Episode 236 - Transcript

Hello everyone. I’m Stephen West. This is Philosophize This! Hope you love the show today.

So depending on what your tastes are you could think that Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is the best philosophy book you’ve ever had the privilege of reading…OR you could think it’s a book… that oversimplifies what it is to be a person on a level that’s almost INSULTING when you read it. Heard both of these takes plenty of times getting emails over the years.

But as I ALWAYS do on this podcast whenever we’re covering ANYTHING… today my job is to make a case… for what’s AMAZING about this book Meditations.

I’m gonna talk about some of the big IDEAS from it, and hopefully give someone who’s reading through it some important CONTEXT… for where Marcus Aurelius was PERSONALLY at in his life as he WROTE each of these 12 entries that make UP the books of this book, they’re called books not chapters in this case.

Should ALSO be said: that NEXT episode… is going to be on Nietzsche and Schopenhauer’s brutal CRITIQUE of Stoicism, and how LIMITED they thought the whole thing was. Cause that’s ANOTHER thing we like to do on this podcast… consider the other side of things.

But anyway: that’s for next time…TODAY…as I said I’m going to be making a REAL CASE for stoicism, and a case for why even if there ARE some built in limitations to it…why those limitations MAY in fact BE, a big part of the SELLING point of Stoicism. How it’s become so POPULAR in the last 15 years or so. What is it about the world we’re currently living in… that makes the message of STOICISM in particular…so attractive to people?

Let’s get right into it…the most important thing I think anybody reading Meditations NEEDS to understand BEFORE they pick the book up…are the differences between three things that may SOUND like they’re all the same thing on the surface, but they’re actually very different.

There’s STOICISM, as a whole SYSTEM of thinking about everything in the universe, metaphysics, knowledge and all the rest of it. Then there’s stoic ETHICS, as a subcomponent of stoicism, with a LOT of modern interpretation added ONTO it. And then there’s THIS book… Meditations… that was written by a guy named Marcus Aurelius when he was the emperor of rome between 170 and 180 AD.

Understanding…how very DIFFERENT, these three things ARE…will bring you a lot of clarity about meditations as a book, and it’ll show how much someone would be MISSING OUT on about Stoicism…if all they did was read meditations and then call it a life. By the end of the episode we’ll understand all three.

Now the FIRST thing to say, is probably to address what you could call, the elephant in the room, regarding Marcus Aurelius as a man.

Anyone who’s read this book Meditations and has HEARD other people TALK about it…has probably also heard someone say at SOME point…that Marcus Aurelius was not a philosopher. Now I'm all for inclusive definitions to a certain extent…and I can respect the argument that this was a man, who should be considered a philosopher because he LIVED so strictly by a philosophical code…but I also think it doesn’t help ANYONE in this world…to just lump everybody out there together under a single banner because they loosely resemble each other.

And the fact is: there are DIFFERENCES… between what Marcus Aurelius did with his life…and what Seneca or Epictetus did with theirs, or for that matter Kant or Hume or ANY philosopher, that produces work that contributes something NEW…to the area of philosophy they are interested in.

Look none of this is to HATE on Marcus Aurelius, again most of this episode is to show what’s cool about him. But if you’re a fan of stoicism it’s important to understand what meditations is not. And when you look at the way he WROTE this book… for someone to say he’s not a philosopher, that he’s probably better described as something else…starts to sound pretty reasonable.

I mean first of all he never INTENDED for this book to be published, as a work of philosophy. He never wrote a single PAGE of ANY this stuff… thinking people would one day read it and learn about STOICISM from it. Meditations was something compiled AFTER his DEATH…from personal journals he kept only for himself about his everyday moral struggle.

In fact some modern commentators will say… that meditations is BEST described…as just a collection of “spiritual exercises” that the guy did LATE in his life. That’s it.

They’ll say that everything that he writes in this book… has been said BETTER, by OTHER stoic thinkers that came before him… and if that sounds kind of harsh, for whatever it’s worth, some important context to have here, is that Marcus Aurelius himself… would probably be the first one to agree with that statement about him.

You know in a very humble moment we can read in book 8 of meditations…he SAYS more or less the same thing as what we’re saying right now. He’s TALKING to himself in this particular section of the book…and he says listen dude… be REAL here with yourself…YOU know you haven’t spent your whole life studying and living as a philosopher…he says YOU know deep down how FAR you really are from philosophy, and look, there’s no shame in it: You should be grateful…if you can just find a way to live out the rest of the time you HAVE here, TRULY living as a virtuous person. THAT in itself… would be something beautiful to carry out. Who CARES about whether you were able to become a philosopher during the time you had, FATE apparently had other plans for your life.

And it’s real moments like this in the book that really start to win you OVER as you’re reading it…because even if we can’t say that marcus aurelius was a stoic philosopher, pushing the conversation forward…he DEFINITELY… has been an inspiration, to COUNTLESS people in a way that transcends Stoicism altogether.

Cause no matter WHAT…moral approach you’re trying to commit yourself to…consider the fact that Marcus Aurelius was a man, that was in his mid fifties as he’s WRITING these journals…which by ancient standards made him, practically ancient…like if you’re in your 60’s back then…you’re basically shaking hands with the grim reaper every day in terms of life expectancy…and yet this is STILL someone who shows up every day, as the emperor of Rome, through plague, through long protracted wars, through the loss of most of his children throughout his life, and this is someone who still DEDICATES himself, to moral excellence as one of his biggest priorities.

That’s something ANYBODY can take inspiration from. Stoic or not.

So again, there’s 12 books, that make UP Meditations…and it’s important to understand that each of these were written at different periods in his life, some of them YEARS APART from each other…where the FEEL of each ONE of these books, is going to mirror whatever he was DEALING with at the time that he was writing it.

Book one may be the only exception to that…because scholars aren’t sure about EXACTLY when he WROTE book one. Essentially the whole chapter is him expressing GRATITUDE…for all of the teachers and mentors he’s had over the years. Great way to START the book I guess, if you’re putting this all together after he’s DEAD.

He thanks his mother and grandfather who raised him after his father died when he was three. He thanks his philosophical heroes. He thanks the man who eventually adopted him, Antoninus Pius…who was the emperor of Rome at the time and ADOPTED Marcus expecting that he would BECOME emperor after he died. For whatever it’s worth Marcus spends the rest of his life, ADMIRING the way his adoptive father ruled Rome before him…and as you’re READING meditations you’ll see him saying positive stuff about him IN these journals…all the way up to the very end of his life.

But anyway, after showing the level of GRATITUDE he has in book one…book two is going to take on an ENTIRELY different FEEL…because its a journal that he wrote when he was on a military campaign, on the front lines fighting against the Quadi.

The Quadi were a germanic group of people that were RESISTING Roman domination at the time.

So what this means for the READER, is that BEING SO CLOSE, to all that death everyday during the war…FORCES Marcus Aurelius to face the reality of how easy it is to DIE…in a way that scholars often say is probably the REASON this particular chapter has as its focus, FATE… and DEALING with things that are outside of his control.

He’s gonna talk about these two things A LOT in book two.

He STARTS it with a really useful exercise that he likes to REMIND himself at the start of each day. It’s an exercise that the Stoic philosopher Seneca, BEFORE Marcus…called “the premeditation of evils”. It’s an exercise designed to get someone to NOT have a ton of expectations… about how people are gonna treat them or how the world SHOULD BE for them that day.

Marcus says he tells himself EVERY morning when he wakes up…that today I am going to meet, “meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, envious, unsociable people”. I WILL MEET these sorts of people… but he says that NONE of thesm can actually HARM me…as LONG as I stick to LIVING in accordance with nature.

Now, useful exercise aside… this statement is a GREAT opportunity to start talking about STOICISM as a whole system of thought…as something that’s DIFFERENT from just Stoic ETHICS… that often becomes compartmentalized and used entirely on it’s own. Let me explain.

See, Stoicism for Marcus Aurelius…was MUCH MORE than just the ethical claim that you often HEAR about Stoicism when people talk about it on the internet…this idea that you can’t control what happens to you in the external world…ALL you can do is control the way you respond to it.

People will try to SUMMARIZE stoicism into a single sentence like that.

And while this is COMPLETELY true, this IS a PIECE of Stoicism, it comes originally from the Enchiridion by Epictetus. But the Stoicism that Marcus Aurelius followed and is WRITING about in these journals…goes FAR BEYOND just ETHICAL ADVICE about how we should be ACTING.

The philosopher Pierre Hadot puts it like this. He says Stoicism, ultimately, is a philosophy of LIFE…that is ROOTED in certain METAPHYSICAL claims about reality.

Meaning assumptions the ancient Stoics made at a metaphysical level…LADDER UP into conclusions they make about how we should behave at an ETHICAL level. And whenever Marcus Aurelius says ANYTHING in Meditations along the lines that he needs to LIVE in accordance with NATURE…it’s these METAPHYSICAL assumptions about reality that he’s going to be referencing.

The ancient Stoics believed that the universe…was organized by what they called a divine logos, that governs all things. Now not ONLY… does this logos GUARANTEE the rationality of each moment, AND ensure that the universe proceeds causally into the future based on a rational order to things…but they ALSO believed there is a SPARK, OF this rational logos, that EXISTS inside of each and every one of US.

The Stoics, then, thought it was our moral responsibility as PEOPLE…to cultivate this rationality…and whenever tough events show up in our lives that may cause us to get overly emotional, or IRRATIONAL…it’s OUR job to stick to four key VIRTUES… that lie at the HEART of stoicism…justice, courage, wisdom and temperance.

What this MEANS is that STOICISM… is a type of VIRTUE ethics. Especially for someone like Marcus Aurelius who would have read and FOLLOWED the ancient stoics.

Meaning it’s IMPORTANT to understand that as he’s WRITING meditations…he’s not saying we should act rationally out of some kind of cosmic DUTY, this isn’t deontology. He’s not saying we should act rationally because it produces good outcomes in the world, this isn’t consequentialism. Moral excellence for the stoics…is MEASURED by how WELL someone sticks to certain virtues…. in THIS case to justice, courage, wisdom and temperance.

Now, EACH of these virtues to the Stoics, their point is if we REALLY look at them closely… these are not REALLY, four different THINGS that are totally SEPARATE from each other. Each of these virtues, are just different EXPRESSIONS of rationality, that show UP in different parts of human behavior.

So you can SEE here for whatever it’s worth, how a rational ORDER to the universe at a metaphysical level…has now laddered up into something ETHICAL that we need to follow as people.

See, to expand on the way Marcus Aurelius would’ve SAW this…IF this divine logos is a force in the universe that ensures everything is RATIONALLY ORDERED…then every THING that HAPPENS that’s not part of human behavior…is necessary. And what FOLLOWS from that is BECAUSE this is something that’s part of the rational order of things, this is also something that is in accordance with nature.

Whether you’re sick or healthy, rich or poor, whether a hurricane rolls through town and carries your house away like we’re in the wizard of oz…NONE of these things are good or bad to the stoics…events like this belong in a category that they called, indifferents.

Now we may PREFER, CERTAIN indifferents over OTHERS, but that doesn’t make them good or bad. The ONLY thing that’s good or bad that we can responsibly TALK about…is human behavior. And the only way we can TALK about it…is to judge whether that behavior conforms to this moral STANDARD of rationality.

And the ancient Stoics… were very SERIOUS about this point.

To act irrationally…is to act immorally, WHATEVER it IS. And if justice, courage, wisdom and temperance are EXPRESSIONS of rationality…well, then what that MEANS is that to act in an UNcourageous WAY, for example, to let your actions be guided by FEAR in ANY circumstance…is a moral failure on your part.

ALL throughout the Enchiridion of Epictetus, through Seneca’s letters, we get claims about how anger or intense desire, irrationality is a moral failing. And that things like JUSTICE and moderation, RATIONAL CONTROL over things… is a reflection of virtue.

So it’s no surprise you can find PASSAGE after PASSAGE in Meditations by Marcus Aurelius TAKING his philosophical mentors seriously. He says in book 9: “Wipe out imagination: check desire: extinguish appetite: keep the ruling faculty in its own power.”

In book 8 he says, “The mind that is free from passions is a citadel” Later again in book 9 he says, “He who does wrong does wrong against himself. He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad.”

The point is: it’s important to know that the Stoicism Marcus Aurelius is following when he’s writing this book…is one that is rooted in metaphysics. And when he says something like he’s COMMITTING himself to LIVE in accordance with NATURE…look the guy’s not saying that he has a low carbon footprint when he says that. He’s not an ecologist. He’s saying to act irrationally…is to go against the rational, divine LOGOS that governs nature.

Now here’s the GOOD news if you BELIEVE acting rationally all the time is living in accordance with nature. For the Stoics this way of thinking leads to two major insights that people often LOVE when reading meditations in today’s world.

These are insights that years later, would be turned into two famous latin phrases about life, that have inspired COUNTLESS thinkers since the Stoics. I’m talking about the ideas of amor fati, or love of your own fate. And memento mori. Or to remember the REALITY of the situation you’re ALWAYS IN as a person: that you are absolutely, going to die one day.

Again BOTH of these ideas, blossom OUT of the metaphysics that Marcus Aurelius built his whole worldview around. Let’s start with memento mori.

If everything that is NOT human behavior is just indifferent, it's the divine logos unfolding…then that INCLUDES the inevitability of your own death. And when you RATIONALLY REFLECT on that, like a STOIC would…one of the FIRST things you realize is… that you just have limited TIME, on this planet, that you’re WORKING with. This is one of the things that HITS you when you truly internalize that fact.

Marcus Aurelius says ALL the greatest EMPERORS and HEROES that you read about are all dust and ashes at this point. Any fame or legacy that ANYONE has ever BUILT… is at BEST something that’s CONSTANTLY fading away, and then disappearing. So with this in mind one of the things you’ll see him REMIND himself of all throughout these journals, is to live INTENTIONALLY with every moment you have…BEFORE time runs OUT.

We are ALWAYS in a sense to Marcus Aurelius…RUNNING OUT OF TIME, to finally MAKE the choice to LIVE as a virtuous person. How easy is it to always put it off to tomorrow, when you don’t even know if you’re going to HAVE a tomorrow. He says don’t live your life like you’re gonna be LIVING for 10,000 years, it’s NOT gonna happen…and when we DO live like this…he says think of all the time we typically WASTE as people on trivial things that don’t really matter.

The argument with somebody on social media. The shame over some dumb thing you said in the past. FRUSTRATION over somebody who was inconsiderate to you. How about just the time we waste he says: on procrastination. How about the fear…sitting there worrying that you’ll be on a plane… and that when you’re taking off a GOOSE is gonna fly into one of the engines?

Marcus Aurelius would say that ALL of this thinking, and much more, is getting caught up in the past and future, and the reason that’s important to recognize he says… is that it’s getting AWAY from the only place we CAN rationally control: the present moment.

Because again if the only thing we can control is how much our behavior corresponds to those four virtues…then that is ALWAYS going to BE something…going on right now, in the present. That’s where we should be STAYING in our thoughts as much as we possibly CAN to Marcus Aurelius.

Now people will hear the don’t regret the past, don’t worry about the future, stay in the present…and they will understandably say well that sounds a lot like Buddhism doesn’t it? Are Stoicism and Buddhism just essentially the same thing, they just come from different time periods and parts of the world?

But by THIS point in the episode you can probably already answer that question for yourself. I mean, no, they’re not even close. Similar language about the present moment, sure, but consider the differences.

Marcus Aurelius is saying the present moment…will allow you to live MORE intentionally… CONFORMING to an abstract code of ethics he believes in. That’s NOT something Buddhists are interested in.

And his foundation for BELIEVING this…is based in a metaphysics that Buddhists, generally, wouldn’t be caught DEAD believing in. So understanding the DIFFERENCES between these two is going to be important because the Stoic VERSION of the present moment… leads to a totally different way of seeing yourself in the world.

There’s a great passage from book TWO of meditations that illustrates this, remember he’s on the front lines of a war, conscious of dying everyday…and this paragraph depicts the stoic attitude that we’re talking about here, and adds some good context into how he was thinking at the time.

He says, “You may leave this life… at any moment: have this possibility in your mind in all that you do or say or think. Now departure from the world of men is nothing to fear, if gods exist: because they would not involve you any harm. If they do not exist, or if they have no care for humankind, then what is life to me in a world devoid of gods, or devoid of providence? But they do exist, and they do care for human kind, and they have put it absolutely in man's power to avoid falling into the true kinds of harm."

This is a legendary quote from this book for a reason. You know, this ties together a FEW different things from his stoicism that we’ve TALKED about so far: that when bad things seemingly HAPPEN to you in the world…none of that stuff is actually HARMING you…it’s your JUDGEMENT about it and your REACTION to it that causes you harm. Also that EVERYBODY…HAS within their POWER…the ability to react RATIONALLY to these things and to PREVENT that harm…and finally what he’s saying here is that when you consider how things in the universe rationally unfold…who are YOU, really, to question the rational order to things?

Some more context here about Marcus as he’s writing Meditations: he obviously talks about GODS… in that passage we just read, he’ll reference Gods and Nature a LOT throughout this book.

But it’s important to know that he doesn’t actually believe in a LITERAL, PANTHEON of human-like gods that are keeping everything organized for us. No, this is just a common way Romans LIKE Marcus… TALKED about things at the level of the universe.

But his ACTUAL views on this, would fall more along the lines of pantheism, like many OTHER Stoic thinkers. Where god… just IS everything…PAN-THEISTIC…in this case GOD to Marcus, WAS the divine logos that PERMEATES everything. His POINT in that passage being then, that if there ISN’T a rational order to the universe like the Epicureans say, then what is life for something like me ANYWAY. But if there IS a rational order, which he thinks there IS…then it becomes OBVIOUS how we can live more in ACCORDANCE with it. It’s Stoic virtue.

Now again the OTHER later latin phrase that emerges out of living in accordance with NATURE like this…is amor fati. We’ve talked about this concept quite a bit on this podcast so I’ll keep it brief… but I’m sure you can see the logic of how this applies here:

If we accept the metaphysical premise that we have NO business questioning the rational order of how things play out…well another way of SAYING that would be that we have no business questioning our own FATE.

And if you’re in THAT spot, then to Marcus Aurelius… simply ACCEPTING your fate is I guess ONE way to go about it. But the more RATIONAL thing to do he thinks is to go one step further…and learn to actually LOVE your fate, as it plays out.

He has a great line about this a bit later on in Meditations in book six. This is written a few years LATER in his life than book two so he’s writing this in a place after the wars have died down a bit, in fact, scholars sometimes say when analyzing this journal that he seems to be in a place of calm when he’s writing it…he says, “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”

See the difference for Marcus, between simply ACCEPTING your fate as it comes…and LOVING your fate…is that when you LOVE your fate… you find a way to ALSO live with VIRTUE, as you’re in it, no matter what happens to you.

Think of how the OPPOSITES of justice, courage, wisdom and temperance, are ALWAYS living in a way that is NOT loving your fate.

To let FEAR, dictate your decision making for example, is to constantly live in opposition… to what is necessarily GOING to happen to you from Marcus’s perspective. Living in fear is not loving your fate.

Excess INDULGENCE for example, the opposite of temperance… is EXCESSIVE and IRRATIONAL, it’s to live “like a beast” Marcus says at multiple points. But it’s only through rationally CONTROLLING your behavior… that you can ever truly LOVE living in accordance with nature.

He says there’s NO GREATER HARMONY…than to love what happens, and to love what was destined. There’s the famous metaphor by Zeno, one of the philosophers from the EARLY stoa that no DOUBT Marcus would’ve been familiar with as well…he says just like a dog, that’s tied to the back of a cart that’s moving down the road…that dog is much better off running ALONG with the cart than being dragged…well in the same WAY he says…so too WE, AS PEOPLE, should trying live VIRTUOUSLY, EMBRACING our PLACE in the rational plan that’s unfolding, rather than being dragged ALONG, JUDGING everything around us irrationally.

Once again, to Marcus, to act on irrationality…IS to morally fail.

Now an important thing to SAY at this point…is that ALL of this we’ve been talking about so far… is NOT the way most MODERN stoic voices…will talk about Stoicism.

Modern Stoics will usually SOFTEN some of these points made by the ancient stoics…and they will usually DO so in a very self AWARE way. There’s nothing BAD going on here.

Massimo Pigliucci for example, one of the BEST, Stoic voices OUT there today in my opinion. He’ll be the FIRST to say look, there are just things that the ancient stoics believed in…that are untenable in the world we live in today. We’ve learned a LOT…since they were SAYING all these things. And if you READ the texts closely the THING we need to take from the stoics… is NOT that you should NEVER be acting IRRATIONALLY…but more like, look there ARE extreme, destructive, emotional SPIRALS that people can FIND themselves in sometimes…and people can USE this philosophy the Stoics developed to help prevent those moments.

That how SILLY would it be to throw out all the INSIGHT here…simply because the stoics were imperfect… in some of the details from a couple thousand years ago?

And this is a COMMON theme you’ll see all THROUGHOUT modern stoicism. MOST people are fine with BRACKETING off the metaphysics, and saying eh, that doesn’t really matter too much. They’ll bracket off some of the more judgmental aspects of the ethics, and they’ll turn it into a MODERNIZED version of stoic ethics…that is much more appealing to people living today.

Stoicism has helped people A LOT, in this kind of world. But why has it been so helpful…IN THIS, kind of world in particular?

Some historical context: remember, Stoicism originally rose to popularity during what’s called the Hellenistic period. Alexander the Great dies…and this GIANT empire that went from greece, ALL the way to india…is split up into four different HUGE sections that go under the control of his top generals.

In fact, there’s even MORE small kingdoms that emerge from within THAT division of things. And when POWER, over a region is so SPLIT up like this…what happens if you’re a person LIVING in the mediterranean sea region is that it’s very possible for your life to become INCREDIBLY, unpredictable lets say.

You might not have any idea what your life is going to be like a year from now, or two WEEKS from now. Territory changes so much you’re not even sure who you’re SUPPOSED to be having an allegiance to. At any second somebody can ride into town on horseback, tell you a new set of RULES to live by, and you have no choice but to just follow them and hope it’s the right decision.

It’s not a surprise that a school of thought like Stoicism rose to popularity. I mean, when you can’t control much of ANYTHING about what HAPPENS in the world…why not focus on the narrow set of things you CAN control? Like how you ACT in RESPONSE to it.

And consider how much that SAME message…RESONATES with people living in the world WE do. How many people out there live their lives every day, not KNOWING whether world war three is going to break out today, or two weeks from now, you’re just supposed to TRUST the leaders that are in charge. THEY seem really smart. I feel great about this.

How many people live in a climate of technology…where things change so quickly, you have no idea WHAT things are going to look like in a couple years from now, whether you’re falling behind, whether your JOB is even going to be RELEVANT in the near future.

People live in a world where they have to constantly reinvent themselves…or else potentially LOSE everything they’ve ever built.

MORE than that in the age of information…it is ENTIRELY possible for you to sit at home, with any FREE time you have…and to just READ…and EDUCATE yourself on EVERY INSTITUTION of the modern world. Economics, law, politics, science, you can become an EXPERT in ANY of these things in THEORY.

But the world is changing SO FAST in the time we’re living…that even if you spent ALL your time DOING that… you would have NO way of knowing whether ANY of that information is going to even be relevant…in TEN YEARS when some new TECHNOLOGY or CULTURAL shift has made the world a completely different place.

What im saying is someone can criticize stoicism and say that it simplifies human experience to just rationality, and that it IGNORES all the parts of the world and people that are IRRATIONAL. Which is a LOT about our lives as it turns out.

But EVEN if those people are RIGHT…which I’m not saying they are, but even IF they are…what if limiting our SCOPE…to JUST the fraction of reality that we CAN control…FULLY ADMITTING that this is not EVERYTHING…but look I’m gonna focus on what I KNOW I CAN…what if that’s part of the MAGIC of stoicism that makes it so effective? Is it so CRAZY…that people would want to spend their time on an area of their thinking where they KNOW it’s not gonna be a waste of time?

So now that we’ve laid out the differences between ancient Stoicism, modern Stoic ethics, and Marcus Aurelius’s goals in writing Meditations, I think it’s REALLY exciting to talk about some of the common GROUND between these three.

Because a LOT of these INSIGHTS that Marcus writes about in Meditations…are still embraced by modern Stoics. Sometimes it’ll be with the metaphysics softened a bit…but SOMETIMES it can be almost word-for-word. Point is: these are MOMENTS… where the ancient and modern projects overlap, even if they’re arriving at the same place…from slightly different assumptions.

For example, in Book 11 of meditations… books 9-12 by the way are generally regarded as being written pretty late in his life. Lot of humility in these books…lot of reflection…and this is supposedly when he’s trying to encapsulate the stoic attitude as BEST he can… as someone that’s been practicing it for years.

And in one of these moments, IN book 11… he gives a GREAT piece of advice about how to respond with KINDNESS or PATIENCE, to the obvious FAULTS of somebody that’s TREATING you bad in a moment.

He says, “When someone does you wrong, you should immediately consider what judgment led them to DO wrong. Once you see this, you will pity them, and not be surprised or angry.”

Once again this is a piece of advice about how to treat people…that is very STOIC…but it doesn’t require any kind of cosmology to GET there.

Marcus Aurelius and the ancient stoics didn’t BELIEVE in the idea… that we DO immoral things because we’re WEAK, like we just don’t have the WILLPOWER to do the right thing. That’s more along the lines of Aristotle.

No, the STOICS believed that ANY TIME, ANYONE does anything irrational…it’s out of ignorance. REASON and PASSION to the Stoics…are NOT two different FORCES, COMPETING with each other. When someone does something immoral…that is NOT passion overtaking REASON…to them that is just REASON that has gone astray.

If someone STEALS from you for example…it’s not that this person REALLY, deep down, believes stealing is wrong…and then BETRAYED what they TRULY BELIEVED, when their WILL just became OVERWHELMED by the PASSION of having what the OTHER person has.

No, in that moment for the stoics… that person made the judgment, that satisfying their DESIRE for what they STOLE…was MORE important than justice. Again, this is a mistaken JUDGMENT for the Stoics, not weakness of the will.

So the TAKEAWAY from this for Marcus Aurelius is going to be that if someone DOES something to you that you don’t like…DON’T focus on the fact that this person just DID something that WRONGED you and the whole INJUSTICE of it all…and instead try to turn your focus, to the mistaken JUDGMENT they made, that LED to whatever problem they caused you.

Because when something is seen as a mistake like this…instead of a DIRECT ATTACK that was just launched ON ME by this BAD PERSON…he thinks focusing on the judgment like this just sets you UP a lot better…to handle, once again, the only thing you CAN control…REACTING in a way… that is rational, and virtuous…or to respond with kindness and patience, when someone around you happens to be imperfect.

Another great insight that Marcus REPEATEDLY puts down in his journals…is the importance of seeing PROBLEMS that show UP in your life…as opportunities, that actually GUIDE your path through life…as opposed to them just being obstructions that are BLOCKING you from something.

He has a COUPLE of great lines here. For example in book five…and book five by the way is a SPECIAL book in meditations with TONS of great insights…cause it’s one of the only books he writes in a way where it SEEMS like he’s trying to articulate things in a way that would be useful for a younger person trying to center their lives more around Stoicism…some scholars have said that this MIGHT be written around the time…when he’s trying to rub a little bit of this stoicism off on his son Commodus, who would become emperor AFTER Marucs. Which, bad ending THERE for whatever its worth, but anyway in book FIVE, trying to put it in the plainest terms possible,

Marcus says, “The impediment to action… advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Certainly something that might be useful for the emperor of ROME to keep in mind. Later on in book seven, he us gives ANOTHER memorable line about to think of obstacles in life:

He says, “What stands in the way… is the raw material for working with — and whatever may obstruct us… can be turned to the furtherance of our design.”

Now consider for a second, just how many obstacles this guy faced throughout his life and yet STILL worked EVERY DAY… to try to not grow resentful of any of them. He lost his wife Faustina, along with most of his children. Plague broke out during his time as emperor, LOT of people died. There was almost ALWAYS some WAR that was going on, trying to maintain STABILITY to the empire, and these wars didn’t always go his way.

And to SEE the things that complicate your life…NOT as a tragedy… or as an injustice that you’re gonna make yourself MISERABLE about…but instead to see them as a kind of raw material, that you’re going to mold into the future YOU…once again, this puts you in a place where WHEN you’re REACTING to these obstacles THAT WILL COME UP… FRAMING it in this way…just makes it MUCH more likely you’re going to HAVE that reaction in a virtuous way. It’s no wonder this is such a POPULAR idea in today’s world.

ANOTHER really great insight comes from Marcus in book four. Scholars say he seems to have WRITTEN book four… RIGHT after the death of his wife, and RIGHT when he’s dealing with a major REVOLT that goes on in a distant TERritory of Rome.

Where aside from it just being a chaotic time that he’s trying to bring ORDER to, he felt personally betrayed by Avidius Cassius, the guy that led the revolt.

Point is there’s a lot of grief, and frustration you can read between the lines in book four. But still: he GIVES us a stoic insight about how to see ourselves when we SHOW UP every day, FULFILLING our particular ROLE in the world.

He says, “Love the humble art you have learned, and take rest in it. Pass through the remainder of your days as one who wholeheartedly entrusts all possessions to the gods…”

Once again, GODS there is him referring to the rational logos, or the ordered way that things play out in the universe. And ENTRUSTING in it…is him telling us to not WORRY about any of the OUTCOMES you get.

No, just LOVE the humble ART you have learned he says…meaning your craft, your purpose…and keep working at that craft EVERY DAY…trusting that WHATEVER POSSESSIONS you have or DON’T have in this world… it’s the way that things need to be.

It’s the WAY nature has ORDERED it. That there’s a lot of Stoic PEACE to be found living in a more process oriented WAY like that… and that the MISTAKE would be to get caught under the spell of a society…that is CONSTANTLY obsessed with outcomes, instead of how moral people are.

Look, there’s so MANY of these insights you could pull from this book, it’s impossible to cover ALL of them… but I’ll give one MORE that often gets overlooked… that is TRULY something Marcus Aurelius built his view of other PEOPLE around.

He says in book six talking about things he just CAN’T bring himself to do in this life, “Neither can I be angry with my brother… for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands or eyelids… to obstruct each other… is against Nature’s law.”

His POINT is that when you TRULY understand the divine logos and the laws of nature…you understand that the people around you…are NOT, competition for you. These are not people to fight against, or to have hate for. Your relationship to other people from Marcus’s view…is a LOT like the relationship between a left hand and a right hand, or two eyelids…he thinks we are PUT here to be natural COLLABORATORS with each other. That we are all part of one, cosmic community under the very SAME divine LOGOS.

Every ONE of us has that rational spark within us that we need to CULTIVATE…and when you SEE things the way that HE does here…this just BREEDS a sense of fellowship with the people around you, that isn’t often TALKED about in these kinds of conversations.

Now again, NEXT episode is going to be on Nietzsche and Schopenhauer’s CRITIQUES of Stoicism. And the question to consider between now and NEXT week when THAT episode comes out is: could it BE…that STOICISM, was such an EFFECTIVE way of living for someone like Marcus Aurelius in particular…BECAUSE of the position he OCCUPIED in the world, AS the emperor of Rome?

In other words: if a BIG part of your purpose in life…is to, instill rational ORDER onto a sprawling empire…if a big part of what is EXPECTED of you is that you maintain a calm, rational public appearance to present yourself as a good example…if that’s your life…do you just, not have the LUXURY…of considering a full RANGE of human experience, in terms of its irrationality?

I mean it’s very clear from his journals that sticking to this moral standard of always doing the rational thing…it’s something he struggled with a LOT during his life.

Is this, part of the selling point of stoicism, where its an ideal to strive for that you will NEVER reach, and so it’s guaranteed to KEEP you working TOWARDS something moral for the rest of your life, with no ceiling?

Or is this a kind of self-inflicted torture, where you’re trying to reduce human experience to something far more narrow than what it is… ultimately, never understanding it beyond a certain level of depth.

We’ll see what Nietzsche and Schopenhauer had to say about this and more, next time.

If you value the show as an educational resource, and want these kinds of conversations to be available to everybody…thank you for subscribing on Patreon. Patreon.com/philosophizethis. And I’m glad I mentioned last time that there are great conversations going on on Patreon in the comment section. MORE people than usual showed up last episode…and its exciting to see that growing as a place where people in good faith…can actually TALK about this stuff and help each other grow faster. Thank you for everyone that’s giving their expertise there.

Hope you have a good rest of your week, but most of all, thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.