Summary: Meditations
The Meditations were written in Greek by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius between 170 and 180 AD, often during his military campaigns. Originally intended to be destroyed upon the author’s death, they have transcended the status of a mere personal journal to become a cornerstone of Stoic philosophy.
How can we attain happiness? For Stoicism, this means achieving serenity, equanimity, and freedom from disturbance in the face of life’s sorrows and misfortunes.
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius admirably illustrate this doctrine.
But how can one remain calm or even content when confronted with tragedy, such as the death of a loved one?
Let us turn to Marcus Aurelius to uncover the secret of Stoic impassivity.
First and foremost, one must embrace a deterministic view of the world. Events do not occur by chance; each is merely the effect of a preceding cause, which itself was caused by another, and so on in an unbroken chain.
As a consequence, all events were contained within the first cause, and everything unfolds with necessity. Every event must happen as it does:
Whatever happens to you was prepared for you from all eternity, and the chain of causes has spun together forever both your substance and this accident 1.
Let us take an example: suppose today I walk out of my house, a brick falls on my head, and I die. This event may seem like pure chance, but in reality, it is merely the consequence of a chain of causes.
If this brick fell on my head, it is because a workman placed it there and forgot about it. If he placed it on the roof, it was because he intended to use it to build a new chimney. If he wanted to build a chimney, it was because the building’s owner had instructed him to do so. Why? Because a tenant had complained. Why did the tenant complain? And so on—we trace the chain of causes back step by step.
Likewise, if the brick fell, it was because of a gust of wind. Why was there such a gust? Because a low-pressure system caused a movement of air masses. Why did this low-pressure system form? Again, this event has its own causes, and we can continue tracing them backwards.
It is this chain of causality that Marcus Aurelius describes as follows: All things are interwoven with one another; their sequence is sacred
2.
There is, therefore, no such thing as chance. Instead, we have a destiny, in the sense that the course of events that will affect us is already determined.
Why, then, does determinism—merely a metaphysical or ontological conception of the world—have ethical significance? Why should we remain calm and serene in a deterministic world, rather than in a world governed by chance?
If a sorrowful event could have happened otherwise, then it is natural to grieve, for such pain might have been avoided. The course of events could have unfolded differently. A loved one who has just died might have been saved, had their death occurred by chance.
Conversely, if nothing happens by chance, but their death follows inexorably from the chain of causes, leading unavoidably to this outcome from the very beginning, then sorrow is futile, for it has no foundation. No possible world exists in which this death does not occur.
To generalise: one may lament a pain that could have been avoided, but it is absurd to grieve over what is inevitable. There is no other existing state of affairs that could be preferable.
Marcus Aurelius expresses this idea in the Meditations:
You must love whatever happens to you [...] because it was made for you, corresponds to you, and has come to you, as it were, from above, from the chain of the most ancient causes 3.
To remain impassive and content, however, we must temper our expectations—specifically, we must not ask too much of others. If we expect people to be good, we are bound to be disappointed and unhappy.
1 Meditations, book X, 5
2 VII, 9
3 V, 8