Summary: Meditations
The Meditations were written in Greek by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, between 170 and 180 AD, often during his military campaigns. They were originally intended to be destroyed on the death of their author, but they have gone beyond the status of a mere diary to become a major work of Stoic philosophy.
How do we achieve happiness? For Stoicism, this involves serenity, impassivity, and the absence of disturbance in the face of sad or distressing events in life.
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius admirably illustrates this doctrine.
However, how do you remain calm or happy in the face of a tragic event, such as the death of a loved one?
Let us read Marcus Aurelius to discover the secret of Stoic impassivity.
First of all, it is a matter of committing oneself to a deterministic conception of the world. It is not by chance that this or that event occurs. It is only the effect of a cause that has produced it, and this cause has itself had a cause, which itself is only the effect of an earlier cause, etc.
As a result, all events in the world were contained in the first cause, and everything necessarily happens. It is obligatory for every event to happen:
Whatever happens to you, it was prepared for you from all eternity, and the chain of causes had 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 seems to have happened by pure chance, but in fact, it is only the consequence of a series of causes.
If this brick fell on my head, it is because it was placed and forgotten there by a workman. If he put it there on the roof, it was because he wanted to use it to build a new chimney. If he wanted to build a new chimney, it was because the owner of the building has instructed him to do so. Why was this? Because a tenant complained. Why did he complain? Etc. We go back up the chain of causes.
Similarly, if the brick fell, it is because there was a gust of wind. Why was there this gale? Because there is a low-pressure system causing such a movement of air masses. Why is there such a depression? Once again, this event has its causes, and we are going back up the chain of causes.
It is this chain of causality that Marcus Aurelius describes as follows: All things are interwoven with one another; their sequence is holy
2.
There is therefore no such thing as chance, but we do have a destiny, in the sense that the course of events that will affect us is already programmed.
Why now does determinism, which is merely a metaphysical or ontological conception of the world, have an ethical significance? Why do we remain calm and serene in a deterministic world, as opposed to a world governed by chance?
If this or that sad event could have happened differently, then it is legitimate to lament, because this pain could have been avoided. The course of events could have been quite different. A loved one who has just died could have been saved, if his or her death happened by chance.
On the other hand, if nothing happens by chance, but his death proceeds mechanically from the chain of causes, tending inexorably to this outcome, from the outset, then all sadness is vain, because it has no foundation. No world is possible, where this death is not.
To generalise: we can complain or lament about a pain that could have been avoided, but it is absurd to complain or lament about something inevitable. For there is no other existing state that is desirable.
Marc Aurelius sums it up this way in the Meditations:
You must love what happens to you [...] because it was made for you, corresponded to you, and came to you, as it were, from above, from the chain of the most ancient causes 3.
To remain impassive and happy, on the other hand, we must restrict our ambitions, in the sense that we must not ask too much of people. If we consider men to be good, then we are bound to be disappointed and unhappy.
1 Meditations, book X, 5
2 VII, 9
3 V, 8