The Death of Marcus Aurelius

The Death of Marcus Aurelius

Saturday, July 4, 2020

Musonius Rufus, Lectures 11.7


What, perhaps someone may say, is it not preposterous for an educated man who is able to influence the young to the study of philosophy to work the land and to do manual labor just like a peasant?

Yes, that would be really too bad if working the land prevented him from the pursuit of philosophy or from helping others to its attainment.

But since that is not so, pupils would seem to me rather benefited by not meeting with their teacher in the city nor listening to his formal lectures and discussions, but by seeing him at work in the fields, demonstrating by his own labor the lessons which philosophy inculcates—that one should endure hardships, and suffer the pains of labor with his own body, rather than depend upon another for sustenance.

Having grown up in a time when the most important intellectuals were imbued with a Marxist spirit, there was always a sense of solidarity for the working man hovering over most of everything.

Notice I say only a sense, however, because it would have been entirely unfitting for most of my teachers to ever pick up a wrench, or milk a cow, or plow a field. They felt certain that their jobs required them to expound the theory of the dialectic, while the proletariat could then follow their inspired instructions.

At my progressive high school, where no one ever got sent to the headmaster’s office, I was once sent to the headmaster’s office for talking back to a teacher who told me that I was too bourgeois in my thinking. I suggested he try working on a Soviet collective farm to see what it felt like to be a slave of the state. Needless to say, this did not go over too well.

I learned fairly quickly that acquiring an education, at least one that mattered, did not require me to become an effete snob. I could still love my fancy books, and I could still be excited about all the profound learning, but I never needed to look down my nose at anyone.

As with most false dichotomies, why should I assume that a commitment to theory excludes the exercise of practice? Quite the contrary, is not the meaning of the former made real through an application to the latter?

A good number of the people I went to school with had never suffered any serious hardships in their entire lives, and yet they were always the most vocal about condemning social injustice. This was possible for them because they only thought about it and spoke about it in a classroom, and then later took their abstract ideologies to their firms and corporations.

Shouting and waving my fist at a fashionable protest is hardly the same as being evicted for not being able to pay my rent.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe they sincerely meant it, but I also believe they had no idea what struggling in life really entailed. If you had spent just an hour sitting with them at a trendy café in Harvard Square, you would know exactly what I mean.

Musonius offers a radical, but also quite sensible, solution to this divide between our intellectual and moral lives: put your money where your mouth is. Instead of discussing it, start doing it. Instead of contemplating it, start living it. Instead of getting angry about it, perform the actual work.

Just imagine if you could meet your teacher, not in the classroom or his office during those very few formally appointed hours, but by spending many days, weeks, and months with him clearing stumps or draining a bog.

Just imagine if you could learn your lessons by helping him plant a crop or build a barn.

Just imagine if you could experience the realities of struggle, suffering, and friendship by working alongside him, and hearing what he has to say at exactly the same time he shows you how to tie the best knots.

Not an artsy John Lennon sort of imagining, but an earthy Wendell Berry sort of imagining.

Now that would be learning, and that would be a teacher.

If we did it in such a way, I assure you that we would no longer bicker about whether this group or that ends up with this political handout or that.

We might well learn that we are responsible for ourselves, and that we are made to care for one another.

We might well learn that we are called to give, not entitled to receive.

Written in 11/1999

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