Embedded Files
Background
Background
Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180) was a Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher. He is known as the last of the Five Good Emperors, and the last emperor of what is known as the Pax Romana, a period of relative peace, and considered a ‘golden age’ of Roman Imperialism —although that obviously depends who you ask —as we have seen, I’m not sure that the Jewish people considered the era to be that peaceful.
As well as being a ‘good emperor’, Marcus Aurelius was also known at the time as ‘the philosopher’ and is remembered for his work, Meditations. The book was probably never intended to be published and is a collection of his private thoughts and writings written as he travelled around the empire and planned military campaigns.
A 'Stoic' philosopher
A 'Stoic' philosopher
Marcus Aurelius is often called a stoic philosopher - that is influenced by the works of Zeno, Chryssipus, Seneca and others, although he doesn’t use the word himself.
One of the major themes of the Meditations is the idea of developing a sensible perspective on things, not letting oneself get wrapped up in unimportant things. This idea is exemplified in following passages from Book 9:
“31. Indifference to external events.
And a commitment to justice in your own acts.
Which means: thought and action resulting in the common good.
What you were born to do.”
32. You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind—things that exist only there—and clear out space for yourself:
. . . by comprehending the scale of the world
. . . by contemplating infinite time
. . . by thinking of the speed with which things change—each part of every thing; the narrow space between our birth and death; the infinite time before; the equally unbounded time that follows.
33. All that you see will soon have vanished, and those who see it vanish will vanish themselves, and the ones who reached old age have no advantage over the untimely dead.
34. What their minds are like. What they work at. What evokes their love and admiration.
Imagine their souls stripped bare. And their vanity. To suppose that their disdain could harm anyone—or their praise help them.”
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9I think that we can get a similar sense of what Marcus Aurelius was getting at if we think about the famous photograph of earth, the Pale Blue Dot.
It may not look like much but it’s a photo taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe, 6 billion kilometres from earth. Voyager 1, which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the Solar System, was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and take one last photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of astronomer and author Carl Sagan. Sagan wrote about the significance of the photograph in his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot:
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue DotTasks
Tasks
Outline Marcus Aurelius’ advice on how to remove the ‘junk that clutters your mind’ and explain it in your own words.
Are there any reasons why it might be a bad idea to remove the 'junk that clutters your mind'?
Evaluate the advice that we have read from Marcus Aurelius.
Page updated
Report abuse