Reviews - Meditations (Collins Classics)

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3.18k reviews for:

Meditations (Collins Classics)

Marcus Aurelius

4.1 AVERAGE

anniewrites's review against another edition

5.0

challenging reflective slow-paced

pluk's review against another edition

3.0

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is a somewhat short book that was written as a sort of diary during a military campaign -- to remind himself of how he should act and why. It was not written as a guide or teaching for anyone other than himself, but it can still provide guidance and rules for anyone who wants to live like him.

Marcus makes many references to the gods, to worship and to divine laws. He's also quick to dismiss the "faithless" as bad people, akin to fools and thieves. While I don't mind that, as he is from a different age, I did mind that nearly all of his teaching relied entirely on the reader also accepting his exact definitions of gods and natural law.

I found it hard to relate to many of his teachings, such as how to treat women and how to treat animals. I also got a bit tired of his repeated morbid positions such as that we are merely corpses temporarily carried around by souls, which he also uses as justification for killing a man -- which he says is not an evil act as death comes to all living things, and to both good and bad people, therefore it cannot be evil. Although as he wrote this moving from battlefield to battlefield, I can see why life and death, and taking another's life, would be on his mind.

I did like some of it, such as his teaching that you should accept what you cannot change (but this does not mean ignoring global problems that cannot be changed by just you alone).

Ultimately, I think this is a good book for modern stoics to get familiar with typical stoic thoughts. He makes mention of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, who he clearly admires, although the core of his teachings seem to stem more from Stoic thinkers such as Epictetus and Zeno.

As I am an atheist utilitarian, my views on ethics are very different from stoicism or even virtue ethics. Obviously all these philosophies are just tools, and I can see how virtues or stoicism could work for some to live ethical, good lives. For me, stoicism and this book especially require too much acceptance of divine will for me to find useful.