Starting Your Day Like a Stoic

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Notebook 2

Today, we are moving on to the second notebook in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. You might want to look over the first post on this wonderful text:

The First Lesson of Stoicism

The rest of the Meditations are written more like a journal; we have left behind the format of the first notebook, in which Marcus explored the concepts of gratitude and providence. This can feel abrupt to many readers. And those who have read the Meditations before might have the same reaction in the opposite direction — to them, the first notebook feels out of place in the context of the larger work. Keep in mind that this was not written for us; Marcus was writing for himself. And because of this, uniformity of style was not a real priority.

The second notebook begins with a reminder:

At the start of the day, tell yourself: I shall meet people who are officious, ungrateful, abusive, treacherous, malicious, and selfish. In every case, they’ve got like this because of their ignorance of good and bad. But I have seen goodness and badness for what they are, and I know that what is good is what is morally right and what is bad is morally wrong; and I’ve seen the true nature of the wrongdoer himself and know that he’s related to me — not in the sense that we share blood and seed, but by virtue of the fact that we both partake of the same intelligence, and so of a portion of the divine. None of them can harm me, anyway, because none of them can infect me with immorality, nor can I become angry with someone who’s related to me, or hate him, because we were born to work together, like feet or hands or eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. To work against each other is therefore unnatural — and anger and rejection count as “working against.”

This is the first paragraph of the notebook, and it will be our focus this week.

We must always keep in mind that Marcus was not just Roman philosopher — he was first and foremost an emperor. The emperor was a man with immense power in Rome, but he was also in constant danger. He had to work to maintain power, to steward the empire, to prevent others from usurping him. Conditions such as these tend to produce cold, cruel, and calculating leaders. These men might ruthlessly maintain their power, with all considerations of morality being set aside.

But this is not how Marcus wants to live, and to maintain this way of life he gives himself a reminder. Let’s expand upon what he writes.

I shall meet people who are officious, ungrateful, abusive, treacherous, malicious, and selfish. Here, Marcus reminds himself of the facts — he does not live in denial. In order to formulate a plan for one’s day, or a rule for one’s life, we must be willing to contend with the facts as they really are. And one fact of life is that we will encounter people on a near-daily basis is that some people will be unpleasant, even immoral. We will encounter many vicious people.

In every case, they’ve got like this because of their ignorance of good and bad. This is an important Stoic belief, which was inherited from Platonism. The Stoics believed that wrongdoing — vice, sin, whatever we’d like to call it — was always a result of ignorance. This is not to say that all wrongdoing is an accident, but instead to say that those who act wrongly do not understand the true nature of good and bad, and more generally do not understand the true nature of the world. This is a difficult belief for many moderns to subscribe to; we tend to think of those who do wrong as being fully in control, knowledgeable, and culpable.

But I have seen goodness and badness for what they are, and I know that what is good is what is morally right and what is bad is morally wrong. These are the virtues and the vices.

I’ve seen the true nature of the wrongdoer himself and know that he’s related to me — not in the sense that we share blood and seed, but by virtue of the fact that we both partake of the same intelligence, and so of a portion of the divine. In the last post, a reader took issue with with my exposition of Marcus as saying that some people possess virtue while others do not. The reader wrote: “I take it that the Stoic position is that everyone possesses virtue/reason, which is what would ground respect for every person.” First, I want to thank this reader and all the other commenters for the high-quality comments (there were more than I expected, and I will try to make time to respond to future comments). But I think we need to make a clear distinction between virtue and reason. The Stoic position is that all human beings possess a portion of the divine, and we might be able to call this reason. But it isn’t the case that all humans possess virtue — because to be virtuous is to live in accord with our nature. Some of us do not do this. These are the people who are officious, ungrateful, etc. And yet, each of these persons is deserving of respect.

None of them can harm me, anyway, because none of them can infect me with immorality. Since immorality involves action, Marcus holds that anyone with adequate self-control and knowledge can avoid it. And since vice is the only harm, no one can actually harm a Stoic.

Nor can I become angry with someone who’s related to me, or hate him, because we were born to work together, like feet or hands or eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. To work against each other is therefore unnatural — and anger and rejection count as “working against.” Here, the Stoic metaphysics is playing a key role. Since Marcus believes that there is an order and purpose to the universe, he also believes that there is a harmony to all things. To work against someone is to reject that harmony, it seems.

When we discuss Stoic metaphysics, we are likely to run into more beliefs that we disagree with. But it is critical to really think about these issues. (This is one reason why Waterfield’s translation is so helpful — he points out the metaphysical assumptions in the Meditations.¹) Stoicism is not a self-help philosophy; it is a totalizing worldview. It is also not a worldview I wholly subscribe to — I do not believe in a Stoic view of the universe, though I might believe in something similar to it. And yet I am learning from Marcus anyway. By looking at how Marcus starts his day, we are also able to see how one’s metaphysical views impact one’s life. Philosophy, even of the most abstract sort, shapes the way that its practitioners live. If someone ever asks you why you bother to read philosophy, this should be the response. We all assume a metaphysical view of the world, and that metaphysical view affects our actions. Perhaps we ought to think more about metaphysics as we think about ethics.

1. That is an affiliate link to Amazon, which means that I earn a small commission from purchases due to referrals.