The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius
Encapsulated in One Passage from His Meditations
“Do away with all fancies. Cease to be passion’s puppet. Limit time to the present. Learn to recognize every experience for what it is, whether it be your own or another’s. Divide and classify the objects of sense into cause and matter. Meditate upon your last hour. Leave your neighbour’s wrongdoing to rest with him who initiated it.” ~ Meditations 7.29, translation by Maxwell Staniforth.
Marcus Aurelius is nobility of character manifested. Being in charge of the largest empire on Earth, he knew more than anyone how easy it was to be corrupted by power, to become narcissistic, paranoid, or close-minded. But he chose virtue instead. From the time he was a young boy, he was preparing for the moment he would sit on the throne, refining his character.
He was a Philosopher King, in the Stoic sense of the word: not only bright and well-educated but put his principles into practice. He knew the annals of history and deeply understood human psychology. He recognized his place in society and the universe at large more aptly than anyone else. So his governance was just and rational, candid but cordial. When he was challenged for the throne, he didn’t kill his rival like any other ruler would, but made him co-emperor.
Stoicism prepared him well for the myriad challenges he would endure during his life. He ruled in a time of a debilitating plague, buried eight of his children, spent a decade at war, and was betrayed by his most trusted general. Yet his character never wavered. He was acutely aware of his own weaknesses and shortcomings, and was committed to becoming a better person throughout his life. His personal journal Meditations, although never intended to be published, left behind the most terrific guide we can use to walk in his majestic footsteps.
Meditations is one of the greatest books ever written. Its immutable wisdom has helped me and countless others find purpose and direction in life. Especially in today’s disarranged world, Meditations is the sturdiest guidepost we can cling to during our existential crises, mental health problems, or misguided endeavors. It helps us regain our inner selves, fulfill our potential, and live a rewarding life.
That’s because Marcus built his philosophy on the finest teacher of Stoicism, Epictetus. His most important teaching, the dichotomy of control, is critical to understanding Meditations. It claims that the most essential thing in life is to realize there are things we can control, and things we cannot. The only things in our control are our own thoughts, opinions, and choices. Everything else — our fate, possessions, reputation, other people’s behavior, and environmental events — are out of our control. We have no power over them. But crucially, it’s our choice how we think about them.
It’s empowering to know that by reasoning about the world, we can choose not to be affected by it. We can always remain composed and clear-minded, and self-assured in being good people. As a Stoic emperor, Marcus believed virtue to be the greatest goal in life. From the dichotomy of control, he knew he could only pursue that goal if he could see the world clearly and objectively. But despite his seemingly cold rationality, he relished life and dearly loved his family and his people, all the while maintaining the strictest discipline and moral code.
Meditations 7.29 is a beautifully concise summary of (almost) every central theme Marcus considered important. Here in his journal, he took a moment to remind himself of these maxims, to reconnect with the way he ought to think and act. So to understand his Stoic philosophy, I’m unearthing this passage sentence by sentence, in the way it helped me find inner peace and reassurance. I intend it to be a brief introduction for anyone looking to read Meditations for the first time.
Do away with all fancies.
~Don’t let false, irrational impressions of the world, and the judgments and ideas these create, carry you away. Don’t be swayed by their constant flux.
Marcus knew he could only be a good leader (and, more importantly, a good person) if he remained clear-minded and rational. He knew how dangerous it was for someone in his position to become outraged, to dabble in hedonistic desires, or to feel paranoid by threats. He knew the road to virtue led through having a clear, unfiltered view of the world.
To understand, imagine all our biases, judgments, and emotions as filters on a photograph. We can only take a representative, faithful picture of the world around us if we don’t apply any filters to the image. But if we’re overtaken by fancies — thrown around by emotions and judgments, or are stuck in incessant, neurotic thoughts — our view of the world is completely skewed. There’s a constant, ever-changing filter applied to the image that keeps us from seeing the world in its true light.
Unfortunately for us, in most cases, the filter is unintentional. We are unaware of our emotional state and don’t recognize that we see the world entirely differently than it actually is. We are being careless with our perceptions and misguided in the world as a result. Most things in life depend on critical decisions we must make, often every day. Being overrun by emotions, and not thinking clearly, is one of the costliest mistakes.
Marcus also knew that most of our stress and worry, indeed most of our suffering, is nothing but fragments of our mind. If we can’t see the world objectively, we immediately deem everything happening to us as subjectively good or bad. But these are all uncontrollable externals. They are just objective events, brought on by chance, happening out there in the world. They shouldn’t affect us because we can’t change them.
But once we label them as good or bad, they affect us emotionally. For example, if we allow ourselves to be hurt by a rude encounter, by letting its negativity inside our mind, it could fuel a ruminating, ever-present bias and hate that we can’t keep out of our heads. Labeling an evidently objective world subjectively is what fuels most of our anger, misery, and anxiety.
The most important principle is to keep our impressions and, thus, our mind clear.
Cease to be passion’s puppet.
~Don’t be enslaved by emotions and desires.
Marcus knew how easy it was to be overtaken by a wave of emotions. To be paralyzed entirely by them. We often cannot think straight because they are so powerful and overwhelming. Just think about the last time someone made you very angry. You were probably so riled up, even for a while after, that you couldn’t do anything without thinking about the incident. You were playing it over and over again in your head in disbelief.
Marcus warns us to never be enslaved and controlled by our emotions. To never let our desires, pleasures, or fears take over our lives and immobilize us. If we allow toxic emotions — based on false, subjective information about the objective world — to affect our minds, we will always be controlled by them.
He knew we could only be genuinely good people if we kept our discipline and remained in control, unruffled by the world’s ever-present nonsense. By having a strong will and being aware of what we control, we can be in charge of the world around us, instead of it being in charge of us. Ultimately, everything is decided in the mind, and reason is our most powerful tool in this world. Fostering such an attitude might be the most critical tool for a virtuous and successful life.
If we don’t let false impressions control us, we can control them instead.
Limit time to the present.
~All we ever have is this present moment. Nothing else.
Only when we truly realize that we can die at any moment — tomorrow, next month, fifty years from now — do we begin genuinely embracing life. We all know how stories of terminal diagnoses go. Faced with the certainty of imminent death, people are stripped of their future. The only thing they have is the present moment: a very limited succession of them.
So they become fundamentally more appreciative of life. Insignificant, petty things or grudges make no sense to dwell over anymore, whether they happened yesterday or years ago. It becomes pointless to gossip, obsess, or procrastinate. They simply have no time for these. All that matters to them is the now. And as a result, these individuals can become the most loving and virtuous people, dedicated to their loved ones, trying to leave behind a legacy, and making the world a better place.
But here’s the catch: we all have a terminal diagnosis. We got one the minute we were born. And the moment we become truly conscious of our own mortality is the day we begin to live properly. Not dwelling over past mistakes that we cannot change no matter how much we wish. And not fearing the uncertainties of the future, which will likely turn out entirely differently than we imagined, or it might not even exist.
By dying, all we are deprived of is our present. So why not live each moment to the best of our abilities? Whether we encounter good or bad, we can learn to love life wholeheartedly. Because it’s all we have. Even a short life, lived to one’s best abilities, fully and virtuously, amounts to much more than a long one wasted on trivialities.
Amor fati — love for one’s fate.
Learn to recognize every experience for what it is, whether it be your own or another’s.
~Use your rationality to observe the world clearly.
From Epictetus’ simple principle of control (labeling everything as controllable internal or uncontrollable external), it’s obvious that most often, our perception and opinion of events, rather than the events themselves, cause most of our troubles.
Learning to accept whatever’s out of our control is the most empowering wisdom of Stoicism. But we can only do that if we recognize each experience for what it really is, without bias or judgment. Whether we think it’s the universe or other people trying to screw us over — they’re still just uncontrollable externals. Nothing happening to us is positive or negative; it just is. If we don’t label an outside event negatively, we won’t overblow its impact inside our heads. And it won’t disturb our inner peace.
Marcus, at times clearly struggling with acceptance himself, also came up with an alternative explanation. Everything that happens to us has already happened to someone else and will also keep happening to others. Nothing is new. Most people go through the same depths and triumphs throughout life, only in slightly different settings. It’s just the circularity of human history. It’s the realization that we shouldn’t be perturbed by anything since it was entirely possible for it to happen. It would be foolish if we didn’t count on it.
What we cannot control is neither good nor bad. Nothing others do is surprising or catastrophic.
Divide and classify objects of sense into cause and matter.
~Be a thinker. Be a philosopher.
Only by exercising our ‘master-reason’ or ‘the divine spirit within’, as Marcus calls it, that we can properly understand ourselves and the world around us. For this, we must be keenly introspective and astutely observant of the world and other people. Through practice, we can all develop a philosopher’s way of thinking that can help us make wiser choices in life.
But if we don’t spend time in solitude, contemplation, or deep thought, how could we ever find solutions to the countless problems we face daily? How could we ever make informed decisions? Without observation and analysis, we can’t better our own lives, or the lives of those around us.
And especially for us, creatures endowed with a consciousness, Marcus said, few things are more gratifying than trying to comprehend the vast cosmos and intricate civilization we inhabit. This mind we have, filled with potential and possibility, is the greatest gift we’ve got.
We can use our capacity for reason to look beyond ordinary happenings, finding their roots, processes, and conditions. Similarly, we can aim for understanding people and their backgrounds, views, motivations. These can help tremendously in navigating our path or any outside circumstance society might throw at us. Because in Stoicism, there’s no such thing as a theoretical philosopher. If we don’t use our knowledge in the real world, all our study is in vain.
We ought to use our mind to better our life. It’s why we have it.
Meditate upon your last hour.
~Remember your place in the universe: you are a mortal being. And it’s completely natural.
Marcus clearly struggled with the concept of his own mortality. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have spent so much of his journal on it. Yet these are some of his most beautifully composed passages. He tries to reassure himself of something we all know: death is completely natural. In fact, nothing is more natural than death.
Marcus knew that everything in nature is about change — things being born, things dying — from the stars and planets to entire nations, civilizations, and even the most powerful people in the world. They are all governed by the single universal constant: change. And death is nothing but change. A transmutation. When something dies, its building blocks will become a part of something else.
If we go out in nature, the profundity of this concept is unmistakable in front of our eyes. Imagine a heavy storm in a forest and a tree falling down, roots snapping out of the ground. Slowly, its trunk is overtaken by insects and fungi, which begin to break it down. Over time, the forest floor engulfs the old trunk, which becomes a mere bulge in the ground. And from its nutrient-rich soil, a young tree will begin to grow out and thrive.
So it is with our lives, Marcus said. When we die, the atoms we borrowed from the world during our development will coalesce once again with the eternal universe. The reason we shouldn’t be afraid of our mortality is because it’s just a natural phase of life. By thinking about our own death rationally — in the context of change and transmutation — we can be freed from its terrifying grasp.
Death is okay; nothing special about it.
Leave your neighbour’s wrongdoing to rest with him who initiated it.
~Forgiveness is the only reasonable response.
Another central theme running through Meditations is forgiveness. It also reflects Marcus’ daily life as emperor. Individuals in power rarely have genuine human interactions. He had to speak and engage with countless flattering, power-hungry, narrow-minded people daily. Just as we all have to, independent of our position in society.
But Marcus chose not to become upset by them because he understood human nature. He knew every person was unreasonable, stubborn, proud, and sinful. Everyone just wants to make it ahead in life, is concerned about their image, and fears losing any possessions they have. So when their ego feels threatened, they act out against others.
But Marcus asked, ‘why are we still surprised and upset about this?’ He famously used a fig tree as an analogy: would we also be surprised if a fig tree produced figs? It’s unreasonable not to expect people to behave selfishly because it’s inherent to human nature.
So he had a simple method for when people acted out against him. Whenever possible, we can be honest and point out the mistake tactfully and considerately. Our intention isn’t to scold or belittle the other person but to help them grow. But beyond that, we cannot do much.
The only reasonable alternative was to accept their behavior. It would be ridiculous to let ourselves be disturbed by something we knew we could’ve expected. We are dealing with people, after all. But if we are benevolent and caring, we could exercise our virtues by forgiving the offender for his mistake.
Similarly important is seeking to understand people. Since we often don’t know anything about a person (or their background and motivation), we have no right to judge them. But if we look into their mind, we might understand why they act a certain way, and we could empathize with them. When someone is mean or hurtful to us, we can take a moment before we begin arguing. If we can imagine ourselves in their situation, we might find we would’ve done exactly the same thing. Yet we still feel entitled to be hurt. Isn’t that hypocrisy?
What permits us to get angry with others?
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