In a comment in the previous post, regarding Marcus Aurelius, Joshua wrote:
...I wonder how much the Christian translators inserted “God” over the years from the original and how close the manuscripts we're using are to the original. Meditations uses universe, God, gods, logos almost all seemingly interchangeably, but I wonder if there is not more to it than that.
The word ‘god’ carries such a different sense in our post-Christian world and it is easy to superimpose this cultural outlook on the polytheistic world of antiquity. And this is true also of Stoic pantheism. The ancients didn't get ideologically worked up about their god(s) as, say, the Christians later became. In the Greco-Roman world, if the meaning of life was something you wanted to inquire into, you didn't turn to religion, but to philosophia—‘the love of widsom.’
The Stoics understood theos or deus to be identical to the entirety of all that is. And sometimes this theistic language is used by the Stoics rather carelessly: living a virtuous life was more important than theological correctness that became the obsession of the early Church. In general, I think it is helpful to remember that, just as in Spinoza, ‘god’ should be read in the Stoics as interchangeable with the whole of nature (‘Deus sive Natura’).
Constantly think of the Universe as one living creature, embracing one being and one soul; how all is absorbed into the one consciousness of this living creature; how it encompasses all things with a single purpose, and how all things work together to cause all that to comes to pass, and their wonderful web and texture.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV.40 (translated by A.S.L. Farquharson)
This other side of the pantheistic coin, ‘Nature,’ ‘Cosmos,’ or ‘the Whole’ might be more relevant for some today, especially when the belief in theism appears increasingly incredulous and irrelevant (as for myself, I have been an atheist for a little over a decade). Stoic pantheism implies that the universe is inherently sacred, rather than a deity separate from it. For better or for worse, Christianity de-divinised the cosmos, placing the Divine outside the world, removed from it.
It is less a matter of Christian terminology injected into Stoic discourse than it is a matter of a Christian mis-reading of a pre-Christian philosophy (think also of how easily some people mis-read 18th century Deism in the same way). And so we should remain aware of those potential superimpositions and seek instead to recapture, as much as possible, the original spirit of ancient Stoicism.
Great post and great explanation. One of the portions I was thinking of is at book II verse 11 (Haines verison, since we both have it):
ReplyDelete"But to go away from among men, if there are Gods, is nothing dreadful; for they would not involve thee in evil. But if indeed there are no Gods, or if they do not concerning themselves with the affairs of men, what boots it for me to live in a Universe where there are no Gods, whree Providence is not? Nay, but there are Gods and they do concern themselves with human things."
In that one section of text, M.A. uses "Gods," "Universe" and "Providence." I, unfortunately, cannot read koinos Greek but I assume that Haines's use of separate capitalized terms denotes that these words are differnet greek words / ideas. One only has to proceed to verse 12 to see a capitalized "Nature."
Now admittedly, I picked a passage that best suits my assertion, but here Marcus is saying that it is his opinion that the gods care for humans. That is not the impartial god of the 18th Century Deist. And these gods that care enough to have created a means for us to avoid any evil that might await us after death, are a separate word (it appears) from Universe, Nature, and Providence.
There is no doubt that I am coming from this from a Judeao-Christian background. But I am familar with other religious beliefs too. The idea of a all-encompassing material like the logos (i refer to your quote above from IV:40) is very similar to the Buddha-essence that animates the entire universe, is corrupted by kharma and to which we return upon finally reaching Nirvana.
I am trying to wrap my mind around a world where Marcus believed gods played some role in our fate, as did Providence and Nature. All of these ideas carried with them some sort of divinity and thus, in my opinion, smack of religion. Religion may not have explained life, but it did inform and color Marcus's thoughts.
Thanks for your time and I enjoy discussing Stoicism with you immensely.