When I read the Meditations for the second or third time around ten years ago, I thought it would be useful to organise their major lessons in a format suitable for recitation. The six themed passages below — all constituted of Aurelius’s own words — are the result of that exercise, and they serve as a general introduction to Stoic philosophy, which I comment on subsequently:
I live only in this fleeting moment of time, the rest of my life either already lived or lying in an unknowable future. The space of my existence is a small thing, lived on a small corner of the earth, where even the most enduring fame is swept into oblivion. Though the universe is orderly, my substance is a flux, my senses dull, the fabric of my body subject to corruption and my soul full of dream and delusion. Everything that belongs to me is a stream in flow, my life a brief stay in a foreign land.
Let philosophy serve as my escort and guide. Let it keep my spirit inviolate and superior to pleasure and pain so that I may welcome whatever is allotted to me by fate. And may it remind me that the person who is blessed by good fortune is the one who assigns a good lot to themselves with a good disposition of the soul, good impulses and good actions.
To be so blessed, may I exclude from my thoughts all that is aimless so that, at any moment, I could say what I am thinking with honesty and without hesitation and find my words free of idle curiosity, malice, envy, suspicion, desire, or anything else I would blush to admit, leaving all within me simple and benevolent. May I further purify myself of the defilements of earthly existence by reflecting upon the stars and examining how all things are transformed from one to another. And through such study, together with the veneration of my rational faculties, may I elevate my mind and strip away my body so that I may offer myself up without reservation when it is time for my dissolution and for my elements to be taken back into the generative substance of the universe.
But while I live, unless it is for the common good, may I not waste what remains of my life forming impressions of others or wishing to impress upon them, instead making sure that I do nothing at random, nothing that depends on the doings of others, and nothing with false intent or pretence. And if a person does wrong, may I not work against or be aggrieved by them, but rather instruct them in a kindly manner and consider what similar faults I commit, or otherwise leave wrongdoing to its author so that I am not diverted from paying proper attention to my own ruling centre. Moreover, may I gladden my heart with images of the virtues that shine forth in those around me so that I may better serve to perfect the social system of which I am a part, never evading its obligations and always doing good for its own sake. In this, may I remember that I am a limb of the common body formed by all rational beings, which is a special unity that any of us may return to even after we have been severed from it.
Yet, may I foremost find the greatest peace and ease of mind by retreating into myself, such that I may be cleansed of my distresses and sent back into the world without discontent. For though we exist primarily for the sake of one another, each individual has their own ruling centre and independent authority. It is thus through my own inner renewal that the world is made bearable and I am made bearable to the world.
Then, whenever I must act, may I devote myself in a resolute spirit to the tasks I am set with a scrupulous and unaffected dignity, with love for others, independence and justice. May all my actions be purposeful, selfless, measured and thoughtful, and undertaken with a cheerful face shown to the world. And if my activities are hindered by some obstacle, may I accept it with good grace and swiftly redirect my efforts to what is practicable and still accords with my goal. And if I am not wholly successful in every action, may I neither feel guilt nor lose heart but instead remember how easy it is, at any moment, to repel and wipe away every disturbing or inappropriate thought and recover at once a perfect calm.
It’s hard to argue with such noble thoughts but I will argue with them nonetheless. However, to give an effective appraisal of Stoic philosophy, it’s important to begin with some rough separation between ethical questions and psychological ones, or, similarly, between the classical concepts of eudaimonia (well-being) and ataraxia (freedom from suffering).
We know, for example, that Stoicism has been an inspiration for mental health interventions like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), yet the health industry is not in the business of giving instruction in virtuous living. What is the nature of this disconnect? One way to make sense of it is to recognise that Stoic teachings are as much about what is (materially) bad for a person as they are about what is (morally) good for humanity, and, though these are related, they are to some degree independent.
To illustrate, consider the fact that, since death is inevitable, a person who lives in continual fear of it will find happiness elusive. Reaching this conclusion does not require any ethical commitments, and though certain responses to it (such as accepting our mortality) can inform our ethics, they can do so in a variety of ways depending on a whole web of values and beliefs (perhaps we will fearlessly pursue a love of extreme sports, or perhaps we will refuse to take medicines for our illnesses and so on). Hence, the various classical philosophies overlap considerably in their accounts of ataraxia but less so in their accounts of eudaimonia.
This being the case, our society has straightforwardly imported Stoic ideas about the causes of suffering while ignoring the ethics as irrelevant to contemporary life. I don’t regard this as an inauthenticity so much as a reflection of the multi-faceted nature of classical philosophy. This is also supported by the history: while it is typical of modern philosophy, with its love for formalisation, to treat Stoicism as an integrated body of doctrine, the school originally arose out of a lineage of personality cults that venerated Socrates, and some of its writings simply emulate Socratic doubt and detachment without any pretence of ethical system-building. To the extent that this is the project of Aurelius’s Meditations, they are a jewel of classical literature, but where they do go further and make claims about virtue, we should examine them carefully.
Stoicism is rooted in the idea that Nature is rational and purposeful, and, as Aurelius writes, “all’s right that happens in the world.” The reason why this doesn’t immediately end all ethical questions (what is there to wonder about if everything is necessarily good?) is that the human being in some way stands apart from Nature, such that they can either live in accordance with it or rebel, and Stoics say that virtue is to be found in accordance, while rebellion leads to suffering.
These ideas require some care. For the Stoic, living in accordance with Nature amounts to developing one’s self-sufficiency, so that happiness is possible come what may (equally, rebelling against Nature amounts to making demands upon it which might not be satisfied). But if the Stoic really has nothing more to do than generate their own peace from within, one might ask what substance there is to the idea of living in accordance with Nature, as it seems that the Stoic really seeks to deny any relationship with Nature at all. This is a misunderstanding common in modern interpretations of Stoicism, which err by thinking that the freedom we have in how we respond to circumstances means that we are entirely separate from Nature. Stoicism rather recognises us as part of Nature, and therefore as having a nature of our own, and the sense in which we stand apart from it is just that we can act in ways which are inconsistent with what’s good for us. Self-sufficiency is the elimination of this internal discord.
Although I said earlier that tools like cognitive behavioural therapy are not inauthentic, this is where they nonetheless lack nuance — for a classical Stoic, no sense can be made of the search for inner peace without an understanding of what constitutes human nature, whereas modern culture would rather treat this issue as opaque and consider people individualistically, leading to mealy-mouthed advice that reduces to telling people to Other their emotions and dominate them (practitioners will find this characterisation unfair but descriptions of CBT in terms of challenging or silencing ‘negative voices’ which are imagined as separate personalities are abundant).
Another misunderstanding can arise over the precise meaning of virtue being found in harmonious existence. This is intended to be quasi-definitional rather than an empirical hypothesis. For the Greeks (as is especially clear in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics), regarding Nature as infused with purpose leads to thinking of virtue as skilfull fulfilment of purpose (i.e. in terms of virtuosity rather than virtuousness). From a modern standpoint, it’s easy to mistake virtue for a practice that creates well-being as a consequent state of mind, such that one might try to discover, as a matter of fact, whether rebelling against Nature might lead to greater well-being. In the classical worldview, this is nonsensical — if it turned out that some supposed rebellion was good for us, this would reveal that it was a virtue that had been misidentified. Thus, the critical issue in all classical ethics is the proper description of human nature.
For any classical thinker, this was to be understood contrastively, as human nature — that which distinguishes us from other beings. Stoics agreed with the consensus view that humans are uniquely rational beings, and they further contended that we are social beings, hence their emphasis on civic responsibility in contrast to the Epicureans and the Cynics. To refine a definition I gave earlier, we can say that, for the Stoic, living in accordance with Nature amounts to using one’s rationality to achieve self-sufficiency (where ‘self-sufficiency’ admits of some social obligations because of our mutual dependence).
Of course, the Stoics also had much to say about the cardinal virtues — wisdom, justice, courage and temperance — but I think these are nothing more than the manifestation of Stoic self-sufficiency in different domains of human activity, and the way these virtues are carved up is not essential. For example, the Stoic idea of courage has less to do with machismo and heroism than with dignified acceptance of hardship, which is just mastery of the self over external conditions. Even justice, which seems more quintessentially selfless, can be thought of in terms of a social contract which aids our own security.
An appraisal of Stoicism therefore comes down to this: how defensible is an ethics based on the rational pursuit of self-sufficiency?
Let me first of all say that I do not find it problematic that Stoicism assumes that humans have purpose, even though the characteristic problem of modern ethics is the supposed purposelessness of existence. I think we are purposeless only in the sense that ‘purpose’ has turned out to be a concept we can do without, but this doesn’t dispense with the issue of our well-being and, to the extent that our well-being might be predicated on the refinement and use of our capabilities, it’s valid to ask whether the rational pursuit of self-sufficiency is the best way of cashing that out.
The inclusion of sociality within the Stoic conception of self-sufficiency is the main reason why I turned to Stoicism rather than its rivals when I first became interested in classical ethics. Insofar as it’s useful to see ourselves in distinction to other beings, the Stoics have been vindicated by our modern understanding that recent evolutionary advances in social intelligence were fundamental to our current form of life. Moreover, when philosophers speak of rationality as the primary human quality, they are necessarily speaking about language, which is an irreducibly social phenomenon. Without language and the possibilities it affords for society, we would not have civilization — the Epicureans and Cynics who turn away from society are little more than hypocrites and savages (what else can it be to reap the rewards of others’ labour without reciprocity or to live in filth on the streets?).
It also seems right that self-sufficiency should be a hallmark of virtuous (i.e. skillful) living, insofar as what it means is that a flourishing human is one who is not defective or incomplete. But trouble sets in when the Stoic specifically tries to use rationality to understand self-sufficiency and make choices in accordance with that understanding. Stoics have a reputation for tending towards austerity and aloofness in this, and, though defenders of Stoicism will say that this is a caricature and that one has to have the properly sophisticated definition of self-sufficiency to be really virtuous, I think this is the same kind of mistake that the utilitarian makes when they say that the abhorrent outcomes of utilitarian calculations are only the result of bad formulae, and more sophisticated ones would lead us to more palatable conclusions.
The problem for the utilitarian is that the utility of an action can conceivably have an infinite number of dimensions which we can neither identify nor describe, let alone measure, so that the theory is useless regardless of its merit. The equivalent problem for the Stoic is that there is no finite, expressible conception of self-sufficiency which can reliably help us decide how to respond to the infinite variety of circumstances we can find ourselves in. The tendency of the Stoic to fit the stereotype is the predictable result of Stoicism’s effort to reason its way to the right actions with a preconceived principle of self-sufficiency, when the only practical course is to discover the meaning of self-sufficiency by first acting in the right way.
There is something counter-intuitive in this criticism, so let me state it another way. The Stoic’s problem is not their valuing of self-sufficiency but rather their belief that they can rationally (consciously, linguistically) understand what self-sufficiency is prior to the infinite material circumstances it might describe. The Stoic gets it exactly backwards: self-sufficiency is not an abstract principle that defines virtuous behaviour, it’s an abstraction from virtuous behaviour which attempts to summarise its character. By treating the abstraction as a foundation rather than as a generalisation, the Stoic opens themselves up to choices that are intuitively abnormal (such as ruminating on the death of loved ones to try to pass through grief as quickly as possible), when really their intuition is their morality, which their principle has undermined.
Consider a practical example. Aurelius repeatedly reminds himself of the vanity of fame, it being something that we have no direct control over and which is in any case always eventually reduced to nothing (fame is in some Stoic writings said to be objectively amoral because it is awarded to good and bad people alike, but this is a linguistic conceit — we could just as well separate fame into veneration and notoreity and consider the virtuousness of veneration instead). On the face of it, it seems sensible to say that personal well-being will not be found in fame because fame depends on other people, but what if the prospect of fame were a motivator for action without its absence being a cause of suffering? For instance, you might decide to dedicate yourself to a life of scientific inquiry in the hope of making a fundamental advance that secures you a place in history, but you decide to do so fully in the knowledge that historical contingencies could disfavour you, so that you will end up a complete unknown, and you are at peace with this. Would this be virtuous?
Stoicism does not have a clear answer. For some, an honest lack of suffering would mean that the spirit of self-sufficiency is not undermined and all that’s left over is arbitrary personal preference, whereas for others it will seem unwise for any decision to be based upon a vanity and some better motivation should be found. The arguments could become quite complex: we might say, for example, that science must ultimately be motivated by curiosity but fame is a signal our society uses to endorse virtuous activities, and a person can reasonably be motivated by that secondary goal because its purpose is to give assurance about the value of a pursuit. Disparaging fame might therefore aid a person’s resilience at the cost of undermining a mechanism we use to encourage people to do good things. Then again, maybe we should reconsider the mechanisms we use so that they don’t appeal to an innate sense of vanity. And so on and so on — the ifs and buts could continue.
The point here is not to reach a conclusion but to realise that we do not start with a coherent idea of self-sufficiency from which we can deduce a conclusion, we rather consider the particular issue on its own merits and then find the self-sufficient path by intuiting a response and discussing it. If we instead imagine that we can apply fixed principles (such as, “my actions should be motivated by outcomes I can control”), we might falsely conclude that some virtues are vices because the principles worked for past examples but are inadequate for the current one.
This is an argument against all principles-based ethics, not just Stoicism, so it would be wrong of me to try to suggest a refinement to Stoic principles as if definitions were all that’s at stake. But to the extent that it’s still reasonable to seek guidance in a framework, I think we can productively look to action-based ethics as an alternative. A good example of this is the effortless action (wu wei) of Taoism, which undergirds self-sufficiency without attempting to rationalise it such that it becomes distorted. In fact, the early Taoists criticised Confucianism in much the way I am criticising Stoicism — in The Way of Chuang Tzu, Thomas Merton summarises the issues like this:
The character of the ‘Superior Man’ or ‘Noble Minded Man’ [≈ the Stoic sage] … is constructed around a four-sided mandala of basic virtues.
[… Chuang Tzu’s] chief complaint [with this] was that [it] did not go far enough. It produced well-behaved and virtuous officials, indeed cultured men. But it nevertheless limited and imprisoned them within fixed external norms and consequently made it impossible for them to act really freely and creatively in response to the ever new demands of unforeseen situations.
[…] The hero of virtue and duty ultimately lands himself in the same ambiguities as the hedonist and the utilitarian. Why? Because he aims at achieving “the good” as object. He engages in a self-conscious and deliberate campaign to “do his duty” in the belief that this is right and therefore productive of happiness. He sees “happiness” and “the good” as “something to be attained,” and thus he places them outside himself in the world of objects. In so doing, he becomes involved in a division from which there is no escape.
[…] The more one seeks “the good” outside oneself as something to be acquired, the more one is faced with the necessity of discussing, studying, understanding, analyzing the nature of the good. The more, therefore, one becomes involved in abstractions and in the confusion of divergent opinions. The more “the good” is objectively analyzed, the more it is treated as something to be attained by special virtuous techniques, the less real it becomes. As it becomes less real, it recedes further into the distance of abstraction, futurity, unattainability. The more, therefore, one concentrates on the means to be used to attain it. And as the end becomes more remote and more difficult, the means become more elaborate and complex, until finally the mere study of the means becomes so demanding that all one’s effort must be concentrated on this, and the end is forgotten.
[…] “If you ask ‘what ought to be done’ and ‘what ought not to be done’ on earth to produce happiness, I answer that these questions do not have [a fixed and predetermined] answer” to suit every case. If one is in harmony with Tao … the answer will make itself clear when the time comes to act.
It’s a major failing of Western philosophy that many people believe an ethical theory without foundations is essentially relativistic. By that paltry measure, Taoism and postmodernism would be bedfellows. The important difference between a system like Taoism and others is that while Taoism recognises a moral reality (a human nature) with which we ought to live in harmony, the role of rationality in this is only to facilitate a critique of behaviours which are disharmonious, so that the path can be freed for a spontaneous, unanalysed virtuosity which defies logical description (this is exactly the dynamic between intuition and reasoning that holds in the physical sciences and mathematics). In contrast, it is a great irony and tragedy of the Meditations that Aurelius preaches self-sufficiency so movingly, yet it eluded him all his life, for he continually had to remind himself of where to look for it, having made it something external which he had to recover.