“Meditations“, Book 4 – Marcus Aurelius

by richibi

“How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his
neighbour says or does or thinks, but only to what he does himself,
that it may be just and pure; or as Agathon says, look not round at
the depraved morals of others, but run straight along the line
without deviating from it.”

“Meditations“, Book 4, 18

Marcus Aurelius

___________

having given the sciences their theoretical
foundations, philosophy, overtaken by facts,
theorems and numbers, impermeable verities
based on rigorous calculations and verifiable
experimentations, feared ceding its austere
position at the head of progressive thought
and ground its studies in more rationally
impregnable pursuits, empiricism overtook
speculation, morality became merely a
subtext instead of the existential quest
it had earlier informed

it has never recovered, though the
importance of the question of good
and evil has never subsided

towards what do we aspire, how do we
accord that with our environment, be it
social, political, natural

it is not a bad thing to consider our
priorities, otherwise we are merely
wisps, I would think, of undifferentiated
dust in the wind, dust having returned
inexorably to untransubstantiated
dust

therefore Marcus Aurelius

Richard