Customer Review
- Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2014I bought this translation of Meditation after I read its free PDF version. Gregory Hays has a very readable style - not too lucid, not too verbose. The introduction is well written and rather comprehensive and by itself justifies the purchase. It provides a chronological view of the sociopolitical environment before and during Marcus' reign. It also provides a simple and necessary background about the common philosophical doctrines of the period. It also outlines a short but concise view of Marcus' life and its challenges, and it ties those life events nicely by references to the actual Marcus' Meditation notes. By doing so, Hays brings some organization to what is otherwise a collection of disparate and disorganized soul searching notes by Marcus Aurelius.
This is not a book of Philosophy. The Stoicism concepts were around for about 450 years before Marcus's time and well documented by professional philosophers before Marcus. What makes this book so unique and interesting to read is the fact that it was written by an emperor with absolute God-like powers. Like an athlete who goes through daily exercise regiments to keep his body and muscles in shape, the Mediation book is a collection of daily notes from Marcus to himself trying to keep his faculties in shape and under control despite constant daily pressures from the court, senate, family, betraying officers, dying wife, and periodic attacks and bloody battles with Barbarians from north and Parthians from east.
He managed to keep his sanity through hard times, especially in the last decade of his life, by continuous mental exercises in logic, ethics and by keeping in harmony with the force of nature - the three principles he believed in. He knew that absolute power could corrupt absolutely and for a man in his position the damage would be irreversible. His philosophies are not unlike another historic figure who was in a similar God-like position as the emperor of Persia about 6 centuries before him, Cyrus the Great. The Cyrus Cylinder and the Mediation notes are reminders of how great men like Cyrus the Great and Marcus Aurelius managed to be larger than life by not committing the mistakes that some other leaders who were in similar positions before and after them committed.
This should be a required reading for any leader who is in a powerful political or financial position and can potentially commit judgment errors the could lead to financial or political disasters. We have seen a few of those judgment errors and their disastrous consequences in recent history.
There are references on the internet that show how the teachings of these great historical figures influenced some US presidents and how these thoughts transformed into concept such as our constitution's "checks and balances" that seeks to eliminate "absolute power" from any one person or institution of the government.
I highly recommend this translation of the book.
