There seems to be an ambiguity as to whether Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is indeed a private document, or whether it was meant for a broader audience. Marcus Aurelius makes many private comments such as, “From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper,” in the Medications that indicate that the book was a personal diary or a journal rather than a book meant for others. Marcus Aurelius records his private notes and ideas on the Stoic philosophy which further supports the argument that the book is a diary, as he expresses himself without a filter and jots down his ideas and beliefs in an informal way and uses the book as a source of self-improvement.
The intimacy within Marcus Aurelius can be seen in chapter 5 verse 26 where he reflects upon himself and tries to form ideas of how to lead an ideal life. He argues, “Let the part of your soul that leads and governs be undisturbed by the movements in the flesh, whether of pleasure or of pain; and let it not unite with them, but let it circumscribe itself and limit those affects to their parts,” and focuses on how to control his thoughts and emotions. He argues that we have emotions and thoughts, and both are different, separate things where we cannot control our emotions, but we can control our thoughts on those emotions. Aurelius explains to himself how the mind is the
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He uses informal language, uses unorthodox style, and uses a bulleted layout rather than a smooth storytelling one. This infers that Aurelius was writing in a diary or a journal and not in a book that he was trying to share with the rest of the world. It is highly unlikely that Aurelius ever wanted the writings to be published publicly. Meditations deals with one’s judgment of self and others and learning one’s position in the grand cosmic perspective which Aurelius was trying to figure out for
I keep my journal hidden; the script, the drawings, the color, the weight of the paper, contents I hope never to be experienced by another. My journal is intensely personal, temporal and exposed. When opening the leather bound formality of Alice Williamson's journal a framework of meaning is presupposed by the reader's own feelings concerning the medium. Reading someone else's diary can be, and is for myself, an voyeuristic invasion of space. The act of reading makes the private and personal into public. Yet, for Alice Williamson and many other female journalists of the Civil War period, the journal was creating a public memory of the hardship that would be sustained when read by others. The knowledge of the outside reader reading of your life was as important as the exercise of recording for one's self; creating a sense of sentimentality connecting people through emotions. (Arnold)
Aurelius, Marcus. The meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. New York: A.L. Burt, 189.
In his work, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes narrates the search for certainty in order to recreate all knowledge. He begins with “radical doubt.” He asks a simple question “Is there any one thing of which we can be absolutely certain?” that provides the main question of his analysis. Proceeding forward, he states that the ground of his foundation is the self – evident knowledge of the “thinking thing,” which he himself is. Moving up the tower of certainty, he focuses on those ideas that can be supported by his original foundation. In such a way, Descartes’s goal is to establish all of human knowledge of firm foundations. Thus, Descartes gains this knowledge from the natural light by using it to reference his main claims, specifically
Augustine finds many ways in which he can find peace in God. He is genuinely sorry for having turned away from God, the source of peace and happiness. Augustine is extremely thankful for having been given the opportunity to live with God. Augustine uses love as his gate to God’s grace. Throughout The Confessions, love and wisdom, the desire to love and be loved, and his love for his concubine, are all driving forces for Augustine’s desire to find peace in God. The death of his friend upsets him deeply, but also allows him to pursue God to become a faithful Christian.
Rene Descartes decision to shatter the molds of traditional thinking is still talked about today. He is regarded as an influential abstract thinker; and some of his main ideas are still talked about by philosophers all over the world. While he wrote the "Meditations", he secluded himself from the outside world for a length of time, basically tore up his conventional thinking; and tried to come to some conclusion as to what was actually true and existing. In order to show that the sciences rest on firm foundations and that these foundations lay in the mind and not the senses, Descartes must begin by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that come to him by the senses. This is done in the first of six different steps that he named "Meditations" because of the state of mind he was in while he was contemplating all these different ideas. His six meditations are "One:Concerning those things that can be called into doubt", "Two:Concerning the Nature of the Human mind: that it is better known than the Body", "Three: Concerning God, that he exists", "Four: Concerning the True and the False", "Five: Concerning the Essence of Material things, and again concerning God, that he exists" and finally "Six: Concerning the Existence of Material things, and the real distinction between Mind and Body". Although all of these meditations are relevant and necessary to understand the complete work as a whole, the focus of this paper will be the first meditation.
In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes makes a point that there is a distinction between mind and body. It is in Meditation Two when Descartes believes he has shown the mind to be better known than the body. In Meditation Six, however, he goes on to claim that, as he knows his mind and knows clearly and distinctly that its essence consists purely of thought. Also, that bodies' essences consist purely of extension, and that he can conceive of his mind and body as existing separately. By the power of God, anything that can be clearly and distinctly conceived of as existing separately from something else can be created as existing separately. However, Descartes claims that the mind and body have been created separated without good reason. This point is not shown clearly, and further, although I can conceive of my own mind existing independently of my body, it does not necessarily exist as so.
The theme of "Meditation 1.6" is Edward Taylor, and the reader, being God's servant, and God showing them their faults. In multiple points throughout the poem, Taylor compares being God's gold or money, to being His laborer. The poet also hits heavily on how bad it is to only have a superficial faith and attitude toward doing God's will. Taylor, through "Meditation 1.6", epitomizes what Christians should desire to be in
Baird and Kaufmann, the editors of our text, explain in their outline of Descartes' epistemology that the method by which the thinker carried out his philosophical work involved first discovering and being sure of a certainty, and then, from that certainty, reasoning what else it meant one could be sure of. He would admit nothing without being absolutely satisfied on his own (i.e., without being told so by others) that it was incontrovertible truth. This system was unique, according to the editors, in part because Descartes was not afraid to face doubt. Despite the fact that it was precisely doubt of which he was endeavoring to rid himself, he nonetheless allowed it the full reign it deserved and demanded over his intellectual labors. "Although uncertainty and doubt were the enemies," say Baird and Kaufmann (p.16), "Descartes hit upon the idea of using doubt as a tool or as a weapon. . . . He would use doubt as an acid to pour over every 'truth' to see if there was anything that could not be dissolved . . . ." This test, they explain, resulted for Descartes in the conclusion that, if he doubted everything in the world there was to doubt, it was still then certain that he was doubting; further, that in order to doubt, he had to exist. His own existence, therefore, was the first truth he could admit to with certainty, and it became the basis for the remainder of his epistemology.
He intended to live a life of no regret, only spreading positivity to others and within himself. He lived a life of temptation greater than anyone around him could ever have even imagined. Even though he faced these temptations, and had all of the tools he needed to get whatever he wanted, he didn’t let these things control his life, and was able to lead a life without regret, never being remorseful for his actions. Although he did not want these writings to be published, the literature that he produced changed the lives of many, and gives many lessons to its
Augustine. “Confessions”. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 1113-41. Print.
You prompt us yourself to find satisfaction in appraising you, since you made us tilted toward you, and our heart is unstable until stabilized in you. Quintessentially, this quote from Confessions symbolizes Augustine’s perilous journey towards Christianity. Although appearing earlier in what is colloquially known as the “first autobiography”, Augustine expounds on this very idea throughout his writings. Whether that includes his attraction and disdain for Manichaeism or his affinity with Neo-Platonism, one could argue this quote acted as the foundation of his inquisitions of these pre-modern dogmatic sects. Augustine, despite his perils with intellectual paradoxes, sought to understand these rigid entities that seemed to have variant positions on God’s goodness and temporal nature. Although Augustine eventually found refuge in Catholicism, nevertheless, he continued to explore the relationship between Gods benevolence and human dependence, even until his death.
In the Third Meditation, Descartes forms a proof for the existence of God. He begins by laying down a foundation for what he claims to know and then offers an explanation for why he previously accepted various ideas but is no longer certain of them. Before he arrives at the concept of God, Descartes categorizes ideas and the possible sources that they originate from. He then distinguishes between the varying degrees of reality that an idea can possess, as well as the cause of an idea. Descartes proceeds to investigate the idea of an infinite being, or God, and how he came to acquire such an idea with more objective reality than he himself has. By ruling out the possibility of this idea being invented or adventitious, Descartes concludes that the idea must be innate. Therefore, God necessarily exists and is responsible for his perception of a thing beyond a finite being.
Overall, The Meditations is in accordance to stoic thought. Marcus Aurelius wrote a lot about how to not let people, and of course externals affect your happiness. That we must, “take nothing in hand without purpose and nothing falsely or with dissimulation, depend not on another’s actions or inactions, accept each and every dispensation as coming from the same Source as itself.” If we live in accordance with stoic belief and what Aurelius wrote then we can achieve happiness.
This idea should also help us understand the apparently lopsided and unusual structure of the text. The first nine Books of the Confessions are devoted to the story of Augustine's life up to his mother's death, but the last four Books make a sudden, lengthy departure into pure theology and philosophy. This shift should be understood in the same context as the double meaning of 'confessions'—for Augustine, the story of his sinful life and redemption is in fact a profoundly philosophical and religious matter, since his story is only one exampl...
Reading his meditation make me think about how it is important to think about what is true and what is false. I think that he was making one see the importance of questioning one’s senses about whether it is false. It is also important that one does not become too skeptical about things. One should be moderate about what we should question.