Marcus Aurelius Point Of View

Through this point of view, a person can overcome limited perspective of the individual and experience the world from a cosmic perspective. Marcus frequently mentions the idea of a cosmic order that forms a framework for living an ethical life (Aurelius, xviii). Marcus states, “You have the power to strip away many superfluous troubles located wholly in your judgement, and to possess a large room for yourself embracing in thought the whole cosmos, to consider everlasting time, to think of the rapid change in the parts of each thing, of how short it is from birth until dissolution, and how the void before birth and that after dissolution are equally infinite” (Med. 9.32). He advocates finding one's place in the universe and sees that everything came from nature, and so everything shall return to it. We are all part of the cosmos as a community on Earth, and living in the point of view of the cosmos connects human beings to nature (Gill, xx). This quote is also connected to the transiency of all things. Marcus explains the transient nature of things, their inexorable passing, their monotony, their insignificance, and their emptiness (Reale, 89).
He uses phrases such as, “How swiftly all things vanish away” (Med. 2.12) or “All is ephemeral” (Med. 4.35) to emphasize how little time human beings have on Earth. Keeping both the idea of the cosmos and the idea of time being fleeting in mind, it is easy to understand the mindset of Marcus while writing the Meditations. The philosophy of the cosmos is also connected to the Stoic teaching of how to “live”, meaning to live freely and consciously. Freely, in that human beings lose dependency on what they cannot control, and consciously, in that human beings pass beyond the limits of individuality and recognize the importance of the cosmos (Hadot,