Review: Meditations: A New Translation

Meditations: A New Translation by Marcus Aurelius
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There is a strange dichotomy to Meditations. There is great wisdom to be had while also containing rambling nonsense. The thing you have to understand is that this book is a series of entries some guy made of his, sometimes completely random, thoughts. Conceitedly, that's basically what philosophy is. Forced perspective in written form. And, as with the rest of the human race, not every thought is a winner.

I will also note that I have not read any other translations of Meditations. So I'm not qualified to note if this is a good one or not. Considering how many people a book like this has to go through before getting published, I would imagine that it is at least passable. People's opinion on this subject tends to depend on which translation they read first.

If you're looking to study Stoicism as a whole, I would like to recommend not starting with this. Most of Aurelius' words are built upon centuries of other stoic philosophers, and there are themes related to Stoicism that need a precursor. The idea of Logos being chief among them. I will say it's the pinnacle of Stoic thought, but that is what makes it a terrible starting point.

Petty grievance time: I read the Kindle version, and there are no links from the passages to the notes. Only from the notes to the passages. Making it a daunting task to go back and forth to further dive into some of the harder to understand passages. Only to find that some of the notes literally say "the latter part of this passage is unclear." Thanks for that.

Overall, there is a lot of here to take in. In only one read-through, I made a shit ton of highlights and notes. Yes, some of it doesn't make sense. Yes, some translation issues remain. Yes, Aurelius repeats himself on more than one occasion. But, once you filter everything down to it's core concepts, this book has wonderful things to say. Knowledge isn't a singular answer. It's a puzzle that you have to put together piece by annoyingly stubborn piece.

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