The Death of Marcus Aurelius

The Death of Marcus Aurelius

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Musonius Rufus, Lectures 16.9


“But, you say, your father will restrain you and actually shut you up to prevent your study of philosophy. Perhaps he will do so, but he will not prevent you from studying philosophy unless you are willing; for we do not study philosophy with our hands or feet or any other part of the body, but with the soul and with a very small part of it, that which we may call the reason.

“This God placed in the strongest place so that it might be inaccessible to sight and touch, free from all compulsion and in its own power. Particularly if your mind is good your father will not be able to prevent you from using it nor from thinking what you ought nor from liking the good and not liking the base; nor again-from choosing the one and rejecting the other.

“In the very act of doing this, you would be studying philosophy, and you would not need to wrap yourself up in a worn cloak nor go without a chiton nor grow long hair nor deviate from the ordinary practices of the average man. To be sure, such things are well enough for professional philosophers, but philosophy does not consist in them, but rather in thinking out what is man's duty and meditating upon it.”

If I define the value of my life by the property I own, or by my social standing, or by the freedom of my body, then I will understandably be concerned when someone in authority, making use of some external force, tries to hinder such things. It would be what post-moderns might like to call an “existential threat”.

If, however, I am informed by a Stoic model of meaning, one that looks to the merit inside me instead of the circumstances that surround me, I will not be quite so troubled.

It isn’t that my inner Stoic is unfeeling, or in denial, or separated from the world; it is rather that I can put all experiences, whether pleasant or unpleasant, within a deeper context. I try to find peace in orienting wherever I find myself to the building of my ability to know and to love.

There is certainly nothing mindless or heartless in that!

Might I have a preference for luxury, or fame, or freedom of movement? Perhaps, and if I am still tied to old habits, most certainly. Yet I can turn to the truth in my judgments, that who I am is not measured by what I have, or whether others look my way, or where I may go.

Musonius, like any good Stoic, insists that being a philosopher is nothing more or less than living according to wisdom and virtue, and living according to wisdom and virtue are, in turn, the very ends of human life. To “choose” philosophy is not like choosing an outfit, or a house, or a career, but is a decision about what it means to be human. Now there is the true existential content of life!

Can anyone or anything else stop me from following this path? I am the only obstacle, and any other hardship is transformed into an opportunity to become better in my soul. My own thoughts and choices are what will make all the difference; even when I face the end of my life, which I inevitably must, I will still face it with my own thoughts and choices.

Can my father block my way by cutting off my inheritance, or ruining my reputation, or even locking me up? The beautiful irony is that if he tried to do so, he would only be a giving me another chance to respect him all the more, by practicing virtues like courage, and temperance, and kindness.

I suppose it is no accident that many of the heroes who inspire me, like Socrates, or Boethius, or Thomas More, or Franz Jägerstätter, or James Stockdale, found their characters tested by the loss of worldly freedoms. They became philosophers not in spite of these challenges, but because of them.

Written in 3/2000

IMAGE: J.F. Clemens, Socrates in Prison (c. 1786). In the background are Socrates' two daimons, the good silencing the bad. 

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