Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Ugh...Okay.  I've had this saved as a draft for a week, it seems.  I actually enjoyed reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.  As one of the 5 Good Roman Emperors, he had some interesting insights.  This man pretty much gives us the determining factors of Stoicism.  I mean, yeah, he spent his days as a murderous Emperor who killed anyone near the borders of Rome, but still, you can't hold that against him when you read the text. 
Actually, you can.  It was a shitty thing to do, and yet the human race continues to murder one another and fight over borders (no, I'm not being political, it just is what it is).  Anyway, despite his shortcomings, something everyone has, Aurelius was self-reflective.  I've said before, and I'll just have to say it over again, I don't agree with Aurelius 100%, but the man makes some good points and teaches some lessons that are worth learning.
I used this edition and translation of Meditations, but I think I would have done better to find a newer translation.  Not that it was bad, and I don't mind reading the more antiquated style, but I feel like it would flow better and more naturally from an updated version.  Language is ever-evolving, after all.

However, I recommend the Penguin publication and translation more:

Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, is known as the Philosopher King, and rightly so.  Much like Plato’s description of the ideal ruler, Aurelius’ philosophy aided him in the ruling of the Roman Empire.  In his musings, commonly referred to as “Meditations,” Aurelius defined his moral concepts.  He not only discusses how one’s own opinions affect their outlook, but he also focuses on the importance of self-reflection and control of emotional impulses.  Marcus Aurelius is the archetypal stoic, and his thoughts concerning one’s life are rooted in reason.  Meditations reads much like a journal Aurelius had written to himself, full of personal advice and self-reflection.  It becomes easy to see why this brand of stoicism is still relevant years after being written.    

A main point of focus for Marcus Aurelius in Meditations is displeasure.  He is greatly concerned with the sensation of displeasure and its reason for being.  Aurelius concludes that since it is reasonable for things which vex a person to occur because it is reasonable to assume that there are unreasonable people in the world who would bring on such vexation, then it is, therefore, unreasonable to be upset by the occurrence.  For Aurelius, “to be vexed at anything which happens is a separation of ourselves from nature” (p 9).  To be upset is to be unreasonable because one has not accepted that the likelihood of inconvenience or injustice to occur—an exercise in the control of emotional impulse.

Furthermore, Aurelius states that “nothing is either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and the good. For that which happens equally to him who lives contrary to nature and to him who lives according to nature, is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature” (p 17).  If something is a reasonable and expected act of nature then one must accept it for what it is and refrain from assigning a characteristic denoting it as “good” or “bad.”  In this regard, Marcus Aurelius determines what Shakespeare later summarizes in Hamlet, “for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, scene ii, lines 249-50). 

The concept above of one’s opinion is a topic in which Aurelius devotes much time.  He concludes that when one’s opinion is in opposition to the “nature” of a thing, then one will experience discord (p 17).  His reason being that neither death nor life is good or bad.  They simply are, and each is in accordance with nature.  Therefore, what reason does one have to believe “death” or “fear” to be bad?  “But it is our own opinions which disturb us,” he notes (p 56).  Categorizing opinions as either “good” or “evil” is unreasonable because death cannot be bad any more than life could be bad, nor is it any more good than life is good.  This is reinforced by his statement that “all these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil” (p 8).

Another vital theme in Meditations is that of self-reflection.  Marcus Aurelius consistently urges that one “look within” (p 34) and “constantly consider” (p 51) their own mind and actions.  He states, “when thou art offended at any man’s fault, forthwith turn to thyself and reflect in what like manner thou dost err thyself” (p 52).  Aurelius was greatly concerned with the mental discipline of keeping one’s thoughts by one’s philosophy.  In this area of self-reflection, he comments on being a reasonable man about the acts of others.  Because it is reasonable and probable that another person will eventually do one harm he states that it “irrational” and “tyrannical” to go about one’s life with the belief that another will not cause one harm (p 57). 

Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is a wealth of philosophical knowledge that covers many areas of life from the fear of change and death to worry about the opinions of others, work ethic, and even doing a task which you abhor because it will bring about something positive later in your life.  He emphasizes the mastery of emotions and to not be overrun by passion, as passion makes it difficult to reason.  Likewise, Aurelius gives rational explanations for how to maintain one’s emotions in a variety of circumstances.  Many of his concepts are parallels of Platonism.  Like Plato, Aurelius believes reason and intellect to be the highest planes of existence.  For Plato, this concept was known as the “true form.”  For Aurelius, it is a different type of existence, which he believes is the soul (intellect) leaving the body at death and transferring elsewhere.  Another similarity between the two philosophers was that of justice, which Aurelius relates to the “universal nature” (p 55). 

As emperor, Marcus Aurelius had a great concern with how the individual fits into the community.  In Meditations, he compares the individual to the bee and the community to the beehive, stating that by giving the analogy that if something is not good for the whole hive, then it is not good for the individual either (book VI).  Aurelius understood the importance of community and encouraged that an individual should keep themselves in a condition that allows for social activity guided by reason which benefits the whole.  He is quoted as writing, “above all things he [the individual] keeps his soul in a condition and in an activity conformable to reason and social life” (p 25). 

Aurelius was the “Philosopher King” akin to the ideal ruler Plato described in the Republic (despite the military background).   The level of stoic philosophical belief which Aurelius achieved during his life no doubt assisted him during his tenure as emperor.  This last of the “Five Good Emperors of Rome” was a true lover of wisdom.  His methods for the development of mental discipline, rationality, and control of passionate emotional impulses are concepts from which every human being could find immeasurable benefit.  The self-mastery described in Meditations can help one not only become an individual better able to cope with the hardships of life but can also help one become a better member of their own community.  It is for this very reason that, though long after his death, Marcus Aurelius remains influential in our modern times.

Aurelius, Marcus, Meditations. Value Classic Reprints, 2016.

Shakespeare, William, and Alan Durbband. Hamlet: Modern English Version Side-by-Side with Full Original Text (SRR). Barron’s, 1986.