the intention or the act.  Several speakers in the Symposium had touched on this, most notably Pausanias.  This issue is still debated to this day.  I remember seeing “Oleanna” a play by David Mamet which contrasts an interaction between a professor and a young female student from each of their viewpoints and suggests that judgment of an action or of someone's words depends more on how it is perceived than on how it was intended by the speaker.

The question of intention also comes up in the murder trials where the intent has a huge impact on the punishment: 1^st degree murder vs manslaughter.  Similarly with state-sanctioned killing: war, self-defense, terrorism etc.

Byron asked “How strange is it that Socrates stands still for extended lengths of time, presumably lost in thought? What would happen today if someone did this? Is this lost in thought or some form of dissociation?”  The answers brought up the theory of the bicameral mind again and how we define mental illness.  For me this brings us back to Diotoma’s spectrum.  Every time I hear about a new mental illness being defined and making it into  the latest edition of the “Diagnostical and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", I can’t help but think that all of us could find ourselves somewhere on many of these spectra, that we are just defining variations on normal human conditions.

We ended our discussion by talking about immortality.  During Socrates’ speech the purpose of life seemed to be immortality and this is achieved through 'reproduction in beauty', suggesting that we should be pursuing truth, beauty, good and that the path to this was through philosophy.  We spoke about the ways of trying to achieve immortality, each containing some kind of flaw:

• procreational (via children) - the problem was that over time your line could die out, or even if it didn’t, who would remember you generations down ?  In modern scientific terms however, your genetic material would survive.

• reputational – either through history (figures such as Alexander the Great) or through surviving written works such as philosophy or literature, or works of art.  The question then becomes how well do you want to be remembered to consider you have achieved immortality: 

1. just your name, 
2. your work without your name (such as an anonymous creator of some Etruscan vase in a museum somewhere), 
3. having future generations know your work but nothing about you, such as Lucretius (coming up in a couple of weeks), to know about you but mainly misinformation such as Richard III, maligned by Shakespeare and known by today’s world as a hunchback, tyrant and murderer of children.  This is very topical today as archaeologists excavate on Grey Friars Street in Leicester, hoping to find the lost grave of Richard the III.

For me immortality would be best achieved by creating something that retained its significance and power centuries later, such as Sappho did.