11/25/2023 0 Comments Diogenes of sinope birdIs there anything finer, then, than this habit of scrutinizing the entire day? What sort of sleep follows this self-examination-how peaceful, how deep and free… I exercise this jurisdiction daily and plead my case before myself. ![]() 65 CE) says that he acquired the habit from his teacher Sextius, who would nightly ask himself: “Which of your ills did you heal today? Which vice did you resist? In what aspect are you better?” “Your anger,” says Seneca, “will cease and become more controllable if it knows that every day it must come before a judge.” This kind of reflective journaling is not original to Epictetus. This embedding of Stoic principles, this turning of theory into practice, is what Marcus appears to be doing in and by the Meditations. In the Discourses, Epictetus advises the reader to rehearse and write down Stoic responses to life’s challenges. Whatever the case, he clearly held the Stoics, and Epictetus, in the highest regard, and endeavoured all his life to live up to their precepts. Even the Stoics have trouble.” This suggests that he did not consider himself a Stoic, or even a philosopher, but merely a friend or student of philosophy. In one place, he refers to the Stoics in the third person: “Things are wrapped in such a veil of mystery that many good philosophers have found it impossible to make sense of them. The “you” that he often uses is not a generic “you,” but him addressing himself-for example, “When you look at yourself, see any of the emperors… Then let it hit you: Where are they now?” It is unlikely that Marcus intended his thoughts for publication, or, even, for anyone’s eyes except his own. He concludes this first book by thanking the gods that “when I became interested in philosophy, I didn’t fall into the hands of charlatans, and didn’t get bogged down in writing treatises, or become absorbed by logic-chopping, or preoccupied with physics.” The influence of the Stoic teacher Epictetus, here and elsewhere, is easy enough to discern. The first book, in which Marcus reflects with gratitude on what he has learned from various relatives and mentors, stands out from the rest as being more structured and autobiographical. To choose the right words.” This touching intimacy, and the epigrammatic character of many of his reflections, have ensured the appeal and perennial popularity of the work. ![]() In the latter years of his life, Marcus kept a journal, now called the Meditations, which has miraculously come down to us, and through which we might enter the mind of the philosopher-king. The twelve books of the Meditations do not present any chronological or thematic order but consist of a variety of unrelated reflections that seem to have been written for Marcus’ own benefit: for strength, for guidance, and for self-improvement-for example, “To speak to the Senate-or anyone-in the right tone, without being overbearing. 375 BCE), Socrates says that his vision of the ideal state could not exist “until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy… then only will our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.” Here he was at last, more than five hundred years later, rarer even than the Egyptian phoenix, the fabled philosopher king-and not just any vassal or kinglet, but the Emperor of Rome. These emperors, wrote Machiavelli, “had no need of praetorian cohorts, or of countless legions to guard them, but were defended by their own good lives, the goodwill of their subjects, and the attachment of the Senate.” Whereas Vespasian and Domitian had persecuted philosophers, Hadrian and Antoninus had courted them-until Marcus crossed over to the other side. So why did he write it?Īfter the three Flavian emperors-Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian-came the “Five Good Emperors” of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty: Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and our man Marcus Aurelius (d. The Stoic emperor never intended his work for publication.
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