Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

A beautifully formatted, easy to read version of a timeless classic!The Meditations present the daily Stoic practice of Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome from 161 to 180 AD. Likely written during his years on various military campaigns across the empire, they reflect his efforts to improve himself by fully assimilating the basic principles of Stoicism as put forth by Epictetus, a Greek slave who became the greatest philosopher of his time. To read the Meditations is to see how a practicing Stoic again and again will formulate for himself the central dogmas of Stoicism--that "everywhere and at all times it is in your power to accept your present condition reverently, to behave justly to those around you, and to exert your skill to control your thoughts, that nothing shall steal into them without being well examined" (VII, 54). The primary philosophical influence on Marcus Aurelius was Epictetus, who set forth the basic principles and dogmas of Stoicism and advised practicing Stoics that "these are the things that philosophers ought to study; it is these that they should write about each day; and it is in these that they should exercise themselves" (Discourses I, 1.25). To read Marcus Aurelius's Meditations is to witness just such study and exercise. We see the emperor formulating the same small set of principles, rules, and themes over and over again: The basic Stoic principle: The only good is virtue or moral good (VIII, 1).The three rules/disciplines of judgment, action, and desire: "Your present judgment founded on understanding, and your present conduct directed to social good, and your present disposition of contentment with everything which happens--that is enough" (IX, 6).The various dogmas or themes: "Tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind" (IV, 3)."[Men do wrong because of] their ignorance of what is good and evil" (II, 1)."All things happen according to the universal nature; a man's wrongful act is nothing to you; everything which happens, always happened so and will happen so, and now happens so everywhere; the close kinship between you and the whole human race is not of a little blood or seed, but of intelligence; every man's intelligence is a god, and is an efflux of the deity; nothing is a man's own, but that his child and his body and his very soul came from the deity; everything is judgment/opinion; every man lives the present time only, and loses only this" (a list of eight dogmas, all from XII, 26). Marcus did what his philosophical master Epictetus called for practicing Stoics to do. He formulated and reformulated just these principles and themes, and the result of this practice of writing is his Meditations. Read and imitate his practice! If you do, you too might "have these reflections at hand by night and day. Write them down, read them, talk about them, both to yourself, and to somebody else" (Discourses III, 24.103).