Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Commentary on Meditations: B1.11

11. From Fronto: to understand the effect of suspicion, caprice, and hypocrisy in the exercise of absolute rule; and that for the most part these people we call 'Patricians' are somewhat short of human affection.

definitions

suspicion: in the way the word is used here, it means "cautious distrust"

caprice: a sudden and unaccountable change of mood or behavior

hypocrisy: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense

patrician: an aristocrat or nobleman

think of a time when someone treated you with suspicion.  they didn't trust you and perhaps there was no reason for them to mistrust you.

think of the time when a friend or a teacher or coach went from being happy to super grumpy.

think of a time when someone tells you to do one thing, but they in turn violate their own instruction.

in each of these cases, you probably don't feel much friendship or trust toward the other person.

having identified how these things are not virtuous, don't be that way!

as marcus aurelius says at the end, these people are "short of human affection"

No comments:

Post a Comment