PhilosophersMarc Aurèle

Marc Aurèle

What is not up to you should not trouble you.

Stoicism121 – 180 ItalyStoicRoman emperorPhilosopher of the inner lifeCosmopolitan
Meditations II, 11; IV, 3; VIII, 47 (with Epictetus, Handbook 1 and 5)

Only your judgement can harm you

What it claims

What is not up to you can do you no real harm, and your happiness depends on you alone.

Why

What is not up to us makes no one worse; only our own judgment, which is up to us, disturbs us.

Valid with an implicit premise

An illness, an insult, a failure: anything, it seems, can spoil our life. Marcus takes up the great idea of Epictetus, his teacher at a distance: some things are up to us, others are not. What is not up to us cannot do us real harm. Only our judgement can, and that is up to us.

P1External things do not touch the soul: our troubles come only from the judgement we pass on them.
P2Now this judgement is up to us: we can wipe it out. So the trouble can always be avoided.
P3What is not up to us (death, pain, poverty, fame) happens to the good and the bad alike: it makes no one worse.
P4What does not make a person worse cannot make their life worse: it is not a real evil.
P5 · implicit premiseBeing happy requires nothing more than suffering no real evil and not being troubled: happiness depends on no external good.
Therefore what is not up to you can do you no real harm, and your happiness depends on you alone.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a person who suffers no real evil and can avoid all trouble, but whose happiness still depends on something other than herself (friends, health, a bit of luck).
P1 to P4 show two things: trouble comes from us, and what happens from outside is not a real evil. But to conclude that happiness depends on us alone, P5 is also needed: happiness is only this (no real evil, no trouble). Marcus believes it, since he calls himself "happy" despite the misfortune that befalls him (IV, 49), but he does not write it down as a premise. This is the point Aristotle disputes: for him, happiness also needs external goods.
Analogy. Two students get the same bad mark. One tells himself "I'm useless", the other "I failed this exercise, now I know what to work on". The mark is the same; what hurts is what we tell ourselves. Marcus adds: the mark has not made you less honest or less brave, so it has not really harmed you.

Objections

4

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Aristotle 330 BC · attacks premise 5

Happiness also needs external goods: it is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without resources, friends or some power. Someone who loses their children or lives alone is not fully happy.

Marc Aurèle replies
Marc Aurèle What Marcus answers himself (VIII, 47; he is not addressing Aristotle)
If an obstacle stronger than you prevents you from acting, do not grieve: the cause of your not acting is not up to you. And if you say life is not worth living without this action, leave life serenely, like one who dies in the midst of acting.
The debate goes on (our summary) Aristotle would answer that this reply proves him right: if, when the means to act are lacking, the only way out is to leave life, then happiness did also depend on something external. Not grieving is not yet being happy.
Aristotle (the man on the rack, Priam's fate) 330 BC · attacks premise 3

To say that a man tortured on the rack, or struck by great misfortunes like King Priam, is happy provided he is virtuous, is to talk nonsense. Some sufferings destroy a life, even a good man's life.

Marc Aurèle replies
Marc Aurèle What Marcus writes about pain
Pain that is unbearable carries us off; pain that lasts can therefore be borne. The mind keeps its own calm by withdrawing into itself, and the ruling part is not made worse.
The debate goes on (our summary) Aristotle himself grants that a good man struck like Priam never becomes miserable, but he refuses to call him fully happy. The disagreement is therefore about the word "happiness": is intact virtue enough, or is a life that is not broken also needed?
Pascal 1670 · attacks premise 1

The Stoics say: retire within yourselves, there you will find rest. That is not true. Man does not find in himself what it takes to be happy: happiness is neither outside us nor within us, it is in God.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1670, after the author's death (180).
Hegel (freedom only in thought) 1807 · attacks the conclusion

The Stoic calls himself free "on the throne or in chains". But a freedom that changes nothing in the real world remains abstract: it can serve to accept injustice instead of fighting it.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1807, after the author's death (180).
The debate goes on (our summary) Marcus cannot answer Hegel. A Stoic would recall that he constantly urges action ("why not act rather than complain?", VIII, 47) and that he governed an empire. But the rest of the same passage lends weight to Hegel: if a stronger obstacle prevents you from acting, do not grieve. And he writes that one should "not expect Plato's Republic", only be content with the smallest progress (IX, 29): the Stoic acts, but without expecting to change the world.