Marcus Aurelius: Meditations

It is very tempting to buy into Marcus Aurelius prescription for content living: "To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing--here is the perfection of character." (VII.69) Upon reflection, however, it occurs to me that this approach is phenomenally depressing. Aurelius seems to typify what Kierkegaard calls the "knight of perfect resignation," that is to say, he subsumes himself to the universal, and finds contentment in the understanding that the individual is but an insignificant fraction of it. The logical conclusion of this approach, however, is such morbid and counterproductive statements as, "In death, Alexander of Macedon's end differed no whit from his stable boy's. Either both were recieved into the same generative principle of the universe, or both alike were dispersed into atoms." (VI.24) It is no wonder that Kierkegaard found ultimate resignation unsatisfying; it leaves one with little motive for action or hope for improvement. To take the next step and say, by virtue of the absurd, "although the individual is subordinate to the universal, nonetheless the universal serves the individual" seems to be the step that escaped Marcus Aurelius, and which even Kierkegaard could only admire from a distance. Indeed, if the individual has no claim on the universal, if--insignificant though I am--God has no investment in my welfare, why continue to live? My passing would be of no more import than that of a film of dust.