Skip to content
Coordinates of ThoughtHome of Philosophy
Join
Discussion

Marcus Aurelius keeps reminding himself he will soon be forgotten. On a night shift, is that a consolation?

Elin Hedqvist Fellow
· 3 replies
DeathGreek & RomanStoicismMarcus Aurelius#being-forgotten#care#consolation#stoicism
Follow

Its coordinates: 6.20 Philosophy of Death

In the Meditations Marcus Aurelius comes back again and again to the same thought: that those who remember us will soon die too, that the great names of the past are already only names, that soon you will have forgotten everything and soon everything will have forgotten you. He seems to find it calming.

Last week a resident of ours, a retired schoolteacher with no visitors, asked me at two in the morning whether anyone would remember him. I did not quote Marcus. I don't think I could have. But on the bus home I wondered whether I should have.

There are two ways I can read the thought:

  • As levelling. The emperor and the teacher end in the same place. Nobody's life is diminished by being forgotten, because everyone's will be. That could be a comfort to someone who feels he has been left behind.
  • As medicine for a particular illness. Marcus was writing to himself (the Greek title means roughly "to himself"), and he was an emperor. The thought of being forgotten is a cure for vanity and the hunger for glory. Given to someone who is lonely rather than vain, it might be poison.

I lean towards the second. But then what is the right thing to say to a man who asks whether he will be remembered?

LikeReply
SaveFollow3 replies

Join the conversation: members reply here, and joining is free. Reading is always free.

Join free to reply Sign in

3 replies

  1. Nikos Theodoridis

    Fellow

    The Orthodox funeral answers your resident in the opposite way from Marcus. At the end of the memorial service we sing Eonia i mnimi, "memory eternal". It is a prayer that the person be remembered by God, when everyone who knew him is gone.

    Whether or not one believes it, notice what it understands: that the fear of being forgotten is not vanity. It is the fear of not having existed for anyone. Marcus's medicine does not touch that.

  2. Rohan Desai

    Fellow

    I agree with your second reading, Elin. Marcus was an emperor talking himself down from the size of his own reputation. "You'll be forgotten" cures ambition. It is the wrong medicine for loneliness.

    When I was burnt out, someone quoted Marcus to me in exactly this way and it made me feel worse. What helped was a friend who said, "I'll remember this conversation." Perhaps that is the right thing to say to your resident, and it has the advantage of being true.

  3. Teodora Vasileva

    Reader

    Elin, I worked many nights too, in a different corner of the hospital, and I agree with your second reading. But I would add a third. Marcus was not only an emperor curing his vanity. He was also a father who buried many of his children. Some of those passages read to me like a man teaching himself to bear loss, not to shrink an ego.

    Even so, I wouldn't quote him to your resident. Marcus was speaking to himself, and that kind of comfort only works from the inside.

    When a patient asked me before surgery whether anyone would notice if he didn't wake up, I did not give him philosophy. I asked who he would like us to telephone afterwards. Sometimes the answer to "will I be remembered?" is a name.