More than self-help
Understanding Marcus Aurelius’ ‘Meditations’
From Roosevelt to Steinbeck, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations has no shortage of admirers. As a private diary aimed at no audience but its creator, its plangency has offered comfort and consolation to millions. Whether on death, divorcing the “judgment” from the “thing”, or learning from others, Marcus’ retreat into himself is surprisingly all-welcoming. Its incisive simplicity reminds us of the therapeutic value of philosophy, if unsoiled by academia. Appropriating his impassioned reminder that “all is as thinking makes it so”, the psychotherapy and billion-dollar self-help industry seem uniquely indebted to Marcus’ private meditations.
Modern readers are continually surprised by its relevance. Consider Marcus’ self-castigation on the all too familiar difficulty of waking up: “is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?” Or consider Marcus’ prudent advice on expecting the worst: “when you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and unfriendly.” Even consider his incredibly reductive approach to sex (no wonder his wife had an affair): “it is the friction of a membrane and, following a sort of convulsion, the expulsion of some mucus.”
This explains stoicism’s remaining hold today, for it is a profoundly personal philosophy. Given Marcus’ status as Roman emperor, it is certainly remarkable how politically sparse his writings are. Yet we must remember that Meditations is an essentially “ancient” text.¹ Despite its modern resonance, Marcus harboured a worldview that is so alien to our own, it must impugn the source of our praise. Its peculiar popularity confronts us with the following. Is it the daily prescriptions we so desperately need, or a missing worldview that we so desperately crave?
A worldview like no other
Whether personal, ethical, or metaphysical, the differences are stark.
Marcus ruminated on a metaphysical order that is archaic and foreign. For Marcus, the world had a fundamental, divine cosmological order. In stark contrast to the modern refusal to ascribe values to the universe around us,² this world is “good”. As an ordered “Whole”, the “cosmos” is stable and unchanging, even if the parts that constitute it deteriorate and die. Unlike the Epicurean (and modern) understanding of the world as constituted by atoms, Marcus’ account of the universe is not chaotic or accidental; instead, it is governed by an active principle called ‘logos’.
Meditations synonymously terms this order “Nature”, “providence”, and the “Whole”. Marcus also expresses obeisance to an undefined “God”, which appears synonymous with Nature. In the Stoic world view, God is immanent and immersed in Nature itself, far distinct from our understanding of a monotheistic God which is transcendent and external. Neither mind and matter or subject and object are split.³ The universe or cosmos, rather than being infinitely external to us,⁴ is animated with consciousness and consciousness is animated with a spark of the eternal.
Nature, providence and God are therefore not matters outside of the human spirit; they flow within and stem from it. There is a connecting force (“Logos”) which binds the inanimate to animate, animal to human, and human to the “supreme rationality of the divine”.⁵ This is why Marcus, in a surprising ode to Christianity’s chance affinity with pre-Christ philosophies,⁶ believes he and all humans had a divine spark of ‘reason’ within them. This reason — or logos — connected humans to God, Nature and the wider cosmos, all bound by the same principle.
Such a system has a connection at heart. And vitally, Marcus’ prescriptions flow from this intricate belief system. For example, his suggestion to lead a just and virtuous life (“arete”) boils down to “living in agreement with Nature”, in accordance with the providentially ordered cosmos. Compare this with modern self-help gurus, such as Jordan Peterson or Andrew Huberman. Rather than fastidiously cleaning my room before commencing my worldly polemic or self-optimising myself with a perfected sleep, diet and intermittent fasting schedule, Meditations does not had the same “closed narrative”. His consolations are sharply dependent on his worldview.
As God gave a “fragment of himself” in “our mind, our logos”, Marcus finds divine connection in the mere use of his faculties of reason and thought. As plants and animals live contentedly in accordance with their nature — Marcus, having just spoken high-mindedly of the cosmos and providence, compares his work to that of ants, bees and plants — so too do humans who live accordingly to their unique capacity for reason. Similarly, reflecting on his nearing death, Marcus offers metaphysics as his private consolation, in a prescient formulation of Pascale’s wager. Either we are a meaningless assortment of atoms, in which we disperse on death and that is that. Or there is divine Providence, and all is good.
In an ordered cosmos with many constituent parts, we are all but humbled. Our triviality and evanescence, once redolent of death, is now strangely comforting. What use are wealth, fame and glory — let alone anxieties, rivalries and obsessions — when confronted with a divine world, far greater than ourselves? What we avoid at all costs — pain, poverty, and ill health — will either be bearable (if long-lasting) or short (if intense). Remarkably, all are reduced to “indifferents”. The virtuous rise above indifference and act in accordance with Nature.
Like Kirkegaard’s Christian knight of faith, Marcus instructs resignation and self-submission — to accept our lot and our place in the cosmos — for all us is well in the cosmos and we are but a cog. And it is all so very natural. Consoling oneself to the anxieties of life and the incontrovertible fact of death is of course much easier when one is but an infinitesimal “Part” of an infinite “Whole”. This is especially so when, for Marcus, God and Nature is good and ordered. It is uniquely life-affirming.
Applicability
This is not to circumscribe Marcus’ modern application. But it is to question how useful these consolations are if we, at first suggestion, run at any suggestion of God, religion or metaphysics. Certainly, any reading of Meditations that elides its metaphysics throws out the baby with the bathwater. It is reading a book summary, skipping to the last page, and calling it a day. Reading Meditations purely for its moral or didactic use⁷ — such as, by extracting only the “self-help” guidance — is to leave it an unmediated husk.
His reflections raise the following. How are we to face death, sickness and injustice if we do not believe in an ordered providence? Seeing ourselves as both the subject and the object in our rights-focused individualism, can we really humble ourselves as a trivial Part of a unified Whole? Can we speak of divine providence, knowing what we do about the chaos of quantum physics? Further, having learnt horrible lessons from phrenologists, fascists and social Darwinists, we are certainly loath to engage in the sort of naturalist arguments that Marcus does.
Such naturalist reasoning was used by the likes of Aristotle to denigrate women and slaves, by suggesting their lower status and function was their natural, and therefore appropriate, role and duty.⁸ Fixed social roles is certainly easier to believe where logos and providence demand an assessment that nothing is arbitrary and everything has an objective purpose. Marcus’ reminders that he can “live well even in the Palace” therefore seems a bit on the nose.
Marcus’ approach even comes across as crass and rudimentary. Certainly, Marcus’ puritanical denial of the pleasures of the body begets a questionable inheritance. Despite there being no indication of Marcus’ Christianity — he, in fact, persecuted many Christians — his framing of worldly pleasures as either indifferent or noxious seems familiarly Christian, that is, life-denying.
Consider his consolation on the death and illness of his children, where only 5 of his 14 children outlived him. Noting the ephemerality of life, Marcus reminds himself of his and his loved ones’ insignificance. Drawing on that famous passage in the Illiad — the “leaves” scatter on the earth but are replaced in springtime, as is humanity where “one generation springeth up and another passeth away”— Marcus instructs himself that his “children are no more than leaves”.
Dispiritingly, Marcus reminds himself that “ever at our side is the immeasurable span of the past and the yawning gulf of the future, into which all things vanish away.” The consolation for death and illness then, is not just the stoic removal of judgment — for “all is as thinking makes it so” — but rather his propensity to view humanity “from above”. From this position, there is an eternal “sameness” of things. No matter how much he loved his children, they will die and a new generation of children will arise, who in turn will die and be replaced, as is the eternal order of things.
Naturally, there is a certain, obvious truth to this. But its insensitivity cannot be denied. And further, the eternal “sameness” evokes the providential idea of a “unified Whole, where nothing happens by accident or is wasted.”⁹ Like Voltaire in Candid, where the senseless destruction in Lisbon led Voltaire to denounce providential accounts of the “best of all possible worlds”, a modern audience might be horrified to think what sort of intelligent deity or design would allow all the senseless suffering we daily confront. And yet in Marcus, his consolations on death, suffering and illness seem to frequently posit that all’s right with the world. His admonition to accept our lot, regardless of how unfortunate, even strikes as pigheaded if we do not believe in fate or intelligent design.
Certainly, these are profound anachronisms. But even so, reading Meditations leaves one awestruck by Marcus’ resounding certainty. One cannot help but compare with the meek, convoluted permissiveness of our age. There is no confused divide between the is and the ought, that is otherwise so familiar. Marcus’ ethical prescriptions — his social duty to his fellow citizens, to “tolerate or teach”, and to accept his lot — stem naturally from his descriptive account of the world as constituted by logos, reason and providence.
It is a certainty that escapes us. Whether division at the social level or angst at the personal, the crisis of modernity is its destruction of any collective structure. Balkanised at heart, we yearn for what we shun. That is, values or ideas that we might submit to or that are greater than ourselves — think of how noble Marcus’ humility is in his final entry in Meditations: “God is at peace with you” and that he, as emperor, lived “as a citizen in a great city”. Consolation then, whether through ideological structures, cultural narratives, or even something more delicately personal, is decidedly anti-individualistic. It requires something beyond ourselves.
A narrative push
Certainly, quests for such narratives are obviously fraught. The opening of Mein Kampf paints a picture of a wounded giant and a wronged state, under the pretence of an otherwise innocent-sounding “German reunification”. Riding on a wave of industrial offshoring, economic losses and cultural condescension, Trump’s support will stand any indictment. From pogroms, and ghettos to concentration camps, Israel’s understandable nationalism has become dangerously immutable.
But equally, the postmodernist push to destroy “grand narratives” and cultural identities has left us bereft and trepidatious. In a cosmopolitan landscape that oscillates between tolerance and coercion, reactionary politics is the last sigh of a confused creature. Our liberal adoption of the “harm principle” has left too much for the individual, and we all simply do not know where to go.
This peters out into the much more trivial-sounding “culture wars”. But it has profound consequences for our national consciousness. Is the Australian identity to be constituted by pride and defensive adulation, as with Geoffrey Blainey, or is it to be one of shame and foiled reconciliation, as with the recent no-vote? Or have we moved past that paradigm into a complete open-ended wilderness, given now over 30% of Australian residents are overseas-born?
Forgive the slight digression, but it is in this context that Meditations seems most remarkable. The style is aphoristic, meaning Marcus has all of the blessings of certainty and none of the curses of confusion. His worldview is set and certain, and his prescriptions are resounding in their force and simplicity. And it leaves me with the creeping impression that his style is alien but it has no right to be.
Certainly, it is not within the ambit of these ramblings to posit an alternative belief structure. What certainly needs no metaphysical structure is cautioning ourselves that, for the most part, we upset ourselves and if we truly “remove the judgment”, we will “remove the hurt”. But if we are to ever transcend the prevailing anomie and ennui that bestrides modern consciousness, we might as Marcus does, canvass alternative values and social narratives.
At least, we may start where Marcus finished. That is, exercising our “directing mind” over our impressions, impulses and desires, eschewing the temptations of fame, power and wealth, and finding kinship in our compatriots. Against such a defined background, Marcus could depart the world with grace and magnanimity.
[1] By ‘ancient’, I refer to Leo Strauss’ division of the philosophy of the moderns as against the ‘ancients’.
[2] For consideration of the western refusal to admit the necessary intermingling of subject and object — or, the inability for reason and science alone to support itself — I would recommend Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
[3] Compare this with Cartesian dualism. Most western philosophy takes at its heart the division and dichotomy between ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ or ‘body’ and ‘soul’.
[4] Compare with the likes of Plato and Kant, who believed that ‘things in themselves’ (or the true, eternal world as against the world of forms) are inaccessible to us in our current, material world.
[5] Diskin Clay — from his introduction to the Martin Hammond translation of Meditations.
[6] J.S. Mill on The Utility of Religion: “I grant that some of the precepts of Christ as exhibited in the Gospels — rising far above the Paulism which is the foundation of ordinary Christianity — carry some kinds of moral goodness to a greater height than had ever been attained before, though much even of what is supposed to be peculiar to them is equalled in the Meditations of Marcus Antoninus, which we have no ground for believing to have been in any way indebted to Christianity”.
[7] Note this is exactly what Marcus extols when noting his dislike of literature.
[8] Aristotle in The Politics: “the male is by nature superior and the female inferior, the male ruler and the female subject.” See also Aristotle’s appeal to ‘nature’ in the Politics: “By nature the female has been distinguished from the slave. For nature makes nothing in the manner that the coppersmiths make the Delphic knife — that is, frugally — but, rather, it makes each thing for one purpose. For each thing would do its work most nobly if it had one task rather than many. Among the barbarians the female and the slave have the same status. This is because there are no natural rulers among them but, rather, the association among them is between male and female slave. On account of this, the poets say that ‘it is fitting that Greeks rule barbarians’, as the barbarian and the slave are by nature the same.”
[9] Diskin Clay — from his introduction to the Martin Hammond translation of Meditations.
