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Close Reading: Meditations 3 (Episode 31)
565 Plays1 year ago
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“He gives his sole attention to how he might carry out his own activities, and attends continually to his own strand in the whole web; he makes sure that his own activities are done rightly, and he is convinced that his own strand in the web is good.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.4
Caleb and Michael do a close reading of Meditations 3.2 - 3.4.
Chris Gill’s Translation: https://amzn.to/4330B8H
(04:16) Meditations 3.2
(16:17) Meditations 3.3
(27:54) Meditations 3.4
(35:46) Continuing 3.4
***
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Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
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Transcript
Interconnectedness and Care in Stoicism
00:00:00
Speaker
He remembers too that all rational creatures are relatives and that while it is in accordance with human nature to care for all human beings, he should not attend to the opinions of all of them, but only those who live according to nature.
Introduction to StoA Conversations
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome to StoA Conversations. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of stoicism. Each week, we'll share two conversations. One between the two of us, and another will be an in-depth conversation with an expert.
Close Reading: Meditations Book 3
00:00:32
Speaker
In this conversation, Michael and I do a close reading of sections from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 3.
Historical Context of Marcus Aurelius
00:00:42
Speaker
Here it is. Today we're going to be talking about Book 3 of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. We'll do a close reading of some of the first few sections of Book 3, similar to how we tackled the beginning of the handbook a few episodes prior.
00:01:18
Speaker
more of an Epictetus person. I think you've mentioned that Marcus Aurelius, if not, I don't know if you have to pick one, maybe not your favorite stoic, but certainly the one that got you into stoicism originally. So interested in, you know, your close reading of Marcus Aurelius and kind of what stands out to you and what inspires you in book three.
00:01:26
Speaker
do you wanna say anything by way of intro?
00:01:36
Speaker
Excellent. I think it's always good to revisit these works, whether it's Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and leaf through and see how the work strikes you a few years later or a few months later, whatever, what have you. So that's what we'll be doing today. Just a few brief words of introduction. So Marcus Aurelius was, of course, a Roman emperor. He lived between 121 and 180 AD.
Writing During the Markomanic Wars
00:02:05
Speaker
And this book three of The Meditations is a work that's compiled from his notebook. So it's a personal work. It's not something that was meant for public consumption, but was something that Marcus Aurelius used to remind himself of Stoic maxims, similar to how someone might journal today. Book three in particular was written at Carnatum.
00:02:33
Speaker
which would have been in the northwest of the Roman Empire at the time, which is probably in modern Germany during the Markomanic Wars. So you could imagine him having a, perhaps, he's not at the front lines, so he's having a peaceful respite, perhaps, at the Roman headquarters, while a war rages on not too far away.
00:02:57
Speaker
So that's my intro to the book. Anything you want to add to that, Michael? Yeah, feel free to edit this out after if I put you on the spot. Do you know anything more about the context of the war or kind of where this was situated in Markos Aurelius' life? This would have been the Markomanic War. And essentially there were a variety of different German tribes that
00:03:22
Speaker
The Romans saw as invading the Roman Empire, and I imagine the Germanic tribe saw as trying to fend off the Romans. So this general conflict was one of the primary issues during Marcus Aurelius's reign. The Romans were always historically fearful of different tribes coming in from the north and desecrating Rome.
00:03:51
Speaker
As sort of an expansionist empire, Rome had largely stopped expanding at this time, but there were always different wars at the fringes. So this, along with the plague, probably would have been one of the major issues. So he spent a lot of time on the front or at different headquarters while he was emperor. Yeah, interesting. Interesting context.
00:04:16
Speaker
Yeah, excellent.
Beauty in Natural Imperfections
00:04:17
Speaker
So I was thinking of starting at 3.2. 3.1 is a note on mortality, but I love 3.2. So I thought let's, let's start with that. And perhaps I won't read the whole thing, but it's worth reading a little bit to give you a sense of what this section is about. So I'll do that now.
00:04:45
Speaker
We should attend closely to points such as that even the byproducts of natural processes have a certain charm and attractiveness. For instance, when bread is being baked, the loaf breaks open here and there, and these very cracks, though they show in a sense the failure of the baker's expertise, catch the eye and in their own special way, stimulate our enthusiasm for food.
00:05:14
Speaker
Again, figs, when they are completely ripe, split open. Also, in olives which are ready to drop, the very proximity to decay adds a certain special beauty to the fruit. Again, ears of corn bending towards the earth, and the lion's puckered brow, the foam dripping from the boar's mouth, and many other things are far from beautiful if one views them in isolation, but the fact that they are corollaries of natural processes
00:05:43
Speaker
gives them an added beauty and draws us to them. So I'll take a pause right there. We got about halfway through 2.5 and I love this passage because it's
00:06:00
Speaker
Marcus Aurelius noting ways in which things that might not usually seem beautiful are beautiful when you take into account how they fit into the rest of nature. And it's also very
00:06:19
Speaker
a very visual passage. You have the image of the baked bread cracking open, the speckles of foam on the wild boar's mouth, and this general picture of seeing these things as beautiful because they are part of nature.
00:06:45
Speaker
And why they're beautiful, I think he answers, he starts to answer or give the stoic view about that later on in this section. But before talking about that, is there any quick reflections or words you want to add to that, Michael?
Stoic Joy and Moral Progress
00:07:01
Speaker
Two thoughts, maybe of medium length. One is about just the beauty of the passage, as you said, the imageistic, the foam from the boar's mouth, the lion's puckered brow. It makes me think about why we read a lot of the Stoics. Their skill in writing is not to be dismissed or Seneca wrote plays, Plato famously wrote dialogues. The value in
00:07:27
Speaker
imagery at communicating truths, you know, cause you could say the same thing without these kind of beautiful images, but it helps us kind of absorb the truth or the argument with that, those metaphors. The second part is, the second thought I have here is we talk so much on this podcast about moral progress, about virtue, about becoming a better person.
00:07:49
Speaker
And this is one, this passage, you know, it's almost about the stoic joy. It's almost about this, this kind of appreciation, this recognition of beauty in the universe, of aesthetic beauty in the universe. Those things are ultimately connected, right? Like the stoic view is going to be something along the lines of, we'll get to it, but it's going to be something along the lines of like, if you understand the nature of the universe and you roll in that universe,
00:08:13
Speaker
you'll be a better person, but also just this idea of just kind of stopping to smell the roses in the most literal sense and engage in that recognition of the beauty. That's something that can get lost sometimes if we're always framing stoicism as being about, which is something I think I'm doing, I do a lot, always framing stoicism as about becoming more virtuous or becoming better in this kind of moralistic sense. It's really nice to kind of get into just the beauty of doing that or the beauty of looking at the world a different way.
00:08:44
Speaker
Right, right, absolutely. So he finishes 2.5 with the following sentence.
Nature's Beauty in Unattractiveness
00:08:50
Speaker
So for someone with feeling a deeper insight into the workings of the universe, there is nothing that will fail to present itself with pleasure, even among the things that happen as incidental consequences.
00:09:04
Speaker
So, the thought there is, as you gestured at, the aesthetics have this view that nature serves a particular purpose, and that if you understand the whole, you can see that every part that makes up the universe plays an important and worthwhile role.
00:09:25
Speaker
either in and of itself or sort of as an incidental consequence. It's a side effect of an important process. Imagine the stoic view as perhaps a view that someone may have when it comes to looking at a complex environment, a complex biological environment where initially you might think
00:09:54
Speaker
or the fact that there are fires that occasionally destroy this environment is terrible, but then you realize if we prevent fires, then that results in exceptional amounts of overgrowth and that the fire actually played an important role.
00:10:13
Speaker
role and allowed things to grow that would not otherwise grow and allowed beings to be who would not otherwise be able to live well in the environment. So I think that's what the sort of attitude Marcus Aurelius is trying to get himself into when he's saying this, is that if you're able to see the true workings of all things, then you would see that
00:10:42
Speaker
They are what might initially strike you as ugly, is actually beautiful and sublime in a particular way.
00:10:56
Speaker
that we're ever able to kind of maintain this? Or is the goal really to get here every once in a while or to get here as often as possible? Because I think we've all had those moments, or at least I had these moments, you know, maybe where I'm walking down the street and I'm just kind of struck by the beauty of the world or everything feels okay, or I'm kind of, I feel very
Beauty in Adversity: A Stoic View
00:11:16
Speaker
present. Is that something we should be aiming for all the time? I guess what is the
00:11:21
Speaker
What does this look like in practice, someone who's gotten good at this skill?
00:11:29
Speaker
It is important that you know that it's a skill. I think just to wrap up the rest of the reading from this section, just because it's directly related to this, the very last sentence before saying this, you know, it's that we should look at the works in nature in a similar way. We might look at paintings or other art. But the very last sentence is, there are many other such instances that will not strike everyone as being persuasive.
00:11:56
Speaker
but only someone who has genuinely familiarized himself with nature and its works. So here's this idea that as you mentioned it's a skill to see the world this way and not all of these instances are going to be beautiful just to anyone because one needs to
00:12:18
Speaker
and the language here genuinely familiarize oneself with nature in order to see them. That is beautiful.
00:12:28
Speaker
And on the hardcore stoic view, the sage I think would see the world probably like this all the time, right? Because they would understand how everything fits together and how it is driven by some purpose that justifies it, makes sense of it all. So that's probably the hardcore stoic view, if you will.
00:12:55
Speaker
If you, there are of course different question marks, there's this assumption here, well does everything really have a purpose or is it just atoms? And that's something Marcus Aurelius struggles with throughout the meditations as well. But I think there is, maybe speaking from the modern standpoint, there is always this thought that
00:13:16
Speaker
If you inhabit this agnostic space where you haven't ruled out the idea that nature has a fundamental purpose, but it's not something that you are fully willing to sign on, there is always that possibility. And when there's that possibility, you can see the world in this way and often come to explanations that are in fact correct.
00:13:45
Speaker
that you might have missed if you didn't have the possibility that everything plays into this hole in mind. Yeah, that's that's persuasive to me. I mean, the one thing you were mentioning about this, this, you know, the counter arguments are not everything seeming that way. I think of it's easy when you're talking about the
00:14:05
Speaker
the cracking of bread, it's a little bit harder if you're talking about, you know, a starving child or something and seeing, you know, the beauty in that. And, but that's, you know, that's part of the, that's part of, as you said, the hardcore stoic view, right? Where the sage would be happy on the torture rack. Likewise, happy seeing other people on the torture rack, I suppose.
00:14:24
Speaker
That's where my mind was going and kind of wrestling with that. There's something about, I guess, and that just depends on how much you commit to stoicism or these fundamental stoic views. There's a big difference in being kind of mindful and present when you're spending time with your family or you're taking a nice walk through nature. And then there's another, there's this other step of kind of incorporating these things we tend to think are, you know, disgusting or awful into that view.
00:14:51
Speaker
And it certainly is true that as you go up into this, as you sort of turn up the knob of suffering, it becomes harder and harder to see why particular things might be justified. And that just is one challenge with the traditional stoic view of physics that I think we should probably have a whole episode.
00:15:10
Speaker
or two about, and if you wanted to cultivate this skill practically, it is always easier to start with things, bread or figs, or perhaps even the foam dripping from a boar's mouth or whatever might be closer or more analogous in our modern, modern life. Yeah. Honking cars or something. I don't know what the, what the, what the intermediate would be. Traffic.
00:15:34
Speaker
Yeah, dirty streets or something like this that have the signs of life at least. Excellent. Anything else on section two?
00:15:45
Speaker
No, that's it for me, this idea of it, of seeing the beauty in the world as a skill, seeing that as a skill based in your understanding of everything's the nature of the world, your place in that world. And then both, there's both an ethical benefit to that. It helps you make better decisions, helps you act better, but then there's this aesthetic, joyful benefit of just being present for beauty and connecting to beauty. It's quite, it's quite a beautiful passage.
00:16:12
Speaker
Excellent. Well, do you want to read from the third section?
Mortality and Historical Figures
00:16:18
Speaker
Sure. Let me go into it and then stop when there's something juicy to dig into further. So, Hippocrates cured many illnesses and then fell ill and died himself. The Chaldean astrologers predicted the deaths of many people, and then they too were taken by a fated day.
00:16:38
Speaker
Alexander, Pompey, and Julius Caesar destroyed utterly many cities and slaughtered tens of thousands of cavalrymen and foot soldiers in pitched battles, and one day they too left this life. Heraclitus, after speculating so much about the universe being destroyed by fire, died with his insides full of water and smeared with a poultice of cow dung.
00:17:01
Speaker
Democritus was killed by lice and Socrates by lice of another kind. So what does it amount to? You came on board, you set sail, and now you've reached land. Step ashore. If you come to another life, nothing is empty of gods, even there. If you come to unconsciousness, you will no longer be subject to pains and pleasures, and you will no longer be the servant of a vessel as inferior in value as that which serves it as superior.
00:17:30
Speaker
One is mind and the guardian spirit, the other earth and blood. Take a look at this. I mean, this strikes me as rather epicurean as well, which it's a cognitive tension we get in Marcus Aurelius is this idea of, you know, order or chaos, interconnected matter or the void and atoms, this idea of this stoicism or epicureanism. And so,
00:17:55
Speaker
Marcus Aurelius here is talking about many successful, famous people, those that cured people, those that conquered people, those that understood the universe, those that understood fate, and they all died. Some died in epic ways and some died by lice, and that's part of our fate, and we should accept that, we should embrace that, knowing that if our souls continue on,
00:18:24
Speaker
That means there will be gods there, and if not, then that means we won't suffer in death. It's this historical confrontation of death in a way that's a very stoic way of approaching the big picture. I like it quite a bit. What do you think about it?
00:18:42
Speaker
Yep, absolutely. I think the main focus on this passage is just that taking on mortality and noting the irony of many different deaths. The people who predicted fate or taken on the fated day, maybe one they not exactly predicted, you know, those who live by the sword, die by the sword.
00:19:07
Speaker
Heraclitus focused on fire but ended up having a somewhat watery death, I suppose. And then Democritus who... I think what this...Democritus was killed by Lys. I think what that means is that Democritus was an atomist.
00:19:23
Speaker
So he thought the universe was made of a bunch of little small things. And in the end, Lys, other small things ended up killing him. And then Socrates, by Lys of another kind. And Marcus Aurelius is using the rhetorical technique of polyoptiton. He's using the same word to have different meanings. That's really a
00:19:48
Speaker
very sharp line because Socrates was put to death by the Athenians. And he says, you know, look at this span of history, these great people who came before and you should see that they had a life and it was fundamentally mortal and thinking of it as any other way would be a mistake. And it's maybe the first bit. And then there's, as you mentioned,
00:20:12
Speaker
this other side, which is like, how does Marcus Aurelius think about the afterlife? And it seems like the main upshot here is that he's taking account of different possibilities. Maybe there's another life. If so, it won't be empty of the gods. So just to say it won't be empty of purpose.
00:20:37
Speaker
or there's not and then that'll be it. You'll no longer be conscious. So why fear? Why fear death? Either way, death is not something to be fundamentally feared.
00:20:54
Speaker
The common technique Marcus Aurelius will take is look at different possibilities, whether it's atoms or providence, afterlife or no afterlife, and think either way, what matters is virtue. What matters is that one does not fear death. Yeah. Going back over this now, I'm also struck by how actually Socratic it is now that you mentioned it.
Views on Death: Marcus vs. Socrates
00:21:20
Speaker
So there's this line about Socrates dying of lice of another kind, which is the Athenian people kind of being pejorative towards them. But there's also this idea, I was looking at the line of, you'll no longer be subject to pains and pleasures.
00:21:34
Speaker
And so it's like, why are you subject to pleasures? But then, because you'll no longer be servant of a vessel as inferior in value as that which serves it as superior. The idea being that our bodies are inferior to our souls and when we are embodied, when we're living, we have to deal with all these pleasures, which could be corrupting or pains, which can be awful, obviously, that come from having a body. But this is the thing that Socrates talks a bunch about in the Apology, in, well Plato's Apology, which is about
00:22:04
Speaker
when Socrates dies about how the philosophers should be happy to die because they get to kind of focus on the soul, right? The soul carries on and you can continue doing the soul things, which is contemplating the truth of the world. And you don't have to be, the soul doesn't have to exist in this body, which is corrupting, limiting subject to pains and pleasures. You know, I don't actually think that's the stoic, I don't think that's the stoic position is this, um,
00:22:31
Speaker
In one is mind and the guardian spirit, the other is earth and blood. It doesn't strike me as the stoic position on the soul. It strikes me as a bit of, we're getting a bit of kind of platonic ideas here about the immortality of the soul. What do you think about that? My sense is that Marcus Aurelius is sort of agnostic about
00:22:55
Speaker
this afterlife type
Agnosticism and Virtuous Living
00:22:57
Speaker
issue. But I would certainly say that sometimes it does seem like he has a more platonic view of the soul and pits it against the body, both here and elsewhere. From this particular passage it seems
00:23:13
Speaker
open to me whether it's really platonic or not, but I certainly could see it being amenable to a more platonic type reading. Practice Stoicism with Stoa. Stoa combines the ancient philosophy of stoicism with meditation in a practical meditation app. It includes hundreds of hours of exercises, lessons and conversations to help you live a happier life. Here's what our users are saying.
00:23:38
Speaker
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00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's certainly compelling either way.
00:24:09
Speaker
Do you think that agnosticism is something that's interesting about Mark Sorellis' work and his coming out here, which is this idea of this, you know, this is not a professor of stoic philosophy. This is not a person who is preaching to students. This is somebody who's like wrestling with these questions privately. And you see the kind of doubt of it's doubt because doubt assumes he's a stoic and he's failing to be a good stoic, but you see the, the questioning or the wrestling with this view of the afterlife. And one thing that, you know, that you said previously, Caleb, that really stuck with me is like,
00:24:37
Speaker
When you get to these kind of questions, what matters are these big metaphysical questions, you know, really ask yourself, is that going to change the way that I, is the answer to this question going to change the way I live? And if it's not, then maybe that's not a metaphysical question that's worth focusing on that much. That's one thing we talked about in a previous episode, and that really struck me, and that's really stayed with me ever since. And maybe this kind of agnosticism here is the same kind of thing, where
00:25:02
Speaker
You know, regardless of what it is, you shouldn't fear death. You should embrace life. So we can be agnostic about what happens after, because regardless of the choice it is, what it means for how we live is, you know, is to, is to embrace death, confront that head on. That's a good point. That's a good reminder. By the way, we're reading from Chris Gill's translation of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, books one through six. But I'm just looking at what Gill has to say.
00:25:30
Speaker
just looking at what Gil has to say about the platonic language. What he says is the platonic style dualistic language carries ethical rather than metaphysical connotations. Okay. And that's basically he doesn't really argue for that. But he does say look at these other notes that I don't have. I don't remember what he says on these other notes. But this is this is certainly something that people
00:25:54
Speaker
have noted before and I think it's to some extent controversial how platonic or indeed how stoic at times Marcus Aurelius is. I think what I like about Marcus Aurelius, this brings to mind, it makes him somewhat different from
00:26:12
Speaker
Epictetus is that he doesn't have the need to represent a school or teach people while he is writing. So you can get these different possibilities that he's thinking through.
00:26:31
Speaker
And you can certainly see the influences of other kinds of philosophies, which in some ways makes him harder to learn from, but in other ways makes him inhabit a similar space to most of us as we're thinking through these philosophical issues where
00:26:52
Speaker
If you're teaching, there's certainly arguments for presenting a comprehensive systematic view that's unified across the important dimensions. But if you're writing personally, then many more inconsistencies, question marks are going to arise just as you figure things out.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah, he's eclectic, which is difficult if you're getting into stoicism and you want to know what the stoicism is about.
00:27:23
Speaker
So you read a passage like this and you think, okay, soul and body, or you think, okay, the Stoics don't have a view on whether or not the soul continues after or whether or not you move on to the afterlife and there's gods. And that can be really confusing if you're using this to understand about Stoicism for the first time, or it can at least be, yeah, not clear. Once you accept that, or you recognize that's what he's doing or where he's coming from,
00:27:48
Speaker
It puts it in a position of more like a peer-to-peer relationship. Someone else also rests in with these ideas in a way that's quite compelling.
Focus on Rational Center and Avoid Gossip
00:27:55
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, let's move on to section four then. So I'll kick us off. Do not waste the remaining part of your life in thinking about other people unless you are doing so with reference to the common benefits. I mean, thinking about what such and such a person is doing,
00:28:14
Speaker
why and what he is saying and thinking and planning and all such things which make you wander from looking after your own ruling center. That's 4.1 and I think it's a sort of a natural stopping point just because this expresses a coherent thought which is Marcus Aurelius reminding himself to be mentally focused and vigilant
00:28:41
Speaker
not waste time with essentially inner gossip, thinking about what so-and-so is up to, but only thinking about others when it's relevant to the common benefit, the common good. I think you can interpret that phrase either for Marcus Aurelius specifically.
00:29:00
Speaker
Is it related to the state, his role as an emperor? Or also more generally, is it related to his being a social being and related to the common good in that sense? So that's sort of, you can think of one criteria for a thought, whether a thought is worthwhile. The other criteria he mentions is
00:29:21
Speaker
ensuring that you don't wander from your own ruling center, which is your own sense of reason. And this, of course, is the stoic view about ensuring that your impressions are correct and seeing what you are is ultimately a reasoning choice making.
00:29:45
Speaker
being and looking after that and not caring as much about all those things that are not up to you. So that's the thought that you want to focus on your own willing center. That's what Marcus Aurelius is reminding himself to do. And only think about others insofar as it is relevant for him performing the relevant role here, which is being sociable, being an excellent
00:30:16
Speaker
Yeah, so at the, I mean, the ruling center of the Greek there would be the hegemonicon. I'm not sure we've talked about a bunch on this channel, but the hegemonicon is part of the self that makes the choices, as you mentioned. It's the part that receives impressions, representations of the world, judges them as being true or false, and then experiences emotions, motivations, because of the kinds of judgments you make.
00:30:36
Speaker
So the goal of Stoicism is to perfect that ruling center, to perfect that hegemonicon, which as you said is the choosing part of us, the deliberating part of us, so we can be rational and we can have knowledge and we can understand our place in the world instead of being ignorant, poor reasoning and suffering extreme emotions because of that. And that's at the technical level. And then I guess at the general level, it's just like,
00:31:02
Speaker
It's this idea about gossiping or even internally gossiping. It's just like, don't worry about other people if it's not making you better. If, if any of that talking or thinking about other people is not making you better, you are wasting your time. And it's a reminder of that. And, you know, I, ironically, Mark's realize isn't preaching here. So it's probably a thing he tended to do. So he's probably reminding himself not to do it.
00:31:25
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, he continues and says, in 4.2, so you must exclude from your chain of thought to what is random and pointless and above all, anything that is interfering and malicious.
Morality of Intentions vs. Actions
00:31:37
Speaker
And then in 4.3, you must train yourself only to think the kind of thoughts about which, if someone suddenly asks you, what are you thinking now, you would answer frankly, this or that.
00:31:50
Speaker
So from your reply, it would immediately be clear that all your thoughts are straightforward and kind and express the character of a social being who has no concern with the images of pleasure or self-indulgence in general, or any kind of rivalry, malice, or suspicion, or anything else you are blessed to admit you are thinking about. I like that. That's a pretty high bar to set that somebody could
00:32:17
Speaker
you know, ask you what you were thinking and you could immediately say it without any shame. It's pretty hard, high bar to set for yourself, but I like it.
00:32:25
Speaker
Yeah, there's a number of places in the meditations where Marcus Aurelius seems to be truly devoted to this ideal of self perfection, not just improvement, but having a perfect self, if you will, or a ruling center that approaches sagehood.
00:32:49
Speaker
And often, I think that picture is inspiring. There's a sense in which it can backfire if it becomes distorted from reality, but I think this particular section is inspiring. It reminds me a little bit of what Jesus says about adultery, which is that the person who commits adultery in their mind is just as bad as the person who commits it physically. That same sort of
00:33:18
Speaker
very hardcore line. It is very hardcore, but it seems kind of stoic consistent, right? Because stoicism is about what matters are the things up to you. So, you know, there is at least seems to be this stoic view that if you, you know, if you desire adultery, you want to cheat and you fail at it because you're poor at cheating or something, it doesn't really, you know, so there's not really this consequentialist, no harm, no foul picture here, right? Like the
00:33:45
Speaker
The mistake was not the actions. The mistake was the intentions that brought about the action. So I think somebody who contemplates something.
00:33:55
Speaker
but then ultimately chooses not to do it because they realize through their contemplation that it's the wrong thing to do. I think that is a better kind of person than someone who acts because that person is like weighing up two options and it's okay to have interior internal conflict, but somebody who decides to do something poorly and is just fails to do it or is, you know, fails to do it for some other reason, like they want to do adultery, but they're too cowardly or something like this. I think on the stove view, it would be the same thing. It would be just as, just as bad, I agree.
00:34:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good point that I think there's this issue of moral luck. People commit some action, say they're doing drunk driving or they're texting while driving and apparently nothing bad comes of it, whereas others while making the same decisions end up hitting someone while driving and killing them. And in those cases, the stoic view is that those acts are basically the exact same.
00:34:51
Speaker
even though we treat them differently, socially. The people who texted and driving without hitting anyone and were irresponsible, basically were acting about as wrongly, just as wrongly as the people who happened to actually hit someone.
00:35:10
Speaker
Likewise, because that has to be true if the opposite claim that, you know, if you try to save someone's life, but fail because external circumstances prevent you, you're just as good as a person as someone who tries to save someone's life and succeeds because they got lucky. Like in order for that opposite version to be correct.
00:35:32
Speaker
The version that, you know, it doesn't matter what's not outside of my control matters. The, what I do that's in my control. We're really quick to accept those things positively. It seems a little bit weird or negatively, but yeah, you can't have one without the other. I don't think.
00:35:46
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. It's good to, it is interesting how we have all these asymmetric attitudes about positive, negative experiences. Excellent. Well, I'll keep on reading from section four and I think we'll probably, this will be our last one, but so in this passage in 4.4, he essentially notes how sage-like or virtuous the person who is able to think well is the person who has
00:36:15
Speaker
died to his depths with justice. And I think one other bit that I want to read out from here is when he's describing this person, this virtuous person, in 4.5 he says, he gives his sole attention to how he might carry out his own activities and attends continually to his own strand in the whole web. He makes sure that his own activities are done rightly and he is convinced that his own strand in the web is good.
00:36:42
Speaker
And what I like about this is that it's...
00:36:46
Speaker
It goes back to what we saw in section two, this idea of parts fitting into the whole. Here he's using the metaphor of a web and each person is responsible for a strand in the whole web of things and ties that into how we should think as individuals about what we are responsible for and playing our own role, focusing vigilantly on our own role in that
Role Focus in Life
00:37:12
Speaker
web.
00:37:12
Speaker
and ensuring that we don't waste our time thinking about how others are managing their strands or thinking about issues that aren't relevant to whether our strands comes out well or not. Yeah, I see the connection there. Absolutely. What I like about it is how
00:37:36
Speaker
incredibly well it encapsulates this idea while also clearly showing how this this kind of thinking is often misinterpreted to assume that stoicism is apolitical or that stoicism is isolationist in some mechanism or involves not
00:37:53
Speaker
interfering in the affairs of others or going out and enacting change. This person is literally at war, right? On the battlefield, engaging in political, you know, strife at the most macro intense level possible, but is also saying, you know, I'm also worrying about my strand of the web and focusing on my strand of the web. But that focusing on your strand of the web does not mean you
00:38:23
Speaker
You know, don't call out injustice where you see it. It doesn't mean you don't, um, you know, get involved in things outside of just, just your own thinking. But it means that, that, that strand of the web involves, you know, your, your particular life, not this going back to the start of the passage, this like over obsession about the behaviors, the choices, the actions of others. That's the part for me that really sticks out with the, with the historical context behind the writing.
00:38:48
Speaker
That's a good point. Yep. That part of this picture is just, just not being an isolationist.
Social Bond Among Rational Creatures
00:38:53
Speaker
The last sentence I'll read out here is from 4.7. He remembers to that all rational creatures are relatives and that while it is in accordance with human nature to care for all human beings, you should not attend to the opinions of all of them, but only those who live according to nature.
00:39:15
Speaker
And I wanted to get that one in just because it's related to a number of other things we talked about. Earlier on, we had an episode about why you should care about what other people think. And I think the less sort of explosive version of that title is that it is important to care about what virtuous people think and to have virtuous models in mind. And that is what Marcus Aurelius is saying here, that you should care about the opinions of those who live according to nature.
00:39:44
Speaker
That's one bit that sticks out to me here. And the other idea is just that all rational creatures are relatives, which is a strong framing and shows how seriously Marcus Aurelius took his social bond.
00:40:00
Speaker
to others and that's always a good framing to sort of bring people closer to you if you can. I think of them as relatives, as sharing in that what Marcus would call their sharing in the divine nature or sharing in our capacity to reason.
00:40:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's quite beautiful because also we use this term of the cosmopolitanism, this idea that we're all citizens of the cosmos. But that would, if Marcus Aurelius was thinking that here, he would say, you know, all rational creatures are statesmen. All rational creatures belong to the same nation.
00:40:38
Speaker
But he's saying all rational creatures are relatives. He's evoking kind of this family comparison beforehand, which is quite touching. And as you said, I think an important thing to do. And then, yeah, another point you're talking about, about why it matters to have stages or positive role models, care about what good people think, but then also double down in both directions. So don't.
00:40:59
Speaker
You're not caring what good people think and what bad people think. You're not caring what nobody thinks. You care what good people think and you don't care what bad people think. And that's, you know, sounds intuitive, but something, something I think we all struggle with. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, excellent. Is there anything else you want to add?
00:41:18
Speaker
The only thing I want to add is like, whenever I do this, I'm always like, whatever we read these texts closely, there's a lot here.
Closing Remarks and Listener Feedback
00:41:24
Speaker
It's easy to sit down and you know, I think this entire chapter is like 10 pages or something, right? So it's easy to sit down and just kind of go through it quick. But I really like these, these deep readings. You know, even, even between the two of us who have both read this before multiple times, it's nice to kind of sit in those ideas for a bit. So yeah, just nothing else to add other than enjoy doing this with you Caleb. So thanks.
00:41:46
Speaker
Yeah, I enjoy this a lot. And for a full transparency, I plan to get through six of these. And it's certainly true that there's a lot here because we did not get through six. So we get slowed down. Slow down. Exactly. Just maybe there's a lesson there. All right. Well, until next time. Awesome.
00:42:05
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Story Conversations. If you found this conversation useful, please give us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast platform you use, and share it with a friend. We are just starting this podcast, so every bit of help goes a long way.
00:42:21
Speaker
And I'd like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. Do check out his work at ancientliar.com and please get in touch with us at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback or questions. Until next time.