3 Minute Philosophy: Marcus Aurelius
Brief Biography
Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor that lived in the time of around 120-180 AD. Like several other philosopher's that I've written about, Aurelius centered his teachings and research around the art of stoicism, the process of enduring and accepting pain without displaying negative feelings or emotion.
??FUN FACT??! Aurelius' grandfather was the one that inspired him the most to dive deep into the world of philosophy!
Teachings
Though there were a bunch of philosophers who spent there time developing the foundation of stoicism, despite sharing similar aspects, each of them has their own unique insight on the topic, and I find Marcus Aurelius' particularly interesting.
Whenever something bad happens in one's life, whether it be getting fired at work or a death in the family, we have a lot of freedom on how we handle the situation. Aurelius says that we have the ability to write our own life stories and it's our choice if we want to make it a positive or negative one.
But how do we do this? How do we are able to change such sad moments into more positive ones? Well, like practically all the other philosophies in the world, it all boils down to you and the way you think of the world. Aurelius explains that one must first accept the idea that no event is bad or good in itself. What determines our perspective from a emotional standpoint of the event is how we react to it.
Picture it like this:
Imagine the whole human race is represented by one human. This human's name is Nature, and each of us represent a small part of Nature (Aurelius describes it as each of us being one finger on the larger entity).
Now just as the limbs, organs, and different parts of the body work together, each of us that make up Nature have to collaborate to take care of it. Or in other words, all the parts of the body need to be harmonized to serve the greater goal of tending to the whole being.
Marcus Aurelius explains that one that is in harmony with nature will be able to live a good prosperous life and will have clear judgement and views on how to handle certain situations that occur in their life. He states in order to reach this state of inner harmony, we must have two virtues: Justice and piety.
Justice
Using the analogy from above, justice is when all the mini-humans take part in tasks in order to do what's good for the whole body. It's about doing what's in our control to help benefit society in any way we can, which usually ends up with us as an individual benefiting too. Or as he put's it, what's good for the society is good for the finger. On the other hand, unjust people are those that try to sabotage Nature, not realizing that they are attached to the body.
Helping one another is in accordance with nature, harming other's isn't. Being cooperative and kind will allow one to develop a deeper sense of understanding of themselves and the world around them.
Piety
Piety is when one comes to understand that they cannot control anyone else's thoughts or decisions (or in other words, when a finger realizes that it can't control other fingers and that the whole body has its own greater goals).
Aurelius says that our only duty is to hold ourselves accountable for our own actions, and do what's in our power to serve the common good. He explains that because of piety, he did everything that was in his power whenever certain situations arose, but everything else out of his control was nature's doings.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1) One that is in harmony with nature will be able to live a good prosperous life and will have clear judgement and views on how to handle certain situations that occur in their life.
2) In order to reach this state of harmony, one must serve the common good and love their own fate (justice and piety).
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