The Death of Marcus Aurelius

The Death of Marcus Aurelius

Saturday, March 2, 2019

Marcus Aurelius. Meditations 9.1.3


. . . And indeed he who pursues pleasure as good, and avoids pain as evil, is guilty of impiety.

For of necessity such a man must often find fault with the Universal Nature, alleging that it assigns things to the bad and the good contrary to their deserts, because frequently the bad are in the enjoyment of pleasure and possess the things that procure pleasure, but the good have pain for their share and the things that cause pain.

And further, he who is afraid of pain will sometimes also be afraid of some of the things that will happen in the world, and even this is impiety. And he who pursues pleasure will not abstain from injustice, and this is plainly impiety. . . .

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 9.1 (tr Long)

To seek pleasure, and to avoid pain, is sadly the default path that many of will choose to take in this life. It appeals to what is most immediate, instinctive and base within us. It is the lowest common denominator, the easy way out, and it allows us to act without having to judge about why we should act.

The primacy of pleasure results in a person who is, as Plato described in the Republic, turned upside down, where reason is in the service of the passions, not the passions in the service of reason. Thinking requires commitment and responsibility, while gratification asks only to be pampered.

If we only chose to look a little deeper, we would see why we have all our wires crossed. Man is indeed a creature of pleasure and pain, like an animal, but he is also a creature of intellect and will, and it is the intellect that should guide our way, because only it is able to distinguish between true and false, right and wrong. The passions give us feelings, but reason permits us to understand these feelings, what they mean, and how we should make use of them.

It’s funny that even when we say pleasure is the highest good, we still somehow think it unfair when bad people receive pleasure, and good people receive pain. We are quite aware that there should be a higher standard for human life, resting in the merit of what we do, not simply in the satisfaction of what we feel.

And so the seeker of pleasure is not only a selfish man, but also an unjust man, and therefore an impious man, because he acts contrary to Nature. He does not respect the moral worth in others, replacing this with his own desires, and so he rejects the very order of all things.

If he is only fleeing from pain, he will avoid many things he ought to do, and he will consider events by their convenience, not by their greater purpose. If he is only following pleasure, he will do many things he shouldn’t do, and he will treat others unjustly, as a means for his own enjoyment.

The seeker of pleasure casts aside all the good in the world for only the good of his own desires. In trying to make his passions supreme, he is an affront to others, and an affront to the Divine.

This sounds like a horrible way to live, and indeed it is. Now I ask myself how often I have lived in precisely this brutish sort of manner, and so I remind myself about the urgency of choosing to be a better man. The illusion of fancy trappings or refined appearances cannot disguise a twisted and selfish soul.

Written in 7/2008

IMAGE: Hieronymus Bosch, Allegory of Intemperance (c.1490)


No comments:

Post a Comment