The Death of Marcus Aurelius

The Death of Marcus Aurelius

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Musonius Rufus, Lectures 14.3


Is it not then plain that He wished the two to be united and live together, and by their joint efforts to devise a way of life in common, and to produce and rear children together, so that the race might never die?

Tell me, then, is it fitting for each man to act for himself alone or to act in the interest of his neighbor also, not only that there may be homes in the city but also that the city may not be deserted, and that the common good may best be served?

If you say that each one should look out for his own interests alone, you represent man as no different from a wolf or any other of the wildest beasts that are born to live by violence and plunder, sparing nothing from which they may gain some advantage, having no part in a life in common with others, no part in cooperation with others, no share of any notion of justice.

Back in high school, I once got yelled at by a teacher for asking whether Catherine the Great was perhaps just a bit too ambitious. I honestly did not expect all the venom that was spit my way.

“Would you say that about her if she was man? I bet you admire all the drive in Napoleon, but not in her, right? You do realize that all of us are looking out for our own success, and it disgusts me when you deny it to a woman!”

I was a bit stunned for a moment, but for once I had the sense to respond without losing my temper.

“No, the ambition I’m talking about is a form of vainglory, not any sort of worthy achievement. No, it has nothing to do with her sex. No, I have little respect for Napoleon either, and if you’d read the last paper I wrote for you would know that. No, I do not believe that success should ever be a matter of selfishness, whether for a man or for a woman.”

You could cut the air with a knife, and no further words were ever said about it, though I did get the evil eye for the next few weeks.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t much care for the whole “look out for Number One” attitude I see around me each and every day. Perhaps the confusion came from my admittedly old-fashioned use of the term “ambitious”, and it is probably best to define what our true ambitions are to begin with.

But once you tell me that your ambition is to make more money, or to win more fame, or to gain more power over others, I have learned something very important. It is then about one person alone, at the expense of other people. One is the end, and the others are the means.

I know it may not be the acceptable thing to say, but any ambition that is at the expense of my neighbors is no longer a virtue; it has now become a vice.

Where do we get this idea that virtue, the highest human good, must be compromised for the sake of what is lesser? Why do we think that some must fall so that others might rise? This can only happen when we have incomplete goals, where we fail to see that the good of the one and the many are inexorably joined together.

And so it is with all things, as big as international politics and as small as the family. Once love, at any level, is just about what it does for me, it is no longer love at all. There can be no balance sheet of giving and receiving, only the total awareness that all is shared in common.

The love between a husband a wife must also be like that, as well as the love between a parent and a child. Any and all individual merits exist in the service of the whole, never to the exclusion of the whole.

“Don’t wolves have offspring too, and don’t they form packs to live?” Certainly, but lacking reason and choice, they do so out of an instinct, and not out of judgment. They also act for survival alone, and not for virtue or for justice. For all the wonderful things about a wolf, a man should not be a wolf.

In the simplest of terms, it does not befit men to fight one another over a piece of meat, as much as it might befit wolves.

Crates was made for Hipparchia, and Hipparchia was made for Crates. Man was made for woman, and woman was made for man. It comes down to an awareness of character over convenience.

Catherine or Napoleon? No thank you, not the women or men I have in mind.

Written in 1/2000


No comments:

Post a Comment