Moral freedom, because... Reason.

Hello, hope everyone is doing well. So last week I talked about fictional Stoic characters, but now I'd like to talk about Marcus Aurelius, a very real Stoic/Roman Emperor.

All the quotes in this are taken from his Meditations and they give us a great overview of some of the important tenants of stoicism.

He starts with things that he learned from his family and friends. The title of the post comes from his thoughts on his friend Apollonius (not the famous mathematician)

"From Apollonius: Moral Freedom, the certainty to ignore the dice of fortune, and have no other perspective...than that of reason alone" (Book 1).

Well that's a problem. Stoicism is cool under pressure, but when faced with Religion, it is unable to reconcile Faith and Reason. The persecutions of Christians under Aurelius' reign actually increased according to Eusebius and a few other historians, so clearly this tension between Faith and Reason wasn't just academic.

So with that, it seems like Stoicism would fall under a kind of utilitarian thought, where for the stoic man, virtuous action is choosing the option that makes the most sense. Obviously he will still make what he thinks is a benevolent decision, but it may not be what we would call the most virtuous one.

(The Mandalorian breaks with stoicism as soon as he rescues the Child, as this decision makes no sense for his career as a bounty hunter.)

Well that's one of the darker aspects of Stoicism, that you can have moral freedom by relying solely on reason.

"From my adoptive father...Acting always in accordance with tradition, yet not making the preservation of tradition an overt aim; further, no liking for change and chance, but a settled habit in the same places and the same practices" (Book 1)

Make your life as structured and stable as possible. That seems like common sense for most people, but the stoic makes it their life goal to be the calm in every storm. A stoic would probably look at COVID-19, and even if they lost their job, they would just go sit in their recliner and read a book. Or, they would continue their physical fitness regimen at home without missing a beat. In this sense, it is probably good to selectively practice stoicism in these hard times. I always like to think of a commercial I saw a long time ago about a baby who loses his job, loses his phone, loses his keys all one after the other, but keeps smiling through it. (I think that was an old huggies commercial and it played the song 'Don't worry be happy')

"His way was unhurried, organized, vigorous, consistent in all" (Book 1).

With all the panic in the world, it's probably a good idea to try and be the calm in the storm at this point. I'll keep talking about this next week once I've read more on the meditations, maybe even do a comparison between epicureanism and stoicism.

Stay virtuously happy!

This one took me a while, but it was worth it!