This is a transcription of Professor Michael Sugrue’s lecture posted on his YouTube channel. His lecture on Stoicism is the best I’ve found anywhere on the Internet. Transcribing free flowing speech into text has its challenges so I’ll admit there may be errors in the placement of dashes, colons, semicolons, paragraph breaks, etc. The goal was to create a readable document based on the lecture. It’s a work in progress. I’m interested in improving this document so please reach out if you see punctuation errors or have suggestions in the formatting. E-mail me at modelerschoice@gmail.com for changes. Thanks, Randy 01/18/21.
Footnotes are from Wikipedia unless noted otherwise. The location of specific passages in the Gregory Hays translation of Meditations (the best translation for our modern ear) is cited in some footnotes.
After the death of Socrates1, and the breakup of Greek culture that resulted from the Peloponnesian War2, Socratic philosophy went into a decline and fragmented into several pieces. The fragments of Socratic philosophy make up the body of Hellenistic philosophy3.
What I mean by Hellenistic philosophy is the subsequent developments of Greek philosophy which take their cue from the Socratic approach to philosophy; yet they don’t have all the component parts of Socratic philosophy. They usually lack the whit. They almost always lack the poetry. Occasionally they absorb some of the ethical doctrines or epistemological4 doctrines but the ones who come after Socrates never really live up to the Socratic ideal.
The three main fragments Socratic philosophy breaks into are stoicism, epicureanism, and skepticism. These are the most important Hellenistic outgrowths from Socratic philosophy.
Since Romeꟷthe Roman Empire5 in particularꟷis the political entity which ultimately dominates the Mediterranean Basin and absorbs and inherits the tradition of Greek
1 Socrates was a classical Greek philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, and as being the first moral philosopher of the Western ethical tradition of thought. Born 470 BC Died 399 BC (aged approx. 71).
2 The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was an ancient Greek war fought by the Delian League led by Athens against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases.
3 Hellenistic philosophy is the period of Western philosophy and Middle Eastern philosophy that was developed in the Hellenistic period following Aristotle and ending with the beginning of Neoplatonism.
4 Epistemological: relating to the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.
5 The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome, consisting of large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean sea in Europe, North Africa and West Asia ruled by emperors. Founded: 27 BC., dissolved: May 29, 1453.
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philosophy, most of the Hellenistic branches of philosophy are developed in connection, or with reference to, either politically or intellectually, with Roman culture.
The first of these developments is hedonism6, or epicureanism7, named after a guy named Epicurus8. And what epicureanism says is that pleasure is the only good, and that the happy man is the one that has a great many pleasures, but no corresponding pains. And there is potentially a way of deriving that from Socratic philosophy. If you would take the idea of Socratic prudence; the man who drinks a little bit in order to get a certain degree of pleasure, but then not so much as he will cause himself a hangover, or cause himself some corresponding pain, he’s being prudently Socraticꟷpicking and choosing his pleasures in such a way that he does not generate any corresponding pain.
You can see possibly how people who were not entirely committed to the Socratic conception of the soul, and a virtue, might want to derive that sort of justification for the pursuit of pleasure from the Socratic dialogues.
A second alternative, again a minor alternative fragment of Socratic philosophy, is called skepticism. Socrates throughout most of the dialogues (I would emphasize the word most, rather than all) says that he doesn’t know anything. Part of the Socratic irony is this posture of acting as if he’s really an ignorant man when in fact he is wise in saying that he knows nothing and thus never trying to teach people by directly making declarative sentences.
For the most part Socrates teaches by question-and-answer. Socrates helps people to articulate and to realize what’s already buried within their soul. When Socrates does that, when he’s in that skeptical mode, he says: I myself know nothing. All I do is inquire into things. I’m the eternal inquirer. I’m the patron saint of rational inquiry.
And it’s possible to see, particularly within the context of the Roman Empire, how skepticism might develop from that Socratic stance of knowing nothing. Remember that the Roman Empire is a heterogeneous mix of peoples, and cultures, and religions, and philosophical positions.
After being forced to encounter one cosmogonic9 myth after another; one theory of religion after another; one theory of morals after another; sophisticated Romans; sophisticated
6 Hedonism is a school of thought that argues that the pursuit of pleasure and intrinsic goods are the primary or most important goals of human life. A hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure.
7 Epicureanism: an ancient school of philosophy founded in Athens by Epicurus. The school rejected determinism and advocated hedonism (pleasure as the highest good), but of a restrained kind: mental pleasure was regarded more highly than physical, and the ultimate pleasure was held to be freedom from anxiety and mental pain, especially that arising from needless fear of death and of the gods.
8 Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents
9 cosmogonic - pertaining to the branch of astronomy dealing with the origin and history and structure and dynamics of the universe; “cosmologic science”; “cosmological redshift”; “cosmogonic theories of the origin of the universe” [thefreedictionary.com]
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Hellenistic thinkers might well come to the conclusion that Lucian the Skeptic10 did which is that no one really knows the right path, no one even knows if there is a right path. The best we can do is say that the pretensions made by the various schools of philosophy are just thatꟷpretensions.
Skepticism, while it may be rather negative, is at least rightꟷwe can be certain about what we do not know. And it’s possible to see how someone especially someone that was terribly frustrated with the attempt to obtain final, absolute, knowledge might resort to skepticism as a kind of easy way outꟷa way of avoiding the burden of Socratic inquiry.
The third and most important development in Hellenistic philosophy is called stoicism. Stoicism is probably the greatest and most interesting achievement of the Hellenistic philosophers. And while it never achieves the poetic and intellectual grandeur of the Socratic synthesis of the Platonic overarching system, which makes statements about the entire human condition, Stoicism is in fact a noble philosophy, an excellent philosophy for silver men; for the spirited men in the Republic who are going to be our guardians. It’s an excellent philosophy for military men. It’s an excellent philosophy for people that are going to be practical politicians, if they intend to be virtuous, if they intend to pursue the public good.
Stoicism is characterized by a rejection of pleasure and a standard of human happiness and human felicity. Stoicism takes the position that the wise man, the good man, the philosopher, is a man who lives in accordance with nature. He fears only abdicating his moral responsibility. He is not afraid of pain. He is not afraid of death. He is not afraid of poverty. He is not afraid of any of the vicissitudes of the human condition. He fears only that he should let himself down and then he should be less than a complete human being.
According to the Stoics, and there are a number of Stoics; two, or three, or four, or five that actually developed the doctrine. But all the doctrines are quite similar. The only matter of concern to a wise and philosophic individual is the things completely under your control. You can’t control the movements of the Sun and the planets. You can’t control whether a leaky ship sinks or makes it to port. You can’t control the weather. You can’t control other people. You can’t control the society around you. There’s only one thing, and one thing only, that you are in control of and that is youꟷyour will, your intention, yourself.
In other words, the wise man, the truly philosophical man, is the man who is entirely in control of his own soul, who takes utter and complete moral responsibility for his actions and is indifferent to everything else. Not because he doesn’t care about other people. Not because he doesn’t care about the felicity of the entire human species, but because it’s not under his control. There’s no use wondering or worrying about what tomorrow will bring since tomorrow isn’t under your control. Do what’s right today and let tomorrow take care of itself.
10 Lucian of Samosata (c. 125 – after 180) was an Assyrian satirist and rhetorician who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with which he frequently ridiculed superstition, religious practices, and belief in the paranormal. Although his native language was probably Syriac, all of his extant works are written entirely in Ancient Greek (mostly in the Attic Greek popular during the Second Sophistic period).
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The stoic philosopher is the man who has liberated himself from fear. He’s not afraid of death. He’s not afraid of pain. He’s not afraid of other people’s dismissal as a fool. The only thing he cares about is that he should meet his moral obligations. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that: greatness is the perception that virtue is enough, which is an elegant and beautiful line and he might well have stolen that from one of the Stoics because all of the Stoics basically believe that.
Virtueꟷmoral virtueꟷan organized soul which pursues rationally the ends which are good for all human beingsꟷthat’s the stoic conception of virtue. They finally understand their greatness consists in the fact that they perceive that virtue is enough. We do not need wealth. We do not need sexual gratification. We do not need life itself. If moral virtue tells us that we must die in the pursuit of some good end: the protection of our family, the protection of our home, the protection of the innocent, in the doing of right nothing should be sparedꟷnot even our lives.
The stoic wise man is a man who has trained his soul, trained his mind, so that he is not afraid of apparent evils. He is only afraid of real evil. He is afraid of losing control of his soul. He is afraid of being a slave to lust, to desire, to emotion. The stoic man is the honorable philosopher, the man who stands at his duty and is steadfast and serious-minded.
In living according to nature what the stoic philosopher does is examine the nature of the human condition and the nature of the world around us. He discerns his position in nature. He discerns the kind of creature that he is, and he lives in such a way as not to disgrace himself as not to be less than what he truly could be. He won’t live the swinish life that we found with Aristophanes11. He wants to be, if not a god, certainly not less than human. He won’t be an animal either. He will live up to the fullest potentials that a human being has to offer.
Now among the Roman Stoics two were especially noteworthy. One is Epictetus12 and one is Marcus Aurelius13. And one of the wonderful ironies about the history of philosophy is that Epictetus was a slave and Marcus Aurelius was an emperor. And philosophy is the great equalizer. Both the slave and the emperor can equally well participate in a philosophy that is accessible to all human beingsꟷas human beings. There is nothing so less conscious of social status than philosophy.
A wise man, a man who is disciplined, in control of his emotions and follows the way of nature can be a good man no matter what his position in the social structure is. He is not responsible for the social structure and it is not his problem. If the gods, or nature, or whatever
11 Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete.
12 Epictetus was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia and lived in Rome until his banishment, when he went to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece for the rest of his life. His teachings were written down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses and Enchiridion.
13 Marcus Aurelius was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors, and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace and stability for the Roman Empire. He served as Roman consul in 140, 145, and 161.
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is controlling the world makes you a slaveꟷthen be a good slave. If God, or nature, or whatever is controlling the world makes you an emperorꟷthen be a good one. Your job is not to disgrace yourself and live to the highest potentials of human being.
The most interesting of the Stoics is Marcus Aurelius. Lord Acton, the great English philosopher and historian, once said that: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that’s generally speaking true. The difficulty with that generalization is Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius was an absolute ruler. He was a ruler of the Roman Empire. He was an emperor. He had absolute power of life and death over everyone in the known world. I don’t mean everyone in the world as we know today but everyone in the world as the Romans would have known it. They don’t know about China, they have a very attenuated conception of the Eskimos. For them the world is the Mediterranean Basin and Rome owns it, and Marcus Aurelius owns Romeꟷessentially. His word is law.
Now for almost all the Roman emperors they lived scandalous lives and they disgraced themselves. They were much more concerned with indulging their sensual appetites, satisfying their passions, flying into rages. Marcus Aurelius is the standing exception to that, and the exception to Lord Acton’s generalization.
In his case power didn’t corrupt. Absolute power did not corrupt absolutely. Instead, absolute power allowed us to see what the man underneath the body is really like. It allowed us to find out what Marcus Aurelius’s soul is like. Imagine a man for whom all the restraints of law, and custom, and political order are taken away. He can have whatever he wants. If a man under those circumstances behaves well, you know something about the soul underneath because no external constraint is making him do what he is doing. Marcus Aurelius is the one example of an absolute ruler who behaves himself in such a way as not to disgrace himself.
It’s an amazing temptation. Imagine what it’s like. Stop and put yourself in that place for a second. Marcus Aurelius takes the throne in 161 A.D. and he dies in 180 A.D. 19 years controlling the entire world. He can have all the money in the world. That’s not an exaggerationꟷall the money in the world. If he wants it, he can just collect it all. He can have sex with anyone he wants, whenever he wants, under any circumstances. If he wants to get drunk he can have wine brought in by the boatload, infinitely, forever. He can go on a drunk now and stay drunk for the next 19 years until he dies. Imagine anything that the bronze14, desiring, emotional, irrational parts of your souls want. Now imagine that you can have it now, under those circumstances. Imagine that you are forced to bear with this human condition for 19 long years.
How many of you would fail to disgrace yourself?
14 The aristocratic state that Plato idealizes is composed of three caste-like parts: the ruling class, made up of the aforementioned philosophers-kings (who are otherwise identified as having souls of gold); the auxiliaries of the ruling caste, made up of soldiers (whose souls are made up of silver), and whose job in the state is to force on the majority the order established by the philosophers; and the majority of the people (souls of either bronze or iron), who, in contrast to the first two classes, are allowed to own property and produce goods for themselves, but are also obliged to sustain with their own activities their rulers’ — who are forbidden from owning property in order to preclude that the policies they undertake be tainted by personal interests.
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To tell you the truth I don’t think that I could meet the challenge. If you’re honest about it and you stop and think about what kind of a man it takes to bear up under those circumstances I think you’ll have to admit, or at least I’ll have to admit, that he’s a better man than I am. And that in this respect over the centuries Marcus Aurelius serves as a standing reproach to our self-indulgence. A standing reproach to the idea that we are unable to deal with the circumstances of human life. If you can deal with temptation at that level I cannot imagine what is outside the human potential. For the Stoics we must remember that any virtue which is accessible to any human being is, in principle, accessible to all of us.
We all have a rational nature which allows us to control our feelings, control our behavior, control our connection to other people.
Compared to Marcus Aurelius we have tiny little temptations. We’re tempted to steal a little thing. We’re tempted to cheat on our income taxes. We’re tempted to cheat on our spouses. Marcus Aurelius has that sort of temptation magnified a thousand-foldꟷand he consistently does good stuff.
Stop and think about this for a minute. This is no common man. He is not like the rest of us. I don’t know how he did it. Maybe he did it through philosophy but…well… it remains to be seen.
Marcus is the last of the good emperors. He’s the last of the Antonine emperors15. The emperors that come before him are generally speaking okay but they’re not as bad as the ones that come after. Marcus is perhaps the greatest of the Romans, the noblest of the Romans. When old-fashioned writers talk about Roman virtue what they have in mind is Marcus Aurelius, a man who does what he ought to do regardless of circumstance. Tough, Roman virtue. He’s not afraid of being dead. He’s not afraid of being in pain. He’s not afraid of how people laugh at him. He’s only afraid of doing what’s wrong. He’s only afraid of making chaos of his soul.
Why?
Because his soul is the only thing he’s completely in control of. It’s the only thing he’s responsible for and the rest of it is a matter of indifference to him. He’ll certainly try and perform his function as Emperor in the best way he possibly can. But there are Germans at the border and should they succeed in winning this war; he did the best he could; he has no reason to feel guilty; he has no reason to feel that this is a difficulty.
If, for some reason he gets sickꟷwell sickness is part of human lifeꟷyou accept it as it is, you deal with it the best you can, and then you move on. In other words, Marcus Aurelius intends to live a life in which you will not have to feel guilty about anything. And, he succeeded in doing that under the most trying possible circumstances.
15 The Nerva–Antonine dynasty was a dynasty of seven Roman Emperors who ruled over the Roman Empire from AD 96 to 192. These Emperors are Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Lucius Verus, Marcus Aurelius, and Commodus. The first five of them are commonly known as the “Five Good Emperors”.
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Again, put yourself in a position where you could have anything you want and no one can stop you, no matter how evil, no matter how depraved. No one can stop you because your word is law. Marcus Aurelius behaved himself for 19 years under those circumstances. A standing reproach to our self-indulgence.
The kind of things that Marcus Aurelius writes are not meant for publication.
Let’s think about this a little further.
Marcus wrote this manuscript without intending to have it published. After his death he wanted to have it burned. Some, philosophically inclined, bookkeeper, librarian, aid to camp, or whoever, picked this up said: no we just can’t throw this out. We can’t lose the memory of such a great man. And we can’t lose the sort of meditations that he created.
He wrote a book called Meditations16 and it’s a book to himself that’s not intended to be published.
What sort of a man writes a book to himself? What sense does that make? Think about it, the nature of a book is communicating something and we would think we would communicate it to some reader but this is not going to be publishedꟷit’s written to himself.
What makes a man write a book to himself?
There’s a very deep answer.
I think here Marcus Aurelius wrote a book to himself because he’s the loneliest man in the world. He has no friends because he has no equals. Think about a man breaking himself on the rock of an impossible virtue.
He has no equals.
Everyone he talks to wants something from him. He is the Emperor of everything in the world. He owns it all. Everything he says immediately gets done. He has absolute life and death power over everyone. So anytime he’s in the throne room he’s having an audience. When someone comes in from some part of the Empire they’re always here for some reason and they’re always here because they want something from him, and all Marcus wants to do is live a philosophical life, but he happens to have had the misfortune to be born the emperor of Rome.
What a pity.
So he has to deal with these self-centered swinish people all the time and it is his responsibility to do good for them. To give them justice. To give them both examples of virtue, and virtuous laws, and virtuous decisions. The weariness of it gets to him after a while.
The book that he’s written, The Meditations, is shot through with a kind of philosophical melancholy that is extremely moving despite the stoic content of what he’s saying. In other words, oddly enough, there are very few books in the world which generate more pathos, which create more of a sense of pity for a person reading this then this book.
16 Meditations has been translated several times into English. The most recent, and perhaps best translation for modern readers is by Gregory Hays - Modern Library; First American PB Edition 2003
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He’s written a book to himself because he has no one else to talk to.
What kind of things does he write in the book?
Moral maxims.
He has two or three ideasꟷit’s about a hundred odd pages, but he says essentially the same thing again, and again, and again.
Why?
He has nobody to talk to so that limits the scope of his conversations. And he’s constantly trying to remind himself that: look although the people you’re dealing with are corrupt, evil, and depraved17 it’s your job not to get angry with them but to try and teach them and morally improve them. If you can’t morally improve them at least put up with them because the gods have created us as social animals and it is part of the mark or it is the mark of a philosophical man that he should return benefits for harm because those that would harm other people do not live the philosophical life. Those that don’t want the ultimate good for themselves and for society do so because they don’t know any better.
Marcus has, not only political power, but wisdom and in that respect he’s the only example in the Western tradition of any ruler who even remotely approximates Plato’s philosopher king. He has some of the qualities that Plato thought the philosopher King would have.
He is totally disdainful of wealth.
Why?
He owns everything.
What would it be like to own everything from England to Egypt?
Well, the idea of accumulating more stuff becomes less and less interesting if you stop to think about it.
And if you have sex with, say, a million people, the million and first has very limited attraction.
And at that point he stopped to think and he says: I will do my best to constantly do what I ought to do.
And, there is a sort of whistling in the graveyard tone to this book. He is, in some respects, an enormously lonely man. In some respects an enormously sad man. There’s a melancholy in this that’s terrifically moving.
Yet we ought not to pity Marcus Aurelius because if he looked at our lives he would pity us. Pathetic creatures that we are we don’t even meet his standard of virtue and we’re pitying him. Think about the irony of that. He said: well I’d pity you back if I didn’t think that was disrespectful.
17 Meditations, Gregory Hays 2003 translation Book 2 Section 1 8
Think about what it takes to be something like Marcus Aurelius. We shall not see his like again.
In the book itself he has all kinds of intriguing and caustic, if you will, moral maxims. He says things like this: soon you will have forgotten all things, and soon all things will have forgotten you18. In other words don’t get overwrought. You’re angry with this guy just because he didn’t do what he was supposed to do? Ask yourself how many of the people that are working for you are doing what they’re supposed to do. Soon you’ll have forgotten all this because you’ll be dead. Soon all the people that know you; they’re going to be dead too and they’ll have forgotten you so what’s the point of being mean to people?
Now imagine the kind of philosophical self-restraint we’re talking about here.
This is a guy who could chop everyone’s head off if he gets sufficiently angry; so he never does.
Remarkable.
So Marcus Aurelius is a man who constantly, in his book, is writing short one and two line epigrams that essentially say things like: don’t lose your temper with these people Marcus you know how they are. Marcus it’s not your fault that they’re stupid. You tried to teach them and you can keep on trying to teach them but if Socrates is a good man and they killed him what would you expect them to do to you?
On the other hand Marcus Aurelius is willing to rule the Roman Empire for the same reason that the Platonic philosopher king is. If he gives up somebody worse is going to take the job and you know what happens then right? He’d much rather just go home and read his books. He doesn’t want to listen to this stuff but he says: well the gods put me here. I didn’t ask for this job but I can’t very well give it up. I’d be abdicating my responsibility to other people. Imagine the bad laws and bad Emperor’s we’re going to get after me. Should I give the job up now or stand here until the gods are good enough to relieve me of my post?
That’s the metaphor he uses all the time to God: to put you on guard over the Roman Empire. Everyone else is sleeping. Stay where you are and stay awake elsewise God knows what’s going to happen.
Marcus Aurelius is constantly whistling his way through the graveyard trying to tell himself that this is a very happy life. That he loves being a philosopher. He particularly loves the particular portion of reality the gods assigned to him.
I think that everyone believes this except the people that read this book, which perhaps is why it wasn’t supposed to be published. Because when you look at this you see a terrifically lonely man. A man of immense moral heroism who has no shoulder to cry on; who disdains crying because what’s the point of crying? We must live in accordance with nature.
Now here’s the natural condition of human beings: they get born, all kinds of stuff happens to them, and they die.
18 Meditations, Gregory Hays 2003 translation Book 4 Line 3 9
Marcus’s maxims are: stop complaining there’s nothing to complain about because there’s only two kinds of things: there are the kinds of things you can control and there are the kinds of things you can’t. If you can’t control it, complaining about it is stupid and a waste of time and I don’t want to hear any more about it because you can’t control it so what’s the point of talking about this?
Or, you have the other kind of thing you can control like your intentions, like your behavior, like your actions. Since you can control them who do you expect to help you out except yourself? Stop complaining about that too so whether it’s the kind of thing you can control or it’s the kind of thing you can’t control Marcus Aurelius does not want to hear any complaint and he does not want to hear any excuses because there are no excuses to give.
Now that’s easy enough to say and a lot of people think that other people should be this way. You can’t help but admire this guy. Every one of us in this audience thinks: wow what a great guy I wish I knew him personally. No you don’t. Think of what he’d think of you. You really don’t want to be working for him. No, this guy is never going to be satisfied, and if he is satisfied it’s not like he’s going to give you a plug. He is going to say: what you’re doing is what you ought to doꟷno complements you. You’re doing what you’re ought to do you don’t need any reward beyond that. You’re living like a philosophical man which is a reward in itself. Virtue is its own reward. You’re virtuous. What do you want for me? Back to work.
And of course if you’re not virtuous you are pretty much what he expects you to be: you swine.
And what’s unnerving about this is there’s not the slightest taint of hypocrisy in it. He not only says this stuffꟷhe acts this stuff. He not only talks the talkꟷhe walks the walk. He does it, and he does it under worse, more difficult circumstances than you failed to do itꟷand yet he still likes us. He still goes out of his way to help us out. If he were the judge in a court of law he would still give us justice even though we have done nothing to deserve it. As a matter of fact: what’s the line from Hamlet? if we gave every man his deserts who would escape a whipping? Marcus Aurelius would. That’s part of the problem with Marcus Aureliusꟷthere’s nothing quite like this guy in the whole history of the world.
Marcus Aurelius says things in his book like: human beings are social animals either teach them or put up with them. The kind of thing that a man has to remind himself of I imagine.
Marcus says in another passage: are you weary of enduring the bad men of the world? The gods aren’t and they made them. Are you really weary of enduring the bad men of the worldꟷespecially given that you’re one of them?
Dreadful, powerful, caustic, ruthless analysis of himself and others. He pulls no punches. He is an honest man and how many honest politicians are there in the world? It’s been some time since we had one leave us literary remains and here we certainly do have one.
The Stoics put together an important, and I think worthwhile idea, particularly in this day of international politics and that’s the idea of a cosmopolitan political philosophy.
There’s few people as cosmopolitan, as lacking in provincial qualities, as Marcus Aurelius.
The stoic wise man has made his life consistent with nature, and nature is universal. Everywhere it exists, in every place, in every time, so the stoic man is never any place but home.
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His polis19 is the cosmos. That is what makes him cosmopolitan in ancient Greek political theory, you were a citizen of one political polis, of one particular policy, one particular city- state. You were an Athenian or you were Spartan.
The stoic wise man is cosmopolitan wherever he is. He lives in accordance with nature. Whatever he does, he does what he knows to be right.
What difference does it make whether he’s in a jail cell or in a palace? As Marcus Aurelius put it in a beautiful epigram in the book: even in a palace it is possible to live well20. No excuses. Don’t tell me that it’s because of temptation. That won’t go over. No excuses.
Marcus’s idea of a cosmopolitan political philosophy is one of the great achievements of Roman stoicism. If you stop and think about it, it’s an excellent and a necessary idea when you’re running something as big and heterogeneous as the Roman Empire. This tremendously complicated mix of religions and cultures and peoples and all kinds of heterogeneous ideas means that this is going to be a big patchwork; a big quilt. It’s not going to be one culturally unified area.
But Marcus would be just as happy being a slave as he is being an emperor.
He would just have been happy being a Gaul or an Egyptian as a Roman as long as there is a nature there and there is a human spirit which can be made in accordance with nature. Any of the external facts of life don’t matter.
And now for the first time we can perhaps see why the Roman Stoics have a reputation, to some extent deserved, of being kind of harsh, cold, unfeeling men because there’s nothing to worry about and it’s hard for them to sympathize with the fact that other people are worried about things that they regard as trivial or not worth worrying about at all.
Many of us worry about the sickness. Well Marcus Aurelius will point out that all people get sick, and once you get sickꟷsince you’re a rational human beingꟷyou want to go to the doctor and do what he prescribes and fix your body. There’s no point in complaining anyplace along line because you know what you’re supposed to do; go do it. Stop asking for somebody else to help you. If you don’t help yourself how can you expect anybody else to help you? Which is a fair criticism. It would be much less persuasive and much less impressive if this were sort of hypocritical philosophy where Marcus Aurelius indulged himself and told everyone else to be stoical.
What really makes this spring to life; what makes this persuasive and moving and important is that he lives the life. So he doesn’t complain when he gets sick. He doesn’t complain when he meets military reverses. He doesn’t complain about anything. Who would he complain to? The buck does stop with Marcus Aurelius.
19 Polis literally means “city” in Greek. It defined the administrative and religious city center, as distinct from the rest of the city. It can also signify a body of citizens.
20 Meditations Gregory Hays translation: Book 5:16 11
If you think of the chain of command of the Roman Empire he doesn’t get to complain to anyone else. Everyone complains to him. He’s constantly listening to complaints and difficulties and problems and he’s watching people become unglued and watching them get all upset and want you to be greedy and avaricious and swinish and lustful and all the things he’s not.
So, he is rather harsh in his criticism and I think that’s a fair observation about him.
But he’s not hypocritical. And he’s not unfair.
That’s one of the cosmopolitan, universal elements in this political philosophy and in this moral philosophy. Because the moral and political philosophy for Marcus Aurelius are going to be connected in the same way that in Plato’s Republic politics was ethics writ largeꟷand what was good for individual soul: the gold, silver, and bronze, that ordering of the soul between reason, spirit and desire. What’s good for the soul is the same thing it’s good for the cityꟷto have rational people running the government, like Marcus Aureliusꟷdoing their best to follow the philosophical life. You’ll want bravery and fortitude and courage among your soldiersꟷthe silver virtues. And among the rest of people you expect the bronze virtues; they want to eat and drink and make merry. It would be nice if we could make philosophers of all of them but if we can’t well the best thing we can do is to take care of them and prevent misfortunes from the following them. In some respects, to try and save them from themselves.
Now Marcus Aurelius is the only example of this in Roman culture. There’s not a great deal of things that we can compare him to. If we had to say that there was someone to compare with it would be Epictetus the slave. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius could meet at a level of equality even though the social distinctions between them are enormous and grave. The reason why they would meet at a level of equality is because they could share mutual respect, because they both understand that to have an orderly soul is the key thing in human life, and that’s what makes life worth living. Whether you happen to be a slave or an emperor doesn’t make any difference. Whether you happen to be sick or healthy doesn’t make any difference. Whether you happen to be just born and have a hundred years ahead of you or whether you’re on your deathbed doesn’t make any difference.
Marcus says with regard to death, because many people are afraid of death, and he has no understanding. He doesn’t really know what everybody else’s problem is. He says: look, everyone dies. You’re going to die, so what’s the point in complaining about it? I can understand trying to avoid it; I mean health is a good thing; but when you’re going to die, you’re going to die. Don’t give into fear. Don’t get into irrational musings. Don’t let your imagination run wild. Control your feelings. Control your emotions. Control that part of you which is you. The meatꟷyour bodyꟷnot so important. The other stuff around you in the world is a matter of indifference to you as long as you follow the way of nature. As long as you act in a rational fashion. As long as you live up to the best potentials in the human soul then you are a good man and you need worry about nothing else.
Some people worry about the gods. That the gods will cause you misfortunes. That the gods have a hades or a hell or an afterlife where people will be tortured and have bad things done to them. Marcus adopts exactly the same position that Socrates did. Marcus says: I’m not certain if there are gods. In the book he says: I’m not aware of any rational proof that there exist gods and I’m not aware of any rational proof there are no gods. In other words, he’s agnostic in that respect. He takes a position rather like that of Blaise Pascal. He says: let’s think about what the
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implications are if God exists. Let’s think about what the implications are if he doesn’t exist. And let’s see if we can find one way of acting that will satisfy both contingencies. Logical guy.
And he says: well if the gods don’t exist and the world is just atoms and the void, and the void is homogeneous stuff called matter and the space that it moves around in. Well, if there are no gods and there is no moral order to the world and we’re just atoms in the void; well then what difference does it make what happens to you or anybody else? So you come into being, you go out of being. So what? You get healthy, you get sick. So what? There’s nothing to get excited about because, well, it’s just atoms and the void. Don’t be afraid of it. It is what it is. There’s nothing to be afraid of.
You could say that Roman stoicism is a way of telling people there’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing can happen to you in nature that is not a part of nature and nature contains nothing fearful for the rational soul.
Now let’s take the other half of the Pascalian alternative. Let’s consider the proposition that there are gods, or a godꟷit doesn’t matter whether it’s monotheistic or polytheistic. If there are gods they must be rather like the gods of Socrates: they are all good, they’re all wise, they’re all completely moral, and completely virtuous, and completely knowing, and completely excellent. Would creatures like this do anything bad to you? Well maybe they would. Maybe if you’ve been doing bad stuff maybe there is something actually in store for you later on. There may well be a hades. Gods like that may want to create moral order in the world and dish out to the bad people of the world just what they have coming to them. But suppose hypothetically you lived according to reason and according to nature and according to the universal law of the logos21. Would the gods hurt a man like that or would a man like that be a friend of the gods? And if a man like that would be dealt with fairly by the gods, justly by the gods, and well by the gods, the gods will do you no harm. So there are two possibilities: either the world is atoms and the void, the world is just stuff in which case there is nothing to be afraid of because you’re just part of that stuff, you might as well go along with the flow. Relax. Enjoy the ride. Nothing to be scared of. Nothing to get excited about. On the other hand, and I suspect deep down in Marcus this is what he really believesꟷI mean we just read between the lines and find out what the man himself is likeꟷhe does basically believe in the gods even though he doesn’t know. If he had to place a wager either way same way as Pascal but perhaps not for the same reasons, he would say: yes I believe in the gods, and if the gods exist, then they create moral order, and they are perfectly moral themselves, and they are perfectly just, and good, and righteous themselves. And they will do you no harm. So if there is an afterlife and you behave well the gods will do you no harm because you deserve no harm done to you. If there is an afterlife and you behave badly you have no one to blame but yourself.
In every case the only thing that a man is in control of is the individual ego himself; the cogito22ꟷwhat Descartes will call later on: the cogito, the self. If you are in control of that, if
21 Logos, in ancient Greek philosophy and early Christian theology, the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning. [Britannica.com]
22 1 : the philosophical principle that one’s existence is demonstrated by the fact that one thinks. 2 : the intellectual processes of the self or ego. [Merriam-Webster]
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you have an orderly soul then you have a divine soul, a good soul, and your life is worth living. The gods will not penalize you for that.
So what’s there to worry about? Don’t worry be happy. Either the world is atoms in the void; nothing to worry about. If the gods are there well then the gods certainly aren’t going to hurt you. Either way, don’t worry be happy. Do what you know you ought to do. Meet your moral obligations.
In some respect the stoic conception of virtue is an anticipation of what I will call the Kantian conception of virtue. Those of you who are familiar with the works of Immanuel Kant can recognize the single-minded and ruthless acquirement of virtue as being the Kantian conception of moral action or good moral behavior, and the stoic conception as well. Both Kant and Marcus Aurelius have achieved the greatness that comes from being aware that virtue is sufficient in itself. The single-minded pursuit of rationality, of justice, of temperance, of fortitude, is what this book is all about. In some respects, I feel a little bit like a voyeur opening up a manuscript that Marcus never meant to publish. And doubtless he would be nothing except embarrassed if he knew that people were reading this book because he wouldn’t want to show that crack in the stoic face. He doesn’t want to give people the idea that he ever worries or ever gets upset at all. In other words, doubtless if he’s in heaven, he regrets every line he ever wrote. Not because he doesn’t think it might benefit us but because it shows us the sort of weakness not entirely consistent with stoic virtue.
Perhaps there are other Stoics who suffered more pain, who had greater difficulties, and never wrote a line, and Marcus Aurelius’s view of those men would be greater than he. Whether there exist such people or not, Marcus Aurelius is a sort of standing reproach to our weakness; to our self-indulgence; to our willingness to give in to what we want; to our inclination to make excuses about things that were entirely up to us; and to try and act as if we are not responsible for our behavior.
One might want to say that Marcus Aurelius is an important step in the construction of the Western conception of the self, or the ego. You are the part of youꟷnot the meatꟷbut the will, the soul, the internal stuff. That’s what you’re responsible for. That’s what the gods will judge you on the basis of. Apart from that don’t worry about itꟷall of those things and matters are of indifference to you. Connect yourself to nature, do what’s right, and let the devil take the hindmostꟷit’s not your problem.
Stoicism is an appropriate philosophy, I would say, for serious, ruthless, introspective people that want real answers and are willing to take no nonsense. In that respect it’s the kind of moral philosophy I would be inclined to teach at, say, West Point. If I were teaching people that are going to be under terrible danger and terrible, fearful conditions I would teach them to do what they know they ought to do and to discipline and organize their emotions in such a way as they behave themselves in a way that is not disgraceful. To avoid that is the epitome of stoic virtue. And it may not have all the attractive elements of Socratic philosophy. It lacks the poetic element of Platonism. It lacks the comprehensive intellectual drive of Socrates. But it still contains elements of Socratic nobility that neither skepticism nor epicureanism offer us. And in that respect I think it’s the true air of Socratic philosophy.
The key idea behind Marcus Aurelius something like this: that it’s just the human condition for us to have troubles, and worries, and anxieties, and problems. Don’t torture
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yourself by worrying about things that aren’t in your control. Leave that in the hands of God. Leave that in the hands of nature. Do your best to control the things that you do have control over: yourself, your behavior, your intentions, and your actions. If you do that you will live a blessed, and happy, and virtuous, and wise life. You will be a real human being. If you fail to do that gradually the inclination towards debauchery, evil, vice, sin (to put in theological terms) will become greater and greater and unless you arrest this slide towards self-indulgence you will harm yourself and you will harm the people around you. No rational being wishes to harm themselves. No rational being wishes to harm the people around them. Because of that, if we were to be rational, it is the same thing as making us good, and that is the same thing as making us free. Not free in the sense of political freedomꟷbeing a slave or free manꟷbut free in the sense of being autonomous: making our own decisions, making laws for ourselves. Free in the sense of no longer being a slave of our passions, being pushed about by our feelings, being a toy that gets messed with by arbitrary things that are really beneath the human condition, that are mere emotional. If we want to be fully human, we must be fully free, and that means fully rational, and that means fully good.
Accept no substitutes is what Marcus Aurelius says. He did that himself, and he hopes that other people will do it. He did the best he could.
You can’t help but feel that at the end of his life he must have felt relieved that the terrible, crushing burden of this lonelinessꟷa man that has no equals, and has no friendsꟷa man that has nothing but philosophy to guide him, death must have been a great release. It’s like getting the evening off after you put in your turn guarding the camp. And instead of becoming an obscure an unimportant figure he’s become a symbol in the history of Western philosophy of the practical, concrete, immediate virtues. The sort of virtues which are accessible to us not because we have profound intellectual ability, not because we’re a Newton or a Kant, but simply because we have problems and we’re every day, rational human beings. The stoic man says that: a virtue that is possible for one man is accessible to all of us. There is no excuse for us not being that good. If we provide such excuses for ourselves we harm ourselves and we harm others by preventing us from recognizing our true moral obligations.
Marcus Aurelius lets us know that all people suffer, but that not all people pity themselves. Marcus Aurelius lets us know that all men die, but that not all men die whining. Something to think aboutꟷto take home with you and mull it over.
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