Analysing the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: The Greatest Stoic Journal Ever Written - A Study in Philosophy

The History of the Meditations

I must admit I didn’t initially set out to write philosophy when I first started this Substack, however in recent years I’ve begun to turn ever more to Marcus Aurelius. He’s a comfort alongside Aristotle that is hard to resist and as I’ve no intention of resisting the magnetism around his writing I figured why not get to writing about him, and share my findings with you all.

The thing about Marcus Aurelius is that he was a 2nd century Roman Princeps or Emperor if you prefer. He reigned from the Year of Our Lord 161 up until 180. He was a particularly good Emperor if one who derived no real joy from war or even leading the Roman Empire. Preferring to pass his evenings in silent meditation and pondering the universe, he was to come to a lot of interesting findings.

The leading Stoic philosopher of his day, he was however to fail the Empire when he nominated his slow-witted and incompetent son to the throne after him. The effect was almost immediate as the Empire began to crumble, fracture and corruption soon seeped in.

The thing is that as incompetent and stupid as Commodus was, the mistake of picking him as heir must still be laid at Aurelius’ door. So that historically he’s both a good and bad Emperor rolled into one. But he’s undeniably a brilliant man, and absolutely someone who should be regarded as worth studying and following in the philosophical footsteps of.

His philosophy-journal the Meditations we know was never intended to be published and yet it was and even translated so that we owe a massive debt to a great many men and women down through the centuries. Admittedly I owe them a personal debt of gratitude on account of how dependant I am on this book for helping with clarifying and honing my thinking and helping me to deal with regular emotional and spiritual blows that life’s delivered me.

I must admit that in this case like with Fiction Guide, my Commentaries or Annotations hereon Substack of the Meditations will be acting like a kind of Journal on my end regarding this magnificent book. So do bear that in mind… so it’s basically a Meditations on the Meditations (lol).

I must also thank

Romaric Jannel

for having gotten me thinking of Philosophy as of late (check out his substack, it’s a purely Philosophical one, quite good and helpful in that regard).

So here’s the start of my analysis on this topic.

The Opening Paragraphs

The Meditations Begin in the Second Book, with the following quote:

“Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil.”

This quote is one that I can absolutely relate to even as it fascinates. It means not only that much of what happens to some people is mere entertainment to others and that gossip and busy-bodyness so to speak is rooted in ingratitude, arrogance, deceit, envy and a certain anti-socialism or animosity towards a certain individual.

All these things happen by reason of ignorance of what is right and wrong. It happens that a great many people do not seem to understand what is right and wrong. This is because morality isn’t rooted simply in DNA, or in instinct but must be cultivated. There are some basic morals within us of course, the idea being Moral Law is within us, as Kant once said but most people forget the follow up of ‘starry heavens above’ for the reason that Moral Law is within us but it stems from above us.

It must originate from some place outside of us, as we are each of us imperfect. We’ve all been the busy-body at some point in our lives. The act of exorcising the inner gossip, the deceitful, envious jerk from us is difficult, and yet it is necessary. But how can you do that if you can only point to others or below you for morality.

Morality and ethics can never be a grass-roots thing. It stems from outside and above, and from the past so to speak. It takes knowledge, cultivation and of course faith in order to truly reach it.

So that a combination of knowledge of things like Chivalry, Bushido, traditional philosophy and also the Bible can be extremely useful. Certainly there’ve been people who are moral without this last one (cannot be denied), but they were exceedingly self-disciplined people. Self-discipline being something that is lacking in a lot of people throughout history.

This is why we must exorcise the busy-body within and ensure that ignorance is cast out also with more reading, more thinking and a greater connection to the heavens and to the past.

“But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.”

This paragraph describes how Marcus Aurelius saw the worst side of themselves that men could possibly offer up. He saw just what they were capable of in their mad lust for wealth, status and power.

This of course changed his outlook, and likely drove him from what I can discern to become ever more emotionally reclusive from them. Not in any bad way, just in the sense that he saw through them, and realized that he must be aloof. He must carry himself above them as might a father so that they could not do him harm on an emotional level. Anger is something that he frets a lot about in this book, so that we should remember that he carried himself in as aloof a manner so that he would not give into anger.

And anger is something we should all be wary of. Anger tends to after all poison everything it touches. It can warp your brain/how you think, it can twist you and it can darken you.

Just as greed, lasciviousness and gluttony can alter you from that which was good and pure, into something that is disgusting, backwards and wicked. It is for this reason that Aurelius pushes for himself (and his readers by extension) to push away these earthly desires that run contrary to our true natures.

Now that being said, it must be said that it is for us Celts particularly difficult to push away things like anger. We have a temper, but the most important thing to do is to not let this anger get the better of us. It is crucial to let go of these temptations, to let them flow through you then to let go and not act upon them. This could however prove difficult.

What I’ve found helps as well is to quiet one’s thoughts and simply breathe. Breath and let go, also looking outside or going outside to be among nature helps enormously.

To go against what is best for one’s nature and to act contrary to another is not helpful, this is something I often stress about and struggle with. What is the best solution? Perhaps that of the wise Aurelius is best; to simply breathe and to let the moment pass.

This is an old technique but it is more important that one take the moment to centre one’s thoughts, think and ponder one’s words with care especially when in an argument. Anger serves no purpose, and the first one to cede to emotions is the first one to lose the argument, or debate or what have you. The wiser course is to let go of one’s attachment to the subject and to simply centre one’s mind.

This can be difficult, can be near impossible for some. However, it is absolutely necessary that one learn this technique, and perfect the art of thinking when full of fury.

Wrath is unsustainable, and utterly worthless. It serves no real purpose, and tends to only obfuscate one’s thoughts. It can only lead to regrets, so that one is truly running contrary to one’s own nature when one lets it hold sway.

“Whatever this is that I am, it is a little flesh and breath, and the ruling part. Throw away thy books; no longer distract thyself: it is not allowed; but as if thou wast now dying, despise the flesh; it is blood and bones and a network, a contexture of nerves, veins, and arteries. See the breath also, what kind of a thing it is, air, and not always the same, but every moment sent out and again sucked in.”

This second paragraph is of some importance as it allows us insight into how the old Emperor was prone to distraction. His advice is to distance oneself physically from one’s distractions. For him it was books and for us it must be the phone or computers, and then his view was that we should remind ourselves that we are a mass of flesh, blood, bones and the like and to simply focus on breathing.

The idea is that once again we must breathe. We must take in a breath and let it out and then suck another breath back in.

This is important precisely because it is about restoring thinking, restoring sense and reason when one has allowed distraction and anger to win out over oneself. Temptation is a wicked beast and isn’t something we can judge others on. After-all it’s a continuous battle and war everyday. We are all of us having to joust with it continuously so that let it not be said that there is a man alive who has mastered his sins and mastered his temptations.

The reason one should not say this is because all of us, each and every single one of us is having to endlessly engage with our desires in a great battle. We must overcome them and restore sense to ourselves, so that this is the only way to truly become all that we can be and all that we must be. To master one’s fate one must accept that each day will bring with it temptations and desires and mistakes, and one must accept this and be open and honest about it.

There must also be a certain forgiveness of the self in this regard, even as we recognize that to err is human and that we must avoid that particular mistake in the future. Mistakes are part of us and we are mistake-addled species. Accept it. Move on.

“The third then is the ruling part: consider thus: Thou art an old man; no longer let this be a slave, no longer be pulled by the strings like a puppet to unsocial movements, no longer either be dissatisfied with thy present lot, or shrink from the future.”

This is in short in the first half to be about not letting oneself be a slave to one’s inner desires, or lusts or foibles or dopamine hits. It is about mastering one’s desires day by day, and attempting to be better than one was yesterday.

The idea is to cease to be unsocial, to embrace others but not to be pulled along by them I think.

This section though doesn’t discourage ambition, doesn’t discourage wishing to achieve more but it speaks of acceptance, and even joy in one’s present lot. This is important, as most people tend to consider ambition and contentedness to be opposite forces in the world. They are not.

They are joint forces of a man’s nature. You can be content with things even as you are ambitious and hungry for more. The key is not to be ambitious for material things or material possessions as these are but mere things. Mere objects that can be replaced, discarded and otherwise gotten rid of. They’ve no real value.

But having more dogs or children, books, artistic achievements and even building a house or cathedral these are things that have great value and require ambition of some sort. They bring contentedness, they bring happiness. Note that I say happiness and not pleasure as pleasure and happiness are enemies. Certainly one can lead to another but one must be wary of pleasure-seeking. Seeking happiness is good though and is a form of ambition.

As to the last piece of advice. It is almost Biblical in nature as it follows the ideals in that particular book; ‘do not be afraid’. This is the true meaning of the Bible, and also the most important part of this paragraph by the brilliant Marcus Aurelius; do not be afraid.

When troubled by fear ask yourself; were the ancient Romans afraid when they marched out into the unknown, to challenge the Hispanic tribes, the Gauls, the Germanic hordes, or Carthage? Certainly they were. They had to be.

It must also be asked; were the Frankish warriors afraid when they galloped to the defence of their nation and empire against the likes of the Saxon hordes or Avars from the East? Absolutely.

Or were the Japanese Samurai afraid when they moved to rescue their islands from the Mongol invasions? They must have been.

As surely as those of Spain, England, France and Portugal were when they set sail from the only homes they ever knew. They were each of them afraid.

Yet they did not shrink. Why? because they knew it was their destiny. It was the pathway, the ship that was to carry them across the sea and they embraced it. This is what Destiny means; to walk the path you were meant to.

So do not shrink from the future. Embrace it, confront it and remember that just as you fear it, so too did a thousand generations before you and ask yourself did they shrink from it? Of course not.

You owe a debt to your forebears who sought to gift you so much and to defy the odds that you might live. And remember that as surely as you owe them a great debt of gratitude, especially if you were born French, Irish, English, Norse, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and so on. Why? Because you were born with every genetic advantage, every mental edge and every cultural high-ground one could possibly ever desire.

Embrace these things and remember that you have a debt owed to future generations. Do not shrink from the future means that you must do as all your ancestors did before you; plant an acorn that your grandchildren or great-grandchildren might rest beneath a tree you might never see.

Valour isn’t something that just happens or is felt by a few people. True valour is a choice. It is a decision just as right and wrong is. It must be cultivated.

So do not shrink from the future, but rather embrace it and face it as the Roman legions did under Aurelius’ command and as the brave, and wise Aurelius did unflinchingly. Make the choice to be brave.

And if it’s Roman wisdom that you crave, do please consider reading the below story which is written for true Romans (and by true Romans ;) ). Or check out the below book on Amazon beneath it.

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