PART 1
                                        ON MARCUS AURELIUS’ RELATIVISM:

Order in the Universe, the Importance of God or Gods and their Relation to the Goddess Nature, and the Necessity of the Bad Man to the Proper Order of Nature as well as the Good Man First.

I would like to note my sources, and ask if there are any other translations more technically correct than what I use. The translations I like most are found in Pierre Hadot’s THE INNER CITADEL, but that has severe inconveniences to use as a text unless someone has an idea about that.

The main translation I use is the paperback Oxford World’s Classics edition by A. S. L. Farquharson, edited with extremely useful notes and cross references by R. B. Rutherford who is the author of another excellent text.

THE MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS: A Study, Oxford/Clarendon, 1989/2003. Farquharson’s translation is used in conjunction with C. R. Haines’ MARCUS AURELIUS in Harvard’s Loeb Classical Library which has excellent cross referencing in the text and excellent indexes in the back as well as an excellent introduction to Aurelius’ Stoicism with numerous references to his text.

It would have been very nice to have a computerized version of this [Is there anything like such? INTELEX?]. His translation is dated [1915] but sometimes helps clarify Farquharson’s which Rutherford complains at times about being obscure. But Rutherford’s mentions of Farquharson’s obscurities are more interesting than disruptive and help illuminate who Marcus Aurelius was within his milieu. Also, Farquharson’s commentary that went with his 1944 edition of his translation is fascinating [I have ordered the Everyman 1992 edition of the MEDITATIONS which MAY have the commentary along with the translation, and maybe line references?].

I only have the second volume, now, which shows the Greek text, at least, of the first volume was indexed line by line while C. R. Haines’ Greek text unfortunately is not, a strange omission considering the fine detail of his cross referencing and indexing and usually not absent in Loeb Library editions as I remember. I have barely glanced at some other translations but, other than using them to clarify or present different views of a passage, found nothing noteworthy about them [Hays, Staniforth, and Long - I do not have the Dover edition revision]. So if they have good points, please tell me. There are also Collier- 1887, G. M. A. Grube - 1983, Robin Hard -
1997, Hicks - 2002, Jackson - 1948, Rendall - 1898. I acknowledge that merely being the newest translation does not mean it is the best. I was disturbed that the Hays version, 2003, used italics to note what the translator wanted to say was most important. What I want is a translation technically correct for Aurelius’ actual time and place - Farquharson can be very prudish - and not Idealized or Christianized as C. R. Haines is. I must say, though,, Haines makes his Christian bias very *up front*, seems extremely honest considering his own milieu, and never really seems to impose it upon Aurelius text. Does anyone think differently?


My main problem in approaching Marcus Aurelius is his repeated statements *here and there* that very literally and explicitly - so their direct and immediate implications are unavoidable - grind his meaning into, first, his own mind repeatedly - a very deliberate and deliberated process, and, secondly into our minds - his truly unintended audience. Aurelius is not at all subtle about this process. As to what he really thinks, he makes it plain as day. The problem is, first of all, 1] a much more intimate and immediate audience near at hand for him, close friends and family, whom he knows is going to read his jottings - and that is truly what they are even if somewhat directed to a very limited audience - and, secondly, 2] like anyone else, and especially someone like Aurelius making himself ‘considerate of others’ as a strict matter of principle, he does not want to shock them with his brutal truths but instead insulates them literally in kinder white lies of universally accepted Stoic practice - Epictetus did this also.

So he talks about the ‘goodness’ of Divine Providence, of everything in the universe belonging in its proper place. This is, superficially as a white lie usually is, perfectly true. But just like other abstractions like those, like any word that is examined for factual truth, there must be a material referent in the original context of the word or phrase, and somewhere in the word or phrase’s history. Now, many times in such a process of investigation, the original situation or context cannot be specifically found. That does not matter because numerous clues are left behind by the person using those words that point directly to the existence of just such a material referent.

Such a trail is perfectly obvious when one concentrates on the structure of memory. It does not have to be just one’s own but can be anyone’s. This is precisely what Sigmund Freud did with free association in psychoanalysis. No analysis today even questions the effectiveness of this process in uncovering hidden intentions. But in psychoanalysis it is a finite tool that can only do so much considering the complexity of the problems and counter-forces it faces. However, even saying this much in relation to Marcus Aurelius is ‘overkill’ because the whole MEDITATIONS is a process TO MEMORIZE LITERALLY TO DEATH the truths he has learned and to subject them to various viewpoints and situations without ever leaving the core of what he wants to say. The point then is his process is incredibly lucid, coherent, rational, and consistent. It bears up under the most intense scrutiny. He truly says what he means, knowingly, exactly, in a way few another people in all of history have been able to accomplish.

So, having said that, having emphasized his deliberate and well educated and often tested rationality in philosophy, rhetoric, and hard core politics, I come to the primary problem resolvable either as white lies, poetic metaphors, or outright irony that blunts the initial brutality of what he believes. He says he believes in the ‘goodness’ of Divine Providence, that the gods have arranged things in the best possible way for every human being, that ‘this is the best possible of all possible worlds’ as Liebnitz would say - and Voltaire satirized. But it is the best possible way only because it is the ONLY possible way, and Aurelius says this repeatedly also. He accords with Hegel’s snippet, ‘What is, is rational’. Aurelius would have no problem with the factual existence of concentration camps. What he would make of them personally he would and did say was his, or anyone else’s, personal problem. Since they exist in a rational universe, they have a rational explanation. Since they have a rational explanation, they have a natural place in the overall scheme of Nature - which is exactly what the ‘goodness’ of divine providence, in the end, boils down to.

One main form of the problem is this. Aurelius will make statement ‘A’ saying something very specific and delimited, strictly defined and graphically exampled, to which cross references can be found with no jarring contradictions whatsoever. And then he will make statement ‘B’ qualified the same way and in every way consistent and fully supporting statement A. And then he will make statement ‘C’ that is neither specific nor delimited nor strictly defined nor graphically exampled. Aurelius makes it very clear who and of what value he, as an individual and as a member of the human species, is - which is quite literally and all inclusively NOTHING in every respect, in fact, disserving of no respect whatsoever as a fact. Taken literally as he should be, unless he is lying to us [and is he?], there are a number of what might seem drastic consequences from this for the average person as he again repetitively states and demonstrates from Stoic physics for the Goddess Nature or Mother Nature or just Nature capitalized. Everything and everyone and all of their acts are necessarily a natural part of nature.

     If my existence is a mere ‘point’ [ii, 17], and I think he clearly means just mathematic, that is, pragmatically imaginary, if, of bad people he says - QUOTE - *These are natural and necessary results from creatures of this kind, and one who wants this to be otherwise wants the fig tree not to yield its acrid juice. And in general remember this, that within a very little while both he and you will be dead, and a little after not even your name nor his will be left;* END QUOTE [iv, 6], then Nature alleviates - as Ideals, as Absolutes in any Platonic sense which almost everyone accepts both now and THEN when he lived - morality, social duties, worship of the gods or God, and everything else considered virtue or vice. Aurelius’ identification of Nature with God should be obvious.

     And this ‘Nature’ is in no way different from the ‘dog eat dog’ savagery explicitly described by Thomas Huxley for evolution and fully implicit in Charles Darwin. When speaking of the ‘survival of the fittest’, though philosophically Aurelius would not disagree without tremendous contradictions to his own stated premises, he would reply [vi, 46, pg. 53] - QUOTE _ *Just as performances in the amphitheater and such places pall upon you, being forever the same scenes, and the similarity makes the spectacle nauseating, so you feel in the same way about life as a whole; for all things, up and down, are the same and follow from the same. How long will it last?* END QUOTE

There are several notable things in this QUOTE. First, it perfectly accords with something I often emphasize personally, that is, ‘survival of the fittest’ IN FACT MEANS survival in a specific point in time under specific circumstances. It is not permanent. It is not only temporary, it is also basically accidental. The nerd may well survive where the warrior dies. Nothing is advanced, nothing in actuality ‘progresses’ is ‘better’, therefore the survivor is not better or ‘good’ simply because they survived. Next time around, they probably did not. Evolution, then, is no upward advance but is simply *forever the same scenes, and the similarity makes the spectacle nauseating*.

Secondly, it is historically noted that he went to the Games but read his mail while people were being slaughtered in the Arena. The audience, also historically noted, was pissed at his indifference. As Rutherford says, - QUOTE - *It is striking here that he does not criticize the games on moral grounds, but only because they bore him* [note to vi, 46, pg. 165; ref. Fronto correspondence no. 14 in same book; also, x, 8; in contrast, see Seneca, LETTERS, vii [Penguin I think], or Augustine, CONFESSIONS, vi, 13 - but on the later, remember Nietzsche recalling from, I think, THE CITY OF GOD that one of the great pleasures of Heaven would be sitting in the Divine Arena watching those who had persecuted the Blessed be tortured in Hell].

There is no doubt in my mind Aurelius was writing primarily to himself to imprint physically and finally his precepts upon his own mind therefore fixing his own acts in society permanently. But this does not mean there was not a possible audience for his writing in his mind. After all, it was on ‘paper’ and therefore, after his death, anyone with access and interest could read it even though it was never publicly published. Who could this audience be? Supposedly his family and closest friends. That someone cared about the text is evident simply because it survived, even though precariously so.

One would suppose that Aurelius had this possibility in his mind that some other may read his text. After all, he could have had it destroyed when he was dying of fever in Germany, trying to find *the Final Solution to the German Problem* his son Commodus immediately wrecked after his death. But he did not. If he had had such a thought, certainly he would have acted upon it. He did not. So, we must conclude there was a limited audience it was intended for.

Each book of the text does seem to have been created or gathered together in an individual bunch. That is initially the best way I can see to begin an approach. Was there organization and relation, though, from paragraph to paragraph? Aphorism to aphorism? Does one paragraph follow another? Or were they really just spontaneous thoughts written down at random? The last seems evident to an extent. But two considerations compromise such mere randomness. Aurelius was a thoroughly trained systematic rhetorician AND philosopher. He could not be perfectly *random* even if he tried.

Secondly, if a limited audience is in his mind, he is going to approach common cultural concepts in a non-alarming fashion. He is going to be truthful but he is also going to be palatable. And above all he wants to be honest BOTH to himself AND to others who might be reading what he wrote. And above all else even more, he wants to be rational. To be honest you have to be rational, but to be rational does not necessarily mean you are honest. Even a liar has to carefully maintain knowingly a rational thread of consistency to his lie. Is this what Aurelius is doing? Not really, because his ‘white lies’ are not confrontable as lies. When confronted as logical and factually based concepts they dissolve immediately into the material referents Marcus Aurelius presents elsewhere in a plain and straightforward manner. That is the only rational way they can work because there is no Platonic metaphysics or epistemology whatsoever in Aurelius. When the balloon is punctured, you see the actual parts that originally kept it together, just exactly as he says of the ‘seductive melody’ at xi, 2, and demonstrates a white lie immediately by denying, in the middle of the paragraph, that ‘virtue and its effects’ are exempt from this methodological process. AND YET he concludes the paragraph saying, - QUOTE *Transpose this method, moreover, to life in its entirety* [Hadot/Chase trans]. What could be more plain that, for confused minds, he is softening the blow of reality while yet communicating what that reality in fact is, that is, hoping the truth of the matter will eventually seep in?