Learning to Love: the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

Stoicism today is viewed as both a self-centered philosophy and one that promotes isolation from society, due to its goal of apatheia, freedom from emotion. This misconception of Stoicism is due to the improper understanding... [ view full abstract ]

Stoicism today is viewed as both a self-centered philosophy and one that promotes isolation from society, due to its goal of apatheia, freedom from emotion. This misconception of Stoicism is due to the improper understanding of apatheia, an issue seen in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Many scholars highlight the importance of apatheia within the text and attempt to prove Marcus believed in a total absence from emotion. However, apatheia in the Meditations actually means a lack of passion or of negative emotions. As a result, Marcus argues that the emotion which allows one to live life according to nature and Reason is love, a feeling that encompasses all good emotions, or eupatheiai. In his work, Marcus presents a tripartite classification of love, corresponding to the discipline of assent, desire, and action. Through all three, one is able to experience love of the moral good, fate, and community, intensely and purely. Love is not an emotion which only involves one area of life, but when applied properly, allows someone to practice all three disciplines of Stoicism correctly and thus align one’s reason with universal Reason. Marcus believes that love is both a means and an end.