/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.23375482]

Do I need to read anything before I tackle this slim boy?

[Anonymous No.23375483]

No you don't. How about you actually read it first and then branch of from there? Or do you need to be spoonfeed everything your whole life?

[Anonymous No.23375489]

>>23375482
You're not really going to understand it unless you've read the entirety of the Harry Potter series beforehand. And even then, understanding Harry Potter as Rowling originally intended takes YEARS of proper education.

[Anonymous No.23375531]

>>23375482
No, but it would be beneficial to read Seneca's letters first. Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations in his own personal journal, not intending it to be read by others. Thus, it's just a bunch of journal entries about his thoughts on his every day life. Otoh, Seneca's letters were written for the purpose of instruction, so reading these first will give Meditations more context to his thought process.

[Anonymous No.23375579]

>>23375482
Yes.
Marcus Aurelius was said to be more or less a follower of Epictetus (unlike Hadrian, his adoptive father, Marcus Aurelius was not a direct student of Epictetus but he had notes of Epictetus give by his own tutor).

To understand Marcus Aurelius it is good to know what Epictetus was writing about. The explanation by Pierre Hadot in "The Inner Citadel" seems to be the most commonly used interpretation of the Meditations.

It is very easy to misinterpret Marcus Aurelius without that.

Tl;dr:
The Discourses of Epictetus
The Inner Citadel

That said, IMO, Aquinas completed philosophy in the way the Ancients did.

[Anonymous No.23375664]

>>23375579
Imagine a random homeless dude - rather filthy, slightly drunk, in the mood of talking “big things”. His life experience is diverse, but lacking formal education. His observations are scattered. His conclusions, chaotic. Yet he may be naturally bright, and even though his train if thoughts gets continuously derailed, its power may be rather impressive...

Well, this is Epictetus for ya. He knew less people than average social network user follows, and absorbed less worldwide stories than an average TV owner consumes monthly. His education was more primitive than what an average public school could deliver today. Yet, his thinking is bright, and reasoning, often quite deep.

Epictetus “discourses” may have been an enjoyable and enlightening reading, if not for an unchewable “translation” of someone who was focused on dumb exactness of the words, rather than smart explicitness of their meaning.

Result is tragically retarded. Academically so. Making you work on translating these “academic” mumblings back into the actual thoughts they bury, sentence by sentence. From English that seems as broken as that of an international refugee.

And these thoughts, though not too many, may have been the only reason you would have wished to spend your time on this book.

Sorry, Epictetus. Maybe one day we’d have someone with live and sound imagination re-delivering your messages to us, the way they would make sense In the mean time, three stars feel way too much for what we’ve got.

[Anonymous No.23375741]

>>23375482
the answer to this is always no, ignore the "start with the greeks" pseuds on here. consult secondary literature if you get stuck

[Anonymous No.23375796]

>>23375741
You have no understanding of the Meditations if you think this.
It is very important to have some knowledge of Epictetus/Musonius style of Stoicism to understand Marcus Aurelius. The Meditations are not supposed to be a kind of textbooks, they are the exercises of Marcus Aurelius based on Roman Stoicism.

[Anonymous No.23375847]

>>23375796
secondary lit will fill that in if it's so important