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Speaker 1: This is Jay Dyer from Jay's Analysis. You're listening to

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Esoteric Hollywood. Esoteric Hollywood is where I deconstruct the biggest

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films in an unparalleled way, from the classics of the

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silver screen to today's blockbusters. Learned to watch film with

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new eyes as we enter Esoteric Hollywood. Greetings, Welcome back

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to Jay's Analysis, My friends, subscribers, especially thank you all

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you subscribers out there. Today we're going to talk about

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Marcus Aurelius, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and you're listening

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to Jay's Analysis. My website is Jaysnalysis dot com and

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I deal with philosophy, theology, the esoteric movie reviews, film analysis.

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I do a lot of stand up, a lot of comedy,

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a lot of impressions. I do all kinds of crazy stuff.

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But I also do philosophy talks and lectures. And so

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what we're going to do is maybe skip back and

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go and talk about some of the older post Greek

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stuff into the Roman period because I had some requests. Actually,

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people said you didn't ever talk about anything Stoic, what

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about the Stoics? And that's interesting because the Stoics are

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influenced by the Greeks. They were very interested in continuing

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the Greek tradition with that sort of Hellenized period of

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the Roman Empire. And Stoicism is interesting. It's not the

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best philosophy, I don't think, but it's interesting. And you

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had the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius influenced by Stoicism. So

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the first thing with that we want to do is,

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you know that I'm very much a fan of channeling,

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and so I got my hair cut into this fascy

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haircut they call it, because we're going to actually channel

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Marcus Aurelius the emperor today. You ready, so close your eyes,

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put your legs up into a lotus position. And the

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way that we channel the Roman emperor is that we

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do instead of doing this the way that we might meditate.

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We're going to hell Caesar. Hey Caesar, this is a

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very controversial hand movement. Now you can do this all day,

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fuck the poet, right, you can be a communist Marxist,

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but if you dared to do hell Caesar, fascist fascist alert,

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fascist alert, anyway, I'm being silly. We're going to delve

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into the meditations and part one will be free for

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those out there in internet land and then part two.

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Of course, you can subscribe at Jays Analysis for four

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a month or for sixty dollars a year to get

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the full talks, likes and interviews and access to the

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archives where I've talked to a lot of interesting people

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and done full lectures on the totality of Tragy and Hope,

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Plato's Republic, this kind of stuff. The subscribers are all

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very happy. Ninety five percent approval for subscribers at Jason

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elsis so Stoicism is interesting. It gives us the idea

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of a philosopher king, right, so they Marcus, especially Marcus,

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carries on this notion of Plato's republic being ruled by

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the philosopher king, and Marcus sees himself as a philosopher king.

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So in many ways it's going to function like Augustine's Confessions,

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which is the first idobiography in history, I suppose Western civilization.

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It functions as the first known autobiography. And the concern,

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first and foremost is with the care of the soul.

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So virtue matters, the God within matters, and the God

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within here is this idea of what we're going to

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deal with called monism, and the Stoics can accurately be

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called monists, and Marcus follows the tradition of Epictetus in

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the Discourses quite a bit. The reason I troll shows

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Meditations is because the Meditations, well number one. I happened

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to just pick this book up in the last few weeks,

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and I had not read Marcus's disputation. I think maybe

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an undergrad we had to read, you know, like a

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selection of it or something. But I went in and

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read the Meditations, and I thought it is a good companion.

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And they're going to see a lot of similarities to

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Christian theology early on Biblical theology. We're going to see

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similarities to well, it's syncretic, which is interesting. So it

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does platonism and maybe even blends aspects of Biblical or

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Christian thought as well as the Roman ideas, Roman tradition

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and thought, which is very practical, very interested in legalities

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and bureaucracy and how to form a coherent, functioning state.

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And what we're going to see is that Stoicism functions

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very well for the Roman mythos, for the pacx Romana.

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It's a lot of aphorisms, aphorisms, and it wasn't apparently

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intended to be something published. It was intended to be

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his personal diary, and I guess over time it was

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eventually published. So a lot of platonic theme is one

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of those that's going to be pre eminent is the

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control of the passions. The Stoics were at times even

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almost ascetics, right. They were very much into sobriety temperance,

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and we're going to see that throughout these aphorisms. Another

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obvious key point that probably everybody's aware of who's heard

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of philosophy in any degree is a Stoicism is concerned

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with facing life's ills in terms of what you can

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and can't control. If you can't control something, no point

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worrying about it. It's out of your control. It's not

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something that you even need to worry about. Worry is pointless,

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you know. We can think of similarities that, say, the

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Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, who of you

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by worrying? Can one add one inch to your stature? Right?

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I mean, there's not really any point in worry, especially

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when it comes to things outside of your control. And

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that's the key dictum of Stoicism. So it's aphoristic in

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the way that perhaps Nietsi or Wittenstein are aphoristic in

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many of their writings. He does see philosophy as the

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totality answer to man life and ills. So philosophy is

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the path by which you can find solace, find peace,

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and find answers. Philosophy promotes the life of virtue. As

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we've seen before, again, this is straight out of Socrates

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and Epictetus. Many of the early Stoics had a high

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views of Socrates. They thought he was great, not so

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much a lot of the metaphysics and ontology of Plato,

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but rather that within the dialogues you would see Socrates

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really laying out what it means to live a philosophical life.

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So it's a lot more interested in the esthetic and

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what's natural out there in the world, harmony with nature,

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and a lot less interested in, you know, these sort

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of big skill speculations about metaphysics and justifying your belief

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systems and so forth and so on, so that they

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don't really care about that. Of course, the first Stoic

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that we'll talk about is Zeno, but we also have

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to talk about Epictetis, and a lot of it's going

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to deal with death, and so some people have called

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it an ontology of freedom in the face of death,

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which is interesting. You do tend to have this obsession

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or this acceptance of death in the Stoic tradition, facing

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death as something natural, and that's what we're going to

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look at, especially given the fact that we don't believe

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death is natural. Death is in fact very unnatural. But

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for Stoicism it ends up being pantheistic, as we'll see.

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So that is those are the foec i, the focuses

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of Stoicism, and the introduction of my copy talks about

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it being proto Christian. I don't know about all that

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epictetis perhaps, but there were apparently times when Marcus thought

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he had mystical visions, and these mystical visions seem to

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be connected to the notion of an all pervading providence

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over the universe, which is a Christian doctrine, and in

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fact some of the other Stoics did. The argument is

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often made that they were influenced by Christian theology because

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they believed in providence, right, and you don't really have

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a sense of providence unless you believe in some kind

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of single God or source ruling the universe. Sometimes polytheism

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might talk about providence, but it's hard to see how

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there could really be providence if you have just a

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bunch of warring gods. Right, providence seems to presume or

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presuppose a single divine mind or single mind consciousness. So

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a lot of interesting stuff here. You know, did he

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have mystical visions that tied into his philosophies of stoicism

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in the state and all that. Maybe, but that's what

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we're going to look at today. So if you want

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to see the full thing, come over to Jason Analysis,

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and we're gonna do an end up look at the

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meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and we're going to talk about

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Marcus viewing himself as the philosopher king straight out of

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Plato's Republic. And then we're going also, of course, going

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to critique the philosophy and look at weaknesses in this

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position and whether or not it can accurately give us

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the kind of worldview that I think we want that

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we all look for as human beings. So, if we

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want to talk about the Roman period, and this would

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be roughly the period between say Aristotle and the first

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few Caesars, Christ's period into the second century, first and

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second century, and that's well, actually, what we're gonna do

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is we're gonna look at roughly the five schools during

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this period, and you really only have a few options.

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And that's what's interesting about this. Not many offers from

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world views that are out there in terms of what

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we might call the secular perspective, and philosophy is a

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secular perspective. Now, you might could argue that Plato's philosophy

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has elements of the mystery schools or Esoterism or something

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like that, and Pythagorianism, but ultimately it's still the vision

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of reason, right reason conceived of as an abstract and

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personal principle governing the universe. And we're gonna see that

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logos principle actually at work in the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius.

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So you're gonna you're gonna see like five basic schools.

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And what's neat is that the modern day philosophy is

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of secularism. They don't present anything different than that. We

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still only have essentially these same five options in our day,

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and I think that's very telling. And with with skepticism,

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first of all, we have obviously the idea of no absolutes,

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everything is relative. This would be like puro right. The

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skeptics and their perspective is based in this idea of

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a lot of times empiricism. We only know what's present

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to our five senses. That can be deceived quite often,

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and so therefore it doesn't make sense to think that

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there's any actual objective principles or truths. How could anybody

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pertain claim to have access to to these kinds of

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lofty ideas when in fact true humility, right opposition to

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human hubris, demands that that's absolutely impossible. But it's also

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so it's kind of a buffet style approach as well

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to philosophy with skepticism. You might take a little bit

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of this, a little bit of that, but none of

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them are quote true. Now, as I pointed out in

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the little brief video that I did yesterday about relativism,

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skepticism is relativism. And so this is actually the dominant

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kind of philosophy of our day, and the problem with

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it is that it starts out contradicting itself on its

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own premisses. As we pointed out in that brief video,

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it says there's no absolutes, everything is relative, but The

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problem is that that claim itself has to also fall

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under the dictum of everything being relative, and so it's

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self refuting on its own grounds. Right. You can't say

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that there's no truth, right, because that claim itself would

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then also have to be true. And the problem with

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this is that it's not a paradox. It's actually a contradiction.

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And there's a difference between a paradox and a contradiction.

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Even in formal logic or a history of logic. Addicians

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have discussed this topic, even Birch and Russell, right, the

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worst man ever, arguably the wickedest dude of all time.

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Maybe even Russell noted the distinction between a paradox and

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a contradiction. So next we had the school of Epicureanism,

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and this is a kind of a materialistic atomistic atomism.

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The world is just atom is falling through space. That's

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all there is. And it's hedonistic, but it's not hedonism

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in the sense of total moral abandon and total licentiousness.

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The hedonists actually thought that the best way to live

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was to live in a kind of moderated pleasure. So

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it's not just bodily sensate pleasures that are the best pleasures.

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It's a little bit of wine, a little bit of cheese,

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a little bit of Netflix. Right, this is the highest

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levels of pleasure, not Dionysian Jam Morrison, you know, pulling

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out his schlong on stage and having sex with microphones

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right while you're blitzed on Bzillian drugs. That's not what

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they mean by hedonism. Of course, we don't really have

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any reason to accept that the intellectual pleasures necessarily are

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higher than the bodily pleasures on this perspective. I mean,

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in other words, Epicurus might prefer the intellectual conversational pleasures

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with his philosophical friends, But on what basis are we

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supposed to believe that that's actually objectively a better pleasure

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than you know, the whorehouse or something, right, I mean,

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maybe the eyes wide shut party is a better pleasure

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than the philosophical nerd chat right. In the Philosophy one

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on one class, do you want to go to the

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party with Bill Harford? Or do you want if we're

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just gonna live for pleasure right? Or do you do

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you want to sit in Philosophy one on one with

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the fat guy with stinky armpits and debate the matrix. Right.

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So in other words, we don't really get any clear

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explication or a reason to believe that that the moderated

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hedonism of Epicurus is somehow a higher, more lofty pleasure.

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It's just assumed to be so than the pleasures of

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moral abandoned. Now, the other school, the third option that

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we have in this rough period between say the prophet

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Malachi in the second century, is Platonism ul And now

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there's there's other options too, in terms of like the

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Sibiline cult and the Mythra cult. There's other religious options,

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but right now we're just looking at like philosophy, secular

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philosophy during this period Platonism. Of course, the Academy at Athens,

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we know what Plato and Platonism taught, the three characteristics

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of Platonism. If you've heard my lectures, you already know

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this stuff. We don't have to rehash this. But for

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those that haven't heard the Plato talks I've done in

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the last couple of years, including the totality of the republic.

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In the Platonic scheme, you have basically dualism of the

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body and the soul, or of the realm of the

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forms in our world, the realm of the forms being invariant, unchanging,

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immaterial in our world being material flux subject to constant becoming.

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And then you have rationalism that the mind or the soul,

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the news, the reason in man is the highest faculty

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that's intended to govern the passions of the body, and

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it somehow it taps into the realm of the forms directly,

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and so it's it is definitely a rationalist position. Platonism is.

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And then you have what we might cause just idealism,

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that the highest levels of reality, the absolute, et cetera,

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are in fact formal and ideal in an abstract, mathematical

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type of sense, not in the realm of the here

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and the now. So that is that the three basic

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principles that we'll find in Platonism. I got my I

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got my fascy haircut today, and I got hair in

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my eye, So then aristotelianism. And I got this haircut

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as a joke, by the way, because people were making

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fun of the last time I got this haircut. So

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anytime I get people making fun of things, I always

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I always charged forward into the thing that they're making

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fun of and saying because I don't care and so Aristotelianism.

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We haven't really dived into Aristol yet. We will, I

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assure you maybe in the next year or two, we're

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gonna get pretty deep into Aristotle, cover some of the

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major works. The logic, the metaphysics, the poetics, the ethics.

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These are all important to understand in the history of philosophy.

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And I had plenty of graduate level Aristotle classes. I've

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spent a lot of time in Aristotle. I spent a

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lot of time in Aquinas, especially in my twenties. I mean,

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very very intense, in depth time in Aquinas is thought.

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You know, I've got the whole Suma sitting right over here.

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I read a good portion of the Suma as well

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as the Suma countries and Telaes. I've read the entire

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volume volumes of the of that one, which is more

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of an apologetic work. And to do that you have

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to be very familiar with Aristotle, There's no question about it.

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So we'll do that. We'll also do some Augustine. I've

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got some Augustine right here in this stack, right here

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by my thumbing. Augustine. We'll do some of that too.

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I thought City of God monumental work in the history

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of philosophy. It should be analyzed. Nobody does full talks

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on the City of God. I will, and you need

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not doubt me, because we did a full talk on

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Tragy and Hope. So I read the City of God

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when I was twenty one and took all those questions

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to my Baptist professors and they didn't have any answers,

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and they still don't. So you're gonna get that here

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for me. You're not gonna get that anywhere. El There's

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no other professor is going to take you through the

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entirety of the City of God. But I will. So

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then Aristotelianism is Aristotle School was located in the Lyceum

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as opposed to the Academy, and the Lyceum philosophers were

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called the peripatetics. And they're called this because they would

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wander around. They would walk around and sort of stroll

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about and philosophize. Actually I do this. I don't know.

300
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Maybe I'm a descendant of Aristotle or something. I don't know,

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but generally speaking, if I'm doing an interview, if I'm

302
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talking or something, actually I like to be strolling about.

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I don't like being confined and having to sit here,

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but I'll do it. It's focused on obviously the teleology, right,

305
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which is purpose in the Greek, that things have a

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purpose to which they're going moving towards it, trying to attain,

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and so everything is in a movement from potentiality to actuality. Right.

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So the the acorn becomes the oak tree or whatever.

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So the acorn has the potential to become the full

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oak tree, the telos. The purpose of that seed is

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to transition into that final form. This is what characterizes

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Aristotle's philosophy. We could say that Ariostol's philosophy obviously is

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a more empirical approach, whereas with Platonism it's kind of

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a unless you make the argument that Platonism is ultimately

315
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a mystery school initiatory kind of religious philosophy, which you

316
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could make that argument it kind of is. But if

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you consider it just in its in as secular sense,

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then it's more focused just simply speaking, in terms of

319
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epistemology on reason, on thought and a priori mathematics or

320
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these these are characteristics that are not generally speaking empirical,

321
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So you know, algorithms, these kinds of things, you know,

322
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large geometric problems, in mathematics, they might have a relationship

323
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to the physical world, but the objects of these disciplines

324
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themselves are not empirical, right, achilleagon is not an empirical

325
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thing out there in the world, but it is a

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real geometric thing. And so there's many other examples of this, Right,

327
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a tesseract. There's not something actually out there in the world,

328
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but it's a real mathematical object. And so in that sense,

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because Plato believed that in Pythagoras, they believe that these

330
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kinds of mathematical truths were the real, higher true is reality,

331
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ultimately speaking, is more in line with that kind of

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stuff than it is the flux and change of matter

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and decay and death in this world. And so in

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that regard, Aristotle is much more interested in studying the

335
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natural world. He's much more interested in biology than he

336
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is metaphysics. Right, So, I mean, he doesn't have a

337
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problem writing a book about metaphysics, but his metaphysic is different. Right,

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So he'll take form. He believes in objective form. He's

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a realist, so to speak, but those forms are all

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instantiated for him in time and space, in some configuration

341
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of matter. Right, So matter is impressed with some form.

342
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Always there's not an abstract out there, a transcendent realm

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where the true formal principles reside, and there is for Plato.

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So next we come to Stoicism cynicism, and there's a

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similarity between those two schools. We are going to be

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talking about Stoicism today, as I said with Marcus Aurelius.

347
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But we have in Stoicism this emphasis on harmony between nature, reason,

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and virtue. All of these three are kind of mystically linked,

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almost to where if you're living right, you're living in

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accord with reason, and reason lives in accord with the

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principles that are manifested out there in nature in the

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natural world. So virtue is to be natural. Virtue is

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to be rational, and to be rational, and natural is

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to live according to reason. And so all of these

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three are linked. Now how do they get that, Well,

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they're all linked because there is, as we said, some

357
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sort of in the mind of the a universal principle.

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It's a universal principle that governs all reality. It's a

359
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kind of force of reason or logos. And they will

360
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actually use the term logos now, they don't mean it

361
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in the sense of what John one one is talking

362
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about in the Gospel of John, that in the beginning

363
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was the Word, The Word was with God, the Word

364
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was God. He was in the beginning with God, and

365
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all things are made through Him, for him, by Him,

366
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et cetera, et cetera. That's not what they're talking about,

367
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because they don't believe in creation. For the Stoics, for

368
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the Roman philosophers, they inherit the Greek idea of cycles,

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that reality is not created, it's just a kind of

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an eternal manifestation of itself extending out forever, never, ever, ever.

371
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And in fact, this is kind of an eternal recurrence

372
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type of view, madam psychosis. You're just going to live

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the life that you've lived now over and over and

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over again. It's just going to repeat. And they believe

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that because they would look out in the world, and

376
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Marcus is going to say this in his Meditations, that

377
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he would say he says that the universal principle mother

378
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Earth slash mother Universe, you know, something kind of what

379
00:26:11,319 --> 00:26:14,640
Plato talks about in the Timaeus, gives birth to all

380
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of these various living forms and living creatures, and then

381
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they have a time period where they exist and then

382
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they die and they return to the natural world, and

383
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so presumably they're just recycled, right, And this is where

384
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we would get the idea of transmigration of souls metempsychosis. Presumably,

385
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when you break down in return to dust, the rational

386
00:26:44,319 --> 00:26:47,720
soul principle that inhabits you your body or whatever is

387
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also presumably going to like meld back into the all

388
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and then be at some point germinated, disperminated the universal shoes.

389
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It's odd, and you will come back into existence at

390
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some point. And this is why, of course all the

391
00:27:05,839 --> 00:27:12,839
traditional what we call pagan religions believed in thetive generative principle, right,

392
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so that the universe is governed by this principle of birth,

393
00:27:17,559 --> 00:27:24,720
cycle of birth, living, your life, death, and then process repeats,

394
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rent and repeat for all eternity. So it's going to

395
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mark these views is no doctrine of creation. Now, there

396
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:36,799
might be some kind of like mythology of the gods

397
00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:39,039
falling and Titans and this kind of stuff and an

398
00:27:39,039 --> 00:27:44,480
ancient Golden age, but that's not what actually sets the

399
00:27:44,480 --> 00:27:47,880
Biblical theology. For example, apart from these views is that

400
00:27:48,039 --> 00:27:51,079
time is not viewed as a prison. Time is not viewed,

401
00:27:51,119 --> 00:27:53,000
and to be fair to the Stoics, they don't really

402
00:27:53,079 --> 00:27:55,480
view time as like a prison or something necessarily bad,

403
00:27:57,039 --> 00:28:02,279
but they view it as as governed by fate. But

404
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:05,039
you'll find these inconsistencies in these views where it's like

405
00:28:05,079 --> 00:28:08,039
there's everything's governed by fate, but you also have the

406
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:13,240
ability to live and act virtuously, which presumes free will.

407
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:18,720
So you know, it's it's very it's not actually harmonized

408
00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:21,039
with a lot of the things that that it believes.

409
00:28:21,519 --> 00:28:23,960
It's very contradictory in many points. And we're actually going

410
00:28:24,039 --> 00:28:26,799
to see that in the Meditations. I'm going to point

411
00:28:26,839 --> 00:28:29,680
out to you the point the times where Marcus consistently

412
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:34,720
contradicts himself. That's not to say that it's all bad.

413
00:28:34,759 --> 00:28:36,240
I mean, there's some good points here and there. There's

414
00:28:36,279 --> 00:28:38,880
there's he makes some good arguments, he makes some good

415
00:28:39,279 --> 00:28:42,000
and he has some good insights. Then in many many

416
00:28:42,039 --> 00:28:47,759
ways echo Ecclesiastes. Right. He sounds a lot like Solomon

417
00:28:47,799 --> 00:28:50,519
at times. And you know, since you could argue Solomon

418
00:28:50,640 --> 00:28:53,480
was a kind of philosopher king, a lot of it

419
00:28:53,519 --> 00:28:58,200
will echo the proverbs right, or syrac Ecclesiasticus in the

420
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Deutero Kenon, So I wanted to my notes go back

421
00:29:06,519 --> 00:29:13,119
to this point of understanding that these five rough outlines

422
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:17,119
of the positions in this time period are really repeats

423
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:20,480
of the world views that we have today. If you

424
00:29:20,519 --> 00:29:23,200
go to the university and you study philosophy, or if

425
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:27,440
you are involved in civic discourse or whatever is supposed

426
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:30,119
to be out there in the world as your options,

427
00:29:31,400 --> 00:29:33,880
you're really only going to get like a handful, Like

428
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:37,640
this handful is regurgitated and given to you. Again, there's

429
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:40,359
not a whole lot of other options out there unless

430
00:29:40,359 --> 00:29:44,480
you turn to something, if like a different religious perspective

431
00:29:44,559 --> 00:29:48,480
or something which would probably be classed by most people

432
00:29:48,599 --> 00:29:51,079
under mysticism. Right. So the idea, of course is that

433
00:29:51,119 --> 00:29:54,240
religion is not in the realm of reason and logic

434
00:29:54,319 --> 00:29:56,079
and all this kind of stuff. There's just then there's

435
00:29:56,119 --> 00:29:59,000
like a reason and logic over here, philosophy and world

436
00:29:59,079 --> 00:30:02,160
views and politics and this and that, and then there's

437
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:06,480
a religion over here which is based on faith and mysticism,

438
00:30:06,559 --> 00:30:10,279
and it doesn't really have any basis. There's no real

439
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:13,359
coherent reason why people believe it. It's just what they

440
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:16,759
happen to be believing and growing up in the perspective

441
00:30:16,799 --> 00:30:18,799
obviously that we're going to take that I'm going to

442
00:30:18,880 --> 00:30:22,519
argue for and demonstrate I think hopefully, is that that

443
00:30:22,519 --> 00:30:27,559
that's that's just simply not true, that that the ultimate

444
00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:31,359
foundations of these positions that we want to hold to,

445
00:30:31,839 --> 00:30:33,799
like we want to believe, there is some kind of metaphysic,

446
00:30:33,839 --> 00:30:35,839
there is some kind of epistemology, there is some kind

447
00:30:35,880 --> 00:30:40,680
of ethic. The ultimate foundations of those three basic divisions

448
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:44,880
of philosophy are ultimately religious in nature, and they can

449
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:48,759
only be given a coherent basis in the in a

450
00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:51,240
in a certain kind of theology. At least that's the

451
00:30:51,319 --> 00:30:56,640
argument that I'm going to make. But so when we

452
00:30:56,680 --> 00:31:01,039
talk about nothing new under the sun is essentially what

453
00:31:01,039 --> 00:31:05,279
we're trying to say here, right as Solomon says, hearkening

454
00:31:05,319 --> 00:31:09,359
back to Ecclesiastes. And so you only have a finite

455
00:31:09,440 --> 00:31:12,240
number of number of options and worldviews that you can

456
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:15,160
pick here. I guess you could actually kind of make

457
00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:18,440
the same argument for religion and theology. You don't have

458
00:31:18,440 --> 00:31:20,000
a whole lot of options there. I mean, you can

459
00:31:20,039 --> 00:31:25,359
start with God or theology and say, okay, either I

460
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:30,920
believe in a personal or an impersonal absolute principle, and

461
00:31:31,319 --> 00:31:32,839
if you choose either, I mean, because there are only

462
00:31:32,839 --> 00:31:35,519
two options there, there's not like a middle If you

463
00:31:35,599 --> 00:31:38,559
choose the middle ground, then the objective principle that you're

464
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:44,440
choosing is not personal still, right, I mean, And even

465
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:47,480
if you tried some far Eastern perspective which says, oh,

466
00:31:47,519 --> 00:31:50,559
that's a duality and I don't want either one of those, that, well,

467
00:31:50,599 --> 00:31:55,599
it's still some unknown absolute that has absolutely no connection

468
00:31:55,680 --> 00:31:59,000
to you. Right, So you're still not avoiding the question

469
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:02,359
by saying that I don't one either one of those. Now,

470
00:32:02,359 --> 00:32:04,039
if you choose neither of those and you say, well,

471
00:32:04,079 --> 00:32:05,960
I don't believe, well, then you're back in the school

472
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:10,880
of skepticism, agnosticism or something like this, which I believe

473
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:13,319
is a dead end. So we don't have any many

474
00:32:13,359 --> 00:32:15,400
roads to go down there. It's a dead end pretty

475
00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:21,000
quick again, So only a finite number of religious views

476
00:32:21,039 --> 00:32:22,960
as well as only a finite number of these sort

477
00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:25,640
of secular views, as we're going to see. That's where

478
00:32:25,519 --> 00:32:31,200
we're going to argue here. Stoicism was very popular in

479
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:33,480
the Empire, and we're going to see why that is,

480
00:32:33,519 --> 00:32:41,559
because it's a perfect philosophy for the Roman imperium it had.

481
00:32:42,279 --> 00:32:45,519
It took over the reputation of the Greeks for scholarship.

482
00:32:46,599 --> 00:32:51,480
They were very interested in me scholarly and they liked

483
00:32:51,519 --> 00:32:57,039
this Hellenized worldview idea, as we said, and it was

484
00:32:57,119 --> 00:32:59,319
kind of a Roman philosophy. For the entirety of the

485
00:32:59,359 --> 00:33:03,880
empire was the governing principle. Here we begin with Zeno

486
00:33:03,960 --> 00:33:07,920
around three twenty ABC, and the school was called this.

487
00:33:08,519 --> 00:33:11,720
They would do their teaching in this area called the stoa,

488
00:33:11,839 --> 00:33:15,240
which is the porch, and they had, as we said,

489
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:20,559
a very highview of Socrates. Another kind of rival school

490
00:33:20,599 --> 00:33:22,720
around this perier was the Senex, and the Senics were

491
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:27,680
also students of Socrates, but they again didn't care for

492
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:31,200
the metaphysics. They were only concerned with the process of

493
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:35,119
the dialogues and the argumentation, and the Synics believed that

494
00:33:35,319 --> 00:33:42,480
it showed that bad things in life should just simply

495
00:33:42,519 --> 00:33:47,240
be accepted with a kind of cold, calm indifference. And

496
00:33:47,279 --> 00:33:49,480
this is also what the Stoics would hold to too,

497
00:33:49,559 --> 00:33:53,160
so they both share this view. The Synics, though, tended

498
00:33:53,160 --> 00:33:57,039
to be a little more antisocial and were anarchic and

499
00:33:57,160 --> 00:34:01,440
revolutionary at times. They had a kind of anarcho revolutionary perspective,

500
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:06,880
and the the Stoics didn't didn't agree with that. They

501
00:34:06,880 --> 00:34:11,639
were there were more into high culture and order and hierarchy. Right. Uh.

502
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:19,079
So Zeno, one of the key early cynics or who

503
00:34:19,119 --> 00:34:23,159
studied there, said, you know what, this this anarchy principle

504
00:34:23,199 --> 00:34:26,559
is stupid. Nothing's there's no there's no there's nothing helpful

505
00:34:26,679 --> 00:34:30,400
to the whole of society out there by trying to

506
00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:33,679
be an anarcho cynic. It doesn't do anybody any good,

507
00:34:34,199 --> 00:34:38,159
and it's really self destructive. It's just you. Uh. You know,

508
00:34:38,159 --> 00:34:40,239
if you want to be a revolutionary and try to

509
00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:44,440
fight everybody and make everybody conform to your ideas, you're

510
00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:47,519
wasting your time. You might as well go just go

511
00:34:47,599 --> 00:34:49,599
live out in the woods. Get over it. It's not

512
00:34:49,599 --> 00:34:52,159
gonna happen. You're not gonna change everybody's mind. So there's

513
00:34:52,159 --> 00:34:56,000
no point in being upset about the stuff that you

514
00:34:56,039 --> 00:34:59,920
can't change, right. I Mean, the whole idea here was

515
00:35:00,119 --> 00:35:05,639
to be indifferent to the things that we can't change.

516
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:09,960
And if that's the case, why are you trying to

517
00:35:10,039 --> 00:35:14,679
change everybody? Man? It ain't gonna happen. So to live

518
00:35:14,679 --> 00:35:21,599
a calm, virtuous life, you need not try to convince

519
00:35:22,159 --> 00:35:27,199
the entire society of you're wasting your time and energy,

520
00:35:27,199 --> 00:35:31,239
and Zeo trying to convince the society of the rightness

521
00:35:31,280 --> 00:35:42,039
of your cynicism. Now Zeno keeps, however, some of the

522
00:35:42,079 --> 00:35:44,960
ideas of the cynics. He likes this idea of passive,

523
00:35:47,199 --> 00:35:51,440
indifferent acceptance of what comes your way. So that was good,

524
00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:55,840
and he wanted to carry that over and then but

525
00:35:55,880 --> 00:35:59,960
what's interesting about the Stoics with Zeno is that Zeno

526
00:36:01,400 --> 00:36:08,519
he's not a Platonist. He likes the empirical ideas of

527
00:36:08,559 --> 00:36:13,400
Aristotle more than he likes, as we said that, the

528
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:18,559
metaphysical ideas. And so because Aristotle was an empiricist, you

529
00:36:18,559 --> 00:36:21,119
could argue that Xeno is actually a little more consistent. Now,

530
00:36:21,119 --> 00:36:27,480
I actually do argue this, often criticizing and critiquing Aristotle,

531
00:36:27,559 --> 00:36:32,559
especially given the Roman Catholic and the Tonistic obsession with Aristotle,

532
00:36:33,679 --> 00:36:35,880
Xeno is actually a little more consistent, because if we're

533
00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:43,960
blank slates, and if our experience is just writing impressions

534
00:36:44,039 --> 00:36:49,800
upon the videocamcorder of our mind or whatever, then it

535
00:36:49,920 --> 00:36:56,079
really doesn't make sense to believe that form is out

536
00:36:56,079 --> 00:37:01,199
there in the world, Like Aristotle said, the objects that

537
00:37:01,239 --> 00:37:07,239
you think have form, that formalness that you're talking about Aristotle.

538
00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:11,079
Remember Aristotle, you rejected Plato and the idea of transcendent forms.

539
00:37:11,679 --> 00:37:17,840
That formalness is a construct in here, and your mind

540
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:21,519
is imposing that on the objects out out there in

541
00:37:21,559 --> 00:37:24,760
the world. Right. I mean, there's nothing about that object

542
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:28,719
out there in the world that makes you know for

543
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:32,960
sure that it has formalness. It's your mind constructing this

544
00:37:33,159 --> 00:37:36,360
idea of a form and imposing it upon that object.

545
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:40,559
So Zeno in this way is kind of a forerunner

546
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:46,639
to the hardcore empiricis of the Enlightenment period, like a

547
00:37:46,679 --> 00:37:52,000
Locke or a Hume right, or Barkley. So Xeno is

548
00:37:52,159 --> 00:37:54,760
a little more consistent with this idea than Aristotle. I

549
00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:58,079
would say, Now, I don't agree with Stoicism and Zeno,

550
00:37:58,159 --> 00:38:02,920
but I'm just making this this point. Now, where do

551
00:38:04,039 --> 00:38:06,719
here's the Xeno weirdness? Here? Where does what does Zeno

552
00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:13,239
say is the ultimate totality of reality? It's fire? What

553
00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:17,960
did Heraclitus say? Well, this is he's getting this from Heraclitis, right,

554
00:38:18,519 --> 00:38:25,800
So only matter is real, where all of reality is

555
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:30,800
just atam's falling through space and ultimate reality is just fire.

556
00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:39,519
So you know, again something that he just took from Heraclitis.

557
00:38:39,519 --> 00:38:42,159
And this is where we see that buffet style approach

558
00:38:43,159 --> 00:38:50,000
from from the Stoics. So Stoicism comes from Heraclitis, the

559
00:38:50,079 --> 00:38:55,079
details details come from Aristotle. And it makes no grand

560
00:38:55,199 --> 00:38:59,519
contributions to ontology or metaphysics. In fact, it rejects that stuff.

561
00:39:00,599 --> 00:39:04,559
It's mainly focused on ethical philosophy, which is interesting again,

562
00:39:04,599 --> 00:39:07,199
and you could see why. Because you're not ever going

563
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:09,639
to get access to forums, there's no point in trying

564
00:39:09,679 --> 00:39:12,920
to do metaphysics. You might as well focus on the

565
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:15,559
good life. And what's the good life? Living in harmony

566
00:39:15,679 --> 00:39:21,039
with reason, nature and virtue. Knowledge is only good when

567
00:39:21,079 --> 00:39:24,119
it helps us fit into harmony with nature would be

568
00:39:24,199 --> 00:39:28,920
the dictum here. Now, oddly enough, there is a logos

569
00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:34,440
principle that permeates the universe. This logos principle is described

570
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:37,239
as providence, and that's what we're going to see in Marcus.

571
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:46,320
It a weird ideas attached onto this, which so law

572
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:52,760
or maxims within the state are conceived to be in

573
00:39:53,239 --> 00:39:58,039
accord with this logos universal principle. So you can begin

574
00:39:58,119 --> 00:40:01,320
to see why it makes sense for Roman emperor to

575
00:40:01,440 --> 00:40:07,519
adhere to stoicism, you're probably going to encounter tragedy. That's

576
00:40:07,519 --> 00:40:11,880
a Roman emperor. Your buddy, your BFFs might stab you

577
00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:16,320
in the back and take over being Caesar something like this.

578
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:19,440
This could happen, right, They might murder your family, you

579
00:40:19,519 --> 00:40:24,320
might lose a giant military campaign, maybe thousands of your

580
00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:30,039
soldiers die. You know, you're bound for tragedy in a

581
00:40:30,079 --> 00:40:32,480
pretty extreme sense, probably if you're a Roman emperor. So,

582
00:40:33,119 --> 00:40:35,320
but not only that, it also could appeal to the

583
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:40,320
to the emperor because it views the state as the

584
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:44,679
incarnation of the universal principle of reason. And what is

585
00:40:44,719 --> 00:40:48,480
the what is the incarnation of the state, but the Emperor, right,

586
00:40:48,559 --> 00:40:52,280
So the emperor's god because he is the incarnation of

587
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:56,239
the universal reason principle, which is the universe as a whole.

588
00:40:56,360 --> 00:40:59,679
So the entire universe, the macro causem, is contained in

589
00:40:59,679 --> 00:41:02,239
the micro cosm of the state. The microcosm of the state,

590
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:07,480
which is the entire Roman imperium, is contained in Isesiza. Right.

591
00:41:10,480 --> 00:41:16,320
So it has an interesting globalist perspective. It says that

592
00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:19,599
all men are brothers under this universal principle of reason,

593
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:22,360
and all men are brothers because they're all members of

594
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:29,079
the Roman imperium. Interesting, so from Stoicism comes this idea

595
00:41:29,239 --> 00:41:33,880
of the Cosmopolis, right, not the David Cronenberg movie, but

596
00:41:34,079 --> 00:41:42,280
the Cosmopolis of a giant world city state. Ethically speaking,

597
00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:46,679
everybody has to do their duty, right, and you do

598
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:50,639
your duty for duty's sake. That's just what you do,

599
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:53,079
because that's in accord with reason, and it's in accord

600
00:41:53,159 --> 00:41:56,400
with the state. It's in accord with the universal logos principle,

601
00:41:56,679 --> 00:41:59,599
which is not again, Jesus, that's not the logos that

602
00:41:59,639 --> 00:42:02,599
we're talking talking about. The logos we're talking about here

603
00:42:02,679 --> 00:42:06,840
is just this a generic sort of just idea that, oh,

604
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:10,320
I have reason. There does seem to be order out

605
00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:13,239
there in the world, and so the entire universe must

606
00:42:13,320 --> 00:42:18,800
in some sense have just a rational calculating faculty. But

607
00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:22,280
it's not conceived of as a single divine mind or

608
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:24,360
God that you could have a relationship with. So it's

609
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:27,639
very distinct from the kind of the I Am that

610
00:42:27,679 --> 00:42:30,320
we see in Exodus three fourteen of the Bible. Right,

611
00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:36,280
it's not Jehovah God having a covenant relationship with his people,

612
00:42:38,039 --> 00:42:42,079
manifested ultimately in the incarnation with Jesus or anything like that.

613
00:42:42,559 --> 00:42:48,119
It's just an abstract philosophical principle kind of roughly maybe

614
00:42:48,159 --> 00:42:50,760
like what we saw with Plato and the Pythagoreans, how

615
00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:55,760
they viewed mathematics as being a kind of overriding universal

616
00:42:57,320 --> 00:43:01,199
ordering principle. But it's still abstraction act and is still impersonal.

617
00:43:01,199 --> 00:43:06,400
It's not a single omniscient divine creator or anything like that.

618
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:17,639
So for the citizen, you have all these obligations that

619
00:43:17,719 --> 00:43:20,519
make you a good, virtuous citizen, and that means that

620
00:43:20,559 --> 00:43:25,679
everything's in its place. You live according to your station

621
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:30,440
in life. You don't need anarchy and revolutions or anything

622
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:33,159
like that because that's against good order. And you might

623
00:43:33,199 --> 00:43:35,599
as well just, you know, accept your lot in life.

624
00:43:36,039 --> 00:43:40,119
And if you do that with a healthy passive resignation

625
00:43:41,039 --> 00:43:48,039
and live your life with sobriety and and frugality, and

626
00:43:48,119 --> 00:43:49,880
then that's the best way to live, you're gonna be

627
00:43:49,880 --> 00:43:55,199
happiest that way. If it was supposed to be otherwise,

628
00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:58,920
then the gods would have created you otherwise. Right, if

629
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:02,360
you were meant to rise up in the ranks and

630
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:05,679
become emperor yourself, or if you were meant to go

631
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:09,440
from being a plebeian to a patrician, or if you

632
00:44:09,519 --> 00:44:13,480
were meant to be go from you know, being the

633
00:44:13,519 --> 00:44:17,760
poor guy to the to King Midas or something like this,

634
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:19,559
then the gods would have made you that way. Don't

635
00:44:19,599 --> 00:44:24,320
worry about spending your life exerting all this energy and

636
00:44:24,360 --> 00:44:29,679
trying to increase your station in life, because that's ultimately futile,

637
00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:32,159
and it's ultimately out of accord with the principle of

638
00:44:32,239 --> 00:44:39,400
universal reason. So service to the state ultimately is the

639
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:42,599
highest good. Here and again, the state is embodied in

640
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:46,079
the figure of the Roman imperium, embodied in the figure

641
00:44:46,159 --> 00:44:52,679
of Marcus Aurelius. So again, attaining peace of mind, as

642
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:54,719
we said, is just simply to live in accord with

643
00:44:54,800 --> 00:45:01,480
these principles. Cicero, Epictetus, these are famous Stoics, and again

644
00:45:01,599 --> 00:45:08,159
Cicero was very eclectic in his perspective. Epictetus is around

645
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:11,000
fifty a d. And what's interesting about Epictetus is that

646
00:45:11,039 --> 00:45:13,840
he seems to be the most sort of kind of Christian.

647
00:45:13,920 --> 00:45:16,880
He appears to have actually been influenced by Christian theology,

648
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:20,679
and this is why providence plays such a central role

649
00:45:20,719 --> 00:45:28,199
in his stoicism. But it's again, it's still not really Christian.

650
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:31,960
I mean just you get these sort of generic ideas

651
00:45:31,679 --> 00:45:36,920
of bear and forbear. This is the famous teaching of Epictetus,

652
00:45:38,079 --> 00:45:42,239
and so you bear with what the universe sends you,

653
00:45:42,280 --> 00:45:45,079
and you forbear with your fellow men, and that's just

654
00:45:45,119 --> 00:45:48,760
the best way to be happy. And so when we

655
00:45:48,840 --> 00:45:52,280
come to one twenty one eighty a d. This is

656
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:56,639
the Marcus Aurelius period. And what we're going to see

657
00:45:56,719 --> 00:45:59,800
is it's we live in a cosmos that is in

658
00:46:00,039 --> 00:46:04,840
perpetual flux and change. Change is the most certain as

659
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:09,719
the certitude of this life, which doesn't make any sense,

660
00:46:09,760 --> 00:46:13,960
by the way, because if the only certitude is change,

661
00:46:14,239 --> 00:46:16,719
we can do a presubsitional critique of that and point

662
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:22,360
out that well is it is everything has changed also

663
00:46:22,400 --> 00:46:24,760
subject to change, right, So I mean that the principle

664
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:28,199
itself would over time not be true, which doesn't make

665
00:46:28,199 --> 00:46:30,119
any sense. May make the same argument which ill we

666
00:46:30,199 --> 00:46:33,679
often do against Darwinian evolutionary thought because they try to

667
00:46:33,719 --> 00:46:39,760
include everything under the principle of evolutionary flux and movement. Well,

668
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:42,119
does that mean that the principle of evolutionary flux and

669
00:46:42,199 --> 00:46:45,400
movement is also eventually going to evolve to not be true.

670
00:46:45,880 --> 00:46:54,159
I mean, it's just nonsense, right. So looking at my

671
00:46:54,679 --> 00:47:01,920
Marcus Surelius notes here, Yeah, the universe is a living, intelligent,

672
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:04,519
giant being. It's like, you know, if you think about

673
00:47:04,559 --> 00:47:07,480
Gya as mother Earth, well, this is like Gaya as

674
00:47:07,559 --> 00:47:11,000
mother Universe. The entire cosmos is the giant living organism,

675
00:47:11,039 --> 00:47:13,760
and we're kind of like a little cells on the

676
00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:16,239
body of the giant universal organism, which is kind of

677
00:47:16,239 --> 00:47:20,199
again from Plato and the Tamas, where the universe is

678
00:47:20,199 --> 00:47:24,039
a giant, living being. You can see why the Roman

679
00:47:24,039 --> 00:47:27,440
imperium likes this idea because again we go back to

680
00:47:27,519 --> 00:47:30,400
Plato and Platonism, and even the ancient Egyptians taught this

681
00:47:30,519 --> 00:47:34,840
idea of the microcosm and the macrocosm, that everything that's

682
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:40,039
in the macrocosm is in a way contained in the microcosm. Now,

683
00:47:40,119 --> 00:47:43,320
we believe that doctrine as it pertains to the incarnation.

684
00:47:44,079 --> 00:47:46,639
This is the teaching of Saint Maximus the Confessor when

685
00:47:46,679 --> 00:47:49,920
he talks about the incarnation. But that's a different topic.

686
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:53,480
We'll get to that down the road. Now, the Stoics

687
00:47:53,519 --> 00:47:58,880
are all pantheists, and so this universe being this giant

688
00:47:58,880 --> 00:48:02,760
living entity kind of gives birth to itself from itself.

689
00:48:03,679 --> 00:48:08,840
So you are a manifestation, a seminal spermal manifestation that

690
00:48:09,320 --> 00:48:13,480
kind of is birthed out of Mother Universe for your

691
00:48:14,119 --> 00:48:16,400
time period, the allotment of your life, as we said,

692
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:18,400
and then you die and you kind of go back

693
00:48:18,440 --> 00:48:27,320
into Mother Universe reabsorbs you into her bosom. And so

694
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:29,519
again that that pantheism we're going to see is very

695
00:48:29,559 --> 00:48:35,800
prominent in meditations changes the fabric of the universe. Uh.

696
00:48:36,039 --> 00:48:39,199
And yet at the same time, you have a share.

697
00:48:39,800 --> 00:48:43,599
Man has a share a spark of natural divinity within him,

698
00:48:43,639 --> 00:48:49,760
and that's his reason. So man Is Marcus says, a

699
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:53,760
morsel of the divine. You're like a little ligament, little

700
00:48:54,400 --> 00:48:58,960
little this little muscle here of the giant universe being.

701
00:48:59,039 --> 00:49:03,239
That's you, or the little a little nipple being on

702
00:49:03,480 --> 00:49:14,400
Mother Universe, that's you. Man Is oh Man is also

703
00:49:14,440 --> 00:49:17,599
a social civic being, right, So he's not an island.

704
00:49:17,639 --> 00:49:20,960
He's not a hermit normally speaking, he doesn't go live

705
00:49:21,199 --> 00:49:24,880
on his own. He's not anarchic. He needs other human beings.

706
00:49:24,920 --> 00:49:27,880
He needs a social order, and that's what the Roman

707
00:49:27,920 --> 00:49:32,079
imperium is there to provide. True duty is to be

708
00:49:32,239 --> 00:49:35,000
a good Roman citizen. That's your whole duty, that's your

709
00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:40,719
whole your whole existence is to be a healthy, functioning,

710
00:49:41,039 --> 00:49:49,480
staying in your place Roman citizen. And interestingly, the unfortunate

711
00:49:49,519 --> 00:49:51,519
aspect of this, which I think we're going to see,

712
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:56,880
is that embrace with death and the pro death attitude

713
00:49:56,880 --> 00:49:59,280
in the sense of you should accept your death because

714
00:49:59,280 --> 00:50:01,840
death is natural, it's just part of the natural world.

715
00:50:01,920 --> 00:50:05,880
In this view, is that suicide is a logical component

716
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:08,760
of this view. And actually Marcus will say, yeah, yeah, actually,

717
00:50:08,760 --> 00:50:11,840
there is a noble aspect to suicide. And we can

718
00:50:11,880 --> 00:50:16,000
see from all of the pagan worldviews that don't believe

719
00:50:16,039 --> 00:50:20,119
in things like resurrection, or they don't believe in creation

720
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:25,599
and resurrection, which actually go together as revealed doctrines, they're

721
00:50:25,880 --> 00:50:29,440
stuck in fate. They're stuck in the ever never ending

722
00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:35,320
flat circle of time and cycles and reincarnation and metempsychosis.

723
00:50:36,639 --> 00:50:42,400
Death is part of this natural process, right, and you're

724
00:50:42,440 --> 00:50:44,960
going to die. Death is therefore natural, so you might

725
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:47,559
as well just love and accept death as much as

726
00:50:47,599 --> 00:50:51,920
you love and accept life. They're almost dualistic, two sides

727
00:50:51,920 --> 00:50:55,239
of the same coin, aren't they Because as these pagans

728
00:50:55,320 --> 00:51:02,840
argue death gives life meaning and life gives death meaning. Right, No,

729
00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:04,360
we do not believe that. In fact, we're going to

730
00:51:04,440 --> 00:51:09,159
look at Acts seventeen where Paul goes and deals with

731
00:51:09,760 --> 00:51:12,440
the Greeks and the philosophers who have these kinds of

732
00:51:12,519 --> 00:51:16,079
views and will argue in debate and do apologetics with them.

733
00:51:16,639 --> 00:51:18,679
So I'm gonna be giving you the kind of Act

734
00:51:18,800 --> 00:51:26,000
seventeen approach in answer to the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius.

735
00:51:26,000 --> 00:51:30,639
So that concludes the sort of overview. And next we're

736
00:51:30,639 --> 00:51:34,039
going to move to the actual text itself and look

737
00:51:34,079 --> 00:51:38,639
at some of Marcus's aphorisms and teachings and doctrines. You've

738
00:51:38,639 --> 00:51:44,039
been listening to Jays analysis. You've been listening to Jay's analysis.

739
00:51:44,599 --> 00:51:47,199
We've been talking about Marcus Aurelius. This is the first

740
00:51:47,239 --> 00:51:50,960
half for free. The second half, of course, you can

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00:51:51,039 --> 00:51:54,079
obtain by subscribing to Jay's Analysis for four ninety five

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a month or for sixty dollars a year at the

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00:51:56,159 --> 00:51:59,559
PayPal links at my site. You can also get my

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book there at my website. Eslotera Hollywood Sex Cults and

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Ridley Scott, all kinds of popular films. And the book's

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reviews across markets. So avail yourself and get a signed

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my side. As I said Jasonalysis dot com, thank you

754
00:52:37,559 --> 00:52:38,159
for watching