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Book 6
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Meditations, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Philosophy, The Mind, and Living Well
Relationships and The City
Nature and the Gods
Mortality and Dying Well
Summary
Analysis
3. A person’s worth depends on what they devote their energy to.
A person should be judged based on what they think is valuable—that is, on what they dedicate their mind to, thereby shaping their actions.
Themes
5. Either do the best you can on a task, or delegate it to someone who’s better suited for it. The point is that the community’s needs are met.
The good of the community is the most important thing, and people should cooperate toward that end. The individual’s ego is subordinate to community well-being.
Themes
7. There’s no shame in needing help, like a wounded soldier who needs his comrades’ help.
Since the parts of a community make up an interdependent whole, the well-being of an individual impacts the whole, and vice versa.
Themes
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9. Everything is interconnected and harmonious—one world made up of everything, one divinity present in everything, a shared logos.
Human cooperation reflects the harmony of the whole universe, which in turn is based on and governed by the gods.
Themes
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10. All substance is soon absorbed back into nature, and what animates substance is restored to the logos.
Human beings are, according to Stoic doctrine, made up of substance and an animating power—neither of which lasts forever.
Themes
13. Until you realize that you’re a part of a larger whole—just like a limb is part of a body—you won’t see helping other people as its own reward.
When the universe is an interconnected whole, helping others is the same as helping oneself.
Themes
16. There’s no point in being scared of change. You can’t burn firewood or eat food without transforming things. It’s the same with human processes, and they’re just as important to nature.
Everything changes. A person should learn to see the changes in their life, up to and including death, as just another one of these processes, thereby making it less frightening.
Themes
22. It’s human to think well of other people even when they make mistakes. You can do this by recognizing that they’re human, that they’re acting ignorantly, and that you’ll both be dead pretty soon. Anyway, nothing they’ve done can inhibit your own choices.
Recognizing shared humanity, and the shortness of life, helps people forgive each other, and maintain responsibility for their own actions.
Themes
26. When someone mistreats you, consider what their intentions were—then you’ll feel sympathetic toward them. If their ethics are the same as yours, you can forgive them. And if they’re misguided, then you can show compassion.
It’s important to understand each person’s ethical guidelines (i.e., their philosophy)—people are simply the product of these, either not yet completely conformed to their philosophy or mistaken in their choice of one.
Themes
31. Be simple, be humble, and focus on right and wrong. Care about others and follow God.
In this teaching and the ones that follow, Marcus urges himself to keep focused on simple precepts in life.
Themes
33. Chronic pain can be endured, because it doesn’t affect the mind. If pain is unendurable, then it’ll bring about its own end.
Even ongoing pain (something he probably knew about after multiple military campaigns) will either kill him or make him stronger.
Themes
46. Nobility and virtue can’t be equated with preservation of life. “A real man” doesn’t worry about how many years he’s going to live—he tries to live his allotted years as well as possible.
Marcus believes that the length of life shouldn’t be his focus, but living well within whatever time he has.
Themes
54. No matter what’s happening at any given moment, a person has the option of accepting it humbly, treating another person justly, and resisting any irrational thoughts.
External events never prevent a person from acting rationally—that is, humanly, the way they’re designed to act.
Themes
55. Don’t worry about what other people are thinking. Keep looking straight ahead, where nature is leading. Everything has a role; lower things exist for higher ones (those with logos), and higher things for one another. We were made to work together. We were also made to resist bodily urges, to master them with our thoughts—they’re made for us and not vice versa.
Further, everyone is designed to cooperate. Marcus believed in a hierarchical world in which “lower” people served higher; in his view, this was all a reflection of the god-given natural order of things. Within a person, too, lower urges are intended for the use and mastery of the higher (the thoughts).
Themes
61. A person shouldn’t live life like a dancer, but like a wrestler, ready for assaults.
Life is a fight that requires constant training and vigilance. This aligns with Marcus’s purpose in penning his Meditations: to train his mind.
Themes
67. Your well-being is in your hands, and it doesn’t require much. You don’t have to be a great scholar or scientist. Just be someone who seeks freedom, is humble, serves others, and obeys God.
Even though life is a fight, it also doesn’t require anything special—you just have to desire your mind’s freedom from the circumstances surrounding you.
Themes
68. Anything that happens is an opportunity to practice virtue. You have to judge events by seeing what they really are and adapting to them by deciding they’re what you really need.
According to Marcus,certain circumstances are given to you in order to be analyzed and used for the practice of virtue.
Themes
69. The perfect character lives life “without frenzy, or sloth, or pretense.”
A person shouldn’t be frantic, or lazy, or dishonest about their life. Avoiding these things helps one develop a balanced character that benefits others as well as oneself.
Themes
74. The most useful—and natural—thing is to be of use to others.
Though a person is ultimately responsible only for their own development of virtue, they should also use that virtue for the benefit of their community.
Themes
