Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.23

The Universal Nature out of the Universal Substance, as if it were wax, now molds a horse, and when it has broken this up, it uses the material for a tree, then for a man, then for something else, and each of these things subsists for a very short time.

But it is no hardship for the vessel to be broken up, just as there was none in its being fastened together.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 7 (tr Long)

Metaphysics, or what I like to jokingly call high-octane philosophy, is the profound reflection on being itself, considering the very problem of what it means for something to exist. I have seen it bring people to the edge of madness.

In one sense, it ought to be one of the most concrete aspects of philosophy, because the world doesn’t come any more basic than what “is”. In another sense all the theory behind it, with all the fancy terms and the incessant pondering, can drive people away from philosophy. It is not for everyone, and one must come prepared.

All the subtle distinctions, concerning the one and the many, immanence and transcendence, or mind and matter do make a real difference, just as all true wisdom makes a real difference. Yet when I am faced with the most practical of questions in life, the ones about making it through the day, there are two principles of Stoic metaphysics that have helped me the most:

First, everything is far more united than I might think. Second, everything is far more fluid than I might think.

I am prone to separating and dividing most anything I come across, and there is certainly a sort of comfort in putting everything in its own box, different from every other thing. My wife and I used to call it the Theory of the Nut Piles, but that is probably a story best saved for another time.

Yet, regardless of all the details on what we might really mean by pantheism or panentheism, I must remember that there is one Universe, within which all things are made of the same Substance, and given their specific forms by the same Nature. I can consider these ideas in isolation, but in immediate existence they are inseparable.

I am also prone to making things as permanent for me I can possibly make them, and there is also a certain comfort in relying on what is lasting, or even a certain misery in bemoaning what is lasting. My wife and I used to call that the Theory of the Immortal Duck, and that is certainly a story best saved for another time.

Yet, regardless of all the details on what we really mean by constancy and change, I must remember that form is never static, and matter is always in action. Nothing stays the same, because in its very existence all of it is a constant relationship with other things. It is moving even as I consider it, and my consideration is itself a form of action.

To see difference at the expense of what is common, and to see only one moment of change at the expense of the whole process of change, will keep me from seeing all of the parts within the whole. I will be staring at a tree, and missing the forest. I will assume a struggle between various aspects of life, and I will lose track of the fullness of life. I can hardly live in harmony with Nature, when I have no sense of how Nature is ultimately one.

That something comes to be, and ceases to be, is an effortless part of that unity and fluidity. I will only find difficulty and suffering within it when I ignore what is Universal. 

Written in 10/2007

IMAGE: M.C. Escher, Metamorphosis I (1937)