Contemplation and Action

Meditations, Notebook 3, §4-16

Never act reluctantly, selfishly, thoughtlessly, or with conflicting motives. Don’t embellish your thoughts with fancy language. Avoid garrulousness and officiousness…Be joyful within and in need of no external assistance or peace provided by others. In other words, you must stand straight, not be straightened.

As I read passages like this, I keep returning to one thought. I have always been told that Stoics were men of action. And while certainly there is an emphasis on action, or as I described last week, on urgency, there is something more happening. The Stoic life will necessarily include action, but it is action that has been heavily guided by contemplation.

The tamed lion.

Notice how in the passage below, which is almost the entirety of §5 of Notebook 3, Marcus Aurelius is laying down rules for action. It would be surprising if this paragraph was the first time that he had told himself these things. As he studied the Stoics, he surely would have seen some emphasis on right action and on maintaining an inner harmony — a harmony that would be disrupted by conflicting motives.

And yet, he keeps thinking about the nature: the Logos, the gods, the rational nature of humanity. He thinks of his metaphysical picture of the world, in which all is material. He thinks of the concept of a true human nature, and he considers the myriad deviations from this nature. Always, Marcus reflects.

Think of where he is in this moment. Marcus may be writing these notebooks in the evenings before he rests, or in the mornings when he has just awakened. He may jot them down when he has a spare moment.

And I think that when we think of when Marcus might write, we see how a Stoic should balance action and contemplation. We use our quiet moments, what we would now call our free time, to contemplate. This contemplation enables us to act rightly. Since the Stoic conception of freedom would hold that we only act freely when we act rightly, we can even make a philosophical pun: this use of our free time allows us to be free the rest of the time.

Think, for a moment, of all of this as a sickness. We have been made sick by the world — we are made ill by distraction, by temptation, and so on. The solution is to either remove ourself from all those things which are making us sick or to find an appropriate course of treatment. Since totally removing ourselves from distraction and temptation seems impossible, we need to find a course of treatment. And the Stoic treatment is to contemplate the nature of the world, which should then allow you to act rightly.

Marcus makes a lovely comparison with medicine in this notebook. “Doctors always keep their instruments and implements ready to hand for emergency procedures”, he writes in §13. This prepares them for emergencies. We should do likewise. But our instruments and implements are our principles. These principles allow us to understand the divine and the human. These principles allow us to act rightly, to handle the unexpected.

As students of Stoicism, let’s think about how we can put this advice into practice.

First, ask yourself the following: when was the last time I devoted myself purely to thinking? It may surprise you. We can go so long without properly engaging our intellectual capacities.

Next, ask yourself: how can I make time to devote myself purely to thinking? What changes need to be made to allow yourself to think?

I have often talked about journaling, and it is a fine thing to do. But as I reflect on my current state, I’m realizing that some of my best thinking is done while active and alone. Since my wife became pregnant, I’ve exercised considerably less — we used to go bouldering together, and I didn’t keep up the practice when she couldn’t join me. Perhaps I need to make the time again. This is essential for the care of my body, but it is also when I am able to think, reflect, and contemplate.

And finally, ask yourself: when was the last time I was silent?

Our world is a world of noise. Podcasts, ads, YouTube, streaming services, traffic. There is noise all around. And our response to noise is often to add more noise — we put on our headphones and pretend listen to something else. But this constant noise is an impediment to contemplation.

In a premium post, I argued that philosophy is valuable in part because it allows us to be bored. A commenter and subscriber asked if by ‘bored’ I really meant something like ‘not fun’ — because doing philosophy is an activity, and activities do stave off boredom. I think this is a very nice point. Philosophy demands that we step back from stimulation for awhile; that’s when the real thinking occurs. And as Marcus shows us, this real thinking is essential for free action.