Marco Aurélio

Marcus Aurelius (ad 121–80)

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Emperor of Rome, was the author of a book of philosophical reflections written in Greek and known as the Meditations. These reflections are based primarily on Stoicism, but also reveal the influence of other currents of thought and of his experience as emperor. Marcus was deeply influenced by Epictetus and shares his interest in the inner mental life and the psychology of moral improvement. He combines a deep commitment to the providential cosmology traditional in the Stoic school with a more pronounced religious sensibility and a frequent emphasis on the insignificance of human life in space and time. The Stoic recognition of the irreducibly social character of human nature is obviously pertinent to an emperor whose career consisted largely of self-sacrificing public service.

1 Life

Marcus was born in Rome in ad 121, was adopted by the future emperor Antoninus Pius in 138, and succeeded to the throne (jointly with Lucius Verus) in 161. In 169 Verus died, leaving Marcus sole emperor until 177 when his son Commodus joined him. Marcus died on campaign.

Marcus was the last in a series of efficient and humane emperors chosen by adoption whose reigns made the second century ad the high point of Roman imperial culture. The stability of this culture was threatened, however, by military challenges, and Marcus’ reign was beset by wars on its borders. (It was during these campaigns, late in his life, that Marcus composed the notebooks which were published after his death.) The reign of his son Commodus was unsuccessful; his assassination in 192 ushered in a period of uncertainty which ended with the consolidation of the rule of Septimius Severus in 197. It is tempting to regard Marcus’ reign as the acme of the Roman system and to assign Marcus much of the credit. But the seeds of decay were already present and Marcus did little to prevent the decline.

As a member of the ruling elite, Marcus was educated in Latin oratory and in law, but he also had Greek tutors, including the ‘sophist’ Herodes Atticus. Marcus’ mentor in Latin was Marcus Cornelius Fronto, one of the most famous literary figures in Rome. Fronto’s influence on Marcus was personal as well as literary and the correspondence (in Latin) between them rounds out the picture of Marcus which we get from his philosophical writings.

To the disappointment of Fronto, Marcus chose the study of philosophy (which he had begun under the Stoic Apollonius) over law and oratory. The catalyst for this choice was Quintus Junius Rusticus, who not only provided a model of philosophical principle applied in public life, but also introduced Marcus to the Discourses of Epictetus (Meditations I 7). Marcus’ personal circle included philosophers of various schools, some of them active in the administration of the empire. He describes Claudius Severus, a Peripatetic, as ‘brother’ and credits him with inspiration in the area of political theory and practice; Severus introduced Marcus to the ideas of Thrasea Paetus and other figures of the philosophical opposition to Nero (I 14). Severus may be responsible for Marcus’ acceptance of the un-Stoic denial of the equality of moral errors (II 10) (see Stoicism). Another influence was Marcus’ friend Claudius Maximus, a political and military leader as well as a (possibly Peripatetic) philosopher (I 15); yet another friend, Cinna Catulus, was probably a Stoic (I 13). A certain Alexander, a Platonist, was given a key political post (Greek secretary) at a time of crisis (I 12). Perhaps the best insight into Marcus’ philosophical formation comes from reflection on his relationship with Sextus of Chaeronea, a professional philosopher and nephew of Plutarch of Chaeronea. Marcus continued to attend Sextus’ lectures even while emperor; in the Meditations (I 9.1) Marcus says that he learned from this Platonist the meaning of ‘life according to nature’ – the defining slogan of the Stoic school (see Stoicism §17). This same philosophical breadth is reflected in Marcus’ establishment of the first ever chairs of philosophy. In ad 176 he endowed four chairs at Athens, one for each of the recognized major schools – Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism and Epicureanism.

2 The Meditations

The Meditations reflects this lack of school dogmatism. While Stoicism provides the framework, Platonic and other ideas are also accommodated. Marcus’ philosophical importance does not lie in the preservation or development of the Stoic system but rather in his demonstration of its adaptability to various circumstances and philosophical temperaments.

The framework for Marcus’ thought is providential cosmology. The cosmos is an organic whole; each individual is not just a part of that whole, but a limb or organ of the living universe (VII 13). Our well-being is inseparable from that of the whole; he frequently calls humans mere ‘fragments’ of it. We are similarly related to human society: our private benefit can never conflict with that of the collectivity. Our human nature is fundamentally social; personal fulfilment can never be achieved at the cost of the welfare of the whole. This idea is made into a test of what counts as harm to an individual: ‘what is not harmful to the city does not harm the citizen either’ (V 22). Civic welfare subsumes, but does not negate, that of the individual. Marcus emphasizes the Stoic claim that whatever happens by nature is in the best interests of each rational agent, that nothing genuinely bad can befall anyone except by way of their own failings. The conjunction of providential determinism with an emphasis on our role as parts of an organic whole brings Marcus close to the amor fati (‘love of fate’) of which Stoics are often accused.

Marcus’ conception of the true interests of each person rests on the Socratic idea that nothing bad can happen to any good person. Also Socratic are his determination to teach, not punish, the wrong-doer (everyone should be forgiven, since all are aiming at their own good – XI 16) and the notion that a happy life is based on critical examination of one’s convictions. This reveals, he thinks, that nothing unexpected or unbearable ever happens to a rational person (V 18). Like Epictetus, he emphasizes the role of mental reservation (IV 1, V 20), the analysis of impressions, and impersonal detachment; the one thing which ultimately matters is our mental life, our desires, beliefs and convictions.

If the cosmos subsumes individual well-being, then each of us is transient, important only for the rationality we embody, a rationality identified with an indwelling divinity. Hence Marcus emphasizes the smallness of human life, that we are a mere point in space and time (for example, XII 32). The inevitabilty of material change and the cyclical certainty of birth and death are themes to which Marcus returns repeatedly, often drawn from Heraclitus imagery; nothing as predictable as our own deaths can be regarded as important. Hence there are no surprises for anyone who has spent even half a lifetime in critical reflection on the world (XI 1.2); the most important thing is to structure one’s beliefs around the rationally inevitable. Another link between cosmology and ethics emerges from Marcus’ repeated reflection on Epicurean atomism – a system opposed to the providential cosmology shared by Platonists and Stoics (see X 6). He states the case tersely at XI 18.1: ‘If not atoms, then there is a nature which organizes the universe; and if this is the case, then the inferior exist for the sake of the superior, and the superior [that is, rational beings] for the sake of each other.’

Marcus’ views on the composition of human beings can be singled out as an illustration of his openness to non-Stoic influences. We are made up of three components (XII 3): body, ‘spirit’ or pneumation, and intelligence (Nous, identifiable with an internal divinity); although we must care for all three aspects of ourselves, only the third is really our own. The separation of pneuma, the stuff of the entire soul according to traditional Stoic theory (see Pneuma), from our rationality is a mark of Platonic influence; this pneuma is associated by Marcus with automatic, puppet-like responses. If our reason is separable from the rest of our soul and from our body, then our personal identity has been detached from our empirical selves and the early Stoic unity of the person has been abandoned. Hence Marcus says: ‘Wipe out impression; stop your impulse; extinguish desire; keep your commanding-faculty (hēgemonikon) in your own control’ (IX 7). The similarity to Epictetus is limited. For Marcus, to set impulse, impression and desire in opposition to the commanding-faculty appears as a step on the road to Neoplatonism (see Neoplatonism).

But Marcus never abandons the foundations of Stoic physical theory. He repeatedly claims that everything is either ‘material’ or ‘causal’ (V 13, VII 29, VIII 11, IX 37, XII 29). Though the terminology is new (it is also reflected in Seneca, Letters 65.2), this is the same physical dualism which Zeno of Citium and Chrysippus employed when they divided the universe into the active and passive principles and identified the former with a rational divinity (see Stoicism §§3, 5). Building on this, the founders of Stoicism had outlined a cosmology in which divine guidance and rational coherence were integral parts of the natural world. Despite the appeal of Peripatetic and especially Platonic thought, Marcus retained a Stoic commitment to a unified and physicalist conception of the natural world. Marcus the emperor clung tenaciously to the political and military stability of the second century ad, but he was the last to do so. Similarly, Marcus the philosopher clung to his Stoic tradition.