We have reached the end

The final installment of the Meditations read-along is finally here.

This is the very last post in our series on the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. By the time this is published, a new tag should have been added to this post and all posts about the Meditations (#Meditations — check the navigation bar on the site). This should let you more easily find the posts if you ever want to go back and read them.

Restricting ourselves just to posts that were part of the read-along, and not posts reflecting on those themes, there were 22 posts about the Meditations. You can find them all at that link above. If you include other essays that loosely fit with the read-along posts, we had nearly 30. Not bad.

I want to highlight a few favorites. First, a more recent post: A Transgression Against Oneself, in which I try to explain the idea that doing wrong harms the wrong-doer (and thus makes behaving morally in our self-interest). Second, The First Lesson of Stoicism, the beginning of the series where I go over the role of gratitude for Stoics (and in which you can see me experimenting with format). And finally, Stand Straight, Not Straightened, on one of the more memorable lines of the Meditations.

Next week, we will begin reading the Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. Here is the tentative schedule:

• July 1: Introducing the work, Aristotle’s life, etc.

• July 8: Book I

• July 15: Book II

• July 22: Book III

• July 29: Book IV

• August 5: Book V

• August 12: Book VI

• August 19: Book VII

• August 26: Book VIII

• September 2: Book IX

• September 9: Book X

• September 16: Retrospective

We’ll likely take a a week or two off from the read-along posts before starting another book in October. I have no idea what book we’ll read next. I’ll likely ask for input from paid subscribers some time in late August or early September.

The goal is to be a little more analytical than we’ve been with the Meditations. I hope by having a published schedule for this read-along, you’ll be able to read it as well. I’ll also organize these readings with another tag, and that will be available on the site’s navigation bar as soon as the first one is published.

If you need a copy of the book, I highly recommend the Bartlett & Collins translation from the University of Chicago Press. After that, I recommend the Cambridge University Press edition translated by Roger Crisp. There are other options, and as long as you stick with a reputable publisher (Hackett, Penguin, Oxford, etc.) you will be fine.

Now that we are ending our read-through of the Meditations, I am feeling particularly introspective (and a tad bit nostalgic). I have come to know this book better than many books I know and love, and I have found that I both love this book and that I am ready to step away from it (and the Stoics) for awhile.

Marcus Aurelius is no doubt an inspiring figure. He is no doubt an eloquent writer, even rendered into English. He is thoughtful, careful, and apparently kind. He is also repetitive, sometimes dull, and an elliptical thinker, making it hard to follow his exact arguments. Indeed, he is a thinker who is not all that interested in making exact arguments. He is a man of action first.

I see why so many are drawn to him. If you want to build yourself a little empire, even the empire of your own mind, you might see him as a towering figure whom you could emulate. I see why he is able to draw such a diverse set of admirers: men and women, rich and poor, PhDs and autodidacts.

I am also ready to step away. The Stoics have taken up a good part of the last two years of my life, through this read-along, various YouTube videos, and my own reading. I’m ready to look for alternate perspectives on the issues of which the Stoics were so keenly aware: the life of the mind, the meaning of it all, the struggles of daily life.

And so it is fitting to read this near the end of Notebook 12:

What a tiny fraction of the infinite gulf of time has been allotted to each of us! It’s very quickly swallowed up by eternity. What a tiny fraction of the entirety of substance! What a tiny fraction of the entirety of soul! What a tiny clod of earth you crawl on, compared to the earth as a whole! Bear all this in mind and think nothing important except acting in compliance with your nature and being acted upon by whatever universal nature brings your way.

Of course the passage ends with a typical Stoic call to action: heed your own nature and the universal nature and do good.

The very final passage of the Meditations, which I have been eager to discuss since we began this read-along, reads as follows:

My friend, you were a citizen of this great city. Does it really matter to you whether it was for five years or a hundred? The laws of the city apply equally to all. What is there to fear, then, since it’s not a tyrant or a corrupt judge who’s banishing you from the city, but the same nature that brought you into it in the first place? It’s as though a praetor, after engaging an actor for a comedy, were to dismiss him mid-show. “But I haven’t played all five acts, only three!” Quite so, but in life the play might be over after three acts. The ending is decided by the one who was formerly responsible for your constitution and is now responsible for your disintegration. You have no responsibility for either. Go serenely, then, matching the serenity of the god who is dismissing you.

These passages have some important commonalities, and it is fitting that both would be at the end of the final notebook of the Meditations. Both passages are meditations on the inevitability of fate, the shortness of life, the ways in which our best plans and our expectations can be thwarted. At the end of the first, we are reminded to be good — that is what is under our control. At the end of the second, we are reminded to find inner peace — again, a matter of our control.

It is interesting to contrast Marcus’ view here with what we find in Seneca’s “On the Shortness of Life.” For Seneca, life is not short (for most of us). The problem is that we do not actually spend our time living. Instead, we just exist. Our gray hairs are a testament to the passing of time, not to a life of activity or achievement. Seneca’s essay is thus an exhortation to go and live. Marcus does not have this ‘make the most of it’ message. Instead, his advice is internal: control yourself and accept fate.

Perhaps this reflects a fundamental difference in ways of looking at the world. Marcus tends toward the fatalistic: the world will go as it ought to go, our wills be damned. Seneca seems more optimistic about the human condition and our ability to change the world: just go and really live, and you will be shocked at what you can accomplish.

I’d be curious where my readers land on this issue.

So we are now done with the Meditations. I know I will return to this book again, but I don’t know when.

I find myself pulled in many directions. I admire the Stoics more than ever; reading them has changed the way I think; I have become significantly more appreciative of their systematic approach to philosophy, in a way that runs counter to my unsystematic education in the subject.

Yet, I think it is time to let the Stoics lie for a time. We’ll move on, together, to Aristotle. I’ll read more Germans as I’ve been meaning to. I’ll look at philosophies which prioritize the cultural and social over the individual. Then maybe it will be time to return.