Famous Stoics on Death

The Stoic school is a long argument with a short list of famous names. For death, three will take you most of the way: Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus. They are not a committee. One is an emperor writing notes to himself. One is a wealthy adviser who was ordered to open his veins. One is a former slave who taught that almost nothing is yours except your choices.

None of them invented memento mori as a two-word product. All three treat mortality as equipment.

Marcus Aurelius: the notebook of a man who could not take a day off

Marcus ruled Rome from 161 to 180. The book we call Meditations was not written for us. It is a set of reminders, often repetitive, because he needed the reminders. Power does not make a person less afraid of wasting a life. Sometimes it makes the waste more ornate.

He keeps telling himself that the body is on loan. In book 2 he says, in effect: you could be out of this life by tonight, so let that fact govern action, speech, and thought (2.11). In book 4 he warns himself not to live as if he had ten thousand years, because death is already hanging over him (4.17). In book 7 he tries a stranger angle: think of yourself as already dead, then use what remains properly (7.56).

That last one is easy to misread as grim. It is a reset. The life you were going to start "once things settle" is not coming. Things do not settle. You are already in the only life you get.

Marcus also uses death to shrink other people, including himself. Famous men are buried. Their reputations last a little longer than their bodies, then those go too. He is not being edgy. He is talking a consul out of needing to be remembered.

If you only take one Marcus habit into a weekday: when you catch yourself waiting for a more official version of your life, write the week down. The calendar is a crude Meditations for people who will not keep a Greek notebook.

Seneca: the accountant of wasted hours

Seneca wrote for an audience. That makes him easier to quote and easier to distrust. He was Nero's tutor and adviser. He got rich. He wrote beautifully about poverty of time. The contradiction is real. It does not erase the analysis.

On the Shortness of Life is the essay to read first. The complaint he rejects is that nature gave us too few years. His answer is that we are not given a short life. We make it short. We give the years away to other people's business, to vice, to idle busyness that feels like work.

He is very good on a particular modern injury: being occupied without being alive. A full diary can still be a vacant span. If you have ever closed a laptop at midnight and been unable to say what the day was for, you are in his jurisdiction.

In the letters to Lucilius he treats death as a rehearsal, not a surprise. You prepare so that the fact, when it arrives, is not a new thought. Premeditation is not pessimism. It is removing the extra suffering that comes from being astonished by something you were told in advance.

Seneca was forced to commit suicide in 65 CE. People like to end the biography there, as if the death validated the essays. Maybe. Maybe he would have preferred a different afternoon. The useful remainder is the accounting: hours as a resource you can squander even when you are important.

Epictetus: death as an item on the list of things not up to you

Epictetus was born a slave, lamed, freed, and taught in Nicopolis after Domitian expelled philosophers from Rome. We have him through Arrian's notes. The voice is drier than Marcus and less literary than Seneca. It is also harder to dodge.

His basic split: some things are up to us, some are not. Your judgments, your aims, your refusals: up to you. Your body, your property, your reputation, your lifespan: not. Death sits on the second list. Anxiety about death often comes from demanding that the second list behave like the first.

He tells a student, roughly: I have to die. If it is now, I die now. If later, I will eat lunch, since it is lunchtime, and I will deal with dying later. That is not bravado. It is order of operations. You do the present task. The last task will not be skipped.

The Handbook (Enchiridion) keeps returning to this. If you treat your body as a possession the universe might recall, you stop living as a clerk of your own medical file. You still bandage the wound. You just do not pretend the bandage is a contract.

People who are not Stoics, and why they keep getting invited

Steve Jobs used a last-day question every morning. He was a Zen student with a product company. The Jobs note is here because the question is a clean memento mori, and because a lot of readers will arrive on his name.

Leo Tolstoy wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich, which is still one of the least sentimental accounts of a man noticing, too late, that he spent a life on the wrong game. Tolstoy was a Christian moralist with a genius for social detail, not a Roman. He belongs in the wider mortality shelf.

Modern popularizers of Stoicism (Holiday, Irvine, and the rest) are useful as doorways and risky as destinations. Read them if they get you to open Marcus. Then open Marcus. The primary texts are short and they do not need a brand.

What to do with all of this

Do not collect quotes. Pick one writer and one move.

• From Marcus: drop the fantasy of the later, real life. Use this week.
• From Seneca: count the hours you donated to occupancy. Steal some back.
• From Epictetus: put death on the list of things you do not control, then return to the thing you do.

A life-in-weeks grid will not make you a Stoic. It will keep the three moves from floating off into wallpaper. If you want the daily mechanics, they are in How to Practice Memento Mori.

See the span they were talking about

The school is named for a painted porch. The porch is gone. The advice that survived is almost embarrassingly small: you will die, other people will not live your hours for you, and the work is today. Everything else is commentary.

Questions people ask

Which Stoics wrote about death?

The three you will meet first are Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus. Marcus kept a private notebook we call Meditations. Seneca wrote essays and letters. Epictetus taught, and a student wrote the Discourses and the Handbook down.

Did Marcus Aurelius say remember you will die?

He says the thing in several places. In Meditations 2.11 he tells himself that he could leave life right now, and that this should determine what he does, says, and thinks. He does not need the later slogan. The instruction is already there.

Were later figures like Steve Jobs Stoics?

Jobs was not. Tolstoy was not. They both took mortality seriously, which is why they show up next to the school. The Stoic claim is more specific: death is outside your control, character is not, and remembering the first should improve the second.

Keep reading

• How to Practice Memento Mori

  Five concrete ways to remember you will die without turning it into a mood. Includes the morning question, a weekly calendar, and what to skip.

• Steve Jobs and the Morning Question

  Steve Jobs was not a Stoic. He still used a daily memento mori: if today were the last day of your life, would you want to do what you are about to do?

• What Is Memento Mori?

  Memento mori is Latin for remember that you will die. It is an old practice of keeping death in mind so ordinary days stop feeling like a rehearsal.