Marcus Aurelius (121-180 EV)
Although a white European male, mature in years, I'm not a statesman or ruler of any kind, so it surprised me to discover just how much affinity I felt with Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher described by Matthew Arnold as the most beautiful figure in history.
His Meditations constitute such a remarkably modern series of philosophical reflections on ethics, rationality, and the nature of the self, that it's hard not to love both book and man. And it's difficult also not to look at those moral and intellectual pygmies in positions of power today, exercising their authority over millions of lives, and feel a growing sense of despair.
I can't, for example, imagine Donald Trump tweeting something as lovely - or as profound - as this passage taken from Book 3, in which Aurelius stresses the importance of attending to little things in life, including small imperfections, and of affirming elements of baseness and corruption on the grounds that these too possess their own charm and belong to what Nietzsche will later term an economy of the whole:
"Take the baking of bread: the loaf splits open here and there, and those very cracks, in one way a failure of the baker's profession, somehow catch the eye and give particular stimulus to our appetite. Figs likewise burst open at full maturity: and in olives ripened on the tree the very proximity of decay lends a special beauty to the fruit. Similarly the ears of corn nodding down to the ground, the lion's puckered brow, the foam gushing from the boar's mouth, and much else besides - looked at in isolation these things are far from lovely, but their consequences on the processes of Nature enhances them and gives them attraction. So any man with a feeling and deeper insight for the workings of the Whole will find some pleasure in almost every aspect of their disposition, including the incidental consequences. Such a man will take no less delight in the living snarl of wild animals than in all the imitative representations of painters and sculptors; he will see a kind of bloom and fresh beauty in an old woman or an old man; and he will be able to look with sober eyes on the seductive charm of his own slave boys." [3.2]
I can't, for example, imagine Donald Trump tweeting something as lovely - or as profound - as this passage taken from Book 3, in which Aurelius stresses the importance of attending to little things in life, including small imperfections, and of affirming elements of baseness and corruption on the grounds that these too possess their own charm and belong to what Nietzsche will later term an economy of the whole:
"Take the baking of bread: the loaf splits open here and there, and those very cracks, in one way a failure of the baker's profession, somehow catch the eye and give particular stimulus to our appetite. Figs likewise burst open at full maturity: and in olives ripened on the tree the very proximity of decay lends a special beauty to the fruit. Similarly the ears of corn nodding down to the ground, the lion's puckered brow, the foam gushing from the boar's mouth, and much else besides - looked at in isolation these things are far from lovely, but their consequences on the processes of Nature enhances them and gives them attraction. So any man with a feeling and deeper insight for the workings of the Whole will find some pleasure in almost every aspect of their disposition, including the incidental consequences. Such a man will take no less delight in the living snarl of wild animals than in all the imitative representations of painters and sculptors; he will see a kind of bloom and fresh beauty in an old woman or an old man; and he will be able to look with sober eyes on the seductive charm of his own slave boys." [3.2]
As Diskin Clay, Professor of Classical Studies at Duke University indicates, this passage not only has real philosophical interest, but an almost poetic quality.
In conclusion, we might say that whilst it's true the Ancient world cannot directly provide us with answers to the problems facing us today, there are nevertheless a number of texts containing a treasury of devices, techniques, ideas, and procedures, that may help us, as Foucault argues, form a perspective upon the present and serve as tools for analysing what's happening today. Meditations is surely one such text.
See: Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. with notes by Martin Hammond, introduction by Diskin Clay, (Penguin Books, 2006), pp. 16-17.
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