Stoic Ethics as a Guide to the Political Life in Marcus Aurelius // La ética estóica como una guía para la vida política en Marco Aurelio (original) (raw)
Related papers
Stoic ethics as a guide to the political life in Marcus Aurelius
Revista Escritos (Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana): Vol. 28 Núm. 61 (2020): Julio - diciembre, 2021
Marcus Aurelius reigned from 161 A.D. to 180 A.D., and he ranks among the most successful emperors of the antonine dynasty. The success of his administration may be attributed to his philosopher personality and, more than that, to his stoic character. Meditations presents thoughts of a stoicism devotee, which reflects in moments of intimacy on the challenges that he faced throughout his life as an emperor. It is in the practice of the ethical precepts of stoicism that he finds his refuge. The text consists of a series of spiritual exercises which reaffirm the indifference to pleasures, contempt for fame, detachment from riches and abnegation for political power. This paper is a study of Meditations, and its main purpose is to elucidate how the stoic way of life is incorporated in the figure of the philosopher emperor; this, as a military function, as he was a commander of the Roman army in the war against the Nordics, where political virtue was tested. Amid the chaos of an insane struggle for the survival of Rome, he found in stoicism a precious source of inspiration. Marcus Aurelius was not dazzled by the cult of the emperor's personality; he acted for the natural right to freedom and guided his political actions for the common good. His stoic perseverance reveals itself in a harmonious conduct with the city, the rational and cosmic organism from which the emperor is a simple part.
How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, by Donald Robertson
Ancient Philosophy, 2020
The first seven chapters of this book tell tales about Marcus’ life and character taken from the accounts of Cassius Dio, Herodian, and most of all the Historia Augusta. Robertson freely adorns these accounts with imagined dialogues and speculative details to enrich his story. He adds texts from not only the Meditations and Marcus’ correspondence with Cornelius Fronto but also Epictetus, Seneca, and other sources of Stoic ideas, interwoven with CBT psychotherapies. Though the Historia Augusta is not an impartial source, Robertson uncritically gathers every flattering characterization of Marcus in it so as to burnish his gleaming portrait of Marcus. Why did Marcus ignore his wife Faustina's infidelity? Why did he allow Commodus to succeed him as emperor despite his son's glaring defects? Robertson nowhere hints at how to reconcile the militaristic imperialism of this warrior-emperor with the ideal of cosmopolitanism inspiring this Stoic warrior of the mind. Nor does he explain why Marcus’ imperial clemency and cosmopolitan brotherhood did not extend to peoples outside the empire. Did Marcus practice tolerance towards Christians or did he see them as political subversives defying Roman law? Did he punish Christians justly or persecute them? It is odd and disappointing that Christians are nowhere mentioned in this book. These defects will annoy scholars, who are not the target audience for this lively, creative, and well-crafted book.
What kind of Stoic are you? The case of Marcus Aurelius
This is a provisional version of the paper. It is now published in *Passionate Mind: Essays in Honor of John M. Rist* ed. Barry David (Academia: Baden-Baden, 2019), pp. 155-180. In it I consider some of the more innovative features of Marcus' version of Stoicism, arguing that he has strong philosophical motivations for some key departures from earlier versions of Stoic psychology and metaphysics and that simple 'eclecticism' is not an adequate account of his novel views.
Stoic Simplicity: The Pursuit of Virtue [Stoaci Sadeli̇k: Bi̇r Erdem Arayişi]
2011
I intend to explicate the phenomenon of simplicity insofar as it is constitutive of an agent"s character, and also to argue that it is a cardinal (though often underappreciated) virtue-every bit as fundamental to a well-lived and admirable life as is wisdom, compassion, fortitude, or any of the more commonly acknowledged praiseworthy qualities. Simplicity, as I will use the term, refers to a disposition in favor of the rational governance of desire and aversion and, in particular, the renunciation of pretense. The simple person eschews interests rooted in concern about how he (or she) may be perceived or regarded by other persons. Simplicity, in short, is a rational restriction of one"s interests to the sphere of one"s direct, unmediated control (as understood by the Roman Stoics)-and a correlative disregard for matters lying beyond that sphere (especially matters such as one"s "image" or reputation).
The Stoics and the State: Theory -- Practice -- Context
The Stoics and the State: Theory -- Practice -- Context. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2018
Presents a comprehensive overview of Stoic political thought by asking (a) what the Stoics thought a state was, (b) how their concepts shaped their views and actual political practice, (c) how Stoic political thought changed during the school's history and (d) was received by later thinkers. The conceptual account (a) is structured on the basis of extant definitions of the state (a polis, res publica and or also the cosmopolis) and constituents of statehood according to Bob Jessop: population, territory, insitution, and state idea.
2019
The philosophy of the Imperial Stoics is often described as apolitical or politically conservative, but Imperial Stoicism was neither of these. The Imperial Stoics were highly engaged with developing a philosophy that was one of the most politically ambitious philosophies in all of ancient philosophy. By insisting that philosophy was a way of life, the Stoics tried to provide a philosophy that could change humanity for the better, and as a consequence also transform human societies. For the Stoics, everyone should undergo a rigorous philosophical training regime in order to become a divine sage, and this they thought could potentially lead to a radically new society that would be entirely rational, deeply egalitarian, and completely property-less. This dissertation attempts to outline how the Imperial Stoics’ philosophy as a way of life comprised a political spirituality that was firmly grounded in a metaphysical claim of the existence of a divine Cosmic City in which all of humanity lived. This dissertation provides readings of the ancient sources through the lens of such thinkers as Michel Foucault, Henry Lefebvre, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Peter Sloterdijk in a novel re-interpretation of ancient Stoic political philosophy, and argues that the Stoics were some of history’s first radical political thinkers.
Living on the Edge: Self and World in extremis in Roman Stoicism
Classical Antiquity, 2020
Roman Stoicism is typically read as a therapeutic philosophy that is centered around the care of the self and presented in the form of a self-help manual. Closer examination reveals a less reassuring and more challenging side to the school's teachings, one that provokes ethical reflection at the limits of the self's intactness and coherence. The self is less an object of inquiry than the by-product of a complex set of experiences in the face of nature and society and across any number of flashpoints, from one's own or others' beliefs, actions, values, and relationships to the difficulty of sizing up one's place in the universe. The pressures of natural and ethical reflection put intuitive conceptions of the self at considerable risk. The Roman Stoic self proves to be vulnerable, contingent, unbounded, relational, and opaque-in short, a rich matrix of problems that point beyond the individual self and anticipate contemporary critiques of the self. You have to begin by analyzing the third person. One speaks, one sees, one dies. There are still subjects, of course-but they're specks dancing in the dust of the visible and permutations in an anonymous babble. The subject's always something derivative. It comes into being and vanishes in the fabric of what one says, what one sees.