Meditations

A preoccupation in Book 10 is the need to be reconciled with the inevitability of death. Characteristic of Marcus’s multiplicity of views if it benefits his practical philosophy, he adopts two approaches: first, by finding comfort in the cyclicality of events, and second, in conceiving of death as a release from burden. Reflecting on men of consequence—the Caesars, philosophers, students of philosophy (several of whom are not known to history)—Marcus notes that all have passed on. Human life is “mere smoke and nothing” (101), thus there is no need to be troubled by his current afflictions. They, and he, will soon be gone.

The only response is to be content to pass through life “with an orderly passage,” presumably enabled through the practice of philosophy (101). Alternately, as he reflects on the challenge of applying his philosophical practice to tolerate the ills that he sees all around him, he characterizes death as a release, like children rid of a difficult schoolmaster. At the same time, he cautions himself not to allow this view to harden him against others, since all humans are bound to each other, evoking the Greek concept of phyloi and his limb analogy from earlier in the Meditations.

Marcus’s reverential approach to the divine suffuses his reflections in Book 10. His opening chapter mournfully questions his soul whether it will ever outshine its physical covering, and the rest of the chapter meditates on fate and the divine hand. Everything that has happened and will happen to Marcus issues from the divine and thus must be accepted. The force of his repetitions and refrains creates the impression that Marcus seeks consolation, guidance, and strength from contemplating the divine.