Book Review: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
When I was in school I read about half of this and then skimmed the rest. I recently gave it a second look and recalled why I read it the way I did. As interesting as Aurelius’ thoughts are, he does tend to repeat himself a great deal. You can sum up about 70% of the book with this sentence: “Life is short, you will die very soon, live honorably.” Given the way the book was written it isn’t surprising. These are really just Aurelius’ random thoughts over the course of many years. It almost reads like his personal Twitter account. He wasn’t trying to write a philosophical treatise. Taken from that perspective, Meditations is a nice book to travel with and a good primer on Stoicism. It is easy to read in tiny bits — say taking in three or four aphorisms while waiting for your food to arrive at a diner. It’s worth multiple reads if you have a serious interest in philosophy. At some point I will do a more lengthy examination of stoicism.
Grade: B
