Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.10

See what things are in themselves, dividing them into matter, form, and purpose.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 12.10 (tr Long)

What is it made of? How are these pieces joined together into a single nature? What does that very nature tell me it exists for, and what it is meant to do? All other questions are quite secondary, and will divert me from the task of living a genuine human life.

There will be all forms of doubt, all degrees of skepticism, tempting me to abandon the task of understanding my world and myself. What I find that so many share in common is the error of making something far more complicated than it needs to be. I tell myself, time and time again, that it doesn’t have to turn into rocket science.

Observe it carefully, and calmly, and impartially, whatever it is. What is it doing, and how is it behaving? What does this, in turn, tell me about what its action aims for, the end for which it is made?

This will often demand that I must take my time, that I must squint at it from all angles, that I must not let my assumptions get in the way of what I am seeing. It is most certainly what it is, in and of itself, and it is only my hasty judgments that will get in the way. To do it right, I must strip away all presumption, I must look at with new eyes.

Let me look at myself, or let me look at my neighbor. What do I see? The model of “human resources,” of man as homo faber, as an instrument of labor, tells me that a human being is good or bad by how efficient he is at making a product. This is quite a common perception, but does it describe what a person truly is, as opposed to only how a person can be useful and convenient to me?

A person may make a widget or sell a doohickey, may be tall or short, fat or thin, a man or a woman, black or white, living here or there, possessing this or that. These are indeed qualities he may have, but they do not define who he is, or why he is here. To say he is or is not a worker who is efficient for making money completely misses the mark.

There is no deep mystery here; just look behind the accidents to the essence. He has a body, one that has life, and one that has instincts and feelings. He is also able to understand, and he is therefore able to freely choose, and this makes him quite different from other animals.

Can a man design and build a rocket? Of course he can. But he is not just a homo faber, whatever he builds, but a homo sapiens, a creature of reason and will. That he can reflect upon himself in this way is proof enough of his rational nature. The rocket he designs and builds shows me that he is able to form his own sense of meaning and purpose.

That we build rockets isn’t what makes us aware, but that we are aware makes it possible for us to build rockets.

Written in 8/2009