Week Eleven: Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus

I am not a Stoic. Just want to get that out of the way up front. This week’s reading of the Latin Stoics, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, was rewarding and I wish (as usual) that I’d read this forty years ago. But Stoicism as a way to orient my life? Not for me.

After the amazing week of Greek dramas in Week Ten, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that I struggled this week. That seems to be a pattern for me, maybe one I will go back and look at more closely. Also, you may have noticed that I’m a week late with this set of readings. A rough translation combined with a lot of travel made it a real challenge to get through this reading in a timely manner. Okay, okay, but what about the actual books themselves?

Ted Gioia’s Humanities List jumped from mid-5th century Greek drama last week to 2nd century Roman Stoics this week. Part of my ground rules for myself is to read the introductions to books AFTER I read the books themselves, if at all, so I came to these with no information about the Greek Stoic school (like Diogenes) or really any history at all. Partway through this reading week I did brush up on a little history. All that to say, a LOT must have happened in those intervening 600 years: the fall of the Greeks, the rise of the Persians, then the Romans, and Christianity. I still am not talking about the books yet!

Marcus Aurelius was an emperor of Rome. His Meditations were his journal, although (according to a tiny bit of reading that I did) they weren’t meant for outside consumption, and they weren’t really referenced a lot until about the 10th century. I read this book first.

The second, and much shorter, book was by Epictetus, a slave and aid to the proconsul of Emperor Nero. In other words, he was low status but had a front-row seat to power. He went on to gain his freedom and become a teacher of philosophy in Greece, around 100 A.D. His teachings, like Socrates’, weren’t written down by him but were captured by a student. The Enchiridion (“Handbook”) was one of several books of Epictetus’ writings, and definitely something that influenced Marcus Aurelius. I think I would have liked to know that Epictetus preceded Marcus Aurelius, but it’s too late now.

Summarizing either of these books was very difficult, because they are both consist of teachings of a few sentences to a few paragraphs, unrelated to each other as you go through the book. While they are both books of Stoic thought, they seem to approach life from different points of view, hardly a shock since MA was an emperor and Epictetus was a servant and teacher.

First, a few thoughts on Meditations specifically:

• Keep the focus on yourself, not others. Not what they are doing, or thinking, or thinking of you. Your goal is to develop your own skills and mind.

• Cultivating an appreciation for the world around you, especially nature, will develop in you an interest in everything around you. In other words, in order to find the world interesting, start looking.

• Life is brief, and you are small. (Imagine this self-talk from a Roman emperor!) Find comfort in the smallness and the brevity. Act virtuously throughout your life, though, and expect no rewards for it.

• Cultivate an inner peace because that is the only place you can actually “get away from it all.” Don’t look to a vacation house or another change of scenery to solve your problems. (Seriously, advice about a place at the shore from a 2nd century writer. The more things change…)

• If you can hold the pleasures of this life loosely, and be content in the face of the things fate deals to you, and find fulfillment in the things you are doing right this moment, then you can be happy. Honestly, Rudyard Kipling said this so beautifully in his poem If, and I highly commend that to you for a less prosaic way to look at Stoicism.

The Enchiridion, by contrast, is much shorter. To be honest, I truly wish I’d started here; there’s something about Epictetus’ style that is more direct, more honest, and just easier to take. A couple of thoughts:

• Understand effects and to what category they belong. A condition or event that harms the body only harms to body, not the will. Interestingly, he calls out lameness as a specific condition that doesn’t harm the will but only the body. Epictetus was either lame from childhood or had his leg broken (by his master!) so that teaching takes on special poignancy. The guy knows what he is talking about.

• Take care to study how things relate to each other and what their limits are. Likewise, study your own limits and know them. Then operate within those limits but FULLY within those limits.

• Figure our “your thing.” Then do it fully, body and soul. Doing something partway is just childish and you are merely playing at doing that thing. This is similar but not identical to a teaching in the Bible: “Whatever you do, do with your whole heart, to the glory of God.” (Colossians 3:17) There is, in fact, an entire school of Christian Stoic thought. That’s a very big rabbit hole that I have made a note of as part of my future reading.

• Don’t talk to much, or laugh too much, or worry about nice meals too much. I’m pretty sure that Epictetus was not a ton of fun at parties.

An overarching theme of Stoicism is to accept what the natural order of things is, and where you fit into it. Then take your place and occupy it fully. Expect nothing, and be content with your position.

And so I suppose that brings me to my initial statement, “I am not a Stoic.” Holding things so loosely that their loss doesn’t affect you also means, to me, a loss of attachment that precludes deep and abiding love. True grief as a result of losing someone comes about as a result of a deep love. While our Stoic friends seem to see this detachment as an advantage, to me it seems you miss out on life. And while Stoicism isn’t the same as materialism, there doesn’t seem to be much room for beauty, either. And, honestly, any philosophy whose advice includes not laughing very much really isn’t for me.

Additionally, MA’s Stoicism in particular seems to come with some internal contradictions. Why is it, in fact, necessary to lead a virtuous life when you also believe life is futile and we are all unimportant? Why not just get what you can, live it up, because it will all be over soon enough? He never approaches that question, much less tries to answer it. Second, he has a real difference in his opinions of himself and others. He holds himself to an extremely high standard while advising quick forgiveness of others because they can’t help themselves.

There is a lot of great advice here, though, and many great figures have gotten enormous good from these writings. As a matter of fact, I was introduced to Stoicism the first time through my oldest son. James Stockdale, an admiral in the Navy, was a POW in Vietnam for several years. He credited his personal philosophy grounded in Stoicism with his survival, and he wrote a book that is required reading for all Navy ROTC students. It’s a short read and a good addition to this week’s reading.

Finally, I fell prey YET AGAIN to the translation problem. I purchased a “pretty” copy of Meditations that turned out to be the off-copyright translation (1877) from George Long. It is arcane, and I can’t recommend it at all. Halfway through my reading, I found a much more recent translation of Meditations from Gregory Hays. It’s quite readable and the introduction is excellent. I’ve changed the link on my Amazon list to reflect this recommendation. I also read Long’s translation of The Enchiridion and found it to be more approachable. That made me wonder if it weren’t possible that MA’s writing style was less approachable as well.

I find myself wishing that I had time to compare translations, but that will wait. I do think I need to do a little more research going forward as I try to find the most readable translation of future works. “Most readable” is almost never the same as “accurate” or “reliable,” and I am fine with that.

The music this week was three of Haydn’s symphonies, 45, 94 and 104. I’m frankly loving the classical music. For some reason, in the last five-eight years I have completely quit listening to classical music at all and it’s been a real delight to come back. Here’s a link to no. 94, the “Surprise” Symphony:

I frankly bailed on the art this week. That is usually the piece that gets left behind, and this week was no exception. Maybe next week.

Ah! Next week we are back to some history with Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars. I have been looking forward to this since I read Herodotus back in Week Six. Another gossipy historian! The music will be very fun to compare to this week, Mozart’s Symphonies 39, 40, and 41. Art, should I get to it, it Botticielli and Caravaggio. Lush Italian art? I am going to do my level best. (As always, here is my Amazon list.)

Finally, I want to ponder my difficulties in getting the reading done in a timely manner. These two books really weren’t that long. When I started this project, though, I committed to myself to read the books, not listen to them, and to read them in hard copy if at all possible. I can’t read in the car and we did 17 hours of driving last weekend, and this week we are sailing in the Virgin Islands. (As I’m typing this we just set sail. I’m rushing to finish so I can put this away…I can feel my stomach objecting already.) Neither one of those is conducive to reading. I am definitely minimizing the amount of time I think these works take to read, and so I’m not building in the time to get the reading done.

Aside from not carving out enough reading time, I need to develop a better way to read these non-narrative books. I’ve struggled with Analects, parts of the Bible, the Dhammapada, and now these books. They all have in common that they are books of sayings and short thoughts, unlike the narratives like last week or even the philosophy of Aristotle. While I struggled with Aristotle, it was dense and required just slowing down a lot. Maybe a different reading schedule for this type of book, a half-hour at a time, would work better for weeks like this?

So many different things to ponder this week. Have you read any of the Stoics? What do you think the best way to approach this type of writing is?