Marcus Aurelius' Meditations: The Stoic Ideal

[Music] after the death of Socrates and the breakup of Greek culture that resulted from the Peloponnesian War Socratic philosophy went into a decline and fragmented into several pieces and the fragments of Socratic philosophy make up the body of Hellenistic philosophy 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 let lack the wit they almost always lack the poetry occasionally they absorb some of the ethical doctrines or epistemological doctrines but the ones who come after Socrates never really live up to the Socratic ideal the three main fragments that Socratic philosophy breaks into are called stoicism epicureanism and skepticism and these are the most important Hellenistic outgrowths from Socratic philosophy and since Rome the Roman Empire in particular is the political entity which ultimately dominates the Mediterranean Basin and absorbs and inherits the tradition of Greek philosophy most of the helot the Hellenistic branches of philosophy are developed in connection or with reference to either politically or intellectually with Roman culture and the first of these developments is hedonism or Epicureanism named after a guy named Epicurus 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 Socratic picking and choosing his pleasures in such a way that he does not generate any corresponding pains you can see possibly how people who were not entirely developed at the sea who were not entirely committed to the Socratic conception of so land 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 scepticism Socrates throughout most of the dialogues I would hesitate 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 eternally quieter 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 and after being forced to encounter one cosmogonic myth after another one theory of religion after another one theory of morals after another sophisticated Romans sophisticated Hellenistic thinkers might well come to the conclusion that Lucian the skeptic 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 that pretensions scepticism while it may be rather negative is at least right we can be certain about what we do not know all right 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 out a way of avoiding the burden of Socratic incorrect the third and most important development in Hellenistic philosophy is called stoicism and stoicism is probably the greatest and most interesting achievement of the Hellenic of the Hellenistic philosophers and while it never achieve x' 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 and excellent philosophy for silver men for those 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 people that are going to be practical politicians if they intend to be virtuous if they intend to pursue the public good and stoicism is characterized by a rejection of pleasure as the 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 you your will your intentions 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 wandering 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 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 virtue moral virtue an organized soul which pursues rationally the ends which are good for all human beings that'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 spared even not 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 swine ish life that we found with Aristophanes 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 human being has to offer now among the Roman Stoics two are especially noteworthy one is epictetus and one is marcus aurelius and one of the wonderful irony 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 beings as human beings there is nothing nothing less so nests less conscious of social status than philosophy a wise man a man who is disciplined in control of his motions and follows the way of nature can be a good man no matter what his position in a social structure is he is not responsible for the social structure and it is not his problem if the gods or nature or whatever is controlling the world makes you a slave then be a good slave if God or nature or whatever is controlling the world makes you an emperor then be a good one your job is not to disgrace yourself and live up 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 it today but everyone in the world as the Romans would have known it they don't know about China or have a very attenuated conception of the Eskimos for them the world is the Mediterranean Basin and Rome owns it and Marcus Aurelius owns Rome essentially 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 our so Liz 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 it what he is doing and 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 AD and he dies in 180 ad 19 years controlling the entire world he can have all the money in the world that's not an exaggeration all the money in the world if he wants it you 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 Brauns desiring emotional irrational parts of your souls want and 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 now ask yourself and you didn't give a show of hands but stop and think about it for a minute how many of you would fail to disgrace yourselves to tell you the truth I don't think that I could meet the challenge if you if you're honest about it and you stop and think about what kind of a man it takes to 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 us respect over the centuries Marcus Aurelius serves as a standing report 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 and 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 which attempted to cheat on our spouses Marcus Aurelius has that sort of temptation magnified a thousandfold and he consistently does good stuff stop and think about this for a minute this is no common man this is not like the rest of us and 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 emperors and the emperors that come before him are generally speaking ok they're not as bad as the ones that come after but 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 to have a 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 as 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 ensured 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 sick well sickness is part of human life you 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 he will not have to feel guilty about anything and he succeeded in doing that under the most trying possible circumstances 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 it's 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 I guess bookkeeper librarian aid the camp whoever it is to pick this up said no we do we just can't throw this out we cannot 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 meditations and it's a book to himself that's not intended to be published sort of a man writes a book to himself what sense does that make think about it the nature of book is communicating something and we were thinking we would communicate it to some reader but this is not going to be published it's written to himself what makes a man write a book to himself and there's a very deep answer I think here Marcus Aurelius writes 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 someone comes in from some part of the Empire they're always here for some 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 swine --is-- people all the time and his responsibility to do good for them to give him justice to give them both examples of virtue and virtuous laws and virtuous decisions and 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 he's writing a book to himself because he has no one else to talk to and what kind of things does he write in the book moral Maxim's and he has two or three ideas not 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 depraved 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 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 and 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 and think about it and if you could have sex with say a million people the million at first has written 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 enormous Lee lonely man and in some respects an enormous Lee sad man there's a melancholy in this that's terrifically moving and 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 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 Maxim's he says things like this soon you will have forgotten all things and soon all things will have forgotten you 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 and soon all people who knew you they're gonna be dead too and they'll have forgotten you and 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 remarkable so Marcus Aurelius is a man who constantly in his book is writing short one in 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 do you expect me 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 gonna 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 other people imagine the bad laws and bad Emperor's we're gonna get after me well should I give the job up now or stand here until the gods are good enough to relieve me of my post in fact that's the metaphor he uses all the time the gods have 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 grave you are trying to tell him that this is a very happy life that he loves being a philosopher any particularly loves the particular portion of reality of the gods have assigned to him now 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 Markus's Maxim's with reference to that are a 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 as 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 the kind of thing you can control like your intentions like your behavior like your actions and 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 control Marcus Aurelius does not want to hear any complaints 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 all right have you noticed it like you can't help but admire this guy like everywhere every one of us I bet in this audience it wow what a great guy I wish I knew him personally no you don't think of what he think of you you really don't want to know this guy imagine working for him oh please no this guy is never going to be satisfied and if he is satisfied he's not like he's gonna give you applause is gonna say well you're doing what you ought to do no compliments for you you're doing what your ought to do you don't need any reward beyond that you're living like a philosophical man which is a reward in itself first she was 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 in beings to be you swine and what's unnerving about this is that there's not the slightest taint of hypocrisy in it he not only says this stuff he acts this stuff he not only talks the talk he walks the walk he does it and he does it under worse more difficult circumstances than you failed to do it and yet he still likes us you notice he still go 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 we what is it the that 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 arrays there'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 or Marcus is 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 we're even during the bad men of the world especially 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 I mean 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 cut 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 and everywhere Majin every place and every time so the stoic man is never any place but home his Paulus is the cosmos that is what makes him Cosmo politan in ancient Greek political theory you were a citizen of one political paulus of one particular Palace one particular city-state you were an Athenian or your 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 well mmm no excuses don't tell me that it's because of temptation that won't go over no excuses go with markers the idea of a cosmopolitan political philosophy is one of the great achievements of Roman stoicism and 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 as 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 more about it all many of us worry about sickness well Marcus Aurelius will point out that all people get sick and once you get sick since you're a rational human being you want to go to the doctor do what he prescribes and fix your body there's no point in complaining anyplace along the 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 a 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 we complain to he the buck does stop with Marcus race if you think of the chain of command in the Roman Empire he doesn't get to complain to anyone else everyone complains to him and he's constantly listen to complaints and difficulties and problems and he's watching people become unglued and they're watching him get all upset and want you to be greedy and avaricious and swine ish and lustful in all things he's not so he is rather harsh and his criticism and I think that's a fair observation about him but he's not hypocritical and he's not unfair and that's one of the cosmopolitan universal elements in this political philosophy and in this moral philosophy because the moral and political philosophy from Marcus Aurelius are going to be connected in the same way that in Plato's Republic politics was ethics writ large and what was good for the 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 city to have rational people running the government like Marcus Aurelius doing their best to follow the philosophical life you'll want bravery and fortitude and courage among your soldiers the 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 Philosopher's all 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 be 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 through it would be Epictetus the slave and 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 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 and 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 decide what everybody else's problem is he says look everyone dies so you're gonna die so what's the point of complaining about it I can understand trying to avoid it I mean health is a good thing but when you're gonna die you're gonna die don't give in to fear don't give in to irrational musings don't let your imagination run wild control your feelings control your emotions control that part of you which is you the meat your body not so important the other stuff around you in the world 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 he says look Marcus or Marcus says I'm not certain if there are gods in many of you in the book itself he says I'm not aware of any rational proof that there exist gods and I'm not aware of any rational proof that there are no gods in other words he's agnostic in that respect but he takes a position rather like that of Blaise Pascal and he says let's think about what the 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'll satisfy both contingencies logical guy and he says well if the gods don't exist and the world is just atoms and the void if you think back to professor stile lofts lecture about early primitive physical theories what we have atoms in the void a homogeneous stuff called matter and then the space that it moves around in well if there are no gods and there is no moral order to the world and we 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 in 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 pest galleon alternative let's consider the proposition that there are gods or a god doesn't matter whether it's monotheistic polytheistic if there are gods then they must be rather like the gods of Socrates they are all good they are 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 logos would the gods heard a man like that or what 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 Adams and the void the world is just stuff in which case there's nothing to be afraid of because you're just part of that stuff and 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 this I suspect deep down in Marcos is what he really believes I mean when you just read between the lines and find out what the man himself is like he does basically believe in the gods even though 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 the cogito what they caught will later on called the cogito the self if you are in control of that if 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 it a worry about don't worry be happy either that's not either the world has atoms in the void nothing to worry about if the gods are there we'll end to God certainly I'm 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 and I think that this is worth taking notes on if you happen to be here at the can't lecture next week or two weeks from now is that the stoic conception of virtue is an anticipation of what I will call the content conception of virtue those of you were familiar with the works of Immanuel Kant can recognize the single-minded and ruthless acquirement of virtue as being the content 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 and in some respects I feel a little bit like a voyeur in opening up a manuscript that never meant to be 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 all right 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 a 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 in Marcus Aurelius view those men would be greater than he and whether there exist such people or not Marcus Aurelius is a sort of standing 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 you not the meat but 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 it all other things are matters of indifference to us connect yourself to nature do what's right and let the devil take the hindmost it'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 - tonight it's a 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 stoke no elements of Socratic nobility that neither scepticism nor epicureanism offer us and in that respect I think it's the true heir 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 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 put in theological terms will become greater and greater and unless you 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 freedom being a slave or free man but 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 emotion 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 and you can't help but feel it at the end of his life he must have felt relieved that the terrible crushing burden of this loneliness a man that has no equals and has no friends a 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've put 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 Conte but simply because we have problems and we're everyday 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 about take home with you and Mull it over

Channel: Michael Sugrue

Views: 130,109

Rating: 4.9682846 out of 5

Keywords: Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Stoic, Stoicism, Michael Sugrue, Dr. Michael Sugrue, Lecture, History, Philosophy

Id: Auuk1y4DRgk

Length: 42min 28sec (2548 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/well--imfucked]

the greatest philosophy lecture on youtube. full stop. Buckle up.

[u/sisypheandilemma]

This is the first time I was properly introduced into the practice of stoicism. Dr. Sugrue does the topic profound justice.

[u/CalmYoTitz]

Wow that was good.

[u/Magnet97]

Gets me every time.

[u/Stoic_Gladiator]

thats the exact lecture that got me into stoicism, thats what a lecture should be like