4 ms·

Definitely looks like this is a book I'll pick up for myself soon. Anyone else able to comment on their experience reading it, or recommend a specific edition/

Definitely looks like this is a book I'll pick up for myself soon. Anyone else able to comment on their experience reading it, or recommend a specific edition/translation?

subjectsigma 8y ago
A non-religious friend of mine recommended it to me, presenting it as a new kind of secular philosophy, and I was deeply unimpressed by it. The book itself is rambling and hard to read. There is constant repetition of the concepts, paragraph by paragraph and chapter by chapter he says the same things over and over again. Despite being described as secular, Marcus Aurelius leans pretty heavily on 'the gods' as an answer to why some of these things he says matter. (E.g. do not be mad at nature when bad things like disasters happen, nature was made by ''the gods'' and is therefore good. Instead look within yourself ... etc.) An emperor instructing peasants to mostly just suck it up also came off as somewhat entitled. Overall I was surprised at how the person who recommended it to me could dismiss Christianity as nonsensical and inconsistent, when much of Meditations is Christian morals (Do not cheat, do not steal, do not lie, be humble, be grateful to those around you, do not be sexually promiscuous, etc.) with Christ replaced by references to unnamed deities and an appeal to some sort of innate human strength or spirit. There's definitely wisdom in there but the book overall didn't resonate much with me. I would recommend trying to find a free & legal translation online and reading some of it, and then purchasing the author's translation if you're still interested. I did not read the recommended translation either, so maybe I will buy it and see what I think.
- anyfoo 8y ago
  This advice goes directly against the advice in the article, which specifically calls out not looking for free translations, as they are apparently “dense and unreadable”.
  - subjectsigma 8y ago
    GP asked for opinions and advice and I gave them, make of it what you will.

Definitely looks like this is a book I'll pick up for myself soon. Anyone else able to comment on their experience reading it, or recommend a specific edition/translation?

subjectsigma 8y ago

A non-religious friend of mine recommended it to me, presenting it as a new kind of secular philosophy, and I was deeply unimpressed by it. The book itself is rambling and hard to read. There is constant repetition of the concepts, paragraph by paragraph and chapter by chapter he says the same things over and over again. Despite being described as secular, Marcus Aurelius leans pretty heavily on 'the gods' as an answer to why some of these things he says matter. (E.g. do not be mad at nature when bad things like disasters happen, nature was made by ''the gods'' and is therefore good. Instead look within yourself ... etc.) An emperor instructing peasants to mostly just suck it up also came off as somewhat entitled. Overall I was surprised at how the person who recommended it to me could dismiss Christianity as nonsensical and inconsistent, when much of Meditations is Christian morals (Do not cheat, do not steal, do not lie, be humble, be grateful to those around you, do not be sexually promiscuous, etc.) with Christ replaced by references to unnamed deities and an appeal to some sort of innate human strength or spirit. There's definitely wisdom in there but the book overall didn't resonate much with me. I would recommend trying to find a free & legal translation online and reading some of it, and then purchasing the author's translation if you're still interested. I did not read the recommended translation either, so maybe I will buy it and see what I think.

anyfoo 8y ago
This advice goes directly against the advice in the article, which specifically calls out not looking for free translations, as they are apparently “dense and unreadable”.
- subjectsigma 8y ago
  GP asked for opinions and advice and I gave them, make of it what you will.