Meditations

Perhaps due to his practical and personal approach to philosophical principles, Marcus uses a variety of terms that can often seem interchangeable or suggest nuances of meaning. This is especially evident in his variable use of terminology for the divine. It is also evident in his movement between first- and second-person pronouns when offering exhortations, though he is consistently addressing himself. In Book 11, his discussion of how a rational soul should occupy itself raises the question of the relationship between the rational soul and the directing mind. The Greek phrase translated into “rational soul” is logekes psyches, which could be literally translated as “the breath or spirit of reason,” while the Greek phrase for “directing mind” is hegemonikon. The implication is that the directing mind is the leader or force by which the soul brings itself into harmony with the Whole.

Across Meditations, Marcus struggles often against anger and resentment of others’ bad behavior. The repetition of observations and lack of specifics lends the sense that Marcus is not necessarily angry at particular individuals and behaviors (though this may also be the case) but frustrated in a larger sense at the lack of virtue he sees all around him, which he may have trouble reconciling with his core belief that all things work for the benefit of the whole. His compromise across Meditations seems to be that divine workings are beyond human understanding. Things that seem bad in the moment may prove useful in the long run. Thus, it is futile to question nature; it is better to try to understand what is expected of him as an individual limb on the cosmic body. His characteristic response is to turn his attention back on himself: on the contours of his thought, the absence of virtue in his own response, and the need to bring himself in harmony with the divine Whole, which can be thought of as justice itself. If he allows himself to become mired in others’ faults while ignoring his own, he abdicates his freedom to practice reason, and to fail to practice reason is to fail to uphold justice.

The longest chapter in the book, Chapter 18, essentially lays out an argument for how to overcome his anger and achieve understanding, and thus bring him into harmony with the whole. His reference to the nine steps in this process being “gifts from the Muses” may be expressive of this harmonization with the divine. In poetic tradition, the Muses are arbiters of truth, which is always a deep concern of Marcus’s.