On Reading Marcus Aurelius

“Everything that happens is either endurable or not.

If it’s endurable, then endure it.  Stop complaining.

If it’s unendurable . . . then stop complaining.  Your destruction will mean its end as well.

Just remember: you can endure anything your mind can make endurable, by treating it as in your interest to do so.

In your interest, or in your nature.”

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius as translated by Gregory Hays, Book 10, 3

I’ve recently finished the wonderful Gregory Hays translation of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.  I am fascinated with the philosophy of Stoicism*, although I’m quick to point out I am by any reasonable definition not a true Stoic.  But I’m a Stoic wannabe.

Marcus was a Roman emperor; however, like most of the ruling class of the time, he was fluent in Greek, and the Meditations were written in Greek.  It seems clear that he never expected the book to be published in any form.  To me, the book seems more like a commonplace book; that is, it’s a collection of thoughts and quotes from others written down as they occurred to him.  He simply jotted them down as he felt the urge.  The book is divided into twelve sections or books, although these do not follow any chronological order.  And the overall approach is that of the Stoic; the quote above seems to me to epitomize the Stoic philosophy.

Rather than engage in a long (and probably not always accurate) interpretation of the book, I thought I would share a few quotes that seem to me to be representative of Marcus, his insight and, surprisingly, his humor.  The first quote may very well cause me to be excluded from the ranks of the Stoics:

—[From the literary critic Alexander, I learned] to not be constantly correcting people, and in particular not to jump on them whenever they make an error of usage or a grammatical mistake or mispronounce something, but just answer their question or add another example, or debate the issue itself (not their phrasing), or make some other contribution to the discussion—and insert the right expression, unobtrusively. [Book 1, 10]

—Not just that every day more of our life is used up and less and less of it is left, but this too: if we live longer, can we be sure out mind will still be up to understanding the world—to the contemplation that aims at divine and human knowledge?  If our mind starts to wander we’ll still go on breathing, go on eating, imaging things, feeling urges and so on.  But getting the most out of ourselves, calculating where our duty lies, analyzing what we hear and see, deciding whether it’s time to call it quits—all the things you need a healthy mind for . . . all those are gone.

So we need to hurry.

Not just because we move daily closer to death but also because our understanding—our grasp of the world—may be gone before we get there. [Book 3, 1]

—Suppose that a god announced that you were going to die tomorrow “or the day after.”  Unless you were a complete coward you wouldn’t kick up a fuss about which day it was—what difference could it make?  Now recognize that the difference between years from now and tomorrow is just as small. [Book 4, 47]

—In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial.  Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash.[Book 4, 48]

—It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults.  They are inescapable.  Just try to escape your own. [Book 7, 71]

—Alexander and Caesar and Pompey.  Compared with Diogenes, Heraclitus, Socrates?  The philosophers knew the what, the why, the how.  Their minds were their own.

The others? Nothing but anxiety and enslavement. [Book 8, 3]

—A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you’re in the same room with him, you know it. [Book 11, 15]

—There’s nothing more insufferable than people who boast about their own humility. [Book 12, 27]

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*I could find no consistent “rules” for capitalizing Stoic or Stoicism.  A search on the internet had all sorts of suggestions.  I like this one the best and will use it:  “Stoical is of the Stoics, while stoical is of indifference to pain or pleasure. Then it gets more complicated: uncapitalized stoicism is the philosophy of the capitalized Stoics. The adverb stoically is uncapitalized. . . . To hell with all this!  From now on I’m capitalizing Stoic and Stoical, in the same way I would Christian, regardless of context.  I will also capitalize Stoicism in the same way I would Aristotelianism.  I’m undecided on what to do with stoically.”  [https://letthesewordsanswer.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/capitalizing-stoic/]  The Chicago Manual of Style has the words in caps unless they are “used metaphorically.”  Jeez!  I wonder if fretting about this makes me a Stoic?  Am I think stoically?  Nope: fretting about this just makes me a grammar nerd.