Marcus Aurelius Meditations

Marcus Aurelius’s, Meditations, is a series of twelve books that record Aurelius’s private thoughts, which were written to himself for guidance and self-improvement. Meditations draws ideas from Stoicism, and at times Platonic thinking, and covers topics about life, suffering, and a man’s ethics. One of the ideas that Aurelius has is that we can avoid feeling negative feelings by changing our attitude towards any situation. Aurelius claims that “everything which happens, happens justly”. Basically, the things that happen to a person happen for a reason, and by keeping calm about it and accepting it can benefit a person. Second, Aurelius says that no man is intentionally evil. I disagree with this statement, especially since Aurelius allowed