M. AURELIUS: Meditations (Book 9)
Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic but he could have followed another path if he had wanted to. Some of our Great Books readings have shown us other views of life. How do these views compare with Stoicism?
Lucretius lays out the Epicurean view in his book On the Nature of the Universe: the material world isn’t just a good thing; it’s the only thing. Therefore, the best way to live is to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Epicurus believes this is the only reasonable way to live. But Marcus says “he who pursues pleasure as good and avoids pain as evil is guilty of impiety.” Epicurus is an atheist and asks: impious against whom? There are no gods. That’s just mumbo-jumbo to keep us living in fear and darkness. Marcus seems more agnostic: “if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, do not also be governed by it.” Marcus thinks the prudent attitude toward the gods is to take a wait-and-see attitude: “Either the gods have no power or they have power.” Question: is the Epicurean view of life fundamentally incompatible with Stoicism? Can there be such a thing as a stoic Epicurean? Marcus quotes Epicurus in this section and seems to approve.
The Platonists believe just the opposite of the Epicureans. They think the material world is just a pale copy of the real thing. Plato outlines this idea in The Republic. Perfect chairs or horses or triangles only exist in a sort of spiritual plane. What we see around us is a mere shadow of the true and eternal existence. “Real” chairs and horses and triangles in this world aren’t nearly as good as the pure idea of them. Marcus says that “the universal nature is the nature of things that are…this universal nature is named truth.” Does this mean that Plato and Marcus agree about the nature of truth? Or are they saying totally opposite things? Is Marcus saying that there are no perfect chairs and horses and triangles lying around out there somewhere? Marcus actually mentions Plato directly: “Do what nature requires. Set yourself in motion, if it is in your power, and do not look about you to see if anyone will observe it; nor yet expect Plato’s Republic…”
St. Augustine talks about the Manicheans in his Confessions. The Manicheans think the material world is bad and the spiritual world is good. There are two creative forces at work in the cosmos: one creates evil and the other creates good. Neither can fully overcome the other so they’re locked in eternal conflict. But Marcus claims that “Man and God and the universe all produce fruit, each at the proper season.” Question: is there a “proper season” for evil to be produced? Is evil a real thing in the Stoic philosophy or is evil just our misguided perception of reality? Marcus does say that “For the stone that has been thrown up it is no evil to come down, nor indeed any good to have been carried up.” But that’s only saying that there are natural laws that drive the universe. Those laws aren’t good or bad, much less evil. They just are what they are. What is the Stoic position on the presence of evil in this world?
The Judaeo-Christian view is that the spiritual world is good and the material world is good too. God created the heavens and the earth and in the book of Genesis God says that it’s all good. Marcus poses a question: “have you determined to abide with vice, and has experience not yet induced you to fly from this pestilence?” God says the world is good. Marcus says it’s a pestilence. How would Christians respond to Marcus’ question: if you Christians believe in heaven and everlasting life then why hang around this rat-hole of a world? Why not flee from it now? Question: can there be such a thing as a stoic Christian?
Lucretius lays out the Epicurean view in his book On the Nature of the Universe: the material world isn’t just a good thing; it’s the only thing. Therefore, the best way to live is to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Epicurus believes this is the only reasonable way to live. But Marcus says “he who pursues pleasure as good and avoids pain as evil is guilty of impiety.” Epicurus is an atheist and asks: impious against whom? There are no gods. That’s just mumbo-jumbo to keep us living in fear and darkness. Marcus seems more agnostic: “if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, do not also be governed by it.” Marcus thinks the prudent attitude toward the gods is to take a wait-and-see attitude: “Either the gods have no power or they have power.” Question: is the Epicurean view of life fundamentally incompatible with Stoicism? Can there be such a thing as a stoic Epicurean? Marcus quotes Epicurus in this section and seems to approve.
The Platonists believe just the opposite of the Epicureans. They think the material world is just a pale copy of the real thing. Plato outlines this idea in The Republic. Perfect chairs or horses or triangles only exist in a sort of spiritual plane. What we see around us is a mere shadow of the true and eternal existence. “Real” chairs and horses and triangles in this world aren’t nearly as good as the pure idea of them. Marcus says that “the universal nature is the nature of things that are…this universal nature is named truth.” Does this mean that Plato and Marcus agree about the nature of truth? Or are they saying totally opposite things? Is Marcus saying that there are no perfect chairs and horses and triangles lying around out there somewhere? Marcus actually mentions Plato directly: “Do what nature requires. Set yourself in motion, if it is in your power, and do not look about you to see if anyone will observe it; nor yet expect Plato’s Republic…”
St. Augustine talks about the Manicheans in his Confessions. The Manicheans think the material world is bad and the spiritual world is good. There are two creative forces at work in the cosmos: one creates evil and the other creates good. Neither can fully overcome the other so they’re locked in eternal conflict. But Marcus claims that “Man and God and the universe all produce fruit, each at the proper season.” Question: is there a “proper season” for evil to be produced? Is evil a real thing in the Stoic philosophy or is evil just our misguided perception of reality? Marcus does say that “For the stone that has been thrown up it is no evil to come down, nor indeed any good to have been carried up.” But that’s only saying that there are natural laws that drive the universe. Those laws aren’t good or bad, much less evil. They just are what they are. What is the Stoic position on the presence of evil in this world?
The Judaeo-Christian view is that the spiritual world is good and the material world is good too. God created the heavens and the earth and in the book of Genesis God says that it’s all good. Marcus poses a question: “have you determined to abide with vice, and has experience not yet induced you to fly from this pestilence?” God says the world is good. Marcus says it’s a pestilence. How would Christians respond to Marcus’ question: if you Christians believe in heaven and everlasting life then why hang around this rat-hole of a world? Why not flee from it now? Question: can there be such a thing as a stoic Christian?
posted by RDP | 10:13 AM
1 Comments:
Question: is the Epicurean view of life fundamentally incompatible with Stoicism? Can there be such a thing as a stoic Epicurean?
Ans. - Since Epicurus identifies pleasure as the goal of human striving and Aurelius chooses virtue over pleasure, it is hard to reconcile these two principles, since they lead in opposite directions. In actual practice, however, the epicureans held a rather modest and restrained view of pleasure, preferring actions that were good for the soul over extreme behavior such as gluttony or immorality. Yet, this form of quiet restraint cannot always be found in people whose morality is grounded in self-gratification. Epicurus lacks any concept of public duty, and thus he relies solely on the individual to prescribe his own moral limits. This allows for a higher degree of self expression, but ignores the question of how to balance freedom with responsibility. For Epicureans, the only responsibility to worry about is to yourself.
Aurelius sees things differently. Without the institution of law and the inhibitions imposed by a civil authority, people will follow their own base instincts. The correct path to follow is to fulfill one's duty to one's community, and to seek virtue. Human existence is full of disappointment and sorrow, yet these misfortunes can be overcome by adopting the proper attitude toward one's fate: accept the fact that there are things beyond your power to control, and enjoy what freedom you have in the limited time you are alive.
Question: Marcus says that “the universal nature is the nature of things that are…this universal nature is named truth.” Does this mean that Plato and Marcus agree about the nature of truth? Or are they saying totally opposite things? Is Marcus saying that there are no perfect chairs and horses and triangles lying around out there somewhere?
Ans. - Plato's idea of truth can be boiled down to one simple observation: truth is reality. This "true" reality is hidden from the ephemeral world that men inhabit, but it can be experienced, to a limited degree, through philosophy. Aurelius is concerned with the nature of man and how to improve civil society. He believes that the hidden design or structure of the universe is the work of a supreme architect whose ways are unknowable to man. Sometimes he refers to this divine creation as nature, which implies the material objects of nature that we can see and touch. Other times he says quite honestly that he isn't sure what it is. Plato's philosophy is built on the notion that ideas precede and are superior to (i.e., more "real") than material objects. Ideas are eternal and perfect, whereas the world we experience is constantly changing and often messy.
Aurelius believes in the possibility of the Platonic realm of truth, but he also recognizes that most people will never reach that higher realm. The pursuit of virtue is in some sense an accommodation to the idea of truth made by lesser beings such as ourselves. Philosophy gives us a momentary glimpse of that realm, but does not grant us complete access. That is because our human power of reason is limited, trapped by the mortal constraints imposed by the world we live in. A virtuous man like Aurelius can ascend higher than most other men, but even he cannot experience the full measure of truth that is accessible only through philosophy. Perfection exists as an idea in the mind of God, not in man. Aurelius' idea of "universal nature" simply alludes to that part of reality which is knowable to man. Because it is universal, it is the same nature for everyone, but it is not universal in the sense of being the highest reality or the highest truth. Those lie beyond the veil of human mortality.
Question: Is there a “proper season” for evil to be produced? Is evil a real thing in the Stoic philosophy or is evil just our misguided perception of reality?
Ans. - Aurelius does not believe in the Manichean power of evil. For stoics like Marcus Aurelius, almost all "evil" is simply a disease of the human mind. It is a kind of troubling metaphor that infects our thoughts, poisoning the way we think and rendering us helpless to control our base desires. A better understanding of what St. Augustine calls evil would be the concept of entropy, the fact that, as Yeats put it, "things fall apart," and "the center cannot hold." Because the universe is not a random series of events, what Christians call "evil" is simply the collision between human desire with nature. If human desire is guided by reason (philosophy), then it will be properly oriented with natural law. To put this in a modern context, evil is simply the human ego in conflict with the external world which it is helpless to control. Aurelius suggests that the human desire to live forever is but the immature wish of a child who lacks the strength to overpower his guardian (Creator). The fact that all living things die is not evil; it is written into the fabric of nature. Death is not evil; it is a kind of transformation of which we disapprove because it renders us non-existent, but that does not make it evil.
Aurelius would probably say that rude behavior, cowardice, and gluttony are worse things than death. Any behavior that leads us away from the principles of virtue is bad for society, and might be called "evil". But evil is no malevolent force that exists to do us harm. Wisdom is the recognition that nature is indifferent to our prospects for human happiness.
Question: God says the world is good. Marcus says it’s a pestilence. How would Christians respond to Marcus’ question: if you Christians believe in heaven and everlasting life then why hang around this rat-hole of a world? Why not flee from it now? Question: can there be such a thing as a stoic Christian?
Ans. - Like everyone else, Marcus Aurelius had his good days and his bad days. Maybe after 13 years of campaigning in Gaul and sleeping in military tents, and getting daily reports that yet another barbarian tribe had invaded the empire, and, oh yeah, the plague is sweeping through Rome, the Parthians are on the war path, and our favorite general in Syria, Cassius, has gone native and declared himself emperor, and the troops guarding Hadrian's wall are grumbling because they haven't been home in five years, and you'd really like to have just a few hours of undisturbed peace so you can write in your journal, well just maybe he was a little grumpy one day and said that the world is a pestilence. Can you really blame him? Most of the time, though, Aurelius thought that life, especially in Rome, was pretty good. It would be better, of course, if people would do their duty and be kind to one another, but he knew that wasn't likely to occur.
The truth is he didn't think much of Christians because they whined a lot about injustice and cried over their troubles. Real men don't whine. I think he recognized that allowing the Christian beliefs to spread throughout the empire would bring nothing but trouble. After all, Christians didn't give one hoot about Rome. They wanted to convert other people to their religion and save souls for Jesus, but they didn't really care much about the state of the empire. I think a Christian can have stoic values such as patience, steadfastness, courage, honesty, chastity and loyalty. But I don't see how a stoic could adopt Christian theology and still be called stoic. Once you buy into the idea that this world is just basic training for the real world to come, Paradise, that puts an entirely different focus on your values. Christians might say that the material world (or nature) is good but it is obviously not as good as the spiritual world. That is why St. Augustine talked about the existence of two different cities, the city of God and the city of man. And there is no doubt about which city St. Augustine prefers. Actually, if it were not for the duty of every Christian to spread the gospel over the entire face of the world, it is hard to see how one could justify staying in this lower realm of sinful temptation. Aurelius was quick to suggest to anyone who despised his or her life to part with it. There is no evidence to suggest that he himself, though he was the emperor of the entire civilized world (with apologies to China, India, etc.) ever wanted to live one minute longer than destiny allotted to him.
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