Beyond Philosophy

Marcus conducts an inventory of his life. How does he relate to other persons, human and divine? Each one he meets offers occasion for action and expression: the trick is to speak and act well, adapting the self to converse skillfully with the other. To do this well, you need to remember who you are, what you have seen and done: having your past in mind helps you improve your expression, as far as you can, and rest content once you have deliberately given someone your best effort. Πῶς προσενήνεξαι μέχρι νῦν θεοῖς, γονεῦσιν, ἀδελφῷ, γυναικί, τέκνοις, διδασκάλοις, τροφεῦσι, φίλοις, οἰκείοις, οἰκέταις; εἰ πρὸς πάντας σοι μέχρι νῦν ἐστι τό· μήτε τινὰ ῥέξαι ἐξαίσιον μήτε εἰπεῖν. ἀναμιμνῄσκου δὲ καὶ δι’ οἵων διελήλυθας καὶ οἷα ἤρκεσας ὑπομεῖναι καὶ ὅτι πλήρης ἤδη σοι ἡ ἱστορία τοῦ βίου καὶ τελεία ἡ λειτουργία καὶ πόσα ὦπται καλὰ καὶ πόσων μὲν ἡδονῶν καὶ πόνων ὑπερεῖδες, πόσα δὲ ἔνδοξα παρεῖδες, εἰς ὅσους δὲ ἀγνώμονας εὐγνώμων ἐγένου. How have you conducted yourself up to this moment with god...

The root of love, for Unamuno, is a desire to understand and be understood. We want others to feel what we feel, and more valiantly, we also want to feel for them—to know and share their feelings. Unamuno sees this more valiant love, that aspires to feel for others, as being generally more common to women, and motherhood, than to men. Amar en espíritu es compadecer, y quien más compadece más ama. Los hombres encendidos en ardiente caridad hacia sus prójimos, es porque llegaron al fondo de su propia miseria, de su propia aparencialidad, de su nadería, y volviendo luego sus ojos, así abiertos, hacia sus semejantes, los vieron también miserables, aparenciales, anonadables, y los compadecieron y los amaron. El hombre ansía ser amado, o, lo que es igual, ansía ser compadecido. El hombre quiere que se sientan y se compartan sus penas y sus dolores. Hay algo más que una artimaña para obtener limosna en eso de los mendigos que a la vera del camino muestran al viandante su llaga o su gangrenoso...

Seneca opens his letter with a jocular greeting, turning serious at the end to remark that we are always making new beginnings, cutting ourselves off from the past to try something we haven't yet done or prepared. If we aren't careful about this, if we let ourselves be driven always to the latest novelty by crowds of people and events, we will lose the thread of meaning that holds our lives together, from birth to death (and perhaps beyond, if we manage to leave some legacy for others). As we get older, it is important to make time to keep that which we have built, and to make it something of enduring worth. Look beyond the moment and build for what comes after. Inquiro de te et ab omnibus sciscitor qui ex ista regione veniunt quid agas, ubi et cum quibus moreris. Verba dare non potes: tecum sum. Sic vive tamquam quid facias auditurus sim, immo tamquam visurus. Quaeris quid me maxime ex iis quae de te audio delectet? quod nihil audio, quod plerique ex iis quos interrogo nesciun...

When Marcus looks into the world, he sees there the workings of a great mind, a vast ordering force beyond the power of humanity to understand or control in any comprehensive fashion. Like other Stoics, Marcus thinks that the universe is alive, moving with conscious purpose whose moment includes our own time and place without being limited, or limitable, to them. Our little moments of mindfulness are just so many tiny sparks cast off by the great glowing flame that is Mind. Ὁ τοῦ ὅλου νοῦς κοινωνικός. πεποίηκε γοῦν τὰ χείρω τῶν κρειττόνων ἕνεκεν καὶ τὰ κρείττω ἀλλήλοις συνήρμοσεν. ὁρᾷς πῶς ὑπέταξε, συνέταξε, καὶ τὸ κατ’ ἀξίαν ἀπένειμεν ἑκάστοις καὶ τὰ κρατιστεύοντα εἰς ὁμόνοιαν ἀλλήλων συνήγαγεν. The mind of the universe has a share in each and every thing. It has made things that are worse for the sake of things that are better, and has harmonized the better, so that each great thing supports the other. You see how it has subjected and ordered everything, giving to each its due and br...

Unamuno presents his own version of the ladder of Diotima (described in Plato's Symposium ). A doomed passion on earth causes those who hold it to conceive some place where it might not be doomed, where it might find the fruition denied to it here. But that fruition must be different, as the place outside the world must be, and so the passion is transformed, too, becoming otherworldly (abstract from the original circumstances that fostered it). Todo lo cual se siente más clara y más fuertemente aun cuando brota, arraiga y crece uno de esos amores trágicos que tienen que luchar contra las diamantinas leyes del Destino, uno de esos amores que nacen a destiempo o desazón, antes o después del momento o fuera de la norma en que el mundo, que es costumbre, los hubiera recibido. Cuantas más murallas pongan el Destino y el mundo y su ley entre los amantes, con tanta más fuerza se sienten empujados el uno al otro, y la dicha de quererse se les amarga y se les acrecienta el dolor de no pode...