Speaker 1: This is Jay Dyer from Jay's Analysis. You're listening to
Speaker 1: Esoteric Hollywood. Esoteric Hollywood is where I deconstruct the biggest
Speaker 1: films in an unparalleled way, from the classics of the
Speaker 1: silver screen to today's blockbusters. Learned to watch film with
Speaker 1: new eyes as we enter Esoteric Hollywood. Greetings, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Jay's Analysis, My friends, subscribers, especially thank you all
Speaker 1: you subscribers out there. Today we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: Marcus Aurelius, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and you're listening
Speaker 1: to Jay's Analysis. My website is Jaysnalysis dot com and
Speaker 1: I deal with philosophy, theology, the esoteric movie reviews, film analysis.
Speaker 1: I do a lot of stand up, a lot of comedy,
Speaker 1: a lot of impressions. I do all kinds of crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: But I also do philosophy talks and lectures. And so
Speaker 1: what we're going to do is maybe skip back and
Speaker 1: go and talk about some of the older post Greek
Speaker 1: stuff into the Roman period because I had some requests. Actually,
Speaker 1: people said you didn't ever talk about anything Stoic, what
Speaker 1: about the Stoics? And that's interesting because the Stoics are
Speaker 1: influenced by the Greeks. They were very interested in continuing
Speaker 1: the Greek tradition with that sort of Hellenized period of
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire. And Stoicism is interesting. It's not the
Speaker 1: best philosophy, I don't think, but it's interesting. And you
Speaker 1: had the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius influenced by Stoicism. So
Speaker 1: the first thing with that we want to do is,
Speaker 1: you know that I'm very much a fan of channeling,
Speaker 1: and so I got my hair cut into this fascy
Speaker 1: haircut they call it, because we're going to actually channel
Speaker 1: Marcus Aurelius the emperor today. You ready, so close your eyes,
Speaker 1: put your legs up into a lotus position. And the
Speaker 1: way that we channel the Roman emperor is that we
Speaker 1: do instead of doing this the way that we might meditate.
Speaker 1: We're going to hell Caesar. Hey Caesar, this is a
Speaker 1: very controversial hand movement. Now you can do this all day,
Speaker 1: fuck the poet, right, you can be a communist Marxist,
Speaker 1: but if you dared to do hell Caesar, fascist fascist alert,
Speaker 1: fascist alert, anyway, I'm being silly. We're going to delve
Speaker 1: into the meditations and part one will be free for
Speaker 1: those out there in internet land and then part two.
Speaker 1: Of course, you can subscribe at Jays Analysis for four
Speaker 1: a month or for sixty dollars a year to get
Speaker 1: the full talks, likes and interviews and access to the
Speaker 1: archives where I've talked to a lot of interesting people
Speaker 1: and done full lectures on the totality of Tragy and Hope,
Speaker 1: Plato's Republic, this kind of stuff. The subscribers are all
Speaker 1: very happy. Ninety five percent approval for subscribers at Jason
Speaker 1: elsis so Stoicism is interesting. It gives us the idea
Speaker 1: of a philosopher king, right, so they Marcus, especially Marcus,
Speaker 1: carries on this notion of Plato's republic being ruled by
Speaker 1: the philosopher king, and Marcus sees himself as a philosopher king.
Speaker 1: So in many ways it's going to function like Augustine's Confessions,
Speaker 1: which is the first idobiography in history, I suppose Western civilization.
Speaker 1: It functions as the first known autobiography. And the concern,
Speaker 1: first and foremost is with the care of the soul.
Speaker 1: So virtue matters, the God within matters, and the God
Speaker 1: within here is this idea of what we're going to
Speaker 1: deal with called monism, and the Stoics can accurately be
Speaker 1: called monists, and Marcus follows the tradition of Epictetus in
Speaker 1: the Discourses quite a bit. The reason I troll shows
Speaker 1: Meditations is because the Meditations, well number one. I happened
Speaker 1: to just pick this book up in the last few weeks,
Speaker 1: and I had not read Marcus's disputation. I think maybe
Speaker 1: an undergrad we had to read, you know, like a
Speaker 1: selection of it or something. But I went in and
Speaker 1: read the Meditations, and I thought it is a good companion.
Speaker 1: And they're going to see a lot of similarities to
Speaker 1: Christian theology early on Biblical theology. We're going to see
Speaker 1: similarities to well, it's syncretic, which is interesting. So it
Speaker 1: does platonism and maybe even blends aspects of Biblical or
Speaker 1: Christian thought as well as the Roman ideas, Roman tradition
Speaker 1: and thought, which is very practical, very interested in legalities
Speaker 1: and bureaucracy and how to form a coherent, functioning state.
Speaker 1: And what we're going to see is that Stoicism functions
Speaker 1: very well for the Roman mythos, for the pacx Romana.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of aphorisms, aphorisms, and it wasn't apparently
Speaker 1: intended to be something published. It was intended to be
Speaker 1: his personal diary, and I guess over time it was
Speaker 1: eventually published. So a lot of platonic theme is one
Speaker 1: of those that's going to be pre eminent is the
Speaker 1: control of the passions. The Stoics were at times even
Speaker 1: almost ascetics, right. They were very much into sobriety temperance,
Speaker 1: and we're going to see that throughout these aphorisms. Another
Speaker 1: obvious key point that probably everybody's aware of who's heard
Speaker 1: of philosophy in any degree is a Stoicism is concerned
Speaker 1: with facing life's ills in terms of what you can
Speaker 1: and can't control. If you can't control something, no point
Speaker 1: worrying about it. It's out of your control. It's not
Speaker 1: something that you even need to worry about. Worry is pointless,
Speaker 1: you know. We can think of similarities that, say, the
Speaker 1: Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, who of you
Speaker 1: by worrying? Can one add one inch to your stature? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, there's not really any point in worry, especially
Speaker 1: when it comes to things outside of your control. And
Speaker 1: that's the key dictum of Stoicism. So it's aphoristic in
Speaker 1: the way that perhaps Nietsi or Wittenstein are aphoristic in
Speaker 1: many of their writings. He does see philosophy as the
Speaker 1: totality answer to man life and ills. So philosophy is
Speaker 1: the path by which you can find solace, find peace,
Speaker 1: and find answers. Philosophy promotes the life of virtue. As
Speaker 1: we've seen before, again, this is straight out of Socrates
Speaker 1: and Epictetus. Many of the early Stoics had a high
Speaker 1: views of Socrates. They thought he was great, not so
Speaker 1: much a lot of the metaphysics and ontology of Plato,
Speaker 1: but rather that within the dialogues you would see Socrates
Speaker 1: really laying out what it means to live a philosophical life.
Speaker 1: So it's a lot more interested in the esthetic and
Speaker 1: what's natural out there in the world, harmony with nature,
Speaker 1: and a lot less interested in, you know, these sort
Speaker 1: of big skill speculations about metaphysics and justifying your belief
Speaker 1: systems and so forth and so on, so that they
Speaker 1: don't really care about that. Of course, the first Stoic
Speaker 1: that we'll talk about is Zeno, but we also have
Speaker 1: to talk about Epictetis, and a lot of it's going
Speaker 1: to deal with death, and so some people have called
Speaker 1: it an ontology of freedom in the face of death,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. You do tend to have this obsession
Speaker 1: or this acceptance of death in the Stoic tradition, facing
Speaker 1: death as something natural, and that's what we're going to
Speaker 1: look at, especially given the fact that we don't believe
Speaker 1: death is natural. Death is in fact very unnatural. But
Speaker 1: for Stoicism it ends up being pantheistic, as we'll see.
Speaker 1: So that is those are the foec i, the focuses
Speaker 1: of Stoicism, and the introduction of my copy talks about
Speaker 1: it being proto Christian. I don't know about all that
Speaker 1: epictetis perhaps, but there were apparently times when Marcus thought
Speaker 1: he had mystical visions, and these mystical visions seem to
Speaker 1: be connected to the notion of an all pervading providence
Speaker 1: over the universe, which is a Christian doctrine, and in
Speaker 1: fact some of the other Stoics did. The argument is
Speaker 1: often made that they were influenced by Christian theology because
Speaker 1: they believed in providence, right, and you don't really have
Speaker 1: a sense of providence unless you believe in some kind
Speaker 1: of single God or source ruling the universe. Sometimes polytheism
Speaker 1: might talk about providence, but it's hard to see how
Speaker 1: there could really be providence if you have just a
Speaker 1: bunch of warring gods. Right, providence seems to presume or
Speaker 1: presuppose a single divine mind or single mind consciousness. So
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting stuff here. You know, did he
Speaker 1: have mystical visions that tied into his philosophies of stoicism
Speaker 1: in the state and all that. Maybe, but that's what
Speaker 1: we're going to look at today. So if you want
Speaker 1: to see the full thing, come over to Jason Analysis,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna do an end up look at the
Speaker 1: meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: Marcus viewing himself as the philosopher king straight out of
Speaker 1: Plato's Republic. And then we're going also, of course, going
Speaker 1: to critique the philosophy and look at weaknesses in this
Speaker 1: position and whether or not it can accurately give us
Speaker 1: the kind of worldview that I think we want that
Speaker 1: we all look for as human beings. So, if we
Speaker 1: want to talk about the Roman period, and this would
Speaker 1: be roughly the period between say Aristotle and the first
Speaker 1: few Caesars, Christ's period into the second century, first and
Speaker 1: second century, and that's well, actually, what we're gonna do
Speaker 1: is we're gonna look at roughly the five schools during
Speaker 1: this period, and you really only have a few options.
Speaker 1: And that's what's interesting about this. Not many offers from
Speaker 1: world views that are out there in terms of what
Speaker 1: we might call the secular perspective, and philosophy is a
Speaker 1: secular perspective. Now, you might could argue that Plato's philosophy
Speaker 1: has elements of the mystery schools or Esoterism or something
Speaker 1: like that, and Pythagorianism, but ultimately it's still the vision
Speaker 1: of reason, right reason conceived of as an abstract and
Speaker 1: personal principle governing the universe. And we're gonna see that
Speaker 1: logos principle actually at work in the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna you're gonna see like five basic schools.
Speaker 1: And what's neat is that the modern day philosophy is
Speaker 1: of secularism. They don't present anything different than that. We
Speaker 1: still only have essentially these same five options in our day,
Speaker 1: and I think that's very telling. And with with skepticism,
Speaker 1: first of all, we have obviously the idea of no absolutes,
Speaker 1: everything is relative. This would be like puro right. The
Speaker 1: skeptics and their perspective is based in this idea of
Speaker 1: a lot of times empiricism. We only know what's present
Speaker 1: to our five senses. That can be deceived quite often,
Speaker 1: and so therefore it doesn't make sense to think that
Speaker 1: there's any actual objective principles or truths. How could anybody
Speaker 1: pertain claim to have access to to these kinds of
Speaker 1: lofty ideas when in fact true humility, right opposition to
Speaker 1: human hubris, demands that that's absolutely impossible. But it's also
Speaker 1: so it's kind of a buffet style approach as well
Speaker 1: to philosophy with skepticism. You might take a little bit
Speaker 1: of this, a little bit of that, but none of
Speaker 1: them are quote true. Now, as I pointed out in
Speaker 1: the little brief video that I did yesterday about relativism,
Speaker 1: skepticism is relativism. And so this is actually the dominant
Speaker 1: kind of philosophy of our day, and the problem with
Speaker 1: it is that it starts out contradicting itself on its
Speaker 1: own premisses. As we pointed out in that brief video,
Speaker 1: it says there's no absolutes, everything is relative, but The
Speaker 1: problem is that that claim itself has to also fall
Speaker 1: under the dictum of everything being relative, and so it's
Speaker 1: self refuting on its own grounds. Right. You can't say
Speaker 1: that there's no truth, right, because that claim itself would
Speaker 1: then also have to be true. And the problem with
Speaker 1: this is that it's not a paradox. It's actually a contradiction.
Speaker 1: And there's a difference between a paradox and a contradiction.
Speaker 1: Even in formal logic or a history of logic. Addicians
Speaker 1: have discussed this topic, even Birch and Russell, right, the
Speaker 1: worst man ever, arguably the wickedest dude of all time.
Speaker 1: Maybe even Russell noted the distinction between a paradox and
Speaker 1: a contradiction. So next we had the school of Epicureanism,
Speaker 1: and this is a kind of a materialistic atomistic atomism.
Speaker 1: The world is just atom is falling through space. That's
Speaker 1: all there is. And it's hedonistic, but it's not hedonism
Speaker 1: in the sense of total moral abandon and total licentiousness.
Speaker 1: The hedonists actually thought that the best way to live
Speaker 1: was to live in a kind of moderated pleasure. So
Speaker 1: it's not just bodily sensate pleasures that are the best pleasures.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of wine, a little bit of cheese,
Speaker 1: a little bit of Netflix. Right, this is the highest
Speaker 1: levels of pleasure, not Dionysian Jam Morrison, you know, pulling
Speaker 1: out his schlong on stage and having sex with microphones
Speaker 1: right while you're blitzed on Bzillian drugs. That's not what
Speaker 1: they mean by hedonism. Of course, we don't really have
Speaker 1: any reason to accept that the intellectual pleasures necessarily are
Speaker 1: higher than the bodily pleasures on this perspective. I mean,
Speaker 1: in other words, Epicurus might prefer the intellectual conversational pleasures
Speaker 1: with his philosophical friends, But on what basis are we
Speaker 1: supposed to believe that that's actually objectively a better pleasure
Speaker 1: than you know, the whorehouse or something, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe the eyes wide shut party is a better pleasure
Speaker 1: than the philosophical nerd chat right. In the Philosophy one
Speaker 1: on one class, do you want to go to the
Speaker 1: party with Bill Harford? Or do you want if we're
Speaker 1: just gonna live for pleasure right? Or do you do
Speaker 1: you want to sit in Philosophy one on one with
Speaker 1: the fat guy with stinky armpits and debate the matrix. Right.
Speaker 1: So in other words, we don't really get any clear
Speaker 1: explication or a reason to believe that that the moderated
Speaker 1: hedonism of Epicurus is somehow a higher, more lofty pleasure.
Speaker 1: It's just assumed to be so than the pleasures of
Speaker 1: moral abandoned. Now, the other school, the third option that
Speaker 1: we have in this rough period between say the prophet
Speaker 1: Malachi in the second century, is Platonism ul And now
Speaker 1: there's there's other options too, in terms of like the
Speaker 1: Sibiline cult and the Mythra cult. There's other religious options,
Speaker 1: but right now we're just looking at like philosophy, secular
Speaker 1: philosophy during this period Platonism. Of course, the Academy at Athens,
Speaker 1: we know what Plato and Platonism taught, the three characteristics
Speaker 1: of Platonism. If you've heard my lectures, you already know
Speaker 1: this stuff. We don't have to rehash this. But for
Speaker 1: those that haven't heard the Plato talks I've done in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, including the totality of the republic.
Speaker 1: In the Platonic scheme, you have basically dualism of the
Speaker 1: body and the soul, or of the realm of the
Speaker 1: forms in our world, the realm of the forms being invariant, unchanging,
Speaker 1: immaterial in our world being material flux subject to constant becoming.
Speaker 1: And then you have rationalism that the mind or the soul,
Speaker 1: the news, the reason in man is the highest faculty
Speaker 1: that's intended to govern the passions of the body, and
Speaker 1: it somehow it taps into the realm of the forms directly,
Speaker 1: and so it's it is definitely a rationalist position. Platonism is.
Speaker 1: And then you have what we might cause just idealism,
Speaker 1: that the highest levels of reality, the absolute, et cetera,
Speaker 1: are in fact formal and ideal in an abstract, mathematical
Speaker 1: type of sense, not in the realm of the here
Speaker 1: and the now. So that is that the three basic
Speaker 1: principles that we'll find in Platonism. I got my I
Speaker 1: got my fascy haircut today, and I got hair in
Speaker 1: my eye, So then aristotelianism. And I got this haircut
Speaker 1: as a joke, by the way, because people were making
Speaker 1: fun of the last time I got this haircut. So
Speaker 1: anytime I get people making fun of things, I always
Speaker 1: I always charged forward into the thing that they're making
Speaker 1: fun of and saying because I don't care and so Aristotelianism.
Speaker 1: We haven't really dived into Aristol yet. We will, I
Speaker 1: assure you maybe in the next year or two, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get pretty deep into Aristotle, cover some of the
Speaker 1: major works. The logic, the metaphysics, the poetics, the ethics.
Speaker 1: These are all important to understand in the history of philosophy.
Speaker 1: And I had plenty of graduate level Aristotle classes. I've
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in Aristotle. I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time in Aquinas, especially in my twenties. I mean,
Speaker 1: very very intense, in depth time in Aquinas is thought.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got the whole Suma sitting right over here.
Speaker 1: I read a good portion of the Suma as well
Speaker 1: as the Suma countries and Telaes. I've read the entire
Speaker 1: volume volumes of the of that one, which is more
Speaker 1: of an apologetic work. And to do that you have
Speaker 1: to be very familiar with Aristotle, There's no question about it.
Speaker 1: So we'll do that. We'll also do some Augustine. I've
Speaker 1: got some Augustine right here in this stack, right here
Speaker 1: by my thumbing. Augustine. We'll do some of that too.
Speaker 1: I thought City of God monumental work in the history
Speaker 1: of philosophy. It should be analyzed. Nobody does full talks
Speaker 1: on the City of God. I will, and you need
Speaker 1: not doubt me, because we did a full talk on
Speaker 1: Tragy and Hope. So I read the City of God
Speaker 1: when I was twenty one and took all those questions
Speaker 1: to my Baptist professors and they didn't have any answers,
Speaker 1: and they still don't. So you're gonna get that here
Speaker 1: for me. You're not gonna get that anywhere. El There's
Speaker 1: no other professor is going to take you through the
Speaker 1: entirety of the City of God. But I will. So
Speaker 1: then Aristotelianism is Aristotle School was located in the Lyceum
Speaker 1: as opposed to the Academy, and the Lyceum philosophers were
Speaker 1: called the peripatetics. And they're called this because they would
Speaker 1: wander around. They would walk around and sort of stroll
Speaker 1: about and philosophize. Actually I do this. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm a descendant of Aristotle or something. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, if I'm doing an interview, if I'm
Speaker 1: talking or something, actually I like to be strolling about.
Speaker 1: I don't like being confined and having to sit here,
Speaker 1: but I'll do it. It's focused on obviously the teleology, right,
Speaker 1: which is purpose in the Greek, that things have a
Speaker 1: purpose to which they're going moving towards it, trying to attain,
Speaker 1: and so everything is in a movement from potentiality to actuality. Right.
Speaker 1: So the the acorn becomes the oak tree or whatever.
Speaker 1: So the acorn has the potential to become the full
Speaker 1: oak tree, the telos. The purpose of that seed is
Speaker 1: to transition into that final form. This is what characterizes
Speaker 1: Aristotle's philosophy. We could say that Ariostol's philosophy obviously is
Speaker 1: a more empirical approach, whereas with Platonism it's kind of
Speaker 1: a unless you make the argument that Platonism is ultimately
Speaker 1: a mystery school initiatory kind of religious philosophy, which you
Speaker 1: could make that argument it kind of is. But if
Speaker 1: you consider it just in its in as secular sense,
Speaker 1: then it's more focused just simply speaking, in terms of
Speaker 1: epistemology on reason, on thought and a priori mathematics or
Speaker 1: these these are characteristics that are not generally speaking empirical,
Speaker 1: So you know, algorithms, these kinds of things, you know,
Speaker 1: large geometric problems, in mathematics, they might have a relationship
Speaker 1: to the physical world, but the objects of these disciplines
Speaker 1: themselves are not empirical, right, achilleagon is not an empirical
Speaker 1: thing out there in the world, but it is a
Speaker 1: real geometric thing. And so there's many other examples of this, Right,
Speaker 1: a tesseract. There's not something actually out there in the world,
Speaker 1: but it's a real mathematical object. And so in that sense,
Speaker 1: because Plato believed that in Pythagoras, they believe that these
Speaker 1: kinds of mathematical truths were the real, higher true is reality,
Speaker 1: ultimately speaking, is more in line with that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff than it is the flux and change of matter
Speaker 1: and decay and death in this world. And so in
Speaker 1: that regard, Aristotle is much more interested in studying the
Speaker 1: natural world. He's much more interested in biology than he
Speaker 1: is metaphysics. Right, So, I mean, he doesn't have a
Speaker 1: problem writing a book about metaphysics, but his metaphysic is different. Right,
Speaker 1: So he'll take form. He believes in objective form. He's
Speaker 1: a realist, so to speak, but those forms are all
Speaker 1: instantiated for him in time and space, in some configuration
Speaker 1: of matter. Right, So matter is impressed with some form.
Speaker 1: Always there's not an abstract out there, a transcendent realm
Speaker 1: where the true formal principles reside, and there is for Plato.
Speaker 1: So next we come to Stoicism cynicism, and there's a
Speaker 1: similarity between those two schools. We are going to be
Speaker 1: talking about Stoicism today, as I said with Marcus Aurelius.
Speaker 1: But we have in Stoicism this emphasis on harmony between nature, reason,
Speaker 1: and virtue. All of these three are kind of mystically linked,
Speaker 1: almost to where if you're living right, you're living in
Speaker 1: accord with reason, and reason lives in accord with the
Speaker 1: principles that are manifested out there in nature in the
Speaker 1: natural world. So virtue is to be natural. Virtue is
Speaker 1: to be rational, and to be rational, and natural is
Speaker 1: to live according to reason. And so all of these
Speaker 1: three are linked. Now how do they get that, Well,
Speaker 1: they're all linked because there is, as we said, some
Speaker 1: sort of in the mind of the a universal principle.
Speaker 1: It's a universal principle that governs all reality. It's a
Speaker 1: kind of force of reason or logos. And they will
Speaker 1: actually use the term logos now, they don't mean it
Speaker 1: in the sense of what John one one is talking
Speaker 1: about in the Gospel of John, that in the beginning
Speaker 1: was the Word, The Word was with God, the Word
Speaker 1: was God. He was in the beginning with God, and
Speaker 1: all things are made through Him, for him, by Him,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. That's not what they're talking about,
Speaker 1: because they don't believe in creation. For the Stoics, for
Speaker 1: the Roman philosophers, they inherit the Greek idea of cycles,
Speaker 1: that reality is not created, it's just a kind of
Speaker 1: an eternal manifestation of itself extending out forever, never, ever, ever.
Speaker 1: And in fact, this is kind of an eternal recurrence
Speaker 1: type of view, madam psychosis. You're just going to live
Speaker 1: the life that you've lived now over and over and
Speaker 1: over again. It's just going to repeat. And they believe
Speaker 1: that because they would look out in the world, and
Speaker 1: Marcus is going to say this in his Meditations, that
Speaker 1: he would say he says that the universal principle mother
Speaker 1: Earth slash mother Universe, you know, something kind of what
Speaker 1: Plato talks about in the Timaeus, gives birth to all
Speaker 1: of these various living forms and living creatures, and then
Speaker 1: they have a time period where they exist and then
Speaker 1: they die and they return to the natural world, and
Speaker 1: so presumably they're just recycled, right, And this is where
Speaker 1: we would get the idea of transmigration of souls metempsychosis. Presumably,
Speaker 1: when you break down in return to dust, the rational
Speaker 1: soul principle that inhabits you your body or whatever is
Speaker 1: also presumably going to like meld back into the all
Speaker 1: and then be at some point germinated, disperminated the universal shoes.
Speaker 1: It's odd, and you will come back into existence at
Speaker 1: some point. And this is why, of course all the
Speaker 1: traditional what we call pagan religions believed in thetive generative principle, right,
Speaker 1: so that the universe is governed by this principle of birth,
Speaker 1: cycle of birth, living, your life, death, and then process repeats,
Speaker 1: rent and repeat for all eternity. So it's going to
Speaker 1: mark these views is no doctrine of creation. Now, there
Speaker 1: might be some kind of like mythology of the gods
Speaker 1: falling and Titans and this kind of stuff and an
Speaker 1: ancient Golden age, but that's not what actually sets the
Speaker 1: Biblical theology. For example, apart from these views is that
Speaker 1: time is not viewed as a prison. Time is not viewed,
Speaker 1: and to be fair to the Stoics, they don't really
Speaker 1: view time as like a prison or something necessarily bad,
Speaker 1: but they view it as as governed by fate. But
Speaker 1: you'll find these inconsistencies in these views where it's like
Speaker 1: there's everything's governed by fate, but you also have the
Speaker 1: ability to live and act virtuously, which presumes free will.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's very it's not actually harmonized
Speaker 1: with a lot of the things that that it believes.
Speaker 1: It's very contradictory in many points. And we're actually going
Speaker 1: to see that in the Meditations. I'm going to point
Speaker 1: out to you the point the times where Marcus consistently
Speaker 1: contradicts himself. That's not to say that it's all bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's some good points here and there. There's
Speaker 1: there's he makes some good arguments, he makes some good
Speaker 1: and he has some good insights. Then in many many
Speaker 1: ways echo Ecclesiastes. Right. He sounds a lot like Solomon
Speaker 1: at times. And you know, since you could argue Solomon
Speaker 1: was a kind of philosopher king, a lot of it
Speaker 1: will echo the proverbs right, or syrac Ecclesiasticus in the
Speaker 1: Deutero Kenon, So I wanted to my notes go back
Speaker 1: to this point of understanding that these five rough outlines
Speaker 1: of the positions in this time period are really repeats
Speaker 1: of the world views that we have today. If you
Speaker 1: go to the university and you study philosophy, or if
Speaker 1: you are involved in civic discourse or whatever is supposed
Speaker 1: to be out there in the world as your options,
Speaker 1: you're really only going to get like a handful, Like
Speaker 1: this handful is regurgitated and given to you. Again, there's
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of other options out there unless
Speaker 1: you turn to something, if like a different religious perspective
Speaker 1: or something which would probably be classed by most people
Speaker 1: under mysticism. Right. So the idea, of course is that
Speaker 1: religion is not in the realm of reason and logic
Speaker 1: and all this kind of stuff. There's just then there's
Speaker 1: like a reason and logic over here, philosophy and world
Speaker 1: views and politics and this and that, and then there's
Speaker 1: a religion over here which is based on faith and mysticism,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't really have any basis. There's no real
Speaker 1: coherent reason why people believe it. It's just what they
Speaker 1: happen to be believing and growing up in the perspective
Speaker 1: obviously that we're going to take that I'm going to
Speaker 1: argue for and demonstrate I think hopefully, is that that
Speaker 1: that's that's just simply not true, that that the ultimate
Speaker 1: foundations of these positions that we want to hold to,
Speaker 1: like we want to believe, there is some kind of metaphysic,
Speaker 1: there is some kind of epistemology, there is some kind
Speaker 1: of ethic. The ultimate foundations of those three basic divisions
Speaker 1: of philosophy are ultimately religious in nature, and they can
Speaker 1: only be given a coherent basis in the in a
Speaker 1: in a certain kind of theology. At least that's the
Speaker 1: argument that I'm going to make. But so when we
Speaker 1: talk about nothing new under the sun is essentially what
Speaker 1: we're trying to say here, right as Solomon says, hearkening
Speaker 1: back to Ecclesiastes. And so you only have a finite
Speaker 1: number of number of options and worldviews that you can
Speaker 1: pick here. I guess you could actually kind of make
Speaker 1: the same argument for religion and theology. You don't have
Speaker 1: a whole lot of options there. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: start with God or theology and say, okay, either I
Speaker 1: believe in a personal or an impersonal absolute principle, and
Speaker 1: if you choose either, I mean, because there are only
Speaker 1: two options there, there's not like a middle If you
Speaker 1: choose the middle ground, then the objective principle that you're
Speaker 1: choosing is not personal still, right, I mean, And even
Speaker 1: if you tried some far Eastern perspective which says, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a duality and I don't want either one of those, that, well,
Speaker 1: it's still some unknown absolute that has absolutely no connection
Speaker 1: to you. Right, So you're still not avoiding the question
Speaker 1: by saying that I don't one either one of those. Now,
Speaker 1: if you choose neither of those and you say, well,
Speaker 1: I don't believe, well, then you're back in the school
Speaker 1: of skepticism, agnosticism or something like this, which I believe
Speaker 1: is a dead end. So we don't have any many
Speaker 1: roads to go down there. It's a dead end pretty
Speaker 1: quick again, So only a finite number of religious views
Speaker 1: as well as only a finite number of these sort
Speaker 1: of secular views, as we're going to see. That's where
Speaker 1: we're going to argue here. Stoicism was very popular in
Speaker 1: the Empire, and we're going to see why that is,
Speaker 1: because it's a perfect philosophy for the Roman imperium it had.
Speaker 1: It took over the reputation of the Greeks for scholarship.
Speaker 1: They were very interested in me scholarly and they liked
Speaker 1: this Hellenized worldview idea, as we said, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of a Roman philosophy. For the entirety of the
Speaker 1: empire was the governing principle. Here we begin with Zeno
Speaker 1: around three twenty ABC, and the school was called this.
Speaker 1: They would do their teaching in this area called the stoa,
Speaker 1: which is the porch, and they had, as we said,
Speaker 1: a very highview of Socrates. Another kind of rival school
Speaker 1: around this perier was the Senex, and the Senics were
Speaker 1: also students of Socrates, but they again didn't care for
Speaker 1: the metaphysics. They were only concerned with the process of
Speaker 1: the dialogues and the argumentation, and the Synics believed that
Speaker 1: it showed that bad things in life should just simply
Speaker 1: be accepted with a kind of cold, calm indifference. And
Speaker 1: this is also what the Stoics would hold to too,
Speaker 1: so they both share this view. The Synics, though, tended
Speaker 1: to be a little more antisocial and were anarchic and
Speaker 1: revolutionary at times. They had a kind of anarcho revolutionary perspective,
Speaker 1: and the the Stoics didn't didn't agree with that. They
Speaker 1: were there were more into high culture and order and hierarchy. Right. Uh.
Speaker 1: So Zeno, one of the key early cynics or who
Speaker 1: studied there, said, you know what, this this anarchy principle
Speaker 1: is stupid. Nothing's there's no there's no there's nothing helpful
Speaker 1: to the whole of society out there by trying to
Speaker 1: be an anarcho cynic. It doesn't do anybody any good,
Speaker 1: and it's really self destructive. It's just you. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: if you want to be a revolutionary and try to
Speaker 1: fight everybody and make everybody conform to your ideas, you're
Speaker 1: wasting your time. You might as well go just go
Speaker 1: live out in the woods. Get over it. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen. You're not gonna change everybody's mind. So there's
Speaker 1: no point in being upset about the stuff that you
Speaker 1: can't change, right. I Mean, the whole idea here was
Speaker 1: to be indifferent to the things that we can't change.
Speaker 1: And if that's the case, why are you trying to
Speaker 1: change everybody? Man? It ain't gonna happen. So to live
Speaker 1: a calm, virtuous life, you need not try to convince
Speaker 1: the entire society of you're wasting your time and energy,
Speaker 1: and Zeo trying to convince the society of the rightness
Speaker 1: of your cynicism. Now Zeno keeps, however, some of the
Speaker 1: ideas of the cynics. He likes this idea of passive,
Speaker 1: indifferent acceptance of what comes your way. So that was good,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to carry that over and then but
Speaker 1: what's interesting about the Stoics with Zeno is that Zeno
Speaker 1: he's not a Platonist. He likes the empirical ideas of
Speaker 1: Aristotle more than he likes, as we said that, the
Speaker 1: metaphysical ideas. And so because Aristotle was an empiricist, you
Speaker 1: could argue that Xeno is actually a little more consistent. Now,
Speaker 1: I actually do argue this, often criticizing and critiquing Aristotle,
Speaker 1: especially given the Roman Catholic and the Tonistic obsession with Aristotle,
Speaker 1: Xeno is actually a little more consistent, because if we're
Speaker 1: blank slates, and if our experience is just writing impressions
Speaker 1: upon the videocamcorder of our mind or whatever, then it
Speaker 1: really doesn't make sense to believe that form is out
Speaker 1: there in the world, Like Aristotle said, the objects that
Speaker 1: you think have form, that formalness that you're talking about Aristotle.
Speaker 1: Remember Aristotle, you rejected Plato and the idea of transcendent forms.
Speaker 1: That formalness is a construct in here, and your mind
Speaker 1: is imposing that on the objects out out there in
Speaker 1: the world. Right. I mean, there's nothing about that object
Speaker 1: out there in the world that makes you know for
Speaker 1: sure that it has formalness. It's your mind constructing this
Speaker 1: idea of a form and imposing it upon that object.
Speaker 1: So Zeno in this way is kind of a forerunner
Speaker 1: to the hardcore empiricis of the Enlightenment period, like a
Speaker 1: Locke or a Hume right, or Barkley. So Xeno is
Speaker 1: a little more consistent with this idea than Aristotle. I
Speaker 1: would say, Now, I don't agree with Stoicism and Zeno,
Speaker 1: but I'm just making this this point. Now, where do
Speaker 1: here's the Xeno weirdness? Here? Where does what does Zeno
Speaker 1: say is the ultimate totality of reality? It's fire? What
Speaker 1: did Heraclitus say? Well, this is he's getting this from Heraclitis, right,
Speaker 1: So only matter is real, where all of reality is
Speaker 1: just atam's falling through space and ultimate reality is just fire.
Speaker 1: So you know, again something that he just took from Heraclitis.
Speaker 1: And this is where we see that buffet style approach
Speaker 1: from from the Stoics. So Stoicism comes from Heraclitis, the
Speaker 1: details details come from Aristotle. And it makes no grand
Speaker 1: contributions to ontology or metaphysics. In fact, it rejects that stuff.
Speaker 1: It's mainly focused on ethical philosophy, which is interesting again,
Speaker 1: and you could see why. Because you're not ever going
Speaker 1: to get access to forums, there's no point in trying
Speaker 1: to do metaphysics. You might as well focus on the
Speaker 1: good life. And what's the good life? Living in harmony
Speaker 1: with reason, nature and virtue. Knowledge is only good when
Speaker 1: it helps us fit into harmony with nature would be
Speaker 1: the dictum here. Now, oddly enough, there is a logos
Speaker 1: principle that permeates the universe. This logos principle is described
Speaker 1: as providence, and that's what we're going to see in Marcus.
Speaker 1: It a weird ideas attached onto this, which so law
Speaker 1: or maxims within the state are conceived to be in
Speaker 1: accord with this logos universal principle. So you can begin
Speaker 1: to see why it makes sense for Roman emperor to
Speaker 1: adhere to stoicism, you're probably going to encounter tragedy. That's
Speaker 1: a Roman emperor. Your buddy, your BFFs might stab you
Speaker 1: in the back and take over being Caesar something like this.
Speaker 1: This could happen, right, They might murder your family, you
Speaker 1: might lose a giant military campaign, maybe thousands of your
Speaker 1: soldiers die. You know, you're bound for tragedy in a
Speaker 1: pretty extreme sense, probably if you're a Roman emperor. So,
Speaker 1: but not only that, it also could appeal to the
Speaker 1: to the emperor because it views the state as the
Speaker 1: incarnation of the universal principle of reason. And what is
Speaker 1: the what is the incarnation of the state, but the Emperor, right,
Speaker 1: So the emperor's god because he is the incarnation of
Speaker 1: the universal reason principle, which is the universe as a whole.
Speaker 1: So the entire universe, the macro causem, is contained in
Speaker 1: the micro cosm of the state. The microcosm of the state,
Speaker 1: which is the entire Roman imperium, is contained in Isesiza. Right.
Speaker 1: So it has an interesting globalist perspective. It says that
Speaker 1: all men are brothers under this universal principle of reason,
Speaker 1: and all men are brothers because they're all members of
Speaker 1: the Roman imperium. Interesting, so from Stoicism comes this idea
Speaker 1: of the Cosmopolis, right, not the David Cronenberg movie, but
Speaker 1: the Cosmopolis of a giant world city state. Ethically speaking,
Speaker 1: everybody has to do their duty, right, and you do
Speaker 1: your duty for duty's sake. That's just what you do,
Speaker 1: because that's in accord with reason, and it's in accord
Speaker 1: with the state. It's in accord with the universal logos principle,
Speaker 1: which is not again, Jesus, that's not the logos that
Speaker 1: we're talking talking about. The logos we're talking about here
Speaker 1: is just this a generic sort of just idea that, oh,
Speaker 1: I have reason. There does seem to be order out
Speaker 1: there in the world, and so the entire universe must
Speaker 1: in some sense have just a rational calculating faculty. But
Speaker 1: it's not conceived of as a single divine mind or
Speaker 1: God that you could have a relationship with. So it's
Speaker 1: very distinct from the kind of the I Am that
Speaker 1: we see in Exodus three fourteen of the Bible. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not Jehovah God having a covenant relationship with his people,
Speaker 1: manifested ultimately in the incarnation with Jesus or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It's just an abstract philosophical principle kind of roughly maybe
Speaker 1: like what we saw with Plato and the Pythagoreans, how
Speaker 1: they viewed mathematics as being a kind of overriding universal
Speaker 1: ordering principle. But it's still abstraction act and is still impersonal.
Speaker 1: It's not a single omniscient divine creator or anything like that.
Speaker 1: So for the citizen, you have all these obligations that
Speaker 1: make you a good, virtuous citizen, and that means that
Speaker 1: everything's in its place. You live according to your station
Speaker 1: in life. You don't need anarchy and revolutions or anything
Speaker 1: like that because that's against good order. And you might
Speaker 1: as well just, you know, accept your lot in life.
Speaker 1: And if you do that with a healthy passive resignation
Speaker 1: and live your life with sobriety and and frugality, and
Speaker 1: then that's the best way to live, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: happiest that way. If it was supposed to be otherwise,
Speaker 1: then the gods would have created you otherwise. Right, if
Speaker 1: you were meant to rise up in the ranks and
Speaker 1: become emperor yourself, or if you were meant to go
Speaker 1: from being a plebeian to a patrician, or if you
Speaker 1: were meant to be go from you know, being the
Speaker 1: poor guy to the to King Midas or something like this,
Speaker 1: then the gods would have made you that way. Don't
Speaker 1: worry about spending your life exerting all this energy and
Speaker 1: trying to increase your station in life, because that's ultimately futile,
Speaker 1: and it's ultimately out of accord with the principle of
Speaker 1: universal reason. So service to the state ultimately is the
Speaker 1: highest good. Here and again, the state is embodied in
Speaker 1: the figure of the Roman imperium, embodied in the figure
Speaker 1: of Marcus Aurelius. So again, attaining peace of mind, as
Speaker 1: we said, is just simply to live in accord with
Speaker 1: these principles. Cicero, Epictetus, these are famous Stoics, and again
Speaker 1: Cicero was very eclectic in his perspective. Epictetus is around
Speaker 1: fifty a d. And what's interesting about Epictetus is that
Speaker 1: he seems to be the most sort of kind of Christian.
Speaker 1: He appears to have actually been influenced by Christian theology,
Speaker 1: and this is why providence plays such a central role
Speaker 1: in his stoicism. But it's again, it's still not really Christian.
Speaker 1: I mean just you get these sort of generic ideas
Speaker 1: of bear and forbear. This is the famous teaching of Epictetus,
Speaker 1: and so you bear with what the universe sends you,
Speaker 1: and you forbear with your fellow men, and that's just
Speaker 1: the best way to be happy. And so when we
Speaker 1: come to one twenty one eighty a d. This is
Speaker 1: the Marcus Aurelius period. And what we're going to see
Speaker 1: is it's we live in a cosmos that is in
Speaker 1: perpetual flux and change. Change is the most certain as
Speaker 1: the certitude of this life, which doesn't make any sense,
Speaker 1: by the way, because if the only certitude is change,
Speaker 1: we can do a presubsitional critique of that and point
Speaker 1: out that well is it is everything has changed also
Speaker 1: subject to change, right, So I mean that the principle
Speaker 1: itself would over time not be true, which doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. May make the same argument which ill we
Speaker 1: often do against Darwinian evolutionary thought because they try to
Speaker 1: include everything under the principle of evolutionary flux and movement. Well,
Speaker 1: does that mean that the principle of evolutionary flux and
Speaker 1: movement is also eventually going to evolve to not be true.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just nonsense, right. So looking at my
Speaker 1: Marcus Surelius notes here, Yeah, the universe is a living, intelligent,
Speaker 1: giant being. It's like, you know, if you think about
Speaker 1: Gya as mother Earth, well, this is like Gaya as
Speaker 1: mother Universe. The entire cosmos is the giant living organism,
Speaker 1: and we're kind of like a little cells on the
Speaker 1: body of the giant universal organism, which is kind of
Speaker 1: again from Plato and the Tamas, where the universe is
Speaker 1: a giant, living being. You can see why the Roman
Speaker 1: imperium likes this idea because again we go back to
Speaker 1: Plato and Platonism, and even the ancient Egyptians taught this
Speaker 1: idea of the microcosm and the macrocosm, that everything that's
Speaker 1: in the macrocosm is in a way contained in the microcosm. Now,
Speaker 1: we believe that doctrine as it pertains to the incarnation.
Speaker 1: This is the teaching of Saint Maximus the Confessor when
Speaker 1: he talks about the incarnation. But that's a different topic.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that down the road. Now, the Stoics
Speaker 1: are all pantheists, and so this universe being this giant
Speaker 1: living entity kind of gives birth to itself from itself.
Speaker 1: So you are a manifestation, a seminal spermal manifestation that
Speaker 1: kind of is birthed out of Mother Universe for your
Speaker 1: time period, the allotment of your life, as we said,
Speaker 1: and then you die and you kind of go back
Speaker 1: into Mother Universe reabsorbs you into her bosom. And so
Speaker 1: again that that pantheism we're going to see is very
Speaker 1: prominent in meditations changes the fabric of the universe. Uh.
Speaker 1: And yet at the same time, you have a share.
Speaker 1: Man has a share a spark of natural divinity within him,
Speaker 1: and that's his reason. So man Is Marcus says, a
Speaker 1: morsel of the divine. You're like a little ligament, little
Speaker 1: little this little muscle here of the giant universe being.
Speaker 1: That's you, or the little a little nipple being on
Speaker 1: Mother Universe, that's you. Man Is oh Man is also
Speaker 1: a social civic being, right, So he's not an island.
Speaker 1: He's not a hermit normally speaking, he doesn't go live
Speaker 1: on his own. He's not anarchic. He needs other human beings.
Speaker 1: He needs a social order, and that's what the Roman
Speaker 1: imperium is there to provide. True duty is to be
Speaker 1: a good Roman citizen. That's your whole duty, that's your
Speaker 1: whole your whole existence is to be a healthy, functioning,
Speaker 1: staying in your place Roman citizen. And interestingly, the unfortunate
Speaker 1: aspect of this, which I think we're going to see,
Speaker 1: is that embrace with death and the pro death attitude
Speaker 1: in the sense of you should accept your death because
Speaker 1: death is natural, it's just part of the natural world.
Speaker 1: In this view, is that suicide is a logical component
Speaker 1: of this view. And actually Marcus will say, yeah, yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: there is a noble aspect to suicide. And we can
Speaker 1: see from all of the pagan worldviews that don't believe
Speaker 1: in things like resurrection, or they don't believe in creation
Speaker 1: and resurrection, which actually go together as revealed doctrines, they're
Speaker 1: stuck in fate. They're stuck in the ever never ending
Speaker 1: flat circle of time and cycles and reincarnation and metempsychosis.
Speaker 1: Death is part of this natural process, right, and you're
Speaker 1: going to die. Death is therefore natural, so you might
Speaker 1: as well just love and accept death as much as
Speaker 1: you love and accept life. They're almost dualistic, two sides
Speaker 1: of the same coin, aren't they Because as these pagans
Speaker 1: argue death gives life meaning and life gives death meaning. Right, No,
Speaker 1: we do not believe that. In fact, we're going to
Speaker 1: look at Acts seventeen where Paul goes and deals with
Speaker 1: the Greeks and the philosophers who have these kinds of
Speaker 1: views and will argue in debate and do apologetics with them.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna be giving you the kind of Act
Speaker 1: seventeen approach in answer to the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius.
Speaker 1: So that concludes the sort of overview. And next we're
Speaker 1: going to move to the actual text itself and look
Speaker 1: at some of Marcus's aphorisms and teachings and doctrines. You've
Speaker 1: been listening to Jays analysis. You've been listening to Jay's analysis.
Speaker 1: We've been talking about Marcus Aurelius. This is the first
Speaker 1: half for free. The second half, of course, you can
Speaker 1: obtain by subscribing to Jay's Analysis for four ninety five
Speaker 1: a month or for sixty dollars a year at the
Speaker 1: PayPal links at my site. You can also get my
Speaker 1: book there at my website. Eslotera Hollywood Sex Cults and
Speaker 1: Symbols and Film, which deals with philosophy and film geopolitics,
Speaker 1: the Esoteric in relationship to movies from the greats like Kubrick, Hitchcock, Spielberg,
Speaker 1: Ridley Scott, all kinds of popular films. And the book's
Speaker 1: done really well. It's only been out a month and
Speaker 1: a half, two months. I've already had forty five star
Speaker 1: reviews across markets. So avail yourself and get a signed
Speaker 1: copy from me, Jay Dyer. You can see the book
Speaker 1: right here Esoteric Hollywood and you can get that at
Speaker 1: my side. As I said Jasonalysis dot com, thank you
Speaker 1: for watching