Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:35 — 24.9MB)
Mark and Seth build on parts 1 and 2 of our discussion of Marcus to get further into the specifics of his metaphysics and how this is supposed to relate to behavior. Can Stoic directives really come solely "from reason," as he claims? How does this interact with the behaviors that we pursue (appropriately, according to Marcus) "by nature," i.e., without conscious deliberation required? Seth is concerned with how individualistic the philosophy is. Mark is concerned that if you discard the metaphysics (as modern skeptics largely do), why should you expect the rest of the philosophy to be coherent?
Get the full, 42-minute discussion here by becoming a PEL Citizen or $5/month Patreon supporter.
J Miller says
November 5, 2018 at 10:11 amWell I didn’t get to read more than that little bit you’ve posted for a lead in to the full talk but I’m going to say something that’s been on my mind about MA anyway. It might not really be germane to this discussion of MA but here goes.
Personally I believe that logic or reason is the only right tool we have to lead us in this quagmire called life. Reason takes into account nature, emotions and all the things that influence our actions. It knows when to lead and when to yield to powers we might not have control of and would lead us astray if we tried. It cannot be rigid and still be logic as many, IMO, illogical people seem to think.
I think from comparing MA’s life to his written word he did not always follow his own advice. I’ve always been impressed that even though he had a chance to watch his son on war campaigns that he seemed to have no clue his son was a psychopath or something close and would most surely undo all his efforts to save the Empire that he had spent a lot of his reign involved in? Maybe there are unwritten motivations for him staying out on the warpath so long. Something doesn’t make sense there but I’ll bet he surely neglected his son and when the time came had no logical thinking in relation to his own son and how to relate to him in preparing him to take control of Rome. I think this may be common in many father son relationships. Something similar took place in my relationship to my old man to the point where I considered him my biggest enemy (next to our culture itself) in life.
Living a life that is really directed by reason is a lot of difficult work and needs a lot of luck as well. Humans are short on reason and long on fear and denial. IMO there are only maybe a fraction of a % of humans I’d call really logical in their actions and thoughts.. This world would not be like this otherwise.
OK I’ve got this off my chest lol. End Rant!
Roy Albin says
December 24, 2018 at 10:53 pmI debated leaving this but one of the comments that was made was that one of the group I think deserves comment . Seth I think couldn’t understand how Marcus Aurelius could advise people to look at their child at night and think of him not being there in the morning as being something that was horrible. None of you put this into historical context we know that even as late as the 1800s Thirty or forty percent of children didn’t make it to age 5 in the best of Nations like Sweden.. there were queens that were seven or eight children or more before they had one that actually made it to adulthood. The two things that that bring home to me is how incredibly lucky we are to live in the age we do especially in the US and Europe in terms of the afib mortality rate being so small but in the light of what the infant mortality rate was in Marcus Aurelius time that admonition seems to make a lot of sense especially from a stoic perspective. Hopefully that is useful