Meditations

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

Rating: 3.5/5 – A decent foray into Stoic thought.

I didn’t like this as much as I liked Seneca’s Letters, mostly I think becuase these were never written for anyone but Marcus to read. They have a rambling style, jumping from idea to idea in a haphazard manner, often repeating and re-emphasizing the same points over in over.

In fact, the whole of the book contains only a few major ideas, rephrased and retread over and over. Mostly these are:

• The impermanence of everything and everyone.
• The inevitability and unimportance of death.
• The pointlessness of emotionally reacting to the behavior of others.
• Everything is designed to act in accordance with its nature.

Given this relative lack of content, it’s a bit curious to me how popular this book is. I suspect that the credentials of the author (he was a Roman Emperor And in Gladiator! ) does much of the heavy lifting in this matter.

Nevertheless, I think Marcus makes many great points in the book, and I have given a lot of thought to his contemplations of death. If you’re interested in an introduction to Roman philosophical thought, this is an excellent entry point.

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