Beyond Philosophy

Marcus Aurelius here summarizes four sayings attributed to Heraclitus of Ephesus, an ancient Ionian philosopher whom many Stoics respected (including Roman Stoics in the tradition of Caius Musonius Rufus, the master of Epictetus, whose discourses we know Marcus read). Marcus' take on Heraclitus: nature exists by interchange that creates life from death constantly; humanity should participate in that interchange virtuously, choosing good death for other species and for itself. Good death is the natural end to good life; as a Stoic, one should live such that death can be met with joyful resignation. Marcus paraphrases Heraclitus, where other ancient authorities quote. Quotations of the aphorisms Marcus collects are provided in the notes, where possible, in bold. Ἀεὶ τοῦ Ἡρακλειτείου μεμνῆσθαι, ὅτι γῆς θάνατος ὕδωρ γενέσθαι καὶ ὕδατος θάνατος ἀέρα γενέσθαι καὶ ἀέρος πῦρ καὶ ἔμπαλιν. μεμνῆσθαι δὲ καὶ τοῦ ἐπιλανθανομένου, ᾗ ἡ ὁδὸς ἄγει· καὶ ὅτι, ᾧ μάλιστα διηνεκῶς ὁμιλοῦσι, λόγῳ τῷ τὰ ὅ...

Unamuno continues handling different rational approaches to life. Having dealt with contemporary materialists and Spinoza, he moves on to Nietzsche. What strikes him most is the arbitrary way we set premises for rationalizing (cf. Nietzsche making time eternal, but not space: how so?), and the inadequacy of reason to justify our hunger for life (which he stubbornly sees as irrational). Y ahí tenemos otro racionalista, éste no ya resignado y triste, como Spinoza, sino rebelde, y fingiéndose hipócritamente alegre cuando era no menos desesperado que el otro; ahí tenéis a Nietzsche, que inventó matemáticamente (!!!) aquel remedo de la inmortalidad del alma que se llama la vuelta eterna, y que es la más formidable tragi-comedia o comi-tragedia. Siendo el número de átomos o primeros elementos irreductibles finito, en el universo eterno tiene que volver alguna vez a darse una combinación como la actual y, por lo tanto, tiene que repetirse un número eterno de veces lo que ahora pasa. Claro e...

What do we learn from history? How to die well, despising the worst that fortune might do to us. Sollicitum esse te scribis de iudici eventu quod tibi furor inimici denuntiat; existimas me suasurum ut meliora tibi ipse proponas et acquiescas spei blandae. Quid enim necesse est mala accersere, satis cito patienda cum venerint praesumere, ac praesens tempus futuri metu perdere? Est sine dubio stultum, quia quandoque sis futurus miser, esse iam miserum. Sed ego alia te ad securitatem via ducam: si vis omnem sollicitudinem exuere, quidquid vereris ne eveniat eventurum utique propone, et quodcumque est illud malum, tecum ipse metire ac timorem tuum taxa: intelleges profecto aut non magnum aut non longum esse quod metuis. Nec diu exempla quibus confirmeris colligenda sunt: omnis illa aetas tulit. In quamcumque partem rerum vel civilium vel externarum memoriam miseris, occurrent tibi ingenia aut profectus aut impetus magni. Numquid accidere tibi, si damnaris, potest durius quam ut mittaris in...

Ancient science, and skepticism, must reckon earlier (and so at some moment better) than modern with a lack of information pertaining to causation. We observe that events occur in natural series (cf. the human and animal lifecycles, for example), & that the series show familiar resemblance (such that sons share mortality with fathers), but these observations are not sufficient to know the future in particular cases (shall I die precisely the way my father did? possibly, but not necessarily). Part of the genius of the modern laboratory is its ability to create maximally isolated events, events insulated from the noise of natural environments so much that we can see variables whose limitation allows us to infer causation that it would not be possible to infer elsewhere. A strong caveat here: what becomes a cause in our lab is not always necessarily the only cause, or the same kind of cause, in nature, where causation is fraught in ways that resist linear disentanglement. Τὰ ἑξῆς ἀεὶ ...

Unamuno continues his argument ad hominem against Spinoza. He finds Spinoza being very rational about ethics, but for him this is not enough: ethics require sentiment that is not simply rational, that will not be reduced to reason. It does not please him when Spinoza makes virtue its own reward. He suspects that this line of argument develops from Spinoza being quite sadly denied many good rewards in life, so that he must make or frame happiness in terms accessible from a position of misery. He grasps happiness intellectually, in terms of rational explanation, because he does not have it actually, where he and all of us would prefer to take it — or so Unamuno seems to think . En el escolio a la proposición 41 de esta misma última y más trágica parte de esa formidable tragedia de su Ética , nos habla el pobre judío desesperado de Ámsterdam, de la persuasión común del vulgo sobre la vida eterna. Oigámosle: «Parece que creen que la piedad y la religión y todo lo que se refiere a la forta...

Punctuate your life with actions. Don't start things you never finish. When your time is past, have something finished you can offer. Hic est locus solvendi aeris alieni. Possum enim tibi vocem Epicuri tui reddere et hanc epistulam liberare: molestum est semper vitam inchoare; aut si hoc modo magis sensus potest exprimi, male vivunt qui semper vivere incipiunt. Quare? inquis; desiderat enim explanationem ista vox. Quia semper illis imperfecta vita est; non potest autem stare paratus ad mortem qui modo incipit vivere. Id agendum est ut satis vixerimus: nemo hoc praestat qui orditur cum maxime vitam. Non est quod existimes paucos esse hos: propemodum omnes sunt. Quidam vero tunc incipiunt cum desinendum est. Si hoc iudicas mirum, adiciam quod magis admireris: quidam ante vivere desierunt quam inciperent. Vale. Time to pay my debt. I could give you an utterance here from your boy Epicurus, and set this letter free: “It is a pain always to be starting your life.” But perhaps another ...

See order and beauty in nature, even when bad things occur. Don't cultivate a sense of wonder that requires you to cling or cleave too desperately. Don't chase or flee anything merely because it's natural. Pursuit and avoidance require more information. Πᾶν τὸ συμβαῖνον οὕτως σύνηθες καὶ γνώριμον ὡς τὸ ῥόδον ἐν τῷ ἔαρι καὶ ὀπώρα ἐν τῷ θέρει· τοιοῦτον γὰρ καὶ νόσος καὶ θάνατος καὶ βλασφημία καὶ ἐπιβουλὴ καὶ ὅσα τοὺς μωροὺς εὐφραίνει ἢ λυπεῖ. Every event that occurs is as normal and notable as the rose in spring, or the fruit in summer. Disease, death, slander, plots, everything that cheers or grieves the morons: they are all like this.

The voice of reason declares our mortality, as individuals and as species. Is this as devastating to us as to Unamuno? What might Spinoza say to the reading of his work here? El más lógico y consecuente de los ateos, quiero decir de los que niegan la persistencia en tiempo futuro indefinido de la conciencia individual, y el más piadoso a la vez de ellos, Spinoza, dedicó la quinta y última parte de su Ética a dilucidar la vía que conduce a la libertad y a fijar el concepto de la felicidad. ¡El concepto! ¡El concepto y no el sentimiento! Para Spinoza, que era un terrible intelectualista, la felicidad, la beatitudo , es un concepto, y el amor a Dios un amor intelectual. Después de establecer en la proposición 2 1 de esta parte quinta que «la mente no puede imaginarse nada ni acordarse de las cosas pasadas sino mientras dura el cuerpo», lo que equivale a negar la inmortalidad del alma, pues un alma que separada del cuerpo en que vivió no se acuerda ya de su pasado, ni es inmortal ni es a...

Set a good course for your life, one that commits you to actions whose integrity you can admire, regardless of any external fortune that might attend them. Prepare yourself for storms rather than attempt to predict the weather. V eri boni aviditas tuta est. Quod sit istud interrogas, aut unde subeat? Dicam: ex bona conscientia, ex honestis consiliis, ex rectis actionibus, ex contemptu fortuitorum, ex placido vitae et continuo tenore unam prementis viam. Nam illi qui ex aliis propositis in alia transiliunt aut ne transiliunt quidem sed casu quodam transmittuntur, quomodo habere quicquam certum mansurumve possunt suspensi et vagi? Pauci sunt qui consilio se suaque disponant: ceteri, eorum more quae fluminibus innatant, non eunt sed feruntur; ex quibus alia lenior unda detinuit ac mollius vexit, alia vehementior rapuit, alia proxima ripae cursu languescente deposuit, alia torrens impetus in mare eiecit . Ideo constituendum est quid velimus et in eo perseverandum. What is truly good is s...

Life is a stream in which things move, bearing us and our cares along in an interchange of momentum that is always dynamic, evolving, escaping every attempt at total control. Ride the wave, for you will never own it. Ποταμός τίς ἐστι τῶν γινομένων καὶ ῥεῦμα βίαιον ὁ αἰών· ἅμα τε γὰρ ὤφθη ἕκαστον, καὶ παρενήνεκται, καὶ ἄλλο παραφέρεται, τὸ δὲ ἐνεχθήσεται. Life is a river of events whose current runs strong. No sooner has one thing appeared and passed on, than another comes whirling by: it too shall wash away.

Unamuno wants to explain why none of the rational methods for motivating life work for him. He begins with the Epicurean and Stoic positions, which attempt to explain and motivate our lives in terms of rational pleasure (thus Epicureans) or rational duty (thus Stoics). In each case, nature offers the feedback that makes our pleasure or duty rational, by limiting it. This is mortality, which is precisely what Unamuno is not prepared to accept emotionally (with his heart), though he might accept it rationally (with his head). The unwillingness of the heart to reconcile with the head here makes his fate, and faith, tragic. Muchas y muy variadas son las invenciones racionalistas—más o menos racionales—con que desde los tiempos de epicúreos y estoicos se ha tratado de buscar en la verdad racional consuelo y de convencer a los hombres, aunque los que de ello trataran no estuviesen en sí mismos convencidos, de que hay motivos de obrar y alicientes de vivir, aun estando la conciencia humana de...

Beware of pleasures not because they must be bad, in themselves, but because they tempt you to forget limits. Limitation is necessary. We cannot afford to lose sight of it, in any place we inhabit. This is a significant problem with much naïve modern discourse about freedom (conceived as absence of limitation: while history shows many examples of evil straitjackets, bad limitation, it also warns that we require limitations, that omitting them entirely is at least as evil as having the wrong ones). Fac, oro te, Lucili carissime, quod unum potest praestare felicem: dissice et conculca ista, quae extrinsecus splendent, quae tibi promittuntur ab alio vel ex alio; ad verum bonum specte, et de tuo gaude. Quid est autem hoc de tuo ? Te ipso et tui optima parte. Corpusculum quoque, etiam si nihil fieri sine illo potest, magis necessariam rem crede quam magnam. Vanas suggerit voluptates, breves, paenitendas, ac nisi magna moderatione temperentur, in contrarium abituras. Ita dico: in praecipiti ...

The events of change, or evolution, are not good or bad, for Stoics like Marcus Aurelius. They are merely indifferent: it is our attitude that converts them to evil or good. The Stoic sage, by having a thoroughly good character, makes everything he meets into good. Τοῖς ἐν μεταβολῇ γινομένοις οὐδέν ἐστι κακόν, ὡς οὐδὲ ἀγαθὸν τοῖς ἐκ μεταβολῆς ὑφισταμένοις. Among the outcomes of change there is nothing bad, even as there is nothing good among them.

What is culture? Offerings to memory. But if memory is mortal, the offering can fail. A tragedy. Y los racionalistas que no caen en la rabia antiteológica se empeñan en convencer al hombre que hay motivos para vivir y hay consuelo de haber nacido, aunque haya de llegar un tiempo, al cabo de más o menos decenas, centenas o millones de siglos, en que toda conciencia humana haya desaparecido. Y estos motivos de vivir y obrar, esto que algunos llaman humanismo, son la maravilla de la oquedad afectiva y emocional del racionalismo y de su estupenda hipocresía, empeñada en sacrificar la sinceridad a la veracidad, y en no confesar que la razón es una potencia desconsoladora y disolvente. ¿He de volver a repetir lo que ya he dicho sobre todo eso de fraguar cultura, de progresar, de realizar el bien, la verdad y la belleza, de traer la justicia a la tierra, de hacer mejor la vida para los que nos sucedan, de servir a no sé qué destino, sin preocuparnos del fin último de cada uno de nosotros? ¿He...

Seek the joy that lies deep in the moments your life already has. Be patient enough to notice how you are already very blessed, in some way that only you can appreciate—some way that cannot be published or envied or broadcast to the world at large. Mihi crede, verum gaudium res severa est. An tu existimas quemquam soluto vultu et, ut isti delicati loquuntur, hilariculo mortem contemnere, paupertati domum aperire, voluptates tenere sub freno, meditari dolorum patientiam? Haec qui apud se versat in magno gaudio est, sed parum blando. In huius gaudii possessione esse te volo: numquam deficiet, cum semel unde petatur inveneris. Levium metallorum fructus in summo est: illa opulentissima sunt quorum in alto latet vena assidue plenius responsura fodienti. Haec quibus delectatur vulgus tenuem habent ac perfusoriam voluptatem, et quodcumque invecticium gaudium est fundamento caret: hoc de quo loquor, ad quod te conor perducere, solidum est et quod plus pateat introrsus. True joy is serious bu...

Marcus shares an observation from the Stoic master, Epictetus. Remember who you are! Remember that your true identity can be stated simply. Cast away the burden of self-complication and meet yourself honestly, plainly, without deception.  Ψυχάριον εἶ βαστάζον νεκρόν, ὡς Ἐπίκτητος ἔλεγεν. You are just a little breath bearing up a corpse, as Epictetus says.

It is not rational to become angry when other people believe what you do not. Despair might perhaps be rational; it is certainly closer than hope, and both are best not imposed on others against their will. El racionalista se conduce racionalmente, esto es, está en su papel mientras se limita a negar que la razón satisfaga a nuestra hambre vital de inmortalidad; pero pronto, poseído de la rabia de no poder creer, cae en la irritación del odium anti-theologicum , y dice con los fariseos: «Estos vulgares que no saben la ley, son malditos». Hay mucho de verdad en aquellas palabras de Soloviev: «Presiento la proximidad de tiempos en que los cristianos se reunan de nuevo en las catacumbas porque se persiga la fe, acaso de una manera menos brutal que en la época de Nerón, pero con un rigor no menos refinado, por la mentira, la burla y todas las hipocresías». El odio anti-teológico, la rabia cientificista—no digo científica—contra la fe en otra vida, es evidente. Tomad no a los más serenos ...