Philosophy as a Private Practice

Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. The low road will always dog you . That passage from Marcus Aurelius about how the impediment to action advances action that what stands in the way becomes the way. Do you know what he was actually talking about specifically ? It wasn't overcoming an injury or a layoff or financial collapse . It wasn't about a reversal on the battlefield. It was talking about difficult people . He was saying that frustrating, infuriating, thoughtless people , they are opportunities . When someone is a jerk to you, it's an opportunity to practice virtue and how you respond and not being a jerk back, by forgiving them, by standing up for yourself , by empathizing with what they're going through . Of course, when someone is being difficult, you're tempted to give it right back . You're tempted to go, oh, this is how we're behaving these days this is what passes for acceptable behavior . But you shouldn't. On a recent episode of the podcast, we were talking with the novelist Maria Semple, who has this amazing book called Go Gentle, which is about a stoic philosopher. She signed a bunch of copies. We have them in the painted porch. It was an Oprah book club pick. One of the things she shared was a reminder that she relies on when she's dealing with difficult people. Let me play it for you real f ast. A quote that I think I made up that's one of my favorite quotes is the low road will always dog you . Like that basically the high road you can go to sleep feeling good about yourself. The low road you, might ten years from now being like walking down the street and going, why did I have to be like cutting to that person in that situation for no reason? And so I think just on a practical level, it makes sense to just be virtuous and be the person you want to be because then it's like not clogging up your brain with like regret and okay, who's the person I want to be? Mark Sweelus actually reminds himself of this in meditations in addition to that famous passage , he says the best revenge is to not be like that. He was saying that he had no choice about what was done to him, that somebody else took the low road , but he could choose how he responded. He could choose to take the high road. He could choose not to be consumed by anger desire . He could choose not to be implicated in their ugliness. That's how he opens that famous passage in book two . He could choose to be the person that he wanted to be. Whenever someone does something to us, minor or major, we always have this choice. We can decide not to be like the people who did us wrong. We can choose the high road and we should because the low road always dogs you. 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And it's true like he doesn't have a father, he's his overpowering mother, and he knows that he's sort of exempt from the rules that he's, you know , different, special , has all these privileges. Like, of course it wasn't going to turn out well. Like we can say that we look at Nero's the facts of Nero 's life even with Seneca's influence and we're like, yeah, it was always going to go this way. That's what makes Marx Realists so remarkable, right? Like it doesn't go well for Seneca, doesn't go well for Commodists Mark's Realist real'sised son. Why is it different for Marcus? That to me is the ultimate question, right? Marcus does not become a Nero despite being born into privilege, being marked for power at a young age, being surrounded by status and ambition and flattery and all the temptations that form and derange someone, right? That would stain them purple, as Marx says in meditations. Somehow he gets the power and it doesn't break him. Weirdly, it makes him better. And I wanted to talk to someone who might be able to help us answer what happened there. William O. Stevens is a philosopher, a professor, emeritus of philosophy at Crichton University. And he's one of the leading scholars on Marx us Re andali Epictetus and Sto ic ethics, and he's written this great new biography of Marx Rulius. It's called Marcus Riulus Philosopher King . And so in today's episode, it's going to be a short one. I asked him about Marcus' boyhood, the death of his father, what Hadrian might have seen in him . You know, how dangerous it can be for a young person to tell them or for them to believe they're destined for greatness, how not to be corrupted by those expectations and you know, this remarkable life that's shaped by philosophy . You can grab copies of William's latest book, Mark's Realist Philosopher King, anywhere books are sold, and you can learn more about his work at William O. Stevens . com And if you want to do a deep dive into meditations, we have a great guide on that as well. I'll link to that in the show notes. I thought we could talk about Marcus's boy hood, which I find fascinating, right? Because on paper , and we have so many stories and myths about this. In fact, it's kind of every it's every parent's nightmare. Like when you raise a kid amongst privilege and an expectation of power or success or wealth or access , like more often than not, it goes terribly wrong. Certainly it goes wrong in say Nero's case or Prince Andrew's case. How does it go right in Marcus's case? It's easy to speculate and hard to be confident about how one speculates . So let's contrast Marcus's boyhood with that of Sacomadus. So the thing that jumps out to me about Marcus, of course, is that his biological father died when he was quite young. And that didn't make him an orphan because you know he still had his mother . But in Roman society , just as in all of Antiquity and down through today, although less so today , you're dealing with patriarchy, right? So the death of a father is going to be a huge blow for any Roman boy . And including and perhaps especially so for a privileged young boy as Marcus was , right? Because his family is elite and they're and they're optimise, right? They're they're aristocrats. So it's tempting. I mean, I' m tempted to read back Marcus's let's just be clear and call it obsession with death , right? I mean, as a stoic , you know, the Memento Mori , he lived it. Yes. I mean, he faced so much death in his life and it started with his dad . His father died . And you know, he might have been six, seven, eight years old, he might have been , you know, ten or twelve or four , but he wasn't any older than that, right? So historians aren't exactly sure when and in the Roman world that he inhabited , you know, death came easy. You know, they did not they did not have medicine. They had plagues, they had plenty of quacks that, you know, practiced anything but what we would call medicine . And sometimes patients would recover despite it. And they did learn things from the Greek physicians, but it was really Galen who made the major strides. And Marcus was really fortunate to have someone like Galen who was quite a coward , apparently when it came to facing the plague, but was a brilliant philosopher and scientist with his anatomical dissections and what he learned about the human body. And so that came later, you know, Galen entered Marcus' s life when he was an adult . But I mean that only takes you so far. Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of it is just going to be is just going to be luck, you know, or genetics or something , right? He for whatever reason , he was a very serious young boy . And he took philosophy. He really was drawn to reflection. He was a meditative sort of guy , right? From an early age . And he was impressed by the austere model of philosophers and stoics in particular . Do you think that's what Hadrian saw in him or yeah it does seem remarkable though perhaps in the way that a really good scout can see potential in an extremely young athlete but to be able to spot because their relationship begins , you know, right around that time to be able to spot that effectively forty years in the future this gu y would be a good emperor is a pretty remarkable bit of talent scouting. Yeah, so Hadrian was savvy in that regard and you know, lining up the succession with Antonius Pius adopting Marcus and Lucius Ferris . Yeah , and so I mean, it just seems like it's fairly safe to suppose that Marcus did stand out to Hadrian in that respect , and that other boys, Marcus' age just weren't as serious , just weren't quite as studious , weren't really quite as serious about taking their duties even as children really very seriously. And Marcus did , he was, he was precocious, he was bookish , and he recognized his responsibilities and took them very seriously from an early age. And Hadrian saw that and that's what distinguished him. And fortunately for us, you know, that worked out. And fortunately for the Romans under Marcus that worked out his subjects, that worked out pretty well. It's sort of like the law of thermodynamics or whatever where it's when you try to measure it it screws up what you're trying to measure it. I'm probably butchering this analogy here, but it does strike me though that the second you identify the potential in someone like that . And then you anoint them or you begin the process by which you're being groomed for power . It could very well swamp all that potential. Like the second you tell the fif teen year old or it's one year old or quite frankly a fifty year old who's been preparing for this moment their whole life that they're about to become head of state or that they are they are eschewing to be head of state. We know what this does to a person. I think it really does give you a sense of what kind of character that you're dealing with that he could have been put on this path so young and it doesn't , it doesn't seem to have corrupted or messed with his compass. If anything, it confirmed it. Right. And this is the point I made last time when we spoke and the conceit of the book , Marcus was drawn to philosophy. That's what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a philosopher. He was called upon to be an emperor. He did not seek political power . He didn't want it. He understood Plato better than we do in the Republic when Socrates says philosophers don't rule because they want to. They rule because they need to because you need a w ise ruler who's dedicated to justice , not wealth , not power . And Marcus is growing up in a world that's all about power . And yes, there's philosophy , but you know, that's for the nerds , right? That's that's for , you know, the bookish types, that's for the longbeards, right ? Roman movers and shakers , you know, with their military training and the crisis onorim , right? Of all the different offices , I mean they learn how to administrate and they learn how to command men and they learn how to project power and gravitas , right ? And for Marcus , you know, he saw through that to the extent that what he was drawn to as a philosopher in a literal sense is wisdom. He was a lover of wisdom , but he recognized his responsibilities. He was tapped. He was called , right? That was his calling . Or rather, he was called upon, rather, right? He was called upon by Hadrian , but his own , you know , vocation, his own personal spiritual calling was to do philosophy and read literature . And he was an intellectual , but that wasn't in the c ards for him. That wasn't what was faded for him . And he recognized that. And so, you know, he didn't celebrate being an emperor. He tried to be the best one that he could. And he recognized and he knew his history too, as immediate Roman history. Yes. He wanted to be a benevolent despot , not a maniac . Yeah , not a megalomaniac, not a bloodthirsty monster. He didn't want to be a caligula or a Nero, right? And we do sort of have to grade him on a curve in that respect , right? Like, you can't judge him against FDR, Abraham Lincoln or Theodore Roosevelt. You have to judge him against Caligula or Nero or basically anyone that's ever had effectively unlimited power. I mean, there are almost no examples, not just of those people being good people, but I mean, you see this right now in author itarian countries, it's not just that like ours, you mean? Yes . Exactly. I mean, it's not just that it can draw the worst out of you. It can make you really bad at the job. Like what's interesting is there's a famous story. I mean, Hadrian's a cautionary tale in this regard. He's arguing with one of his philosophers about some issue and I'm forgetting the philosopher's name. But at some point, the philosopher concedes the issue . And the friends go to him and say, you know, why did you do that? You were right. Hadrian was wrong. And he said, I think you forget the man who controls fifty leg i isance always correct , right? And right, there's something about not just having absolute power when you're the head of state, but even being marked for power, like being the kid going places . I imagine that Marcus wasn't as a young man from this moment forward , getting accurate information , constructive feedback , real time information that he could use increasingly rare. And so for him to not just be a good person as an emperor is, I think something you have to give him credit for. Even for being a good writer, you have to give him some credit because I'm sure everyone told Nero he was an incredibly talented poet, right? Like you're not getting real feedback. So to be even a half competent benevolent desp ite is something you have to acknowledge there as an incredible feat and certainly the exception that proves the rule. Yes, exactly. And Marcus was clearly very observant. I mean, he learned from his tutors and teachers , but he also learned from his other male role models. He learned from Antonius Pews and just delivers this extended glowing encomium how aptly named Peuse in Latin , the core meaning there isn't piety, it's dutifulness. So I mean Antoninus the dutiful , right? That's what Antoninus Puce means, right? And so the impression that Antoninus made on Marcus , you have millions of people who you're responsible for and to and it's not like our democratic scheme as you were saying before. It's not like that at all. And yet there is this kind of potter famil ius , the grandfather is responsible for all generations after him. And so to be king is to be a father to everyone . And they don't get to vote , your word is law. And then this is also wrapped up, of course, with Roman religion because the emperors are considered to be gods. I mean, he has the same title as the modern day pope, right? Like he is pontiffus maximus like he is also the pope . Well, exactly. And so and when it comes to orthopraxy, when it comes to the rituals and the ceremonial practices in the religious festivals that the Romans practiced. They would sacrifice to the emperor , right? They were deeways . They were were they divin . So it's even more exalted than that of our pope today , right? So yes, he's the head of the church, yes, but in addition to that, he's got this aura . He's got this divine glow and people sacrifice to him as a god. And so I mean, as you're saying, I mean, I think it's exactly right . Everyone around you as a sycophant , they're not going to tell you tough love things that might offend you because they've seen what happens when you become , you know, the most powerful person in the empire . And it's just all too easy to be merciless and violent and punitive against people and ruin their lives or punish them corporally or kill them and execute them. And so for Marcus to avoid all of that as we read the memoranda, which I will still call it , you know, clearly there's a lot of humility there. There's remarkable modesty. There's self nudge . He's aware of his own weaknesses and shortcomings, and he writes them down , right? He's got a temper and he knows that that's a big problem for anyone in a position of power to have a short temper , that's an inch away from disaster and a bloodbath, right? And so he recognizes he's got to work hard at trying to be a good person because he's not going to be a good emperor unless he's a good person There's a famous statue. I don't know if you've seen it of Seneca in Nero . It's by a French sculptor. The body language I just find endlessly fascinating, you know, sort of Seneca is there teaching. He has his scroll laid out. And Nero sort of hunched over like a petulant teenager, just sort of not interested in this at all. Fringing, yes, yeah, yes. Obviously, we don't have a corresponding Marcus Cerelius statue, but you do get the sense both in practice and in the acknowledgements in meditations or memoranda that he had a very different relationship with those teachers at that same age. And in fact, all the way through to the end of his life, he remained an eager student . Yes, yes. And that's why Book One of the Memoranda is so special . Because it's a dedication to all of those people who modeled a wide range of virtues to him and he identifies them. He's taking inventory on all the positive character traits, all the strengths, all the virtues, all the excellences that his tutors and teachers friends and relatives and parents modeled for him , and he's thanking them and the gods for putting him in this position to absorb all that like a sponge because he needs it and Rome needs him to be the best that he can be , right? You mentioned the statue. And so we don't have a kind of pensive pose statue of Marcus. What we have is the Equestrian statue and other busts, right? You know, one he's a child that I have in my earlier book on Marcus Real is the Guide for the Perplexed , which is really fascinating to look at closely and analyze . But the big one, of course, is the Equestrian statue. And in Marcus's time , he wasn't thought of primarily a philosopher at all , right? He was a warrior. He was a general . He was leading campaigns for years and years and years. And he was in the saddle and that's the equestrian. So that's what we see in the Equestrian statue and that's what most Romans saw when they saw Marcus, right? Because they didn't see meditations. They didn't know that it existed. His reputation as a philosopher would have been