The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 
by 

Pierre Hadot, 

 

Michael Chase (Translator)

 

BlackOxford's review 

Mar 09, 2020  ·  edit

it was amazing

bookshelves: french-language, biography-biographical, philosophy-theology, epistemology-language 

Note to Self: Don’t Be a Dick

I find a comparison of the conversion experience of Marcus Aurelius with those of St. Paul and St. Augustine irresistible. Nothing shows more plainly the effect of Christianity on Western culture. More specifically, Christianity created a cult of language which the world has been trying to overcome ever since. Marcus Aurelius has left a legacy in hisMeditations of what the world is like without that cult.

Saul of Tarsus was knocked from his horse, spent several years in meditation, presumably among followers of Jesus, emerged as Paul, and then came up with the startling idea of faith, a religious category unknown among Greeks, Romans, Jews or any other religion practised among human beings. This faith required accepting the story he told about Jesus as incontrovertibly true (this was minimal; the gospels had not yet been written and he had no first hand knowledge of Jesus). The practical implication of Paul’s idea of faith was, and remains, the establishment of a language superior to human intellect to which intellect must submit.

The experience of Augustine of Hippo is less dramatic but has an underlying similarity to that of Paul. Augustine during a period of acute psychic distress hears a child's voice telling him to "take this and read it.” This is in response to his recognition, probably already inspired by Paul, that his life had become a habit he was unable to break. So he reads in Paul’s letter to the Romans to “behave decently.” But this can be achieved according to Paul only by “clothing yourself in the Lord Jesus Christ,” that is by unquestioning belief in Paul’s story about Jesus.

Marcus Aurelius also had a conversion experience in his mid-20’s, quite possibly at about the same age as Paul and Augustine. By tradition, this experience was provoked, as with Augustine, by the reading of a letter. Crucially, however, there was no voice urging him to do so. He already was an avid reader and had what we would call today a spiritual director in the Stoic philosopher Junius Rusticus. The content of the letter by a Stoic philosopher dead more than 400 years concerned fine points of the law. Yet it had a profound effect on Marcus, causing a complete upheaval in his life. But exactly opposite to that of Paul and Augustine.

Instead of adopting an attitude of anything resembling faith, Marcus suddenly relativises everything he has learned, that is to say, all the language he has assimilated about life principles, philosophical doctrines, and spiritual methods. He is abruptly and decisively wary of language. He makes this clear to his mentor as he reports his intentions:

“To have had some idea of the need I had to straighten out my moral condition, and to take care of it. 
That I did not let myself be dragged into sophistical ambition, or to compose treatises on philosophical theorems, to declaim fine exhortatory speeches, or, finally, to try to strike my audience's imagination by parading myself ostentatiously as a man who practices philosophical exercises, or is generous to a fault. 
To have given up rhetoric, poetry, and refined expressions. Not to walk around in a toga while I'm home, and not to let myself go in such matters. 
To write letters simply, just like the letter he himself wrote to my mother from Sinuessa. 
To be disposed, with regard to those who are angry with you and offend you, in such a way as to be ready to respond to the first call, and to be reconciled as soon as they themselves wish to return to you. 
To study texts with precision, without being content just to skim over them in a general, approximate way; and not to give my assent too quickly to smooth talkers. 
To have been able to read the notes taken at the courses of Epictetus, which he lent to me from his own library.”

Clearly Marcus has come to a realisation that behaviour toward one’s fellow not knowledge of purported truths is the crucial core of ethics. Language of any kind whatsoever cannot substitute for the actual relationship one has with others. Actions not words are the substance of ethics; and ethical actions can only be achieved by acting. Even the genre of the Meditations reflects a suspicion of language. It is not a thesis, or a memoir, nor even a complete story, much less a gospel. The Meditations are ‘merely’ notes to himself, reminders. Much of the content is directly precisely toward the self-encouragement to act rather than think correctly. For example:

The best way to get even with them is not to resemble them (VI, 6). 
Leave your books alone. Don't let yourself be distracted any longer; you can't allow yourself that any more (II, 2, 2). 
Throw away your thirst for reading, so that when you die, you will not be grumbling, but will be in true serenity, thanking the gods from the bottom of your heart (II, 3, 3). 

Here is the contradiction for Pauline faith. We have no word for it, but it represents an ethical attitude which is remarkably close to that of James the brother of Jesus and of Judaism in general. It is neither atheistic nor agnostic. But it is deeply human and humane. It typifies what ancient philosophy was about, namely how to act not how to think. Behaviour is what matters. One might use ideas to arrive at or explain correct behaviour but the ideas are always subsidiary to the behaviour. Pauline faith is fatal to such an ethic. The world of the second century was on a cusp and had no realisation of it. Very soon it would plunge into the ethical abyss of faith. We only have Marcus’s notes to himself to remind us what the world could have been like.