What Philosophers Don’t Get About Marcus Aurelius
What psychological benefits can be gained by readers of the Meditations?
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is one of the most widely-read books about philosophy ever written. Its popularity today is somewhat ironic because scholars generally agree that it is unlikely to have been intended for publication. Marcus repeats himself unnecessarily, jumps from one topic to another, alludes to obscure details of his personal life, casually drops in remarks which would have offended his fellow Romans, and rattles off lists of his favourite quotes from other authors, all of which creates the impression that we are reading his private notebooks.
It’s also odd because despite being one of the most famous surviving books on ancient Greek philosophy, it’s been largely ignored by academic philosophers. When I studied philosophy at Aberdeen University, back in the 1990s, it wasn’t part of the undergraduate curriculum and, as far as I recall, it was never even mentioned. I only really became aware of the Meditations after I graduated. That’s partly because it’s typically viewed today mainly as a self-help classic. Paul Giammati’s character in The Holdovers (2023) is so persuaded of its value as a self-improvement guide that he keeps a stash of copies to give to others as presents: ”For my money,” he enthuses, “it’s like the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita all rolled up into one.”
The bemusement of academics at this book’s enduring popularity has been recently expressed by Prof. Mary Beard’s in her book, Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient World, which was published in Oct 2023 and immediately became a New York Times bestseller. Beard questions Marcus Aurelius’ “philosophical acumen” as, in her view, the Meditations is nothing more than a collection of trite homilies offering little or nothing of value to today’s readers.
Some modern scholars rank these Jottings as high-quality ethical reflections, deeply informed by the Stoic school of philosophy. Others — and I confess I am one — see them as little more than a collection of philosophical platitudes, one of those books now more often bought than read.
One of Marcus Aurelius’ own biographers, Frank McLynn, also expressed a very negative view of the Stoic philosophy that played such an important role in his life: “A more priggish, inhuman, killjoy and generally repulsive doctrine [than Stoicism] would be hard to imagine,” he sneers. When I came to research my own biography, Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor, I simply found such a dismissive attitude toward Stoicism untenable.
Such a view of Stoicism is a caricature based on popular misconceptions, and it does the philosophy no justice. Stoicism flourished for five centuries in the ancient world, and numerous proponents spoke to its benefits and appeal. Today thousands of psychological research studies provide scientific evidence for the effectiveness of modern cognitive psychotherapy, which was originally inspired by the Stoics. Many modern readers likewise find in Stoicism a profoundly life-changing philosophy — one which heals certain emotions rather than merely eliminating all of them.
Indeed, the Meditations has been popular in English since the first translation appeared in 1634, it was widely-read in the Victorian era, and in recent decades its popularity has benefited from the resurgence of interest in Stoic philosophy. So what do ordinary people see in it that academic philosophers, and historians such as McLynn and Beard, do not?
One of the main reasons for renewed interest in Marcus Aurelius is that Stoicism was the philosophical inspiration for cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). Albert Ellis, the main pioneer of CBT in the 1950s, drew heavily on ancient Stoic texts, including the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. By the 1980s, CBT was entering the mainstream. Now, as it is the approach dominating the NHS Talking Therapies, for anxiety and depression (formerly IAPT), it is firmly established as the leading evidence-based form of modern psychotherapy, not only in the UK but internationally. Beard doesn’t mention this. Far from being platitudinous, or even mere “jottings”, I would say the emperor’s reflections on Stoic philosophy are far more consequential than she appears to realise.
“People are not distressed by events but rather by their opinions about them.”
Ellis wrote that some of the core principles of his approach, which later evolved into cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), were not new but “were originally stated several thousand years ago, especially by the Greek and Roman Stoic philosophers”, and he names Marcus Aurelius, among others, as an example of a philosopher who anticipated these aspects of modern psychotherapy. The main insight that Ellis and other cognitive therapists derived from Stoic philosophy was a cognitive model of emotion, which stated that our beliefs shape our emotions to much a greater degree than the majority of us normally assume. It was neatly expressed by Marcus, quoting the Stoic teacher Epictetus, who said that “People are not distressed by events but rather by their opinions about them.” Ellis taught this quote to virtually all of his therapy clients and students, and over time it was so widely quoted in books on CBT that it turned into something of a cliche.
In the 1960s, Aaron T. Beck developed what he called “cognitive therapy”, and acknowledged the same Stoic influences as Ellis, which he credited as providing the “philosophical origins” of his approach. In order to illustrate the cognitive model of emotion, instead of Epictetus, he quotes Marcus Aurelius:
If thou are pained by any external thing, it is not the thing that disturbs thee, but thine own judgement about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgement now. (Marcus Aurelius, quoted in Beck, 1976: 263)
Beck hypothesised that a first crucial step in psychological change consisted in the client noticing how his beliefs were shaping his emotions, before proceeding to challenge them using what he described as a form of “Socratic questioning”. This shift in perspective is so subtle that we don’t have a good term for it in the English language. Beck was forced to adopt the jargon term “cognitive distancing”. He explained that just as someone might wear glasses with red-colored lenses for so long that they begin to believe that the world they’re looking at is actually red, some of our long-standing beliefs can become so fused with external events that we no longer notice their subjective nature. We may be looking at the world through “catastrophe”-colored or “depression”-colored glasses, for instance. Cognitive distancing would be like taking off the coloured lenses and looking at them instead of looking at the world through them. Indeed, Cognitive therapy usually begins by helping the client to “gain distance” by separating their beliefs from reality in this way.
The first wave of cognitive therapists, however, only scratched the surface of this idea’s value. The next generation of clinicians and researchers began to experiment with cognitive distancing and found that it could be therapeutic even when used alone, without the questioning techniques central to Ellis and Beck’s approaches. Philosophers had generally overlooked this aspect of Stoicism because it involves a subtle and unfamiliar shift in perspective with regard to our own thoughts. It was only rediscovered by modern psychologists, and even then it took time before they began to realise its therapeutic importance.
It’s no surprise therefore that academic philosophers, and classicists, reading Marcus Aurelius find it hard to understand why ordinary people who approach the Meditations as a self-help guide find it so beneficial. They lack the conceptual apparatus, or even the terminology, which would be required to articulate what the Stoics were doing. The Stoics, and some of the other Greek philosophers, were, in fact, far ahead of their time with regard to their understanding of psychotherapy. Sigmund Freud, and his followers, for instance, had no idea of the importance of this therapeutic concept, which only gained recognition thanks to the pioneers of cognitive therapy. Some academics may, as Prof. Beard put it, find the Meditations lacking in “philosophical acumen”, but they have, almost universally, overlooked the psychological acumen of the Stoics.
One of the reasons academics often give for discounting the writings of Stoic philosophers in this way is that they, allegedly, contribute nothing new to philosophy. When I began studying the Stoics I was told that they merely built on concepts and arguments already established by earlier philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. All the Stoics did, it was said, was to apply these philosophical ideas to everyday life — and why on Earth would anyone want to study that? Ironically, though, that’s precisely what the general public find so attractive about Stoicism.
Marcus Aurelius is especially popular because he took some of the most important insights gleaned from ancient philosophy and rephrased them over and over again, in an attempt to find the perfect words to express them. Marcus was, in fact, highly trained in Greek rhetoric and the powerful and concise language he uses in the Meditations renders its wisdom beautiful. He selected key pieces of wisdom from preceding philosophers and brought them to life for himself, and now for us.
The Meditations is little more than a collection of “philosophical platitudes”, in Prof. Beard’s eyes, and she doubts most people who have bought the book actually read it. In my experience, though, people love to read Marcus Aurelius. He is very easy to understand because, frankly, he was one of the greatest aphorists in the history of Western philosophy. The beauty of his writing also has an important psychological effect: it makes the teachings of Stoicism more evocative and more memorable. That’s gold dust in terms of mental health where evidence-based advice can often seem a bit dull. Don’t we gain more from psychological advice, and philosophical wisdom, when it’s expressed very clearly and powerfully? That’s what people find of value in the writings of Marcus Aurelius.
Emotional resilience training, inspired by research on cognitive psychotherapy, aims to reduce the risk of individuals developing conditions such as clinical depression in the future. It works but it seems to require booster sessions because people tend to forget about using the psychological strategies they’ve learned after a year or two. When people get into Stoicism, though, they usually stick with it for a long time, sometimes even for the rest of their lives. It holds real promise, therefore, which shouldn’t be underestimated or discounted. By combining cognitive therapy and the Stoic philosophy that originally inspired it, we may perhaps find ways of helping people to make permanent improvements to their mental health, and acquire lasting emotional resilience. Stoicism, in my view, therefore, is far more than a “collection of philosophical platitudes”. Indeed, it may help us get a few steps closer to achieving what I like to describe as the “Holy Grail” of mental health research.
Has any attempt been made to suggest to Prof Beard that other interpretations are available and that she might wish to review her statement? Perhaps, she was unaware of the evidence documented here?
Fabulous response, BTW. Thank you. I learnt a lot.
Prof Beard is wrong, at least in my case. I've read it several times.