Marcus Aurelius: Meditations

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations reflect the emperor’s adoption of Stoic philosophy and his daily struggle to live according to its tenets. Originating in the Hellenistic Age and further developed during the Roman Imperial Age, the philosophy of Stoicism espoused the belief that virtue could be achieved by understanding and acting according to one’s nature. This was done by actively trying to understand what we (as individuals and in the aggregate, as humankind) and the world (all matter) are and, through this understanding, to define and live a life dedicated to the good. The twelve chapters of the Meditations are the emperor’s considerations of his thoughts and actions as he guides his empire through troubling times. Throughout the book he refers to himself in the second person—thou, thine, and so on.

For Aurelius, the undistracted life is important. Why be distracted by the personalities and quirks of others when we all participate in the divine and are meant to cooperate with each other? He tells himself not be a slave to books or to the flesh or to social ideals, because one’s inner knowledge of dignity, affection, freedom, and justice (that is, the ideal Roman values) allows discontent to fall away. Distractions cause injury to a person’s soul when the soul permits itself to act in a way that harms others (or even to think of doing so), when it is overwhelmed by pain or pleasure, or when it acts without purpose.

According to the Meditations, active engagement in the world is necessary when it is good and serves a purpose, but to be distracted by the frivolous or to spend useless energy pursuing an activity that achieves no noble purpose is trifling and acts against the good of the soul. That which happens in the world happens equally to all; nothing is either good or evil, but all is part of the design of the world. Change is the natural order of the universe, so even “death” is not evil and should not be feared.

At the beginning of Book III, Aurelius tells himself to remember that the deity within him is like a guardian to his physical form, which is a mature man, a Roman, and an emperor—one who is waiting patiently for death and who, more important, stands on his own dignity, not needing the testimony of others to assure himself of an afterlife. This remark seems directed toward those of other religions popular in the Roman Empire, like the mystery religions and perhaps even Christianity. Continuing his thoughts on distractions, Aurelius notes that valuing things that profit a person but persuade one to act unethically causes one to become too much part of the world and thus infused with its problems. Instead, one should act with moderation and forbearance toward fate, assured of dignity even in the face of death.

Throughout the Meditations, Aurelius notes that distractions cause one to lose one’s self (one’s soul) to the world. Men seek retreats away from the world in country homes, beach houses, and so on, and yet these same retreats become distractions in and of themselves. Why, he asks, seek retreat in a place when one can retreat into oneself anytime and anywhere? An ordered mind brings peace. Whatever interferes with inner peace should be put in its proper place, for all beings and things and events are part of a physical world; just as the mind does not attach itself to the breath, the soul does not attach itself to the world. Certainly human desires, especially for the fleetingness of such things as fame, are nothing when considered against the vast scope of the universe. Aurelius admonishes himself and others not to be “Caesar”—that is, one who puts himself above others—viewing oneself instead as a servant. Consider the connections of all things in the universe, he advises, as evidence of the unity of the universe, adapting to one’s fate and judging as good and evil only that which it is in one’s power to judge. Therein lie inner virtue, steadfastness, and dignity.

The timeless wisdom of the Meditations has found new interest in a fast-paced, materialistic, stressful society seemingly overly concerned with such “values” as fame. Besides having much in common with many religions, Aurelius’s reflections provide profound insight into the ways in which to conduct oneself and survive in such a world with dignity and a sense of purpose.