According to Epictetus, the goal of the discipline of desire was that we not be frustrated in our desires, nor fall into that which we had been trying to avoid. In order to realize this goal, we had to desire only that which depends upon us—that is, the moral good—and flee only from that which depends on us: in this case, moral evil. That which does not depend on us is the realm of the indifferent: we must not desire it, but we must not flee from it either, for if we do we risk “falling into what we are trying to avoid.” Epictetus, we noted, linked this attitude to our consent to Destiny.
Marcus Aurelius takes up this doctrine point for point, yet in his writings its implications and its consequences appear more clearly and explicitly. Above all, the discipline of desire in Marcus is related first and foremost to the way in which we are to greet the events which result from the overall movement of universal Nature, which are produced by what Marcus calls the “exterior cause” (VIII, 7):
Rational nature (that is, the nature peculiar to human beings) follows the path which is appropriate to it… if it has desires and aversions only for that which depends upon us, and if it greets with joy all that common Nature allots to it.
What is thus allotted to human nature is nothing other than the events which happen to it (III, 16, 3):
The proper characteristic of the good man is to love and to greet joyfully all those events which he encounters (ta sumbainonta), and which are linked to him by Destiny.
We have already seen that, for the Stoics, what is present for me is that which is currently happening to me: in other words, not merely my current actions, but also the present event with which I am confronted. Here again, as in the case of the present in general, it is my thought and my attention which singles out from the flux of things that which has meaning for me; at which point my inner discourse will declare that such-and-such an event is happening to me. Moreover—whether I know it or not—the overall movement of the universe, set in motion by divine Reason, has brought it about that I have been destined, from all eternity, to encounter such-and-such an event. This is why I have translated the word sumbainon (etymologically “that which goes together [with]”), which Marcus customarily uses to denote that which happens, by the phrase “the events which we encounter.” To be still more precise, one would have to translate this as “the event which adjusts itself to us,” but such an expression cannot always be used. This is, however, precisely the meaning which Marcus gives to the word sumbainon (V, 8, 3):
We say that events are fitting to us (sumbainein), just as masons say that the square stones they use in walls or in pyramids “fit each other” (sumbainein), when they are well-adapted to each other in a given combination.
The imagery of the construction of the edifice of the universe is reinforced by that of weaving. The interweaving of the woof and the warp was a traditional, archaic image, linked to the figure of the Moirai, who, as early as Homer, spun the destiny of each human being.11 The three Parcai, named Lachēsis, Clothō, and Atropos, appear—first in the Orphic Derveni papyrus,12 and then in Plato13 and the Stoics—as the mythical figures of the cosmic law which emanates from divine Reason. The following is a testimony to the Stoic doctrine:14
The Moirai (or “Parts”) are so named because of the process of separation (diamerismos) which they carry out: Clothō (“the spinner”), Lachēsis (“she who distributes the lots”), and Atropos (“the inflexible one”). Lachēsis is so called because she distributes the lots which individuals have received according to justice; Atropos [gets her name] because the division of the parts is unchangeable in any of its details, and is immutable since eternal time. Finally, Clothō is so named because the distribution takes place in accordance with Destiny, and that which occurs reaches its end in conformity with what she has spun.
Another testimony gives voice to approximately the same representations:15
The Moirai get their name from the fact that they distribute and assign things to each one of us…. Chrysippus suggests that the number of the Moirai corresponds to the three times in which all things have their circular movement, and by means of which all things achieve their completion. Lachēsis is so called because she attributes to each human being his or her destiny; Atropos is so called because of the immutable and unchanging character of the distribution; and Clothō is so called because of the fact that all things are woven and linked together, and that they can travel only one path, which is perfectly well-ordered.
The “events which I encounter,” and which “adjust themselves to me” have been woven together with me by Clothō, the figure of Destiny or universal Reason (IV, 34):
Abandon yourself willingly to Clothō; let her weave you together with whatever event she pleases.
Marcus Aurelius is fond of mentioning this interweaving:
This event which you are encountering… it happened to you; it was coordinated with you; and was in relation to you, since it was woven together with you, from as far back as the most ancient of causes (V, 8, 12).
So something has happened to you? Good! Every event that you encounter has been linked to you by Destiny, and has, since the beginning, been woven together with you from the All (IV, 26).
Whatever happens to you has been prepared for you in advance from all eternity, and the interweaving of causes has, since forever, woven together your substance and your encounter with this event (X, 5).
While this motif is strongly emphasized by Marcus, it is not absent from Epictetus’ sayings, as recorded by Arrian (I, 12, 25):
Will you be angry and unhappy with what Zeus has ordained? He defined and ordained these things together with the Moirai, who were present at your birth and wove your destiny.
For the Stoics, events were predicates, as we saw in the case of “walking,” which is present to me when “I am walking.” If, then, an event happens to me, this means that it has been produced by the universal totality of the causes which constitute the cosmos. The relationship between myself and such an event presupposes the entire universe, as well as the will of universal Reason. We shall have to examine later whether this will defines the event in all its details, or merely gives it an initial impulse. For the moment, it is sufficient to note that whether I am ill, or lose my child, or am the victim of an accident, it is the entire cosmos which is implicated in the event.
This interconnection or interweaving—the mutual implication of all things in all things—is one of Marcus’ favorite themes. For him, as for the Stoics in general, the cosmos is but a single living entity, endowed with a unique consciousness and will (IV, 40):
How all things cooperate to produce everything that is produced; how everything is linked and wound up together
in order to form a “sacred connection” (IV, 40; VI, 38; VII, 9).
Thus, each present moment, the event which I encounter within it, and my encounter with this event, imply and potentially contain all the movement of the universe. This notion is in agreement with the Stoic conception of reality as total mixture, or the interpenetration of all things within all things.16 Chrysippus used to speak of a drop of wine which first becomes mixed with the entire sea, and thence is extended to the whole world.17 Similar world-visions are not, moreover, out of date: Hubert Reeves, for example, speaks of E. Mach’s notion according to which “the whole universe is mysteriously present in each place and at each instant of the world.”18 I am not trying to claim that such representations are based upon science; rather, they are based upon an original, fundamental, existential experience, which can be expressed in poetic form, as it is in these verses by Francis Thompson:
All things
Near and far
Are linked to each other
In a hidden way
By an immortal power
So that you cannot pick a flower
Without disturbing a star.19
Here again, we encounter the fundamental intuition of the cohesion and coherence of reality with itself, an intuition which led the Stoics to perceive love of self and accord with oneself in each movement of a living being as much as in the movement of the universe as a whole, or in the perfection of the sage. This is what Marcus expresses in passages like the following (X, 21):
The Earth loves! She loves the rain! And the venerable Ether? It loves too! The World, too, loves to produce that which must occur. And I say to the World: I, too, love—along with you. Don’t we say: “such-and-such loves to happen”?
Everyday language, which could use the verb “to love” to signify “to be accustomed to,” is here congruent with mythology, which gives us to understand, in its allegorical way, that it is characteristic of the All to love itself. What Marcus is alluding to here is the grandiose image of the hieros gamos between the sky (or Ether) and the earth, such as it is described by Euripides:
The Earth loves! She loves the rain, when the waterless field, sterile with dryness, needs moisture. The venerable Sky, too, when filled with rain, loves to fall upon the earth, by the power of Aphrodite.20
This myth allows us to glimpse that such self-love is not the solitary, egoistic love of the Whole for itself, but rather the mutual love, within the Whole, of the parts for each other, of the parts for the Whole, and of the Whole for the parts. Between the parts and the Whole, there is a “harmony” or “co-respiration,” which puts them in accord with one another. Everything that happens to the part is useful for the Whole, and everything that is “prescribed” for each part is, almost in the medical sense of the term, “prescribed” (V, 8) for the health of the Whole, and consequently for all the other parts as well.
The discipline of desire therefore consists in replacing each event within the perspective of the Whole, and this is why it corresponds to the physical part of philosophy. To replace each event within the perspective of the Whole means to understand two things simultaneously: that I am encountering it, or that it is present to me, because it was destined for me by the Whole, but also that the Whole is present within it. Since such an event does not depend upon me, in itself it is indifferent, and we might therefore expect the Stoic to greet it with indifference. Indifference, however, does not mean coldness. On the contrary: since such an event is the expression of the love which the Whole has for itself, and since it is useful for and willed by the Whole, we too must want and love it. In this way, my will shall identify itself with the divine Will which has willed this event to happen. To be indifferent to indifferent things—that is, to things which do not depend on me—in fact means to make no difference between them: it means to love them equally, just as Nature or the Whole produces them with equal love. It is the Whole which, through and by me, loves itself, and it is up to me not to destroy the cohesion of the Whole, by refusing to accept such-and-such an event.
Marcus describes this feeling of loving consent to the will of the Whole and identification with the divine will in terms of the need to “find satisfaction” in the events which happen to us. He writes that we must “greet them joyfully,” “accept them with pleasure,” “love” them and “will” them. The Manual of Epictetus, as written by Arrian, expressed this same attitude in striking terms which encapsulate the entire discipline of desire (chap. 8):
Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens: then you will be happy.
This entire attitude is admirably summed up in Marcus’ prayer to the World (IV, 23):
All that is in accord with you is in accord with me, O World! Nothing which occurs at the right time for you comes too soon or too late for me. All that your seasons produce, O Nature, is fruit for me. It is from you that all things come; all things are within you, and all things move toward you.
This brings us back to the theme of the present. A particular event is not predestined for me and accorded with me only because it is harmonized with the World; rather, it is so because it occurs in this particular moment and no other. It occurs in accordance with the kairos (“right moment”), which, as the Greeks had always known, is unique. Therefore, that which is happening to me at this moment is happening at the right moment, in accordance with the necessary, methodical, and harmonious unfolding of all events, all of which occur at their proper time and season.
To will the event that is happening at this moment, and in this present instant, is to will the entire universe which has brought it about.
Amor fati
I have entitled this section “amor fati.” Marcus Aurelius, who wrote in Greek, obviously did not use these two Latin words; what is more, they are not, as far as I know, used by any Latin writer in antiquity. The phrase is Nietzsche’s, and my intention in alluding to the love of Destiny of which Nietzsche speaks is to help us better to understand, by means of analogies and contrasts, the spiritual attitude which, in Marcus, corresponds to the discipline of desire. Nietzsche writes, for example:
My formula for what is great in mankind is amor fati: not to wish for anything other than that which is; whether behind, ahead, or for all eternity. Not just to put up with the inevitable—much less to hide it from oneself, for all idealism is lying to oneself in the face of the necessary—but to love it.21
Everything that is necessary, when seen from above and from the perspective of the vast economy of the whole, is in itself equally useful. We must not only put up with it, but love it…. Amor fati: that is my innermost nature.22“To wish for nothing other than that which is": Marcus Aurelius could have said this, just as he could have concurred with the following:
The main question is not at all whether or not we are satisfied with ourselves, but whether, more generally, there is anything at all with which we are satisfied. Let us suppose we said Yes to one single instant: we have thereby said Yes not only to ourselves, but to the whole of existence. For nothing is sufficient unto itself—neither in ourselves, nor among things—and if, just one single time, our soul has vibrated and resonated with happiness, like a stretched cord, then it has taken all of eternity to bring about that single event. And, at that unique instant of our Yes, all eternity was accepted, saved, justified, and affirmed.23For Marcus, as for Epictetus, there is no link between this loving consent to the events which happen to us and the Stoic doctrine of the Eternal Return. This doctrine asserted that the world repeats itself eternally, for the rational Fire which spreads throughout the world is subject to a perpetual alternation of diastoles and systoles, which, in their succession, engender a series of periods all of which are unique, and during which the same events repeat themselves in a completely identical manner. For the Stoics, the ideas of Providence and Destiny, together with the concepts of the complete interpenetration of all the parts of the world, and of the loving accord between the Whole and all its parts, were enough to justify that attitude of loving acceptance in the face of all that comes from Nature which constitutes the discipline of desire. Nietzsche, by contrast, links the love of Destiny to the myth of the Eternal Return. To love Destiny thus means to want that what I am doing in this moment, as well as the way in which I live my life, should be eternally, identically repeated. It means to live any given instant in such a way that I want to relive again this instant I am now living, eternally. This is where Nietzsche’s amor fati takes on a highly idiosyncratic meaning:
The highest state which a philosopher can attain: to have a Dionysiac attitude toward existence. My formula for that is amor fati….
For this, we must conceive of the heretofore denied aspects of existence not only as necessary, but as desirable: and not only desirable with regard to the aspects which have been approved up until now (as their complements, for example, or as their presuppositions), but in themselves, as the aspects of existence which are more powerful, more fertile, and more true, in which its will expresses itself most clearly.24As we shall see, Marcus did indeed consider the repulsive aspects of existence as necessary complements or inevitable consequences of the initial will of Nature. Nietzsche, however, goes much further: in fact, an abyss appears between his views and those of Stoicism. Whereas the Stoic “yes” means a rational consent to the world, the Dionysiac affirmation of the world of which Nietzsche speaks is a “yes” given to irrationality, the blind cruelty of life, and the will to power which is beyond good and evil.
We have wandered far from Marcus; yet this detour has perhaps allowed us to arrive at a better definition of that consent to Destiny which is the essence of the discipline of desire.
As we have seen, the exercises of definition of the self and concentration on the present, together with our consent to the will of Nature as it is manifested in each event, raise our consciousness to a cosmic level. By consenting to the present event which is happening to me, in which the whole world is implied, I want that which universal Reason wants, and identify myself with it in my feeling of participation and of belonging to a Whole which transcends the limits of individuality. I feel a sensation of intimacy with the universe, and plunge myself into the immensity of the cosmos. One thinks of Blake’s verses:25To see the World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Thus the self qua will or liberty coincides with the will of universal Reason, or the logos which extends throughout all things. The self as guiding principle coincides with the guiding principle of the universe.
If, then, the self’s awareness is accompanied by a consent to events, it does not become isolated, like some tiny island, in the universe. On the contrary: it is opened up to the whole of cosmic becoming, to the extent that the self elevates itself from its limited situation and partial, restricted individual viewpoint, toward a universal perspective. Thus, my consciousness is dilated until it coincides with the dimensions of cosmic consciousness. In the presence of each event—no matter how banal—my vision now coincides with that of universal Reason.
When Marcus writes (IX, 6): “Your present inner disposition is enough for you, as long as it finds its joy within the present conjuncture of events,” the expression “is enough for you” has two meanings. In the first place, as we have seen, it means that we possess the whole of reality within this present instant. As Seneca said,26 at each present moment we can say, with God, “Everything belongs to me.” This, however, means that if my moral intentions are good in this present moment, and I am consequently happy, neither all the duration of life nor all eternity could bring me one iota more of happiness. In the words of Chrysippus:27 “If one has wisdom for one instant, he will be no less happy than he who possesses it for all eternity.” Elsewhere, Seneca28 writes: “The measure of the good is the same, although its duration may vary. Whether one draws a large circle or a small one does not depend on its shape, but on the surface which they enclose.” A circle is a circle, whether it is large or small. Similarly, moral good, when it is lived within the present moment, is an absolute of infinite value, which neither duration nor any other external factor can affect. Once again, I can and I must live the present which I am living at this moment as if it were the last moment of my life; for even if it is not followed by any other instant, I will be able, because of the absolute value of moral intention and of the love of the good which I have lived in this instant, to say in that very instant: I have realized my life, and have gotten everything I could have expected out of it.29 It is this that enables me to die. As Marcus says (XI, 1, 1):
The rational soul… attains its proper end wherever it achieves the limit of its life. It is not like the dance or the theater or other arts of that kind, in which all the action is incomplete if they are interrupted. On the contrary: the action of the rational soul, in each of its parts, and at whatever point one considers it, carries out for itself what it was planning fully and without fault, so that it can say, “I have reached my fulfillment.”
Whereas a dance or the reading of a poem reach their goal only when they are finished, moral activity reaches its goal in the very instant when it is accomplished. It is therefore entirely contained within the present moment, which is to say, within the unity of the moral intention which, in this very moment, animates my actions or my inner disposition. Once again, we note that the present instant can thus immediately open up the totality of being and of value. One thinks of the words of Wittgenstein: “If we understand by “eternity” not an infinite temporal duration, but a lack of temporality, then he who lives within the present lives eternally.”30
From:
The Inner Citadel The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
Pierre Hadot
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