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Summary: President Bill Clinton's Favorite Book
Review: Should be right next to the Bible next to your bed. A great and timeless and extraordinary book. The Penguin Classics's edition is not only the best edition but the only edition you should read. I try to read parts of a couple of chapters every night. Marcus Aurelius deserves the Pulitzer Prize.
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Summary: A timeless meditation book for anyone
Review: Here is a great book of meditations for both believers and atheists. Marcus Aurelius was emperor of Rome with an unfaithful wife, a worthless son, and the duties of leading an army for 13 years in what is now Germany. Trying to cheer and console himself in the middle of a desolate area, he wrote down what he remembered of the Stoic philosophy which he had studied. His thoughts are inspiring and provoking. This is the book you want with you when life becomes tough. As Marcus' view of god is a pantheistic one, anyone can profit from his thoughts, whether atheist or believer. A book to read ever few years. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Wonderful-a friend in dark times
Review: I love Marcus. He is noble, sensitive, and trying his best to live right despite being emperor and stuck leading an army near the Danube. A great soul, a friend, someone who understands all you have suffered. Indispensable.
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Summary: Prescient+Powerful Completely Relevant 2500 yr Philosophy
Review: I found this book so powerful, I was moved to memorize large parts of it. Each paragraph, while following a theme of the section, is completely relevent in itself. The book can be picked up and read from any page and any paragraph, and the user will need no context to the previous paragraph, and will find each paragraph sufficient unto itself. The book accomplishes this by driving, in pure and unadulterated form and words, the main theme quickly and directly to the reader. Accerpt from memory: "Let it be thy earnest and Incessant Care as a Roman and Countryman to do whatever it is that thou are about with true and unfeigned gravity, natural effection, freedom and a sense of justice. As for all the other cares and imaginations, how shalt thou ease thy mind of them ? Which thou shalt do, if though shall go about every action as though it were thy last, free from all vanity and self love....."
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Summary: Most accessible edition. M.A. gives stoicism a good name.
Review: This version of M.A. Meditations is much more understandable than the one translated a century ago. I find M.A. a great comfort. Equanimity, duty, right/logical thinking.
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Summary: A book to live you life by.
Review: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is the most insightful book I have ever read. I think that young people would especially benefit from Marcus's wisdom. His advice about how to deal with life's trials is invaluable. He teaches that the praise or censure of others is meaningless. This is so important to teenagers trying to discover where they belong in the world. He teaches people to have courage in the face of adversity and to always live their lives by the highest standard.
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Summary: Coming to grips with humanity
Review: No book has brought me more (for lack of a better word) peace than this one: The inner thoughts (not meant to be published--he was writing for his own benefit) of a man trying to deal with human failings in himself and others.
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Summary: The best book of practical philosophy ever written
Review: The style is direct and unpretentious. The message is simple but extraordinarily powerful: life is short, the past and the future are inaccessible, pain and pleasure have no meaning, but inside each one of us there is a ruling faculty that is touched only by itself. Only that which makes us better capable of confronting our condition with resolution and courage can be said to be good, and only that which makes us worse and more unsatisfied can be said to be bad. The only thing that is of any importance is our own private quest for perfection, which no external power can ever destroy. Marcus Aurelius delivers many insightful and inspirational observations about human nature and the human condition, and he makes an excellent rational argument for seeking the good and for acting modestly and continently. I cannot think or a more satifying and moving work, and it is all the more poignant because it was written by a man who wielded almost absolute power and lived surrounded by the luxury, yet managed to keep things in perspective and to occupy himself only with what truly matters. One sentence captures perfectly the spirit of his writings: "Where a man can live, there he can also live well." An extraordinary testimony of wisdom and fortitude.
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Summary: Meditations' hopeless view is profoundly unsatisfying.
Review: This second-century book of advice reflects its stoic deistic/atheist tradition. In a word, his goal is to encourage the reader toward good works and inner peace disregarding personal circumstances. He ends up sounding much like Confucius, and much like the "under the sun" part of King Solomon's Ecclesiastes. The arguments he gives for us to be at peace despite the continual thriving of evil around us center around its chaos and our own inability to change anything. Such a view is profoundly unsatisfying, and leaves us in perplexity over the purpose of it all, anchorless and hopeless. Whereas Aurelius says "The world is chaotic, but you're powerless so be a man and do right", Solomon says "The world is chaotic because man is inwardly evil, but take heart because it's all part of God's righteous and sovereign plan and part of that plan is our salvation." Life against God is meaningless, no matter how many nice things you do; life under His loving care is meaningful, because we have a sure hope of redemption and life to come.
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Summary: Philosophy that pulls no punches
Review: My first exposure to Marcus Aurelius was "Silence of the Lambs" (when Hanibal Lector quotes Aurelius to Clarice). I was intrigued. After reading Meditations, I was even more intrigued, and started buying copies for my friends. I have read Nietzche, Plato, Sartre. But this book tells it like it IS. Aurelius did not shy away from discussing topics we find too embarrassing today: from death to sex, perversity to honesty. This small volume is PACKED with life-giving, refreshing wisdom. And the price??? An unbelievable value.
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