The second century CE Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius was also a Stoicphilosopher, and hisMeditations, written to and for himself,offers readers a unique opportunity to see how an ancient person(indeed an emperor) might try to live a Stoic life, according to whichonly virtue is good, only vice is bad, and the things about which wenormally concern ourselves are all indifferent to our happiness, asour lives are not made good or bad by our having or lacking them. Thedifficulties Marcus faces putting Stoicism into practice arephilosophical as well as practical, and understanding his effortsimproves our philosophical appreciation of Stoicism.

• 1. Life and Works
  • 1.1 The Character of theMeditations
• 2.Living Stoically
  • 2.1 The Deliberative Content Problem: The Good, The Bad, and the Indifferent
• 3. Justice: Acting for the Sake of the Cosmopolis
• 4. Piety: Welcoming What Happens as Part of the Whole
  • 4.1 Providence or Atoms?
  • 4.2 Erase Impressions
• 5. Conclusion
• Bibliography
  • Primary Literature
  • Secondary Literature
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Life and Works

Born in 121 CE and educated extensively in rhetoric and philosophy,Marcus Aurelius succeeded his adoptive father Antoninus Pius asEmperor of Rome in 161 CE and reigned until his death in 180. Hisreign was troubled by attacks from Germany, rebellions in northernItaly and Egypt, and an outburst of the plague; at least part of thework for which he is famous, theMeditations, was writtenduring the last years of his military campaigns. Aside from theMeditations Marcus’ extant writings include someedicts, official letters, and private correspondence, including alengthy correspondence with his rhetoric teacher and lifelong friend, Fronto.^[1] The private correspondence began before Marcus was twenty andcontinued into his imperial years. It includes what seem to berhetorical exercises (for example, pieces in praise of sleep, andsmoke and dust) written when Marcus was still in his 20s, an exchangeabout the value or disvalue of rhetoric to philosophy written soonafter Marcus became Emperor, and throughout, personal communications,frequently concerning illnesses, births, and deaths in his ownfamily.

Marcus’ chief philosophical influence was Stoic: in Book I oftheMeditations, he records his gratitude to his Stoicteachers Rusticus, Apollonius, Sextus for their examples and teachings(I.7–9); although he was clearly familiar with the writings ofthe great 3rd c. BCE scholarch of Stoicism Chrysippus (VI.42), theStoic whose writings he singles out for mention here is Epictetus(1st-2nd c. CE). In a letter to Fronto written between 145 and 147 hereports that on reading the 3rd c. BCE Greek Stoic Aristo of Chios hefelt both intense joy and shame at his own shortcomings, and realizedthat he would never again argue opposite sides of the same question asrequired by rhetorical practice. The primacy of Stoic influence (forwhich see Sellars 2021) notwithstanding, Marcus also approvinglyquotes Epicurus on ethical matters (as the Roman statesman and StoicSeneca also had) alongside Antisthenes, Democritus, Euripides,Heraclitus, Homer, and Plato. From Book I of theMeditationswe also learn that Marcus’ political heroes included republicanopponents of kingship: he thanks his adoptive brother Severus not onlyfor exemplifying the love of justice and the vision of a constitutionbased on equality before the law, but also for the knowledge of Brutus(assassin of Julius Caesar), Cato, Dion (probably of Prusa), (Publius)Thrasea, and Helvidius (i.14). Consonant with this, he warns himselfto see to it that he does not become ‘Caesarified’ (thatis, a dictator, vi.30).

1.1 The Character of theMeditations

Marcus’Meditations (the title due to the modern editorCasaubon) reads very differently from other ancient Greek and Romanphilosophical texts. Outside of Book I, which acknowledges variousrelatives and teachers for benefiting Marcus by being exemplars ofsome virtue or bearers of some useful lesson (and concludes byacknowledging the gods for providing him with such exemplars and withother circumstances conducive to his moral development), even theorganization of the work is difficult to make out, for instancewhether the order of the books and chapters is evidence of the orderof events in Marcus’ life or follows some logical or topicalorder, or whether the chapter divisions reflect breaks inMarcus’ thought. Marcus returns insistently to issues that musthave arisen from his experiences, such as the imminence of death andhis irritation with his associates’ faults. Our own perennialconcern with these topics, Marcus’ gift for vivid imagery, andthe apparent extractability of individual sentences from the textgiven its lack of clear structure, have all contributed to makingMarcus among the most quotable of philosophers. But the reader whowants to understand Marcus’ thought as a whole is bound to befrustrated; sometimes reading Marcus feels like reading thesententiae-spoofing lines given toHamlet’sPolonius. Philosophical treatments of Marcus have to bring their ownstructure to the work.

We may begin with the work’s genre. Hadot & Luna (1998,XII–XXV) have argued that it was not known in antiquity, theearliest references to it being Byzantine: in 900, Suidas’dictionary calls it a leading or directing(agôgê) and the 10th-century bishop Arethas callsit ‘the [writings] to himself’ (taeisheauton).^[2] Scholars now generally agree (following Brunt 1974) that Marcus wrotefor his own moral improvement, to remind himself of and renderconcrete the Stoic doctrines he wanted to live by, such as that theworld is governed by Providence; that happiness lies in virtue, whichis wholly in one’s own power; and that one should not be angryat one’s associates but regard them as siblings, offspring ofthe same God. While we do not have other examples of this kind ofprivate writing from antiquity, we do have Epictetus’ advice towrite down (as well as to rehearse) daily the sorts of responses oneought to have to situations one encounters, so that one might havethem ready at hand (procheiron) when circumstances demand(EpictetusDiscourses i.1.21–25, iv.1.111; cf.iii.5.11, iii.26.39 on moral improvement being the appropriate aim ofreading and writing). And Marcus describes his own writings assupports (parastêmata, iii.11), records(parapêgmata, ix.3.2) and rules (kanones,v.22, x.2).

Marcus’ goal of mentally equipping himself to deal with whatcomes his way explains theMeditations’ oftenaphoristic and sloganeering style (e.g. ‘Eraseimpressions!’; ‘Do nothing at random!’; ‘Thosewho now bury will soon be buried!’): as Marcus says, for the onewho has been bitten by true doctrines even the briefest sayingsuffices as a reminder (hupomnêsis) of freedom frompain and fear (x.34). In i.7, Marcus speaks of readingEpictetus’ ‘hupomnêmata’; Arrian, whowrote down Epictetus’ teachings, named themhupomnêmata, apparently in reference toXenophon’sMemorabilia (Greek title:‘hupomnêmata’) of Socrates. Marcus’purpose also explains why when Marcus refers to events in his life, hedoes not specify them in a way that would allow anyone else toidentify them, and why he uses technical Stoic terminology without explanation.^[3] Marcus’ purpose also makes sense of his collecting sayings ofphilosophers without much scruple as to whether the philosophicalsystem from which the sayings come is consistent with Stoicism.Finally, this purpose suggests that the reader should look for thepersonal faults that Marcus is trying to combat, or the correctattitude he is trying to inculcate, when he brings up some doctrine orargument, whether Stoic or not. So for example, xi.18, which begins bysaying that human beings came into the world for the sake of eachother and that the metaphysical alternatives are atoms or Nature (seebelow, 4.1), is a list of ten prescriptions against anger, aparticularly consequential failing in the powerful (cf. ix.42). Again,ix.28 invokes the Stoic doctrine of eternal recurrence to bring tomind the insignificance of mortal things. This suggests that despitethe quotability of individual assertions in theMeditations,we should approach them by studying their ‘therapeutic’context, that is, by asking: what moral and psychological effects isMarcus trying to achieve by saying this? When Marcus says‘p’, he is not always simply expressing his belief thatp.

Building on this point about the genre of theMeditations andseeking to establish its particular philosophical content, Hadot 1998organizes Marcus’ thoughts around the Epictetan disciplines of(i) desire, (ii) impulse and (iii) assent; according to Hadot, theseappear in Marcus as the rules of (i) being contented with whateverhappens, (ii) conducting oneself justly towards others, and (iii)exercising discernment in one’s judgments (35–36).^[4] By contrast Gill 2013 identifies four recurring ‘strands’in Marcus: (i) aspiration to an ethical ideal conceived in Stoic termsas the understanding that only virtue is good and that all humanbeings are akin, which involves (ii) acceptance of death andtransience as features of our existence that are not up to us; both(i) and (ii) are enabled by (iii) our rationality and (iv) oursociality, two aspects of human nature that make us a special part ofthe whole cosmos; according to Gill, Marcus assumes the Stoic theoryof the ethical development of (iii) and (iv) by appropriation(oikeiôsis) and focuses on its last stage, which is thebringing about of (i) by self-cultivation.

The approach taken in this article follows Hadot’s (1998, 5)idea that for the ancients philosophy was a way of life, and thatMarcus’Meditations show us what it was like for anindividual to try to live a Stoic life. However, rather than trying tocover all the themes in Marcus in this light—in addition to thetopics discussed below, he talks about time, fate, death, the cyclesof change in the cosmos—I focus on one basic question forMarcus’ project of living Stoically: what does a Stoic use toguide his own conduct? Addressing this basic question leads intodiscussion of the two virtues Marcus has the most to say about:justice and piety.

2. Living Stoically

Although he acknowledges that he struggles to live as a philosopher,Marcus urges himself to that life:

…you are no longer able to have lived your whole life as aphilosopher since youth; and it is clear to many others and to youyourself that you are far from philosophy. So you are confused: theresult is that obtaining the reputation of a philosopher is no longereasy for you … If you have seen truly where the matter lies,then leave behind your reputation and be content even if you live theremainder of life, however long [it may be], as your nature wills.Consider what it wills, and let nothing else distract you. For yourexperience tells you how much you have strayed: nowhere in so-calledreasonings, wealth, reputation, enjoyment, nowhere do you find livingwell. So where is it?In doing those things which human natureseeks. And how will one do these things? If one has doctrines fromwhich [flow] one’s impulses and actions. Which doctrines? Thoseconcerning goods and evils: that nothing is good for a human beingwhich does not make them just, temperate, courageous, free; thatnothing is bad, which does not make them the contraries of theaforementioned. (viii.1, emphasis mine)

In saying that living well lies in doing what his nature seeks, Marcusis echoing generations of Stoic philosophers. After Zeno, founder ofthe Stoa, lays down the goal (telos) as ‘living inagreement’, Cleanthes specifies ‘living in agreement withnature’; Chrysippus, ‘living according to the experienceof what happens by nature’; Diogenes, ‘being reasonable inthe selection and rejection of what is according to nature’;Archedemus, ‘living completing all appropriate actions’;Antipater, ‘living continually selecting what is according tonature and rejecting what is contrary to nature’ (Arius Didymus6a). These formulae indicate that the goal is to act in accordancewith nature, and to be in a certain cognitive state in relation toone’s acts according to nature: in agreement, on the basis ofexperience, being reasonable, continually (dienekôs,i.e. consistently, stably?), all of which imply understanding.

But how is a Stoic to put this into practice? What is it to do whatone’s nature seeks, in the particular circumstances in which onefinds oneself? Surely it does not mean doing whatever is one’sstrongest desire to do in the moment.

In the passage quoted, Marcus explains how one might do what is inone’s nature by saying that one must modify one’s beliefsabout good and bad, as these inform one’s impulses and actions.He says, for example, that if we believe that pleasure is good andpain evil, then we will be resentful of the pleasures enjoyed by thevicious and the pains suffered by the virtuous. And if we areresentful of what happens, we will be finding fault with nature and sowill be impious (ix.3). But while false beliefs about good and badhinder us from following nature and acting virtuously, how can theirremoval by itself enable us to follow nature and act virtuously? OnceI know that pleasure and pain are neither good nor evil but areindifferent for my happiness, I still need to know how I shouldrespond to this pleasure and that pain, in order to be followingnature. The first century Stoic philosopher Seneca argues in hisLetters to Lucilius for the usefulness of concrete advice forcertain types of situations (praecepta) on the grounds thathaving eliminated vice and false opinion, one will not yet know whatto do and how to do it (94.23), for inexperience (and not onlypassion) prevents us from knowing what to do in each situation(94.32); Seneca also says that nature does not teach us what theappropriate action is in every case (94.19). Perhaps Marcus thinksthat there is, in every choice situation, something one can do that isproductive of virtue (he says, ‘nothing is good for a humanbeing which does notmake him just, temperate, courageous,free’; on the other hand, ‘make’ may have the senseof constituting rather than producing, in which case the reference tothe virtues in the passage isn’t action-guiding at all).Alternatively, he may think that what produces virtue is not thecontent of one’s action, but the thoughts that go along with it.But what thoughts are these? Surely, if virtue is to have any content,thinking ‘only virtue is good’ is not going to besufficient.

2.1 The Deliberative Content Problem: The Good, The Bad, and the Indifferent

To appreciate Marcus’s distinctive contribution to the questionof how to live as a Stoic, it will be useful to begin with abackground in early Stoic ethics. Stoicism teaches that virtue is theonly good for oneself, that vice is the only evil, and that everythingelse is indifferent so far as one’s happiness is concerned. Thatis to say, only virtue can contribute to our happiness; only vice cancontribute to our unhappiness. Poverty, ill-repute, and ill-health arenot bad, for their possession does not make us unhappy; wealth, fameand good are not good because their possession does not make us happy.If one asks, ‘how shall I act? On what can I base my choicesbetween health and sickness, wealth and poverty, so that my choicesare rational and not arbitrary?’, then the textbook Stoic answeris that among indifferents some are to be preferred as being inaccordance with nature (Diogenes Laertius vii.101–5; AriusDidymus 7a–b, Epictetus ii.6.9 [for these passages see Long andSedley 1987, section 58]). So whereas it is absolutely indifferent howmany hairs one has on one’s head or whether the number of starsin the sky is even or odd, we do, and in most cases should, prefer andselect wealth, fame and good health over poverty, ill-repute andsickness, because these are (in most cases) in accordance with nature.Cicero gives one reason why there must be value-differences amongindifferents: if everything aside from virtue and vice were absolutelyindifferent, the perfected rationality of the Stoic wise person wouldhave no function to carry out (On Ends iii.50).Wisdom’s exercise would consist in flipping coins to select oneindifferent over another.

When we select what is according to nature and reject what is contraryto nature, our action is appropriate (kathêkon; forMarcus’ use of this term, see i.2, iii.1.2, iii.16.2, vi.22,vi.26.3), and an appropriate action is an action for which there is areasonable (eulogon) justification. An appropriate actioncounts as a morally perfect or virtuous action(katorthôma) when it is done from understanding, i.e.,from the wise and stable cognitive state possessed only by the fullyvirtuous person (Arius Didymus 8). Although the talk of theappropriate action having a reasonable justification might suggestthat more than one action could be appropriate for a situation, orthat what is appropriate could be relativized to the ordinaryperson’s grasp of the situation (as some utilitarians considerthat action right which maximizes expected rather than actualutility), so that ‘reasonable justification’ would be likethe law’s ‘reasonable doubt’ or ‘reasonableperson’, the Stoics’ use of ‘reasonable’ inother contexts, such as the definition of the good emotions(eupatheiai) (Diogenes Laertius vii.116), the end (AriusDidymus 6a), and the virtues of reasoning and rhetoric (SVF iii.264,268; 291, 294), clearly takes the standard of reasonableness to be theright reason of the fully virtuous person. This points to there beingonly one appropriate action per situation, a conclusion which isconfirmed by Chrysippus’ claim that the fully virtuous personperforms all appropriate actions and leaves no appropriate actionunperformed (iii.510). (This discussion of the‘reasonable’ and appropriate action follows Brennan 1996,326–29.)

The appropriate action, for which there is a reasonable justification,is not in all cases the one that obtains or pursues the preferredindifferents for the agent. According to our evidence, while it is ournature to preserve our bodily constitution (Diogenes Laertiusvii.85–86), there are situations in which we ought to give upour lives (CiceroOn Duties iii.89–115,OnEnds iii.60), for example, to save our country (for discussion ofthis issue, see Barney 2003 and Brennan 2005). Further, Chrysippussays that if he knew he was fated to be ill, then he would have animpulse towards illness, but lacking this knowledge he should selectthe things that are well-adapted (tôneuphuesterôn) to obtaining what is in accordance withnature (EpictetusDiscourses ii.6.9). This seems to suggestthat in the absence of knowledge that one is fated to be ill, oneshould select health, but either this selection is not guaranteed tobe in accordance with nature or to result in an appropriate action, ora selection (e.g. the selection of health) can be in accordance withnature even though what it aims at (e.g. obtaining or enjoyinghealth), is not. So perhaps knowing the preferred indifferents guidesactions only in the way that Ross’s identification ofprimafacie duties is supposed to help with moral decision-making,namely, by making certain considerations salient to deliberation (forthis picture, see Vogt 2008, 173–178), but the account is silentabout how to weigh indifferents against each other in a particularsituation. Alternatively, it has been argued that something’sbeing according to nature gives the agent only epistemic reasons forselection rather than practical reasons responsive to some intrinsicvalue of the indifferents (for this view see Klein 2015).

We might wonder why anything should be called according to nature, orpreferred, if there are circumstances in which it is not. Why notreserve the label ‘according to nature’ for what is fated?The heterodox Stoic Aristo of Chios denied that any indifferents wereto be preferred by nature, pointing out that the same thing could bepreferred in one circumstance and dispreferred in another (SextusEmpiricus,Against the Professors 11.64–7). However,orthodox Stoics seem to insist that accordance with nature, and hencepreferability, is an intrinsic character of some things, and DiogenesLaertius reports a distinction between appropriate actions that do notdepend on circumstances, such as looking after one’s health andsense-organs, and appropriate actions that are appropriate only incertain circumstances, such as mutilating oneself (Diogenes Laertiusvii.108–9). So it is not true of all, but only some, appropriateactions that their appropriateness is circumstantial. Perhaps the ideais that while it is only true for the most part that health (orstrength or well functioning sense organs) is in accordance withnature, this does not mean that the naturalness of health (strength,well functioning sense organs) depends on the circumstances. On thisview, what health is for a species is defined by the species’nature, and that is unconditionally according to its nature.

The fact that our sources understand what is according to nature bothin terms of cosmic nature or what is fated, and in terms of theindividual natures out of which the nature of the cosmos is built up(a focus of Gill 2022), raises the question of conflict, for instancewhen my health, which is in accordance with my nature, is not fated,or in accordance with cosmic nature. Such conflict can be avoided forhuman beings by appeal to our rational nature, on the one hand, andprovidential cosmic nature, on the other: our rational capacity, whichis a fragment of divine reason, enables us to understand and will whatis according to cosmic nature because the latter is best for thewhole. On the specific question of why we ought to prefer, as inaccordance with nature, the interest of the community to our own,Brennan 2005 appeals to the Stoic doctrine ofoikeiôsis: we have a natural tendency to care forothers, at first our family and friends and ultimately ourfellow-citizens and fellow-humans (154–59). We may wonder howthis impulse could be strong enough to overcome self-interest;however, Brennan observes that the Stoic’s realization thatindifferents do not contribute to happiness weakens one barrier toimpartial deliberation: if indifferents were good, the Stoic wouldwant them for herself; since they are not good, she deliberates abouthow to distribute them as justice demands (164–65). Sinceconsiderations of virtue cannot (on pain of circularity) enter intoher deliberations, what gives ‘justice’s demands’content (at least in Cicero, and Cicero attributes similar views toChrysippus) are considerations of the community’s utility andrespect for property-rights (206–26). These indifferents are tobe preferred as more in accordance with nature than, for example,one’s individual utility.

As we shall see, Marcus’ way of addressing the deliberativecontent problem is in one respect like Cicero’s: thecharacterization of right conduct comes from ideas about what justicedemands, and the content of justice comes from outside Stoic ethicsproper. In Marcus’ case, it comes from the idea that the cosmosis a city and that all rational beings are fellow-citizens of thiscity. The role of citizen brings with it certain conventionalexpectations of conduct which Marcus transfers to citizenship of thecosmopolis.

3. Justice: Acting for the Sake of the Cosmopolis

Marcus says that one should be concerned with two things only: actingjustly and loving what is allotted one (x.11, cf. xii.1). He fleshesout ‘acting justly’ in terms of acting communally (ix.31),and adds that wherever one lives, one should live as a citizen of thecosmic city (x.15). Appeal to the idea that the cosmos is a cityallows him to say that we should do well for all humanity (viii.23),for we each have a citizen’s duty to contribute to the welfareof the whole cosmopolis, i.e., to the welfare of all humans as ourfellow-citizens. Conversely, anyone who does not contribute to thecommunal goal (to koinônikon telos) is actingseditiously (ix.23); one may not hate even one man, for this rends thecommunity (xi.8).

Strikingly, Marcus seems to specify this communal goal in terms ofindifferents rather than virtue, with the result that one should aimto bring about preferred indifferents for the whole of which one is apart. When he explains that that whatever happens to a part benefitsthe whole, and that what is advantageous (to sumpheron) toone person does not conflict with what is advantageous to another,Marcus writes that by ‘interest’ he means intermediatethings (tônmesôn) (vi.45). Presumablyhe takes this to follow from the coincidence of what is in accordancewith nature for the whole and the part. Even though food is not a goodand hunger not an evil, a Stoic will respond to a hungry person withfood, rather than (only) a lecture that food is not a good and hungernot an evil. (Of course, one’s efforts to give food to thehungry, or to benefit the hungry by giving them food, may fail, soMarcus recommends pursuing such ends with reservation(hupexairesis), making one’s impulses conditional onwhat is fated to happen (iv.1, v.20, vi.50).)

This response is likely grounded in our natural concern(oikeiôsis), which at its most fundamental isresponsible for parents’ caring for their children (DiogenesLaertius vii.85), and Marcus tells himself to regard other humanbeings as most his own (oikeiotaton) when thinking how tobenefit them and how not to obstruct their plans (v.20). Marcus saysthat the rational nature does well when it directs impulses(hormai) to communal action (viii.7). We must do what followsfrom our constitution, and the communal faculty (tokoinônikon) plays the leading part in the humanconstitution (vii.55). After the communal faculty comes the rationalfaculty (vii.55), but again, the rational faculty is perfected injustice (ix.22). As a human being, one is able to contribute to theperfection (sumplêrôtikos) of the whole politicalorganization; Marcus urges himself to make his every action perfectiveof political life (ix.23). Sometimes Marcus goes so far as to identifythe good (agathon) of a rational creature with community(v.16).

Finally, Marcus simply denies that there is ever any conflict betweenthe good of the individual and the good of the whole community ofwhich that individual is a part. He says, on the one side, that theperfection, well-being, and stability of the whole depends on whathappens to each part (v.8). And on the other side, he says that whatthe nature of the whole brings about is good (agathon) foreach part (ii.3), and that what is not hurtful to the city can’tbe hurtful to its citizen (v.22). He compares the relationship betweenseparate rational individuals and the community to limbs and body,which are so constituted as to work together (vii.13). The comparisonbetween the citizen-city relationship and the limb-body relationshipgoes back to Plato’sRepublic (462b–d), accordingto which in the ideal city, harm to one citizen or part of the city isfelt as harm to the rest of the citizens or the city as a whole. WhilePlato uses the limb-body analogy to emphasize the unity of feeling theideal city achieves, Marcus uses it to emphasize that the citizen is afunctional part of the whole city: just as this material making up alimb would not be a limb at all without the body of which it is apart, so too, this human individual would not be what they are withouta city of which they are a part (Marcus must mean the cosmic city).One might object that there is more to being a human being than beinga citizen (Striker 1996, 259), but perhaps Marcus is not merely sayingthat the cosmos is like a city and we are like its citizens; perhapshe is saying that the cosmos actually is a city and human beingsactually are its citizens, so that what it is to be human is exhaustedby citizenship of the cosmos.

Marcus’ claims about the harmony between the welfare oradvantage of wholes and parts are also central to his conception ofpiety.

4. Piety: Welcoming What Happens as Part of the Whole

Marcus writes,

Every nature is satisfied with itself when it goes along its way well,and the rational nature goes along its way well when it assents tonothing false or unclear among its impressions, when it directsimpulses to communal actions, when it generates desires andinclinations for only those things that are in our power, and when itwelcomes everything apportioned to it by common nature. (viii.7)

The last of these four behaviors is productive of piety. The key ideain piety is that the cosmos as a whole is providentially designed, andso is as good as it can be, and so its parts are as good as they canbe, and so our attitude towards every part ought to beacceptance—or as he sometimes puts it more strongly, love.According to Hadot (1998, 128), Marcus follows Epictetus indistinguishing impulse (hormê) from desire(orexis), and innovates by restricting impulse to the sphereof our activity. Desire, parallel to impulse, is restricted to thesphere of our passivity; thus, we should desire whatever befalls us.Hadot is mistaken here, for according to the Stoics, our reactions towhat befalls us are also impulses, and desire is a species of impulse.Marcus says either to restrict desire to what is up to us (ix.7) or toquench (sbêsai) it. Epictetus tells us to refrain fromdesire for the time being (iii.24.23, 24, 85). The reasons to quenchdesire are (i) the danger of desiring the wrong thing—to desiresomething is to believe it to be good, and to have an impulse towardsit—and (ii) being unable to fulfill the desire—so thebeginner should even suspend the desire for virtue in the present.This also gives us an argument against desiring the things that befallone. We might note that Marcus, in the passage above, recommends notdesiring but welcoming (aspazomenê) whatever befallsone. It seems that we should associate desire (orexis) withpursuing, and welcoming with contentment upon receiving.

We can use our understanding of piety as appreciation of providence toilluminate two slogans frequently found in Marcus: ‘providenceor atoms?’ and ‘erase impressions’.

4.1 Providence or Atoms?

Nine times in theMeditations, Marcus lays out thealternatives: providence, nature, reason, on the one hand, or atoms,on the other (iv.3, vi.24, vii.32, vii.50, viii.17, ix.28, xi.39, x.6,xi.18). (On these passages, see Cooper 2004.^[5]) Although he does not explain, the reference is clear enough: eitherthe world and what happens is the design of a providential God, asbelieved by the Stoics (and Platonists), or the outcome of atomscolliding randomly in the void, as believed by the Epicureans. What isnot obvious is why Marcus is laying out these alternatives. Is itbecause his grasp of Stoic physics is so tenuous that he must be opento the possibility that Epicurean physics is true (Rist 1982, 43,Annas 2004, 116)? Marcus does at one point express despair about hisown grasp of physics (vii.67). Or is his point that whetherone’s physics is Epicurean or Stoic, one must live as the Stoicsenjoin (Annas 2004, 108–114, Hadot 1998, 148), that is to say,rationally, with a single purpose, rising above conventional goods andevils (ix.28)? Does the convergence of Epicureans and Stoics on suchethical points, in view of the two schools’ very differentphysical opinions, strengthen his confidence in the ethics (Annas,109)?

In one passage of theMeditations, Marcus gives the‘providence or atoms’ alternatives when he is clearlyinterested in the convergence of ethical opinion among all thewise—not only Stoics and Epicureans, for he also citesDemocritus, Plato and Antisthenes—on the insignificance ofmatters which ordinary people value most (life and death, pain,reputation) and the far greater importance of virtue (vii.32 ff.). Inthis context, Marcus puts Epicurus’ view that at death oursoul-atoms are dispersed and we cease to exist on all fours with theStoic view that Nature either extinguishes or transforms us at death.Here Marcus also quotes Epicurus on pain with approval: pain is eitherbearable (if long-lasting) or short (if intense). His point seems tobe that whatever one’s particular philosophical allegiance,allegiance to philosophy involves rising above pain, death, andreputation—and also, it turns out, involves not grumbling: forif the way things are is due to providence, then they could not bebetter and one is wrong to grumble, but if the way things are is dueto chance, then it is pointless to grumble (viii.17, ix.39).

Still, Marcus is not really open to the possibility of Epicureanphysics. He asserts repeatedly, after laying out the ‘providenceor atoms’ options, that the world is in fact governed by anintelligent nature of which he is a functional part, like a citizen ofa state (iv.3, x.6). Sometimes, he suggests that the chaos is merelyapparent and that change operates according to a rational plan (iv.27:the cosmos is either well-governed or a mixture(kukeôn, referring perhaps to Heraclitus fr. 125), butnevertheless a cosmos). So we should not make too much ofMarcus’ diffidence about his mastery of physics (vii.67), for hemay only mean that his own technical grasp of Stoic physics isinadequate, rather than that he lacks confidence in its superiorityover Epicurean physics. Elsewhere he insists that he has a sufficientconception (ennoia) of a life according to nature so as tolive it (i.9, 17).

We also see Marcus’ reliance on Stoic physics in his innovativederivation of the Stoic doctrine of the indifference of everythingexcept virtue and vice from providence. Since wealth, reputation, andhealth are distributed among the virtuous and the viciousindiscriminately, he reasons, they cannot be good, for that would becontrary to providence (ii.11). This does not mean Marcus is generallygrounding ethics in physics, however.^[6] According to the Stoics, the beliefs of anyone other than a wise andfully virtuous person are weak and unstable (since not anchored in anunderstanding of the whole), and so we should expect a non-wise Stoiclike Marcus to seek out all kinds of reasons to shore up his ethicalbeliefs. Marcus can consistently regard these ‘back-up’arguments for a moment of weakness as weaker and less plausible thanthe Stoic arguments and at the same time as important to have athand—as, if you’re trying to quit smoking, you might hangon to ‘it gives you wrinkles’ for the moments in which‘it gives you cancer’ isn’t doing the trick.

Finally, Marcus uses ‘providence or atoms’ in theMeditations to drive out an impious attitude:

Are you discontented with the part you have been assigned in thewhole? Recall the alternatives: providence or atoms, and how many arethe demonstrations, that the cosmos is a city. (iv.3.2)

To understand what the thought, ‘providence or atoms’, isdoing here we have to connect it with the discontent that is the topicof the passage. Marcus is admonishing himself for his discontent withthings as they stand, saying to himself, ‘if you are findingfault with things as they are, then you must think that they are notdue to providence. But if they’re not due to providence, thenthey’re the result of random causes.’ In this passage,‘atoms’ functions as the implicit commitment of one whofinds fault with things as they are. The reasoning works to raise thestakes for someone who is grumbling at the way things are. It bringsout that there is a contradiction between believing, as a Stoic must,that the world is providentially run, and being discontented withanything that happens. Once the contradiction is brought out, itbecomes clear which of the two alternatives a Stoic must plump for,and what follows about the attitudes he must consequently adopttowards the world and every part of it. Sometimes Marcus spells outthese steps: ‘But look at the evidence in favour ofprovidence—the whole cosmos is organised like a city, that is tosay, each part is so organized as to serve the good of thewhole’. Often, however, Marcus does not have to spell this out.In any event, what ‘atoms’ stands for, in this context, isimpiety. So Marcus is telling his grumbling self: your grumbling isevidence of impiety, evidence of your being like anEpicurean—except that actual Epicureans are more philosophicaland do not grumble about an irrational cosmos bringing them bad luck,but rather, try themselves to live rationally.

This last use of ‘providence or atoms’ shows that sinceMarcus is writing to effect certain psychological attitudes inhimself, we have to look to context to determine what the desiredattitude is, and then determine how the things he tells himself aresupposed to effect the attitude. Perhaps bringing about the desiredattitude calls for making hyperbolic statements in order to correctfor some natural tendency he thinks he has. If we do not keep this inmind as we read Marcus, we will only find contradictions, tensions,and ambivalences and we will conclude that Marcus is an eclectic andimprecise thinker.

4.2 Erase Impressions

Marcus often tells himself, ‘erase (exaleipsai) yourimpressions (phantasiai)’ (v.2, vii.29, viii.29, ix.7,cf. ii.5, iii.16, v.36). According to Stoic epistemology, things inthe world impress images of themselves on human and animal souls, asshapes can impress themselves on a wax tablet. Human beings may alsoassent to or withhold assent from these impressions; judgments are theresult of our assenting to impressions, or more precisely to thepropositional articulations of our impressions. While assent isvoluntary, impressions are not (cf. Epictetus fr. 9). So clearly wecan’t erase our impressions in the sense of simply wiping themout, but then what is Marcus telling himself to do? In exchanges withAcademic skeptics, the Stoics say that the wise person does not assentexcept to impressions that represent accurately the thing in the worldthat is their cause (‘kataleptic’ impressions); how doesMarcus’ injunction to ‘erase’ impressions relate tothis standard?

According to Hadot (1998, 103–4), by ‘eraseimpressions’ Marcus means ‘assent only to objective andphysical descriptions of externals’. What Marcus is tellinghimself to erase, Hadot says, is value-judgments about everythingexternal to his character. Hadot thinks Marcus is simply confused inusing the termphantasia for these judgments (the correctterm, which he sometimes uses [cf. iv.39, v.26, viii.4], and which hesometimes distinguishes fromphantasia [cf.viii.47–49], ishupolêpsis or‘assumption’).

Yet the distinction between objective physical facts and subjectivevalue judgments seems more existentialist than Stoic—for theStoics value is objective, and indeed Marcus repeatedly exults in thebeauty and goodness of the cosmos as a whole. (We should not assumethat the evaluations are all added by us, the subjects, to theimpression, for the Stoics think that there are evaluativeimpressions, cf. Epictetus fr. 9.) Nevertheless, it is right thatMarcus, following Epictetus, recommends refraining from judging‘good’ or ‘bad’ since those describe onlyvirtue and vice and none but the fully virtuous person really knowsthose (see, e.g.,Encheiridion 45). And it is also right thatMarcus often deals with things that are conventionally accorded highvalue in reductive material terms. So, for example, he writes,

Take for instance the impression in the case of relishes and suchedibles, that this one is the corpse of a fish, and that one of a birdor a pig. And again that this Phalernian [wine] is the little juice ofa bunch of grapes, and the purple-edged robe is sheep’s wooldyed by the blood of a shellfish; and in the case of things having todo with sexual union [that it is] friction of the genitals with theexcretion of mucus in spasms. Such are the impressions that get atthings and go right into them, so that one sees how each thing reallyis. (vi.13, cf. viii.21, 24)

Indeed, Marcus himself describes what he is doing here as definingwhat each thing is stripped naked, and enumerating the components intowhich it disintegrates (iii.11); elsewhere he adds that this techniqueleads one to despise the thing so analyzed (xi.2).

However, this is only one of two complementary ways Marcus deals withhis impressions. The other is to consider things that areconventionally disvalued in their larger context, so as to show whatgood they serve. Indeed, the passage recommending the examination ofeach thing stripped naked continues,

… nothing is so productive of greatness of mind as to be ableto examine, systematically and in truth, each of the things thatbefall us in life, and to look always at it so as to consider whatsort of use (chreia) it provides for what sort of cosmos andwhat value (axia) it has for the whole, and what in relationto the human being, they being a citizen of the highest city, of whichother cities are like households (iii.11, cf. viii.11, iv.23, iii.2,vi.36, vii.13, x.20, 25)

Here Marcus is recommending, for the purpose of correct appreciationof the value of things, the reintegration of each thing into itscosmic context. So contrary to first appearances, the goal is not toregard things in the world as stripped of value, but rather, to seeeach thing’s true value, which is determined by considering itscontribution to the whole cosmos. The physical description of eachthing is not a description of its naked physical appearance whenisolated from everything else, but its reintegration into thebeautiful and intelligent design of the cosmos. So Marcus writes,

For example, when some parts of baking bread crack open, these crackstoo, even though in a way they are contrary to the baker’sorders, are somehow fitting and in their own way rouse eagerness forfood. Again, figs, when they are ripest, gape open … and manyother things, if one were to look at them individually, would be farfrom beautiful of appearance, but nevertheless, on account of theirfollowing things that come to be by nature, are well-ordered andeducate our soul. (iii.2)

Insight into what is in accordance with nature is gained bydetermining, for each thing that obtains, its contribution to, orfunctional role in, the cosmos (rather than by looking at whatregularly happens, or what happens with healthy specimens, etc.). Andonce one understands this functional contribution, one is able to seethe value of each thing, how beautifully it contributes to awell-designed whole.

Now that we have a sense of what erased impressions are to be replacedwith, we can return to the questions of what is to be erased, and whatit is to be erased. Marcus does seem to speak indifferently aboutjudgments and impressions: he tells himself to erase his impressions,and he tells himself to remove opinion (iv.7, viii.40); he tellshimself he can bear what his opinion renders bearable and do what hisimpressions deem advantageous or appropriate (x.3). But this need notbe because Marcus is confused about the difference between animpression and a judgment; he may just be using the term‘impression’ more loosely, as his predecessors, Stoic aswell as non-Stoic, do. For the predecessors: Marcus’ Stoicrole-model, Epictetus, says theIliad is nothing butimpressions and the use of impressions (i.28.13). Marcus himself usesthe term ‘impression’ for a recognition (of his own needto be straightened out, i.7), the conception of a standard (of aconstitution observing equality before the law) (i.14), the impressiona person makes on others (i.15), and an appearance—the way athing strikes someone (i.16). These are all accepted uses of the term.So it’s more fruitful to ask: what kind of impression are wesupposed to erase?

Plato’sProtagoras, which greatly influenced theStoics, can help us here. This text contrasts the power ofphantasia (often translated ‘appearance’) with anart of measurement, the former often going wrong because comparativeor perspectival (A looks tall because she’s beside the veryshort B; B looks taller than A because she’s closer to me), andstanding in need of correction by an unchanging standard (a meterruler, for example) (356b–57a). That Marcus may find the samedefects of perspective in impressions is suggested indirectly by thecorrections he prescribes: inspect your impressions (ii.7, iii.6,v.22, viii.13, viii.26); test them by ‘physicizing, ethicizing,dialecticizing’ (viii.13), that is to say, by seeing how theyfare when tested against your physical, ethical, and dialecticalunderstanding—all of which are informed by a picture of thewhole. In xii.18, he tells himself:

Always look at the whole: what that thing is that gives you such animpression, and undo it, distinguishing it into its cause, its matter,its point, the time within which it must come to a stop.

To the extent that impressions are involuntary, Marcus’‘erase’ may mean ‘override’. He may be saying:for the purposes of action and response, wipe out the influence ofsuch-and-such impressions (Plato’sProtagoras,similarly, speaks of rendering the power of appearance unauthoritative[356e]); focus instead on your understanding of the whole, which willgive you a different impression. However, the Stoics’ image ofthe mind as a wax tablet being impressed by different shapes gives aparticular point to talk of ‘erasing.’ The work Marcus isdoing is to replace an inadequate impression with another impression,this one better grounded in a comprehension of reality. Perhaps makingthe second mark requires erasing the first—or perhaps making thesecond mark is a means of erasing the first, for it may be that thewithholding of assent from compelling impressions requires counteringthem with others.

At v.16, Marcus says that one’s mind will be of the samecharacter as the impressions it has. If impressions were entirelyinvoluntary, this would occasion despair. Marcus may think that whileinvoluntary in the moment, impressions are subject to control in thelong run. Perhaps if I keep refusing to assent to my presentimpression that wealth is good, wealth will eventually cease to appearto me as good. It is also not implausible that one’s characterand opinion would influence one’s impressions, especially in thecase of evaluative impressions (such as that x is good orto-be-preferred) and impressions that require some expertise to have(such as that y is the treadle for a foot loom).

5. Conclusion

As mentioned above (1.1), Marcus’Meditations toucheson many more topics than the ones addressed here, but we advance ourunderstanding of Marcus by focusing on one topic at a time and seeinghow his remarks on that topic are related to his overall project ofreminding himself how a Stoic should live. It would be worth workingthis out for others of his frequent remarks, such as that we are tinyand temporary fragments in the cosmos, that death takes us all in theend, that we ought to live purposively rather than like mechanicaltoys.

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Epictetus |ethics: ancient |political philosophy: ancient |Seneca |skepticism: ancient |Stoicism

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Tad Brennan, Stephen Menn, and John Cooper for their helpfulcomments on this article.