This week I visited an old work colleague and he had been listening to an episode of Melvyn Bragg's BBC Radio 4 programme, In Our Time, where the experts had been discussing Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. This triggered a discussion between us about philosophy and it reminded me that I will be giving a talk this coming summer about the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his surviving writings, Meditations, entitled, Marcus Aurelius, a modern thinker?.
Marcus Aurelius embraced Stoicism, a philosophy of personal ethics that emphasized virtue, reason, and nature as the foundation for a happy and fulfilling life. It was founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BCE. Marcus Aurelius' approach to Stoicism was to apply it to his everyday life and focus his thoughts on self-control in a way we might compare with modern ideas of mindfulness or self-help.
The contrast between Aristotle's and Marcus Aurelius' writings seems to me to reflect a modern perception of philosophy. I read recently a critic who claimed the academic discipline of philosophy was in "a state of some confusion", as it has no clear direction. This view of philosophy is that it has become divorced from the everyday life of humanity in a way it wasn't in Aristotle's Ancient Greece.
Where Aristotle's works touch on science, economics, political theory, biology, zoology, art, dance and drama, rhetoric, metaphysics and psychology, modern academic philosophy has become so specialised and is so jargon-laden and esoteric that it is excludes most of society; for example, there are these specialised branches, hermeneutics, pragmatism, phenomenology, semiotics, structuralism, deconstructionism (I once met the chief practitioner of this last 'ism', Jacques Derrida, alas, dead now. He was a charming and articulate man but his ideas are far from easy and I have to admit I could never get my head around them completely.).
Modern philosophy often seems to be a subject where a specialist is talking to fellow specialists in their own echo chamber with little relevance to the practicalities of life. I think of the cosmologist here, Stephen Hawking, who back in 2010 declared that "philosophy is dead". His reasoning was that because philosophy lacked the rigour of empirical evidence, like true science, it was a pointless exercise in speculation, lacking proof.
However, there are populist philosophical writers who fill the gap left by academic philosophy on how people should live their lives. I am thinking of writers like Alain de Botton, who are 'pop-philosophers' who argue that philosophy can help us all live better lives, by providing us with insights into ourselves and the world around us. It is perhaps an inevitable spin-off from psychoanalysis and psychotherapy that we now live in an age of introspection and self-help.
This is where Marcus Aurelius comes in with his writings, Meditations. Although it is a collection of personal thoughts that Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself to remind him of the Stoic principles that he lived by, they can be seen in the same category as pop-philosophy, as they are about self-help and consciousness, tackling a range of existential topics, from death, suffering, and virtue, to the nature of the universe.
The key element of Stoicism is that we should focus on what we can control, and accept what we cannot control. You can see the parallels with mindfulness. Like much of Greek philosophy, the most important aspect of life for the Stoic was to live virtuously and not to be emotionally affected by external events.
It can be said that Marcus Aurelius's Meditations is a powerful and moving work of personal philosophy that has inspired people for centuries. It is a set of thoughts that can help us to live better lives, and to face the challenges of life with courage and equanimity. It instructs us to concentrate on the present and not dwell on the past, or worry about the future: Marcus wrote, "The only thing that is truly our own is the present moment." Does that make him a modern thinker?
The Cathedral talk will be on 13th June:
Marcus Aurelius, a modern thinker?
Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor (CE121 - 180). He was an adherent of Stoicism, a philosophy that emphasized the importance of reason, virtue, and living in accordance with nature. His writings, Meditations, focus on the importance of gratitude, resilience, compassion, acceptance and wisdom. Many today see his ideas as a valuable resource for anyone who is looking for ways to live a more fulfilling and meaningful life.
Text: Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Paperback (Penguin Classics), 2006
Tutor: Tim Boatswain, Professor of Anthropology and History,
The tutor's fee for this talk will be donated to Conservation 50 (Safeguarding St Albans Conservation Areas)
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