On Marcus Aurelius's Reflection of Life and Moral Teaching in The Meditation

• Main Authors: Su, Jia-Chi, 蘇家齊
• Other Authors: Wu, Zhi-Xue
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/60456419647210857399

碩士 === 華梵大學 === 哲學系碩士班 === 104 === Marcus Aurelius was Roman Emperor who is considered as one of the representative philosophers of the late Stoicism. The Meditations is the tome compiled from his notes and published by the posterity, which not only focuses on introspecting himself but inspires people by the thought－provoking theories of life introspection and moral teaching. This article has two main purposes, one is to accomplish the classification of contents of the Meditations, and the other is to discuss the themes of life introspection and moral teaching in it. Furthermore, through the concepts of reputation, affliction, death, fate and happiness, the topic of life introspection will explore how to face trouble in life, as well as how to gain happiness in fate beyond our control; while the subject of moral teaching will be expounded by the ideas of good and evil, obligation, the practice of life and so forth, in order to discuss what the so－called good and evil, and the inherent obligations of human beings is in Aurelius’ point of view, as well as what his requirements of the practice of life are, and also how to achieve them. The first chapter of this article explains the motivation and purposes of studying this book, while the origin of Aurelius’ thoughts will be elaborated through his background of Stoic philosophy in the second section. In the third chapter, it tries to create the classification which is not only out of the constraint of volumes, but also dividing the Meditations into three parts including the metaphysic, the life introspection and the moral education. Subsequently, by the aid of this classification table, it will discuss the concepts of life introspection and moral education, as well as combines them with the idea of “practice” in the fourth and the fifth chapters. At the end of this article, the application of contents of the Meditations to modern society will be explored along with our reflection toward life and enlightenment of reading this tome as the composite summary.