MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS + STUDY G

Garden of Serenity圖書與參考資源2019-07-11

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更新日期：2019-07-11

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Meditations is perhaps the only document of its kind ever made. It is the private thoughts of the world’s most powerful man giving advice to himself on how to make good on the responsibilities and obligations of his positions. Trained in Stoic philosophy, Marcus Aurelius stopped almost every night to practice a series of spiritual exercises—reminders designed to make him humble, patient, empathetic, generous, and strong in the face of whatever he was dealing with. It is imminently readable and perfectly accessible. You cannot read this book and not come away with a phrase or a line that will be helpful to you the next time you are in trouble. Read it, it is practical philosophy embodied.

So, who was Marcus? A Roman emperor from 161 to 180 A.D., Marcus practiced Stoicism and wrote about his own Stoic practice in his journals. It is worth remembering that Marcus is one of history’s most exemplary leaders and one worth emulating in our own lives. Matthew Arnold, the essayist, remarked in 1863, that in Marcus we find a man who held the highest and most powerful station in the world—and the universal verdict of the people around him was that he proved himself worthy of it. Machiavelli considers the time of rule under Marcus “golden time” and him the last of the “Five Good Emperors.” Machiavelli would also describe Marcus Aurelius as “unassuming, a lover of justice, hater of cruelty, sympathetic and kind”

During his time of struggle, particularly while he was directing military campaigns, Marcus would write twelve books of his private journals, which is estimated to has been between 170 and 180 A.D. They have become one of the most influential philosophy books in the history of the world. Meditations originally had no title and was written by Marcus Aurelius for his own benefit, not for an audience. And it’s funny to think that his writings may be as special as they are because they were never intended for us to be read. Almost every other piece of literature is a kind of performance—it’s made for the audience. Meditations isn’t. In fact, their original title (Ta eis heauton) roughly translates as To Himself.

It’s for this reason that Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations is a somewhat inscrutable book—it was for personal clarity and not public benefit. Writing down Stoic exercises was and is also a form of practicing them, just as repeating a prayer or hymn might be.

It is a book of short sayings, varying from a sentence or two, to a long paragraph. It’s not organized by theme, but certain ideas keep popping up throughout, indicating that he thought them the most important for him (and therefore us) to understand and incorporate into the way we live.

This is a book of actionable advice and its teachings were meant to be practiced and used. When Marcus speaks of the certainty of death and how relatively soon it will come, he is not idly philosophizing. He is recommending that this fact advise our decision-making and how we view the events in our lives. Instead of theorizing about what we should do if either there is a guiding intelligence in the universe, or if everything is just atoms, he prescribes one viewpoint that typically follows Stoic thinking, and explains why both possible truths would lead to the same best actions and beliefs.