I think a notebook written without providence would be relying on strength of character in order to be good. That I believe in and of itself is a good thing. The belief that God or nature is there as a protection for or insurance that good will still be the conclusion for even difficult experiences in one's life, is an idea that strengthens people's convictions. Without this belief I believe the notebook would lose some of its impact for people.
The order of the writing is a biography of one's life told through influence. Starting with family and then expanding outwards with tutors, mentors, and philosophers. Ending with "gods and fortune" shows the thread that connected it all. It reminds me of a prayer of thanks.
One of the items that stood out for me was "for he was one who looked to what ought to be done, not to the reputation which a man gets by his acts." It made me think about how today I believe most people are concerned with how they are seen, not with what they have actually done. It has something to say about character and knowing yourself. To be comfortable with the fact of doing something,hopefully for the good, and not doing it for the acclaim.
I would like to offer a reflection on your first question - monhs late to the party!
As an atheist, I do believe in - and recently actively practice - gratefulness for what makes my life worth living, for what I have, for the people, conditions and experiences that made me who I am, for the good and the bad. The lack of an e(x)ternal, or transcendent if one likes, Providence only makes gratefulness more nuanced and moving, and ethics more strict in the search for cohesion. If there is no set rule, we have nowhere to hide behind when it comes to assume responsibility. If there is no God, we are the only ones who can do the job of loving each other. If there is no good and bad, we have a choice to make in how we define good and bad. It is a common misconception between believers that people who have an immanent - materialistic? - approach to reality are missing something, are blind in a sense to the life of the spirit. Funnily enough, there is the same tendency between materialists to pity people who mistake faith in transcendence for the only source of spiritual experience, blind to the beauty and joy of pure existence. I still remember, after a catholic upbringing, the shiver of recognition and relief I felt when I read the line "Religion is the opium of the people, the wail of a society oppressed and robbed of its spirituality". I felt seen, understood and loved. I still meditate on that line today.
I don't pity anymore religious people - understanding is more interesting than judgement and we are all looking for the same beauty - but I am still very surprised to find out that spirituality is often seen as the domain of faith. They are completely independent from each other. Meditating on the inherent beauty of life is to me much more powerful when that beauty, or a sense of justice, or sadness, or love, and my ability to appreciate them and share them, are flourishing on a substrate of billions of years of chaos and cold nonsense like a flower in the sand. Life is a koan zen.
I found this feeling of sadness and longing, of gratefulness and dejection, in Lucretius and Darwin. Both write great poetic works born from the tension between a longing for ultimate meaning, justice and love, and the total awareness of its absence from nature upon honest observation. What counts is that I am aware that our religious longing comes probably from an ingrained evolutionary tendency to look for and find patterns in the savannah, and in the same breath in which I say it I am also aware that good and bad, beauty and horror, love and hate have the exact same importance to me as before reaching that materialistic conclusion.
Of course I am grateful. I am grateful to all the other people who gave me knowledge, examples of virtue, possibilities; I am grateful to the universe, to the unfeeling cold nature for being this coldly majestic, to the shortcircuit between two atoms that made me aware of existence and able to share with other humans our constructs of love, beauty and justice. To my loving partner, to my friends. Ethics are a matter of logical propositions only in the Western thought, rich and fertile but limited by its own rationality. Humanity finds the link between gratefulness and immanence in the koans of zen practice and in the dreamt universe of the Australian cultures. "If the universe is not here to glorify the existence of humanity then all is lost and nothing makes sense" is the pre-teen tantrum of the Western civilisation. I sincerely hope we manage to outgrow it.
I respond to Jared’s first question: “Is it possible to write a notebook like Marcus’ if one does not believe in Providence?” Yes, absolutely. Isn’t that what Humanism is about,they we can lead a meaningful life if we’re guided by reason and empathy?
I'm interested to hear what it means that some people have virtues and others do not. I don't think that Marcus is saying that; I take it that the stoic position is that everyone possesses virtue/reason, which is what would ground respect for every person (Waterfield, p. 9), but some are misguided by their ignorance or when their beliefs do not reflect the actual world. I am not very familiar with any stoicism, but I remember in the Waterfield introduction, he references the "lynchpin of stoic philosophy: assent" (Waterfield, p. xlviii). With this term "assent" in mind, to assent to the right beliefs is germane to follow the first lesson of stoicism “we must know who we are in order to be good”. Knowing who we are, goodness, and enlightenment are all related to virtue – which, in the context of Marcus and Plato, are grounded in reason or Logos. Reason, Logos, and virtue are universal or natural, it is just a matter of whether we assent to our nature. So, if reason is natural to us, and reason is elemental to virtue, then it should follow that we naturally possess virtue. When we fail to assent to nature (by forming the wrong beliefs, for example), that’s when our minds become dissociated from reality, and we do not “know who we are” by nature.
I think this system offers good groundwork for why we ought to treat even the most ignorant with respect, but it doesn’t explain well why it is so difficult. If the stoic sage is the closest to human nature, then why doesn’t it come “naturally” to everyone? For Christians (and within countless other theories of human nature), being good is totally against our nature – we are naturally compelled to turn to vice, but to be virtuous is difficult. To do good is to go beyond our nature – but doesn’t this create an impossibility – if it is not our nature to do good, then is it be possible to do good? It is impossible to do things that are not permitted by nature or reality.
Which theory of human nature seems more believable? Both have conceptual difficulties, but I don’t think we are naturally virtuous or reasonable. And maybe I have misinterpreted Marcus and the stoics, and he would not say that we are naturally virtuous/reasonable either.
In the Hayes translation, Book 1 is subtitled “Debts and Lessons”. The gratitude Marcus has for each person (and Providence) is clear but Book 1 also reads like a checklist of important reminders on how to live life. The line from ‘Maximus’: “The sense he gave of staying on the path rather than being kept on it” strikes me as the theme of Marcus’ journal - constant reflections, reminders and repetitions of these lessons until, as Seneca says, the will to good becomes the disposition to good.
I to am fascinated by Marcus' perspective on the importance of education. I find that his notion that ones educators should be given public office, to be a kind of thanks for their careful sculpting of personality or- as Jared put them- virtues.
This is interesting timing for me: I have just preached on Philippians 3:1-11, and there are some striking similarities and differences to Marcus’ attitude here. In Philippians, Paul lists all of the things he has been given and has achieved, but then goes on to dismiss them as unworthy to be compared with the glory of knowing Christ. This is not to say that listing one’s blessings would be frowned on by someone like Paul, but the context matters.
I think that being grateful to God for my blessings is a very good thing to do; I am considering also writing my own list. And maybe that ordering from the mundane/familial to the divine is in fact the most appropriate ordering after all.
I can’t imagine how someone without some kind of faith in something bigger could express this kind of thankfulness without it ringing a bit hollow: it seems to me that thankfulness needs to be directed TO someone. For example, I am thankful to Jared for his work here and on YouTube. It would be weird to say that I am thankful - full-stop.
Anyway, that’s enough rambling. Thanks for your thoughts, Jared.
From Hobbes to the contemporary welfare state, we can think about the State not as providence on terms you exposed, but we can theorically conceptualize the State as a corporation or organization that transcends human lives and provides a minimum of security and well-being for the people. On a totally diferent perspective, if I am not mistaken, in The Road to Serfdom, Hayek wrote that free market will eventually lead us to a better place.
I also find it interesting that this perspective of providence is quite different from Maquivelli´s concept of fortune, although he was a great Latinist reader. For him, fortune is a whimsical force that can be tamed only by the virtues of individuals.
I love Ginzburg! Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Donatella. Perhaps Jared will respond but I find this very much in keeping with Marcus’s observations. “Not thrift but generosity; not caution but courage.” Very uplifting and inspiring. I think Marcus and the Stoics were all about: “Play your part in the bigger picture.” it’s the overall, general good of all that is the goal.
Yes, when thinking about writing my notebook one, speaking of my mother, I noticed I could easily follow many of the virtues with “but” statements that could address her shortcomings and how those also influenced me perhaps equally.
Thanks to Jared for a nice opportunity to reflect on gratitude and ultimately bring attention to the pervasiveness of negative thoughts that I think we will find to be very anti-stoic.
I would say that they still aren't virtues, in that we recognize them as defects of character, but that doesn't mean they can't be helpful for us. We learn in two main ways: by emulating those we admire and by avoiding the behavior of those we do not admire. So, another person's vices might be very useful for us as we are learning — but, unlike the virtues, it isn't good for that person to have that vice!
I think a notebook written without providence would be relying on strength of character in order to be good. That I believe in and of itself is a good thing. The belief that God or nature is there as a protection for or insurance that good will still be the conclusion for even difficult experiences in one's life, is an idea that strengthens people's convictions. Without this belief I believe the notebook would lose some of its impact for people.
The order of the writing is a biography of one's life told through influence. Starting with family and then expanding outwards with tutors, mentors, and philosophers. Ending with "gods and fortune" shows the thread that connected it all. It reminds me of a prayer of thanks.
One of the items that stood out for me was "for he was one who looked to what ought to be done, not to the reputation which a man gets by his acts." It made me think about how today I believe most people are concerned with how they are seen, not with what they have actually done. It has something to say about character and knowing yourself. To be comfortable with the fact of doing something,hopefully for the good, and not doing it for the acclaim.
I would like to offer a reflection on your first question - monhs late to the party!
As an atheist, I do believe in - and recently actively practice - gratefulness for what makes my life worth living, for what I have, for the people, conditions and experiences that made me who I am, for the good and the bad. The lack of an e(x)ternal, or transcendent if one likes, Providence only makes gratefulness more nuanced and moving, and ethics more strict in the search for cohesion. If there is no set rule, we have nowhere to hide behind when it comes to assume responsibility. If there is no God, we are the only ones who can do the job of loving each other. If there is no good and bad, we have a choice to make in how we define good and bad. It is a common misconception between believers that people who have an immanent - materialistic? - approach to reality are missing something, are blind in a sense to the life of the spirit. Funnily enough, there is the same tendency between materialists to pity people who mistake faith in transcendence for the only source of spiritual experience, blind to the beauty and joy of pure existence. I still remember, after a catholic upbringing, the shiver of recognition and relief I felt when I read the line "Religion is the opium of the people, the wail of a society oppressed and robbed of its spirituality". I felt seen, understood and loved. I still meditate on that line today.
I don't pity anymore religious people - understanding is more interesting than judgement and we are all looking for the same beauty - but I am still very surprised to find out that spirituality is often seen as the domain of faith. They are completely independent from each other. Meditating on the inherent beauty of life is to me much more powerful when that beauty, or a sense of justice, or sadness, or love, and my ability to appreciate them and share them, are flourishing on a substrate of billions of years of chaos and cold nonsense like a flower in the sand. Life is a koan zen.
I found this feeling of sadness and longing, of gratefulness and dejection, in Lucretius and Darwin. Both write great poetic works born from the tension between a longing for ultimate meaning, justice and love, and the total awareness of its absence from nature upon honest observation. What counts is that I am aware that our religious longing comes probably from an ingrained evolutionary tendency to look for and find patterns in the savannah, and in the same breath in which I say it I am also aware that good and bad, beauty and horror, love and hate have the exact same importance to me as before reaching that materialistic conclusion.
Of course I am grateful. I am grateful to all the other people who gave me knowledge, examples of virtue, possibilities; I am grateful to the universe, to the unfeeling cold nature for being this coldly majestic, to the shortcircuit between two atoms that made me aware of existence and able to share with other humans our constructs of love, beauty and justice. To my loving partner, to my friends. Ethics are a matter of logical propositions only in the Western thought, rich and fertile but limited by its own rationality. Humanity finds the link between gratefulness and immanence in the koans of zen practice and in the dreamt universe of the Australian cultures. "If the universe is not here to glorify the existence of humanity then all is lost and nothing makes sense" is the pre-teen tantrum of the Western civilisation. I sincerely hope we manage to outgrow it.
I respond to Jared’s first question: “Is it possible to write a notebook like Marcus’ if one does not believe in Providence?” Yes, absolutely. Isn’t that what Humanism is about,they we can lead a meaningful life if we’re guided by reason and empathy?
I'm interested to hear what it means that some people have virtues and others do not. I don't think that Marcus is saying that; I take it that the stoic position is that everyone possesses virtue/reason, which is what would ground respect for every person (Waterfield, p. 9), but some are misguided by their ignorance or when their beliefs do not reflect the actual world. I am not very familiar with any stoicism, but I remember in the Waterfield introduction, he references the "lynchpin of stoic philosophy: assent" (Waterfield, p. xlviii). With this term "assent" in mind, to assent to the right beliefs is germane to follow the first lesson of stoicism “we must know who we are in order to be good”. Knowing who we are, goodness, and enlightenment are all related to virtue – which, in the context of Marcus and Plato, are grounded in reason or Logos. Reason, Logos, and virtue are universal or natural, it is just a matter of whether we assent to our nature. So, if reason is natural to us, and reason is elemental to virtue, then it should follow that we naturally possess virtue. When we fail to assent to nature (by forming the wrong beliefs, for example), that’s when our minds become dissociated from reality, and we do not “know who we are” by nature.
I think this system offers good groundwork for why we ought to treat even the most ignorant with respect, but it doesn’t explain well why it is so difficult. If the stoic sage is the closest to human nature, then why doesn’t it come “naturally” to everyone? For Christians (and within countless other theories of human nature), being good is totally against our nature – we are naturally compelled to turn to vice, but to be virtuous is difficult. To do good is to go beyond our nature – but doesn’t this create an impossibility – if it is not our nature to do good, then is it be possible to do good? It is impossible to do things that are not permitted by nature or reality.
Which theory of human nature seems more believable? Both have conceptual difficulties, but I don’t think we are naturally virtuous or reasonable. And maybe I have misinterpreted Marcus and the stoics, and he would not say that we are naturally virtuous/reasonable either.
In the Hayes translation, Book 1 is subtitled “Debts and Lessons”. The gratitude Marcus has for each person (and Providence) is clear but Book 1 also reads like a checklist of important reminders on how to live life. The line from ‘Maximus’: “The sense he gave of staying on the path rather than being kept on it” strikes me as the theme of Marcus’ journal - constant reflections, reminders and repetitions of these lessons until, as Seneca says, the will to good becomes the disposition to good.
I to am fascinated by Marcus' perspective on the importance of education. I find that his notion that ones educators should be given public office, to be a kind of thanks for their careful sculpting of personality or- as Jared put them- virtues.
This is interesting timing for me: I have just preached on Philippians 3:1-11, and there are some striking similarities and differences to Marcus’ attitude here. In Philippians, Paul lists all of the things he has been given and has achieved, but then goes on to dismiss them as unworthy to be compared with the glory of knowing Christ. This is not to say that listing one’s blessings would be frowned on by someone like Paul, but the context matters.
I think that being grateful to God for my blessings is a very good thing to do; I am considering also writing my own list. And maybe that ordering from the mundane/familial to the divine is in fact the most appropriate ordering after all.
I can’t imagine how someone without some kind of faith in something bigger could express this kind of thankfulness without it ringing a bit hollow: it seems to me that thankfulness needs to be directed TO someone. For example, I am thankful to Jared for his work here and on YouTube. It would be weird to say that I am thankful - full-stop.
Anyway, that’s enough rambling. Thanks for your thoughts, Jared.
Part of what I will be thinking on the journey through this book is, “Is this compatible with Christianity?”
From Hobbes to the contemporary welfare state, we can think about the State not as providence on terms you exposed, but we can theorically conceptualize the State as a corporation or organization that transcends human lives and provides a minimum of security and well-being for the people. On a totally diferent perspective, if I am not mistaken, in The Road to Serfdom, Hayek wrote that free market will eventually lead us to a better place.
I also find it interesting that this perspective of providence is quite different from Maquivelli´s concept of fortune, although he was a great Latinist reader. For him, fortune is a whimsical force that can be tamed only by the virtues of individuals.
Thank for your notes,
Cheers.
I love Ginzburg! Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Donatella. Perhaps Jared will respond but I find this very much in keeping with Marcus’s observations. “Not thrift but generosity; not caution but courage.” Very uplifting and inspiring. I think Marcus and the Stoics were all about: “Play your part in the bigger picture.” it’s the overall, general good of all that is the goal.
Yes, when thinking about writing my notebook one, speaking of my mother, I noticed I could easily follow many of the virtues with “but” statements that could address her shortcomings and how those also influenced me perhaps equally.
Thanks to Jared for a nice opportunity to reflect on gratitude and ultimately bring attention to the pervasiveness of negative thoughts that I think we will find to be very anti-stoic.
I would say that they still aren't virtues, in that we recognize them as defects of character, but that doesn't mean they can't be helpful for us. We learn in two main ways: by emulating those we admire and by avoiding the behavior of those we do not admire. So, another person's vices might be very useful for us as we are learning — but, unlike the virtues, it isn't good for that person to have that vice!