Marcus Aurelius’s Life Denialism

It is impossible to fully comprehend the temptation and power that Marcus Aurelius confronted throughout his life. It is thus natural, but not inevitable, to come away from the story of his life amazed and impressed, seeing a man who overcame his base instincts and human drives to become the most Stoic of the Stoics, the true Philosopher King that Plato envisaged and dreamed for, and that the world had not yet seen.

Aurelius could not have known this and famously did not want his Meditations published posthumously, and that latter fact is a valuable clue to the inside of Aurelius’s mind often overlooked instead for the bounty of clues in his writings.

Should we ponder this unpublishing instinct? Yes. Because the writings depict the philosophy Aurelius was trying to cultivate to perfect his mind — as it were, the writings are an active attempt to change the mind as it already existed from Aurelius’ perspective. So the instinct tells us something about the actual mind, the actual desires and wants that Aurelius allowed to endure to the end of his life.

The book is very embarrassing, and contains details that sully Aurelius’ reputation as a powerful statesman more than anything else. And while one could argue that Aurelius worried that the book’s publication could hurt the commonweal, Aurelius’ lack of care on the issue of succession, which arguably catalyzed the start of the fall of Rome, demonstrates that this was likely not his primary concern.

Instead, it seems likely Aurelius was concerned with posterity, and we can extrapolate that Aurelius was also concerned with a “preterity” that existed before him. He saw himself as one chain in a long link and, despite claims to the contrary, maintaining the strength of the chain itself was not as important to him as standing out, which the face-losing details of the Meditations puts at risk.

Aurelius was thus not an unambitious man, but his ambition was not to be the best emperor he could be despite his protestations and insistences. Rather, his ambition was to transcend the judgments of his culture and society and be seen as the best Stoic of all Stoics. And he has won that reputation for thousands of years.

However, there is an issue here. Seeking fame or glory by winning the judgments of others is antithetical to the ideals of Stoicism, so while on the level of Aurelius’s quotidian life he was a Stoic — notably in things like how he responds to his cheating wife, to disloyal friends, and so on — we can understand the entire life and his behavior within it as all serving the greater function of being the most Stoic of Stoics and being remembered by history as superior to Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, Seneca.

One can easily envision the thought process bubbling in his time with Junius Rusticus. Having been born to seek glory as the Emperor of Rome and wishing instead to be able to seek glory as a philosopher, since the latter glory is larger than the former, Marcus Aurelius saw how his life limited his ability to realize his full potential as a philosopher. Instead, he hoped to live out his life as the most Stoic Roman emperor in the hopes that historians would document how Stoic he was so that future generations would sit back in admiration at his toughness.

And that is exactly what he got.

From this perspective we can see Marcus Aurelius as enacting a sort of alchemy — changing the life he was given which he did not want for a lifestory that he did.

The act of alchemy is absolutely impressive, which may be why Stoicism has become popular in my own historical period with self-help gurus and marketers. However, for a guide for life it is quite poor; if anything, Aurelius’ story reveals how his Stoicism was a guide for a legacy, not a life. While it may remain true that many lessons of Stoicism were useful during his life, it appears that the philosophy encouraged Aurelius to reject life for legacy. Such life-denying philosophies have their uses, but improving life is quite clearly not one of them.