No More Learning

Loving our neighbors
A proprium ofhumankind is to love even those who make mistakes. This will happen ifyou realize that they are akin to you and that they sin out ofignorance and against their will (VII, 22, 1-2).
This transcendence ofjustice, not only in the direction ofpity or indul­ gence, but in that of love, was implied by the arguments which invited the Stoic to re ect, on the one hand, on the indestructible urge which moves each person toward the good, and, on the other, on the solidarity which unites all rational creatures together.
Thus, the discipline of action attains its culminating point in the love ofone's neighbor. All the logic ofhuman action tends to reveal that the prime motive of our activity must be the love of other people, since this love becomes sed with the deepest urges ofhuman nature (XI, I, 4):
It is aproprium ofthe soul, ifit is rational, to love its neighbor, which corresponds both to truth and to respect.
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The reason r this is that human beings, if they live in accordance with reason, become keenly aware that they belong to one great body: that of a rational beings. Inso r as he is part of this All, man is eve ­ body else, as much as he is himself(VII, 13):
As are the limbs ofthe body in organic unities, such is the relation­ ship between rational beings, who, although they exist within sepa­ rate bodies, are nevertheless constituted in order to realize one single and harmonious activity.
This concept will impress itself better within you if you o en repeat to yourself I am a limb (melos) of the organism (sustema) rmed by rational beings. But ifyou only use the letter rho, saying that you are a part (meros), then you do not yet love mankind om the bottom of your heart. You do not yet nd your joy, without seeking anything else, in the simple ct of doing good to others. Moreover, you are acting r the sake of mere appearance, not yet because when you do good, you are doing good to yourself
This feeling ofbelonging, and ofidenti cation with a kind of"mysti­ cal body" which Kant was to call the kingdom of ends, joins the almost mystical feeling of belonging to the cosmic Whole. The unity of the latter, like that ofthe "body ofrational beings," is ensured by the univer­ sal presence of Reason-that is to say, of God himself
The Stoic's ndamental attitude is thus the love ofthose realities in whose presence he is constantly placed by the All, which are intimately linked to him, and with which he somehow identi es himself(VI, 39):
Harmonize yourself with the things to which you are linked by Destiny.
As r the people to whom you are linked by Destiny: love them, but genuinely.
For the basis ofreality is love. In order to express this idea, Marcus appeals to the grandiose mythical image of the marriage of Heaven and Earth (X, 21):
The Earth loves! She loves the rain! And the venerable Ether? It loves too! The World, too, loves to produce that which must occur. And I say to the World: I, too, lov along with you. Don't we say: " such-and-such loves to happen? "
The Discipline of Action 23 1
What scinates Marcus here is that this mythical image means that natural processes are, in the last analysis, processes of union and of love. He notes that language itselfseems to express this vision, since in ancient Greek, in order to designate a thing which habitually occurs or tends to happen, one says that it "loves" to happen. Ifthings love to happen, we too must love that they happen.
Thus, the ancient image ofthe hieros gamos allows us, in a mythic way, to glimpse the grandiose perspective ofthe universal love which the parts of the Whole feel r one another, as well as the comic vision of a universal attraction which becomes more intense the higher one climbs on the scale ofbeings, and the more conscious they become (IX, 9). The closer people get to the state ofwisdom-in other words, the closer they approach to God-the more the love which they el r one another­ r other human beings, as well as r all beings, even the most humble-grows in depth and in lucidity.
It cannot, then, be said that "loving one's neighbor as oneself" is a speci cally Christian invention. Rather, it could be maintained that the motivation of Stoic love is the same as that of Christian love. Both recognize the logos or Reason within each person. Even the love ofone's enemies is not lacking in Stoicism:
When he is beaten, the Cynic [ r Epictetus,41 the Cynic is a kind of heroic Stoic) must love those who beat him.
We have seen Marcus assert that it is proper, and there re essential, to human beings to love those who make mistakes. One could say, how­ ever, that the tonality of Christian love is more personalized, since this love is based on Christ's saying: "What you have done to the least ofmy brethren, you have done to me. "42 In the Christian view, the logos is incarnate in Jesus, and it is Jesus that the Christian sees in his fellow man. No doubt it was this re rence to Jesus which gave Christian love its strength and its expansion. Nevertheless, Stoicism was also a doctrine of love. As Seneca43 had said:
No school has more goodness and gentleness; none has more love r human beings, nor more attention to the common good. The goal which it assigns to us is to be use l, to help others, and to take care, not only of ourselves, but of everyone in general and of each one in particular.
9
VIRTUE AND JOY
The three virtues and the three disciplines
The Meditations as a whole are thus organized in accordance with a three ld structure-one could even call it a system-which was devel­ oped, and perhaps invented, by Epictetus. This three ld structure or system has an internal necessity, in the sense that there can be neither more nor wer than three exercise-themes r the philosopher, because there can be neither more nor wer than three acts of the soul. The exercise-themes which correspond to them are related to three rms of reality: Destiny, the community ofrational beings, and the individual's culties ofjudgment and assent. These rms, too, cannot be either more or fewer in number, and they are respectively the subjects ofthe three parts of the system rmed by philosophy: physics, ethics, and logic.
What is quite remarkable is that in Marcus Aurelius, we can see another structure, which had been traditional since at least the time of Plato, that ofthe ur virtues-prudence, justice, strength, and temper­ ance-take on, under the in uence of this systematic structure, a three­ ld structure as well, inso r as Marcus makes the virtues correspond to each of the disciplines I have mentioned.
The scheme ofthe ur virtues was very ancient. We should recall that the Greek word arete, which we translate as "virtue," originally had a quite di erent meaning om our word "virtue. " The term went back to the aristocratic ethic of archaic Greece, and consequently did not at signi a good habit or a principle which leads us to behave well. Rather, it meant nobility itsel excellence, value, and distinction. We may sup­ pose that this ideal of excellence and value always remained present in the mind ofthe philosophers. For the Stoics, areteis absolute value, based no longer on warrior nobility, but on the nobility of soul represented by the purity ofour intentions.
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Since very early times, it seems that there existed a model or a canon of the ur ndamental virtues. In the fth century B. c. , Aeschylus, in his tragedy The Seven Against Thebes (verse 6rn), enumerates ur basic values when discussing Amphiaraos: he is wise (sophron), just (dikaios), brave (agathos), and pious (eusebes). Wisdom consists in knowing, with reserve (aidos), one's place in society and in the world-in other words, in having a sense ofmankind's limits. Justice consists in behaving well in social life. Bravery, of course, is courage in the ce of di culties, and especially in combat. Piety, in the case of Amphiaraos, who is a seer, corresponds to the knowledge ofthings divine and also human. In the urth book ofPlato's Republic (427e ), there appears a systematization and justi cation of this enumeration of the ur virtues. Plato distin­ guishes three parts ofthe soul: "reason," "anger" (to thumoeides), which means that part which urges people on to ght, and "desire" (epithumia). Three virtues correspond to these three parts of the soul: prudence or wisdom to reason, courage to anger, and temperance to desire. It is up to
justice to ensure that each part of the soul carries out its nction: that reason is prudent, anger courageous, and desire temperate. The three parts of the soul, moreover, correspond to the three social classes of the Republic: reason is the distinctive feature ofthe philosophers, anger ofthe guardians, and desire of the workers. In the State as in the individual, then, justice will be realized if each class and each part of the soul l lls its nction perfectly. This systematization, which is linked to a speci c political model, and which makes justice the virtue which contains the three others, is not to be und in the rest ofPlato's dialogues, where the ur virtues are enumerated in various contexts, and without any par­ ticular theorization. 1
In their description of moral life, the Stoics also allude to the ur virtues. 2 Here, however, they are not subordinate to one another, but are all on the same level. They mutually imply one another, as do the parts of philosophy. It is enough to practice one in order to practice them all. Nevertheless, it is di cult to nd in our surviving summaries of Stoic doctrine the real reason why it is necessary that there be only ur ndamental virtues. The de nitions of the various virtues are rather divergent, but we may note the llowing: prudence is the science of what ought and ought not to be done; courage is the science of what ought and ought not to be tolerated; temperance is the science of what ought and ought not to be chosen; andjustice is the science ofwhat ought and ought not to be distributed. Unlike Plato, the Stoics do not appear to link the ur virtues to the parts ofthe soul.
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From this perspective, it is ofgreat interest to observe the trans rma­ tions which the system of three disciplines caused the classi cation of virtues in Marcus' Meditations to undergo. Let us begin by noting that the philosopher-emperor often summarizes the three disciplines-of assent, of desire, and of action-by making the names of virtues correspond to them. Thus the discipline of assent takes on the name of the virtue of "truth"; the discipline ofdesire acquires the name ofthe virtue of"tem­ perance "; and the discipline of action, that of the virtue of "justice. " In itself, the substitution of the notion of "truth" r that of "prudence" should not surprise us, r Plato had already once (Republic, 487a5) given t h e fo u r v i r t u e s t h e n a m e s o f " t r u t h , " " j u s t i c e , " " c o u r a g e , " a n d " t e m p e r ­ ance. "
The substitution of"truth" r "prudence" can, however, be perfectly welljusti ed om the perspective ofMarcus Aurelius. This is shown by the llowing lengthy passage (IX, r), which must be cited r two reasons: rst, we can see in it the establishment of an exact correspon­ dence between the discipline ofaction andjustice, the discipline ofassent and truth, and the discipline of desire and temperance. Second, it o ers an admirable summary ofthe three exercise-themes.
Justice and the discipline of action
He who commits an injustice commits an impiety. For since universal Nature has constituted rational animals r the sake of each other, so that they might help each other in accordance with their respective merit and never harm each other, he who transgresses the will of Nature most obviously commits an impiety against the most vener­ able ofgods.
Truth and the discipline of assent
He who lies, moreover, also commits an impiety toward the same Goddess. For Universal Nature is the nature of beings; now beings have a relationship of a nity with true attributes [that is, with what can be truly said of them] . Moreover, this Goddess is also named truth, and she is the rst cause ofall that is true. There re, he who willingly lies commits an impiety, in so r as he commits an injus­ tice by deceiving. And he who lies involuntarily also commits an impiety, inso r as he is in disaccord with universal Nature, and he
Virtue andJoy 235
disturbs order inso r as he is in a state of incompatibility with the Nature of the world. For that person is in a state of incompatibility who, ofhis own ee will, tends toward that which is contrary to the truth. He has received om Nature dispositions to know the truth, but since he has neglected them, he is now no longer capable of distinguishing the true om the lse.
Temperance and the discipline of desire
Finally, the person who pursues pleasures as goods and who ees pains as evils also commits an impiety. For such a person must necessarily o en reproach universal Nature, r Nature attributes a particular lot to the bad and to the good, contrary to their merit; r the bad often live in pleasures and possess that by which they may procure them, while good people encounter only pain and that which is its cause. What is more, he who fears pain will one day come to fear one ofthe things which must happen in the world, and this is already impious. Nor will he who pursues pleasures be able to keep away om injustice; and this is clearly impious. Concerning things with regard to which universal Nature is equally disposed ( r she would not produce both, if she were not disposed toward them in an equal way) : with regard to these things, those who wish to llow Nature, and be in perfect community ofsentiments with her, must also be in a disposition of " equality. " There re, as r as pain and pleasure are concerned, death and li , glory and obscurity, which universal Nature treats in an "equal" manner, he who does not behave in an " equal " manner obviously commits an impiety.
Here it is easy to recognize the three disciplines: that of action, which ordains that people should help one another; that of assent, which con­ sists in distinguishing the true om the lse; and that of desire, which consists in accepting the lot which universal Nature has reserved r us. To these three disciplines correspond three virtues. In the discipline of action, we must respect the value hierarchy of people and of things, and thus act in accordance with justice. According to the discipline of assent, our discourse must be true, and the virtue particular to this discipline is truth. He who knowingly lies commits a two ld sin: in the area ofassent, since his discourse is not true, and in the area of action, since he is committing an injustice with regard to other people. As r the person
who lies involuntarily-in other words, who deceives himself-it is be­ cause he has not succeeded in criticizing his judgments and in becoming the master of his assent that he is no longer capable of distinguishing the true om the lse. Finally, in the discipline of desire, we must desire only that which universal Nature wants, and we must not desire pleasures or ee su erings. This discipline is characterized by temperance.
Here, then, Nature appears to us in three aspects. She is the principle of attraction which urges human beings to help one another and to practice justice, and is there re the basis ofjustice. She is also the basis of truth; that is to say, the principle which unds the order of discourse, and the necessary relationship which must exist between beings and the true attributes which are said about them. To speak lsely, whether voluntar­ ily or involuntarily, is there re to be in disaccord with the order of the world. Finally, universal Nature, since she is indi erent to indi erent things, is the basis of temperance, in other words of that virtue which, instead of desiring pleasure, wants to consent to the will of universal Nature .
Marcus here portrays universal Nature as the most ancient and august of goddesses, in such a way that any lapse with regard to the virtues­ justice, truth, and temperance-ofwhich this goddess is the model and the principle, is an impiety. The Stoics traditiona y identi ed God, Na­ ture, Truth, Destiny, and Zeus. In Marcus' time, there were hymns which presented Nature as the most ancient of goddesses. For example,
an Orphic hymn3 invokes her in the llowing terms:
Goddess, mother of all things, celestial mother, very ancient res­
beira) mother.
A hymn by Mesomedes, one of Hadrian's eedmen, which also dates
om the second century A. D. , begins:
Principle and origin of all, very ancient Mother of the world,
Night, Light, and Silence. 4
In our long passage om Marcus, we can note a certain tendency to privilege the importance ofjustice as compared to the other virtues. Impiety toward Nature consists in injustice, not only if one re ses to practice justice toward other human beings, but also if one lies to them, and even i involuntarily, one cannot distinguish the true om the lse. For then one destroys the order of Nature, and introduces a discordant
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Virtue andJoy 237
note into universal harmony. Likewise, if we accuse Nature of injustice in her distribution oflots among good and evil people, then we ourselves are committing an injustice. We nd a similar idea expressed in XI, IO, 4:
Justice cannot be preserved ifwe attribute importance to unimpor­ tant things, or if we are easily deceived; if we give our assent too rapidly, or if we change our mind too often.
To give importance to unimportant things is not to practice the disci­ pline ofdesire, and hence to sin against temperance; whereas to be easily deceived, or to be too rapid or changeable in ourjudgments, means not to practice the discipline of assent, and hence to sin against truth.
Truth, justice, and temperance can thus designate the three disciplines, asinXII, 15:
Whereas the ame of a lamp shines until it goes out, and does not lose its luster, will the truth, justice, and temperance which are within you be extinguished be re their time?
Elsewhere (XII, 3, 3), the soul's guiding principle, when it ees itself of everything reign to it,
does what isjust, wills the events which happen, and tells the truth. Nothing, says Marcus (VIII, 32, 2), can prevent us om acting
in accordance with justice, temperance, and prudence.
Sometimes, as in this last example and the llowing one, we nd some variations in the names of the virtues; yet the tripartite scheme is retained (III, 9, 2):
Absence of hurry in judgment, a feeling of kinship toward other human beings, and obedient consent to the gods.
Alongside this triad of virtues, we sometimes nd the traditional quaternium, adapted and brought into line with the tripartite structure (III, 6, l):
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Ifyou nd something in human life better thanjustice, truth, tem­ perance, and bravery . . .
In ct, the continuation of this passage reduces these ur virtues to the disciplines ofdesire and ofaction (III, 6, r), when it becomes appar­ ent that they consist
in thought which is content with itself (in those things in which it is possible to act in accordance with right reason), and which is con­ tent with Destiny (in those things which are allotted to us, inde­ pendently of our will) .
The virtues are linked to the nctions of the soul: truth and the intellectual virtues are linked to reason; justice to active impulses; and temperance to desire. Where, then, can we nd a place r courage? It seems to be shared between temperance, qua strength in adversity and su ering, andjustice, qua active rce.
We nd no trace of this theory of the virtues in the Discourses of Epictetus, as reported by Arrian. This does not prove, however, that it did not exist. As I have said, it was impossible r Arrian to have trans­ mitted all of the teachings of Epictetus; moreover, the discourses which he did note down do not correspond to a systematic exposition of the whole ofphilosophy.
Be that as it may, a rst sketch of this doctrine may be glimpsed well be re Epictetus. In Cicero's treatise On Duties,5 which in its rst book reproduces the teachings of Panaetius, the ancient virtue of prudence becomes "the knowledge of truth"; justice is based on the social links between human beings; strength becomes greatness of soul, linked to scorn r the things which do not depend on us; and temperance submits our desires to reason. In a way, then, Panaetian strength and temperance correspond to the discipline of desire in Marcus Aurelius. In the last analysis such comparisons are rather tenuous, but they do allow us to glimpse an evolution of the Stoic doctrine of the virtues, which culmi­ nates in the synthesis attested in Marcus.
Joy
In Marcus' view, these three disciplines and virtues bring to the soul the only truejoy which exists in the world, since they place the soul in the possession ofall that is necessary: the one absolute value.
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Living beings experience joy when they l ll the nction r which they are made, and act in accordance with their nature. As we have seen, man l lls his nction qua man, and llows his nature as well as univer­ sal Nature, when he consents to order: the order ofthe universe as xed by Destiny; the order of the City of the World and of human beings, based as it is upon the mutual attraction ofrational beings, and hence on the proper nature of mankind; and nally to the order of discourse, which reproduces the relation which Nature has established between substances and attributes, and above all between events which necessarily llow upon one another. It is there re by practicing the three disci­ plines that man llows Nature, and nds hisjoy:
Philosophy wants only that which your nature wants. You, how­ ever, wanted something else, which was not in accordance with nature. And yet, what is more attractive than what is in con rmity with nature? Is this not how pleasure leads us astray? 6 Look and see, however, if there is anything more attractive than greatness of soul, eedom, simplicity, benevolence, and piety; r what is more at­ tractive than wisdom itself? (V, 9, 3-5) .
You must consider the activity which it is possible r you to carry out in con rmity with your own nature as a delight-and that is always possible r you (X, 3 3 , 2) .
For the person who strives at every moment to live, act, will, and desire in con rmity with his rational nature and with universal Nature, life is constantly renewed happiness. In the words ofSeneca:7 "The e ect ofwisdom is a continuous joy . . . and only the strong, the just, and the temperate can possess this joy. " Marcus Aurelius often returns to this theme:
To do what is just with all one's soul, and to tell the truth. What remains r you to do but enjoy li , linking each good thing to the next, without leaving the slightest interval between them? (XII, 29, 3).
Enjoy and take your rest in one thing only: to pass om one action carried out in the service of the human community to another action accomplished in the service of the human community, to­ gether with the remembrance ofGod (VI, 7).
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For man, joy consists in doing what is proper to man. What is proper to man is benevolence toward other human beings, who are his relatives; disdain r movements based on sense-perception; criticism of deceptive representations; and the contemplation of universal Nature, and of that which happens in con rmity with its will (VIII, 26).
Joy, then, is the sign ofan action's perfection. It is only when we love human beings om the bottom ofour hearts, and not merely out ofduty, that we el pleasure in bene ting them (VII, 13, 3),just because we then have the feeling of belonging to the same living organism, and of being the limbs ofthe body ofrational beings.
Unlike Epicurean pleasure, Stoic joy is not the motive and the end of moral action: rather, virtue is its own reward. Virtue seeks nothing above and beyond itsel instead, r the Stoics, joy, like Aristotelian pleasure, comes along as an extra surplus in addition to action in con rmity with nature, "like beauty r those in the ower ofyouth. "8 In the words of Seneca:9
Pleasure is not a reward r virtue, nor its cause, but is something added on to it. Virtue is not chosen because it causes pleasure; but if it is chosen, it does cause pleasure.
The j oy which arises om virtue . . . like happiness and tranquillity . . . are consequences of the greatest good, but they do not consti­ tute it. 10
Suchjoy is not, moreover, an irrational passion, because it is in con rm­ ity with reason. According to the Stoics, it is rather a "good emotion" or a " g o o d a e c t i o n . " 1 1
The j oy produced by action accomplished in accordance with Nature is a participation in Nature's love r the that she has produced, and in the mutual love of the parts of the Whole.
For mankind, to be happy means eling the sentiment ofparticipating in an ineluctable movement, issuing om the impulse given to the by original Reason, in order to realize the good of the All. In the word physis, which we translate as "nature," the Greeks perceived the idea ofa movement of growth, of un lding, and, as the Stoics used to say, of "swelling"12 (emphysesis). To be happy meant to embrace this expansive
Virtue and Joy
movement, and thus to go in the same direction as Nature, and to feel, as it were, thejoy which she herself els in her creative movement.
This is why Marcus, when he describes joy, uses images which evoke progress on the right path and in the right direction, and the accord of our desires, wills, and thoughts with the path of Nature. It is then that "rational nature llows the path that is proper to it" (VIII, 7, r). The Stoics13 de ned happiness as euroia biou, "the good owing oflife. " Mar­ cus likes to link this image (II, 5, 3; V, 9, 5; X, 6, 6) to that of"progress in the right direction"-that is, in the direction ofNature (V, 34, 1). While the material elements move up, move down, or tum in a circle,
the movement of virtue does not resemble any of these physical motions, but is something divine, and it proceeds along the right path, which it is hard r us to imagine (VI, 17).
This right path is the "straight line" or "right road"-that ofNature hersel whose way is always straight ahead (X, I 1 , 4) . Her way is short and direct (IV, 51):
Get to the end ofyour race in a straight line, llowing your own nature and universal Nature, r both of these llow the same way (V, 3, 2).
Here, Marcus is reviving an ancient image which had been used by Plato:14
The God who, as ancient tradition will have it, holds the beginning, end, and middle ofall things, gets to the end efhis race in a st ight line, in accordance with the order ofnature.
Already in Plato, then, the order of nature appears as a triumphant movement which reaches its end without ever allowing itself to be distracted om the rectitude of its decision and its intention. According to Marcus, the movement of the governing part of the soul-the move­ ment ofthe intellect-also proceeds in a straight line, like the sun, which illuminates that which is in its way, and in a sense assimilates it to itself (VIII, 57). For the Stoics, moral action reaches its goal straightaway, inso r as it is its own end, and inso r as it nds its perfection in its very activity. A propos of this topic, Marcus recalls the technical expression
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katorthosis, which the Stoics used to designate such actions: it means that they llow a straight way (V, 1 4) .
Joy has its roots in that pro und tendency of living beings which impels them to love that which makes them exist, and this means not only their own structure and unity, but the All, without which they would be nothing, and of which they are integral parts. It also means Nature and her irresistible movement, of which they are but a tiny moment, but with which they identi themselves wholly, by means of their moral will.
Finally, and most important, joy is based on the recognition of the unique value of the one necessary thing that can exist in this human wo d: the purity ofmoral intention. We cannot nd
in human life, a good superior to justice, truth, temperance, and strength (III, 6, 1),
and this, there re, is the good which we must enjoy (VI, 47, 6):
Only one thing has value down here: to spend one's li in truth and justice, all the while remaining benevolent to liars and to the unjust.
MARCUS AURELIUS IN HIS MEDITATIONS
The author and his work
In interpreting the writings of antiquity, and particularly those of Marcus Aurelius, we must be on our guard against two errors which are diamet­ rically opposed, but equally anachronistic. One ofthese, inherited om Romanticism but still very much alive, consists in believing that an author expresses himself totally and adequately in the work which he produces, and that the work is there re completely in the image and resemblance of its creator. The other, which is very shionable today, holds that the idea ofan "author" is passe; the work has its own auton­ omy and its own li , and it can be explained without our having to nd out what the author wanted to do or say.
In ct, ancient authors were subject to strict rules, which were not of their choice. Some ofthese rules regulated the way in which one should write; these include the rules of literary genres as de ned by rhetoric, which prescribed in advance the plan ofexposition, style, and the various gures ofthought and elocution which must be used. Other rules regu­ lated the subject matter itsel what was written, the themes with which the author must deal (which, in the case ofthe theater, were supplied to him by mythical or historical tradition). Philosophers were also situated within a school-tradition, which imposed upon them a list of questions and problems to be discussed in a speci c order, a method ofargumenta­ tion which had to be llowed scrupulously, and principles which had to be adopted.
In the case of Marcus Aurelius, we have seen that the spiritual exer­ cises which he wrote down were prescribed by the Stoic tradition, and in particular by the rm of Stoicism de ned by Epictetus.
Canvas, themes, arguments, and images were provided r him in advance. For Marcus, the essential thing was not to invent or to compose, but to in uence
10
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himself and produce an e ect upon himself Even if this e ect was e cacious at one moment, however, it would soon lose its strength, and the exercise would have to be begun again in order constantly to revive the certitude derived om the striking rmulations ofthe principles and rules oflife.
This state ofa airs will thus lead us to question the attempts ofpsy­ chological history, on the basis of the text of the Meditations, to arrive at conclusions about "the Marcus Aurelius case"- r instance, about his stomach ailments or his opium addiction.
This does not mean, however, that Marcus is totally absent om the Meditations, or that any Stoic who happened to be in Marcus' situation could have written approximately the same work. It is true that the Meditations attempt, as it were, to eliminate the point of view of indi­ viduality, in order to rise up to the level of universal and impersonal Reason; yet Marcus the individual still shines through, in this ever-re­ newed and never nished ef rt to assimilate the principles ofReason, in order to apply them to his particular circumstances. In the last analysis, this apparently impersonal work is highly personalized. Marcus has a vorite style and themes; he sometimes has obsessions and lacerating preoccupations, which arise om his carrying out the business of an emperor. We know very we what Marcus wanted to accomplish by writing this work: to act upon himsel place himselfin a certain state of mind, and respond to the concrete problems which the various situations ofdaily life posed r him.
The limits ofpsychological histo The Marcus Aurelius case
What I have said about the "impersonal" nature of ancient works in general and of Marcus Aurelius' spiritual exercises in particular must incite us to the greatest prudence in any e ort we might be tempted to make to reconstruct the psychology of the philosopher-emperor. As r as I know, it was Ernest Renan who was the rst to attempt to sketch a portrait ofMarcus. He ended up, moreover, with a portrait that is rather incoherent. Sometimes, he insists on the emperor's disillusioned seren­ ity:1
The most solid goodness is that which is based on perfect boredom, and the clear view of the ct that this whole world is frivolous and
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 245
lacking any true substance . . . The goodness of the Skeptic is the most certain, and the pious emperor was more than skeptical. The movement ofli in this soul was almost as quiet as the tiny noises in the intimate atmosphere of a co n. He had attained Buddhist nir­ vana, or the peace of Christ. Like Jesus, Shakya-Muni, Socrates, St. Francis of Assisi, and three or ur other sages, he had utterly con­ quered death. He could smile at it, because it truly had no more meaning r him.
Elsewhere, by contrast, Renan discovers in Marcus a tormented soul:2
The desperate e ort which was the essence ofhis philosophy, this enzied renunciation, sometimes pushed as r as sophism, nally conceals an immense wound. One must have said rewell to happi­ ness to arrive at such excesses! We shall never understand all that this poor withered heart had su ered, and how much bitterness lay hidden by his pale visage, always calm and almost smiling.
Here, r om having attained Buddhist nirvana or the peace of Christ, Renan's Marcus seems "consumed" by an inner sickness:
This strange sickness, this worried study of himsel this demonic scrupulousness, this verish per ctionism, are the signs ofa nature less strong than it is distinguished. 3
What he lacked was the kiss of a iry at his birth, which is, in its way, a very philosophical thing. What I mean is the art ofyielding to nature: that gaiety which learns that abstine et sustine is not every­ thing, and that life must also be able to be summed up by the rmula "smile and enjoy. "4
This portrait ofMarcus by Renan gave rise to what must be called the obstinate and tenacious myth which turns Marcus into a disillusioned pessimist. In the twentieth century-the century ofpsychology, psycho­ analysis, and suspicion-the Renanian representation ofthe philosopher­ emperor has had a tremendous in uence. P. Wendland5 speaks ofMar­ cus' "mourn l resignation. " More recently, ]. M. Rist6 has spoken ofthe philosopher-emperor's "extreme Skepticism," and ofhis "penchant r doubt. " Paul Petit7 speaks ofa "rather negative despair. " What I have said
about the alleged pess1m1sm of the Mediations ought, I think, to be su cient to re te such a rmations.
According to E. R. Dodds,8 the emperor considered human activity to be not only unimportant, but in a way almost unreal. It seems very di cult to reconcile such an interpretation with what Marcus says about the discipline of action. Dodds insists on the perpetual self-criticism to which Marcus subjects himsel and on the need which the emperor feels to be "another. " Dodds relates this tendency to a dream which, accord­ ing to Cassius Dio and the Historia Augusta, Marcus had at the age of seventeen, on the night of his adoption by the emperor Antoninus. Marcus dreamed that he had ivory shoulders, and this suggests to Dodds that Marcus su ered om an acute rm ofwhat modern psychologists would call an identity crisis.
Here we have a typical example of the dangers of historical psychol­ ogy. Dodds gives a poor de nition ofwhat it means to "desire to be something other than one is. " It is true that Marcus aspired to be another man and to begin another li (X, 8, 3). But as the context shows, what he means by this is that he wants to acquire truth, prudence, and nobility of soul (X, 8, r). I think that every normal person also desires to be someone else in that sense, and if that is an identity crisis, then every person has an identity crisis. I cannot, moreover, see how "so much self-reproach" presents a "morbid" aspect, as Dodds maintains. 9 On this theme, Dodds attributes to Marcus the rmula "It is di cult r a man to put up with himself, " which, we are to believe, lets us infer either that Marcus w s unbearable to himsel or that, more generally, human nature taken in itselfis unbearable to itsel In ct, however, Dodds completely de rms the meaning ofMarcus' text 0/, IO, 4; not V, IO, I as is incor­ rectly indicated in Dodds's note). Marcus' actual tone is the llowing:
Also consider the ways of li of the men who live with you; the most pleasant of them is di cult to put up with, not to say that he can scarcely put up with himsel
Thus, the issue is not at all Marcus' relationship with his own self, but a wholly other problem, to which I shall return. Neither is this Marcus' personal experience; rather, it is a description, traditional within Stoicism and even within the other schools, of the misery of a person who does not live as a philosopher, does not devote himselfto the unique value of the moral good, and who is there re in contradiction and at war with himsel To live philosophically-that is to say, to live "according to
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Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 247
nature"-is to be coherent with oneself In all this, no "identity crisis" on the part ofMarcus can be discerned.
Moreover, when discussing Marcus' dream, Dodds does not give a complete report of what the ancient historians had to say. The Historia Augusta,10 r example, tells us that not only did the young man dream that he had ivory shoulders, but that he wondered ifthey would be able to support a burden, whereupon he discovered that they were extraordi­ narily stronger. Cassius Dio,11 writing shortly after Marcus' death, spe­ ci es that in his dream, Marcus could use these shoulders just as easily as the other parts of his body. In ct, however, the question is not what such a dream might represent to a person of modem times, but what it may have meant to a person of antiquity. The mistake made by some kinds ofpsychological history is to project back onto the past our mod­ em-day representations, according to which shoulders which are "other" must correspond to "another" man. What we must try to understand is what the images which appeared to the people of antiquity in their dreams could represent within their collective mentality. As Pierre Gri­ mal12 has shown, r them ivory shoulders immediately brought to mind the story of Pelops. Pelops' body, tom to pieces by his ther Tantalus, had been served to the gods r dinner. Demeter, still grieving over the death ofher daughter Persephone, was the only one not to recognize the dish, and she ate Pelops' shoulder. Clotho, goddess of Fate, replaced it with an ivory shoulder and revived the young Pelops. According to the Images by Philostratus, who wrote a few decades after the death ofMar­ cus, Poseidon was dazzled by the sight of this ivory shoulder, and he ll in love with Pelops. "When the night covered the earth, the young man was illuminated by his shoulder, which shone like the evening star in the midst ofthe darkness. "13
To have ivory shoulders was thus to be the object ofdivine solicitude and grace; it was to be protected by Fate, as personi ed by Clotho. In the situation ofincreased responsibility announced by his adoption, the ivory shoulders announce the help om the gods and om Fate which will make Marcus strong enough to assume his task. This, r a man of antiquity, is the true meaning ofMarcus' dream.
The psychosomaticist R. Dailly and H. van E enterre have under­ taken collaborative research in order to diagnose what they call "the Marcus Aurelius Case. "14 In particular, they sought to know the reason why, in a kind of contradiction with his principles, this emperor sur­ rounded himselfwith highly dubious characters. He chose as co-ruler his adoptive brother, Lucius Verus; he entrusted the position ofCommander
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in Chief over the entire East to Avidius Cassius, the general who later took up arms against him; and nally, he chose as his successor in the imperial dignity his son Commodus, who was to become a tyrant com­ parable to Nero. "These were three ne male specimens," write the authors ofthis article, "who had a de nite ability to enchant the crowds; and we are entitled to wonder whether they did not also exert a kind of unconscious scination upon Marcus Aurelius. " Thus, right at the be­ ginning of the article, we encounter the thesis which the two authors mean to defend: the philosopher-emperor was a weak man, lacking in virility, who lt the need to compensate r his doubts and hesitations by surrounding himself with strong, self-con dent men. Here we can glimpse the inner workings of this kind of psychological explanation: people believe they have uncovered a highly characteristic symptom, which is not in ct the symptom of anything, since it is not even a symptom. Nothing proves that Marcus chose these individuals out of attraction toward their virile rce. The elections of Lucius Verus, Avidius Cassius, and Commodus were dictated by complex political reasons, which historians have analyzed thoroughly. Nor is there any­ thing to prove that these " ne male specimens" (were they indeed so ne? ) were really so sure of themselves. Since, however, the subject of this book is the Meditations, I do not wish to allow myselfto be dragged into the domain of history. I wish simply to a rm, most rmly, that the Meditations do not, either in their goal or in their content, permit us either to a rm or to deny that Marcus was a weak man, that he lacked virility, or, as our two authors would have it, that he had a stomach ulcer. They arrive at this last diagnosis on the basis of the llowing passage om the historian Cassius Dio:15
[During the Danubian campaign] , he became physically very weak, to the point that, at the beginning, he could not stand the cold, and a er the soldiers had been assembled on his order, he had to retire be re having spoken to them. . . . For it was not his custom to eat anything during the day, with the exception of the medicine called theriac. He took this not because he was a aid of anything, but because his stomach and his chest were in poor shape. And it is said that it was because of this medicine that he was able to resist this i ness, and others as well.
This text makes no mention ofany chronic illness, but rather re rs to Marcus' state during the Danubian campaign. Elsewhere, Cassius Dio
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 249
bears witness to the ct that the Emperor was vigorous in his youth, and that he took part in violent sports like hunting. 16 According to Dio, it was the worries ofhis of ce and his ascetic ways that weakened his body. Be that as it may, our two authors, after having diagnosed a gastric ulcer, move on to the psychological correlates ofthis illness:
The ulcerous man . . . is he who is essentially withdrawn into him­ sel worried and preoccupied . . . His neighbors are masked om him by a kind of hypertrophy of the sel it is himsel in the last analysis, that he seeks in others . . . Conscientious to the point of minutiae, he is more interested in the technical perfection of ad­ ministration than in those human relations ofwhich administration should be only the sum total. Ifhe is a thinking man, he will incline to seek r justi cations, to compose superior personalities, and to adopt Stoic or Pharisaic attitudes. In the area of ethics, he will be virtuous by e rt, good by application, and a believer by rce of will. 17
I am not quali ed to debate the scienti c value of the psychological portrait which these two authors trace ofthese "gastropaths," although it would be interesting to ask them if they recognized themselves in this dark portrait. What I question is the possibility of deriving om the Meditations even the slightest hint which might con rm or invalidate this description ofMarcus Aurelius' psychology. The authors are completely mistaken as to the nature of this work when, to justi their diagnosis, they claim that the Meditations respond to a need r "justi cation in his own eyes," and constitute "a long series ofexhortations to persist in the path chosen be rehand. " As we have seen, the Meditations do not repre­ sent an exceptional phenomenon, proper to Marcus. Such written medi­ tation was highly recommended by Stoic masters, and is, moreover, still practiced today by people who do not have a stomach ulcer, but who are simply trying to live in a somewhat human way. And this is not a case of self-justi cation, but rather of an attempt at self-criticism and self-trans­ rmation. These variations on themes supplied by Epictetus cannot in rm us about the Emperor's gastric ulcer, and can tell us nothing decisive about the Marcus Aurelius "case. " Here we have a good exam­ ple ofthe dangers ofpsychological history when applied to ancient texts. Be re we present the interpretation of a text, we should rst begin to distinguish between, on the one hand, the traditional-one might almost say "pre bricated"-elements used by the author, and, on the other,
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what he or she wishes to do with them. Ifwe do not make this distinc­ tion, we will consider as symptomatic rmulas or attitudes which are not at such, because they do not emanate om the author's personality but are imposed upon him by tradition. We must try to nd out what the author wants to say, but also what he can or cannot say, and what he must or must not say, as a nction of the traditions and the circumstances imposed upon him.
Was Marcus an opium addict?
This is what T. W. Africa should have investigated, be re he claimed to discover the symptoms ofMarcus' alleged opium addiction in the Medi­ tations .
A ica bases his claim on three pieces of evidence. He takes up the passage om Cassius Dio discussed above, which, while describing the Emperor's state of health during the winter campaigns on the Danube, told us that he did not consume anything during the day except an antidote called theriac. He did this not because he was a aid of being poisoned, as we saw, but in order to calm his chest and stomach. Else­ where, A ica mentions a work by Galen entitled On Antidotes, which describes the di erent ways of preparing theriac, the use lness of this medicine, and the way in which Marcus used it. Finally, A ica thinks he can discover visions and psychic states produced by opium abuse within the Meditations.
Here is how A ica summarizes the evidence of Galen18 on Marcus' theriac consumption:
When he und himself getting drowsy at his duties, he had the poppy juice removed [ om the mixture] . . . But, then, he was unable to sleep at night. . . . So he was obliged once again to have recourse to the compound which contained poppyjuice, since this was now habitual with him.
Ifwe read Galen's text19 through to the end, however, we nd that it says precisely the opposite of what A ica wants to make it say. In the continuation of his text, Galen speci es two things. In the rst place, when Marcus took up the mixture containing poppy juice again, his personal physician, Demetrius, made sure that it contained aged poppy
juice, which did not have the same sopori c e ect. Second, a er the death of Demetrius, Galen himself was responsible r preparing the
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 251
Emperor's theriac, and he is quite proud to be able to say that Marcus was completely satis ed with the way he composed the antidote in accordance with the recipe that was traditional among the physicians to the emperors. Thus, according to Galen, the Emperor's sleepiness was only a temporary accident which happened during the Danubian cam­ paigns, and which did not happen again after aged poppyjuice was used, and especially after Galen intervened. That is what the latter's text actu­ a y says.
In ct, the question is exceedingly complex, and we have no way of determining the exact quantity and quality of the opium juice that went into the theriac which the Emperor consumed. On the one hand, his doctors took care to see that the opium juice was aged and weakened. On the other hand, Galen, in the course of his treatise, speaks of three kinds ofantidotes which he had prepared r Marcus Aurelius: galene (the antidote ofAndromachus), which contained sixty- ur ingredients, one of which was poppy juice; theriac of Hera, which contained no poppy
juice, but had equal parts of bituminous clover, Aristolochia rotunda, mountain rue (Ruta halepensis), and ground vetch ( cia E ilia). Finally, there was an antidote consisting of one hundred ingredients, which con­ tained very little poppy juice. Thus, the quantity of poppy juice was highly variable. 20
For his part, Galen saw a proof of Marcus' wisdom in this custom of his :
Some people use this medicine every day, r the good of their body, as we know personally om the case of the divine Marcus who once ruled in respect of the laws, and who, thanks to the consciousness he had of himsel observed the mixture of his body with very precise attention. He used this medicine copiously, as ifit were nourishment. It was om him that theriac began to be ­ mous, and that its powerful e ectiveness appeared among men. Indeed, thanks to the ct that the Emperor's health improved be­ cause of it, people's con dence in the use lness of this medicine increased considerably. 21
Thus, we can see om this body of evidence, taken om Cassius Dio and om Galen, that nothing in any way allows us to infer that Marcus was an opium addict.
This, moreover, is the conclusion which T. W. A ica himself reaches,22 in a otnote to his article: "Admittedly the amounts of opium
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could vary, and, on the basis of the antidote of the younger Antimachus (Galen XIV 42), a kyamos (Marcus' daily dose) would contain about 0. 03 3 gram of opium, hardly su cient r addiction. "
In that case, however, can we still speak ofan opium addiction? Yes, says A ica, because Marcus displays two symptoms: his "odd detachment om domestic realities," and the "bizarre visions" which we nd in the Meditations. The strange detachment mentioned by A ica is probably­ r he never clari es the point-what historians have always censured Marcus r: his apparent indi erence to the in delities of his wife Faustina and to the extravagances ofhis colleague Lucius Verus, as well as the un rtunate choice he made of Commodus as his successor. As we have already seen, however, the question with regard to Lucius Verus and Commodus is very complex, and political motives must have played a large role in determining Marcus' attitude. As r Faustina: she bore Marcus thirteen children, and he mentions her brie y but very emotion­ ally in the rst book ofthe Meditations. Everything leads us to believe that she was the victim of court gossip. Be that as it may, it is di cult to see why Marcus' attitude was any more a symptom of opium addiction, as A ica maintains, than it was of a stomach ulcer, as Dailly and van E en­ terre had thought.
There remain the "bizarre visions. " Here, bad historical psychology reaches one ofits summits; this is a piece worthy ofan anthology. I quote T. W. A ica:23
Marcus' vision oftime as a raging river carrying all be re it into the abyss of the ture was no school doctrine of li viewed om the Porch, but an attempt to express the extended perspectives oftime and space which opium had opened up to him. Temporal and spatial dimensions were accelerated until Europe was but a speck and the present a point and men insects crawling on a clod. History was no longer a reference but an actual pageant of the past. Marcus shared the exacerbated sensations of his fellow opium-addict De Quincey:24 "The sense of space, and, in the end, the sense of time, were both powerfully a ected. Buildings, landscapes, etc. , were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not tted to receive them. Space swelled and was ampli ed, to an extent of unutterable in nity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived r 70 or I oo years in one night; nay, sometimes had elings representative
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 253 o f a millennium passed i n that time, or, however, o f a duration r
beyond the limits ofany human experience. "
Let us now examine the passages om Marcus Aurelius to which Africa refers in a otnote:
A river of events, a violent current: that is what eternity is. No sooner has one thing been seen than it has already passed; another one passes, and will, in its turn, be swept away (IV, 43).
Think often about the rapidity with which beings and events pass and disappear: r substance is like a river in perpetual ux; activities are in constant trans rmation; and causes are in a myriad ofmodes. Almost nothing is stable, even that which is close to you. Think also ofthe in nite abyss ofthe past and ofthe ture, into which every­ thing is swallowed up (V, 23).
Pace Mr. A ica, this theme is well attested in Stoicism, r instance in Seneca:25
Represent to yourself ropane) the vastness of time and embrace the universe, and then compare what we call human li to this immen­ sity.
Time passes with in nite speed. . . . Everything lls into the same abyss. . . . Our existence is a point, or less; but nature, by dividing this minimal thing, has given it the appearance ofa longer duration.
We nd this ancient image in the llowing ne verses by Leonidas of Tarentum:26
In nite, 0 man, is the time be re you came to the dawn; in nite is that which awaits you in Hades. What portion ofexistence remains to you, ifit is not barely the value ofa point, or still less?
Marcus' river is no doubt the Stoic river of substance, "which ows ceaselessly, "27 but in the last analysis it is the river of Heraclitus-that Heraclitus who Plato said compared beings to the ow of a river. 28 It is also the river of the Platonists, mentioned by Plutarch: "Everything appears and disappears in one unique moment; be it actions, words, or
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feelings; like a river, time sweeps everything away. "29 Finally, we also encounter this river in Ovid: "Time ows in perpetual movement; like a river, wave is pressed by wave. "30
When Seneca uses the expression propane, which means "represent to yourself" or "place be re your eyes the bottomless chasm of time, " he emphasizes that he is speaking of an exercise of the imagination, which the Stoic must practice. We nd an exercise of the same kind in those Meditations in which Marcus seeks to embrace the dimensions of the universe by his imagination, or to see things om on high, in order to reduce them to their true value:
Remember the totality of substance, of which you participate in only the smallest portion; remember also the whole of eternity, of which you have been assigned but a brie tiny interval. Finally, remember destiny, ofwhich you are a part: but how tiny! (V, 24)
If you suddenly und yourself transported into the air, and con­ templated human a airs and their variety om above, you would have contempt r them, as you saw, in the same glance, how vast is the domain ofthe inhabitants ofthe air and ofthe ether (XII, 24, 3).
You can cut o many of the super uous things which present obstacles to you, and which rest entirely on your value-judgment. Thus you will clear r yourself a vast open eld, by embracing the entire universe in your mind; you will comprehend perpetual eter­ nity, as you consider the rapid trans rmation of each individual thing. How short is the time om birth to dissolution; how gaping is the in nity be re birth, and similarly the in nity a er dissolution (IX, 32).
The soul traverses the entire world and the void which surrounds it; it examines the rm ofthe world; extends itselfinto the in nity of eternity, and embraces and conceives the periodic rebirth of the universe (XI, I, 3).
Asia and Europe are corners ofthe world; the entire sea is a drop of the world; Athas is a lump of earth in the world; all of present time is a point in eternity; everything is tiny, agile, and evanescent (VI, 36, 1).
Marcus Aurelius in His Meditations 255
We can immediately see the di erence between these passages and those by De Quincey. For the latter, the distention ofduration and space is an impression imposed upon the addict om outside, and he is in a sense its passive victim.