How does marcus aurelius represent stoicism in meditations

The fact that our sources understand what is according to nature both in terms of cosmic nature or what is fated and in terms of the individual natures out of which the nature of the cosmos is built up raises the question of conflict, for instance when my health, which is in accordance with my nature, is not fated, or in accordance with cosmic nature.

Such conflict can be avoided for human beings by appeal to our rational nature, on the one hand, and providential cosmic nature, on the other: our rationality enables us to appreciate and will what is according to cosmic nature because the latter is best for the whole. The role of citizen brings with it certain conventional expectations of conduct which Marcus transfers to citizenship of the cosmopolis.

Marcus says that one should be concerned with two things only: acting justly and loving what is allotted one x. Appeal to the idea that the cosmos is a city allows him to say that we should do well for all humanity viii. Strikingly, Marcus seems to specify this communal goal in terms of indifferents rather than virtue, with the result that one should aim to bring about preferred indifferents for the whole of which one is a part. Even though food is not a good and hunger not an evil, a Stoic will respond to a hungry person with food, rather than only a lecture that food is not a good and hunger not an evil.

Marcus says that the rational nature does well when it directs impulses hormai to communal action viii. After the communal faculty comes the rational faculty vii. Sometimes Marcus goes so far as to identify the good agathon of a rational creature with community v. Finally, Marcus simply denies that there is ever any conflict between the good of the individual and the good of the whole community of which that individual is a part.

He says, on the one side, that the perfection, well-being, and stability of the whole depends on what happens to each part v. And on the other side, he says that what the nature of the whole brings about is good agathon for each part ii. He compares the relationship between separate rational individuals and the community to limbs and body, which are so constituted as to work together vii.

While Plato uses the limb-body analogy to emphasize the unity of feeling the ideal city achieves, Marcus uses it to emphasize that the citizen is a functional part of the whole city: just as this material making up a limb would not be a limb at all without the body of which it is a part, so too, this human individual would not be what they are without a city of which they are a part Marcus must mean the cosmic city.

One might object that there is more to being a human being than being a citizen Striker , , but perhaps Marcus is not merely saying that the cosmos is like a city and we are like its citizens; perhaps he is saying that the cosmos actually is a city and human beings actually are its citizens, so that what it is to be human is exhausted by citizenship of the cosmos.

Every nature is satisfied with itself when it goes along its way well, and the rational nature goes along its way well when it assents to nothing false or unclear among its impressions, when it directs impulses to communal actions, when it generates desires and inclinations for only those things that are in our power, and when it welcomes everything apportioned to it by common nature.

The last of these four behaviors is productive of piety. The key idea in piety is that the cosmos as a whole is providentially designed, and so is as good as it can be, and so its parts are as good as they can be, and so our attitude towards every part ought to be acceptance—or as he sometimes puts it more strongly, love.

Desire, parallel to impulse, is restricted to the sphere of our passivity; thus, we should desire whatever befalls us. Hadot is mistaken here, for according to the Stoics, our reactions to what befalls us are also impulses, and desire is a species of impulse. Marcus says either to restrict desire to what is up to us ix.

Epictetus tells us to refrain from desire for the time being iii. The reason to quench desire is the danger of desiring the wrong thing: to desire something is to believe it to be good, and to have a runaway impulse towards it. This also gives us an argument against desiring the things that befall one. Perhaps we should associate desire orexis with pursuing, and welcoming with contentment upon receiving.

Nine times in the Meditations , Marcus lays out the alternatives: providence, nature, reason, on the one hand, or atoms, on the other iv. On these passages, see Cooper What is not obvious is why Marcus is laying out these alternatives.

Is it because his grasp of Stoic physics is so tenuous that he must be open to the possibility that Epicurean physics is true Rist , 43, Annas , ?

Marcus does at one point express despair about his own grasp of physics vii. Here Marcus also quotes Epicurus on pain with approval: pain is either bearable if long-lasting or short if intense. Still, Marcus is not really open to the possibility of Epicurean physics. Elsewhere he insists that he has a sufficient conception ennoia of a life according to nature so as to live it i.

Since wealth, reputation, and health are distributed among the virtuous and the vicious indiscriminately, he reasons, they cannot be good, for that would be contrary to providence ii. This does not mean Marcus is generally grounding ethics in physics, however. Are you discontented with the part you have been assigned in the whole? Recall the alternatives: providence or atoms, and how many are the demonstrations, that the cosmos is a city.

The reasoning works to raise the stakes for someone who is grumbling at the way things are. It brings out that there is a contradiction between believing, as a Stoic must, that the world is providentially run, and being discontented with anything that happens.

Once the contradiction is brought out, it becomes clear which of the two alternatives a Stoic must plump for, and what follows about the attitudes he must consequently adopt towards the world and every part of it. For example, at iv. Often, however, Marcus does not have to spell this out.

So Marcus is telling his grumbling self: your grumbling is evidence of impiety, evidence of your being like an Epicurean—except that actual Epicureans are more philosophical and do not grumble about an irrational cosmos bringing them bad luck, but rather, try themselves to live rationally.

Perhaps bringing about the desired attitude calls for making hyperbolic statements in order to correct for some natural tendency he thinks he has. If we do not keep this in mind as we read Marcus, we will only find contradictions, tensions, and ambivalences and we will conclude that Marcus is an eclectic and imprecise thinker. According to Stoic epistemology, things in the world impress images of themselves on human and animal souls, as shapes can impress themselves on a wax tablet.

Human beings may also assent to or withhold assent from these impressions; judgments are the result of our assenting to impressions, or more precisely to the propositional articulations of our impressions. While assent is voluntary, impressions are not cf. Epictetus fr. What Marcus is telling himself to erase, Hadot says, is value-judgments about everything external to his character. Hadot thinks Marcus is simply confused in using the term phantasia for these judgments the correct term, which he sometimes uses [cf.

Yet the distinction between objective physical facts and subjective value judgments seems more existentialist than Stoic—for the Stoics value is objective, and indeed Marcus repeatedly exults in the beauty and goodness of the cosmos as a whole. We should not assume that the evaluations are all added by us, the subjects, to the impression, for the Stoics think that there are evaluative impressions, cf.

And it is also right that Marcus often deals with things that are conventionally accorded high value in reductive material terms. So, for example, he writes,. Take for instance the impression in the case of relishes and such edibles, that this one is the corpse of a fish, and that one of a bird or a pig. Such are the impressions that get at things and go right into them, so that one sees how each thing really is.

Indeed, Marcus himself describes what he is doing here as defining what each thing is stripped naked, and enumerating the components into which it disintegrates iii. However, this is only one of two complementary ways Marcus deals with his impressions. The other is to consider things that are conventionally disvalued in their larger context, so as to show what good they serve.

These reflect the influence of Stoicism and, in particular, the philosophy of Epictetus , the Stoic. From a modern perspective Marcus Aurelius is certainly not in the first rank of ancient philosophers.

To a certain extent this judgement is perfectly fair and reasonable. However, in order to assess the philosophical qualities that Marcus does have and that are displayed in the Meditations it is necessary to emphasize that in antiquity philosophy was not conceived merely as a matter of theoretical arguments.

Such arguments existed and were important, but they were framed within a broader conception of philosophy as a way of life. The aim was not merely to gain a rational understanding of the world but to allow that rational understanding to inform the way in which one lived.

Marcus Aurelius was born in C. His early education was overseen by the Emperor Hadrian, and he was later adopted by the Emperor Antoninus Pius in C. After an initial education in rhetoric undertaken by Fronto, Marcus later abandoned it in favor of philosophy. Continual attacks meant that much of his reign was spent on campaign, especially in central Europe. However, he did find time to establish four Chairs of Philosophy in Athens, one for each of the principal philosophical traditions Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, andEpicurean.

He died in AD The Meditations take the form of a personal notebook and were probably written while Marcus was on campaign in central Europe, c. AD The entries appear to be in no particular order and may simply be in the original order of composition. The repetition of themes and the occasional groups of quotations from other authors see e.

Book One, however, is somewhat different from the rest of the text and may well have been written separately a plan for it may be discerned in Med. The first recorded mention of the Meditations is by Themistius in AD AD by Arethas. The modern text derives primarily from two sources: a manuscript now in the Vatican and a lost manuscript mentioned above , upon which the first printed edition was based.

AD , discovered as a palimpsest in However, although this interesting discovery sheds some light on Marcus as an individual, it adds little to our understanding of his philosophy. According to tradition, Marcus was a Stoic. His ancient biographer, Julius Capitolinus, describes him as such. Marcus also makes reference to a number of Stoics by whom he was taught and, in particular, mentions Rusticus from whom he borrowed a copy of the works of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus Med.

However, nowhere in the Meditations does Marcus explicitly call himself a Stoic. This may simply reflect the likelihood that Marcus was writing only for himself rather than attempting to define himself to an audience.

Yet it is probably fair to admit that Marcus was at least open to ideas from other philosophical traditions, being impressed by Stoic philosophy , but not merely an unthinking disciple of Stoicism. As has been noted, Marcus was clearly familiar with the Discourses of Epictetus, quoting them a number of times see Med. If Marcus felt drawn towards Stoicism, then Epictetus would surely have stood out as the most important Stoic of the time. It is perhaps reasonable, then, to turn to Epictetus in order to explore the philosophical background to the Meditations.

He suggests that the apprentice philosopher should be trained in three distinct areas or topoi see Epictetus Discourses 3. These three areas of training correspond to the three types of philosophical discourse referred to by earlier Stoics; the physical, the ethical, and the logical see Diogenes Laertius 7.

For Epictetus, it is not enough merely to discourse about philosophy. We should work towards something larger than ourselves, a collective good while treating people justly and fairly. The third discipline, the discipline of will, encompasses our attitude to things that are not within our control.

Acts of nature such as fire, illness, and even death, however unpleasant, can only harm us if we choose to see them that way. The same for the acts of others. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now at this very moment—of all external events. You may think that maintaining a positive attitude regardless of the circumstances is impossible. Individually the three disciplines contribute to a meaningful life. Everywhere, at each moment, you have the option: to accept this event with humility [will]; to treat this person as he should be treated [action]; to approach this thought with care, so that nothing irrational creeps in [perception];.