Mortality and Dying Well Theme Analysis

Judging by how many of his sayings focus on death, it’s clear that Marcus Aurelius made a special effort to train his mind to face this inevitability. It’s not surprising—mortality would have haunted any person living in the ancient Roman Empire, but it was especially pressing for Marcus, as he led armies into battle, survived plague outbreaks, and faced the dangers of high-profile public service. It’s also not surprising that Marcus’s basic Stoic principles—living reasonably and according to nature—shaped his thoughts about mortality and death. In fact, these principles helped him to consider death as just another challenge: like everything else in life, death is a part of nature; therefore, a person can reason about it. Based on these principles, Marcus argues that dying is a natural process, and since dying in harmony with nature and the gods don’t deprive a person of anything that’s ultimately important, death shouldn’t be feared or resisted.

Dying is natural, and therefore, like anything else in life, a person can use their reason when considering death. Like anything else in life, Marcus writes, dying can be considered logically: “if you look at it in the abstract and break down your imaginary ideas of it by logical analysis, you realize that it's nothing but a process of nature, which only children can be afraid of. (And not only a process of nature but a necessary one.)” By looking at dying rationally, rather than being controlled by imagination, one can see that dying isn’t a fearful thing.

Not only is death necessary, dying is as natural to the soul as birth to the body: “So this is how a thoughtful person should await death […] simply viewing it as one of the things that happen to us. Now you anticipate the child's emergence from its mother's womb; that's how you should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment.” Because death is such a natural part of life—other natural processes even prepare a person for it—it shouldn’t create undue anxiety.

Death is part of the gods’ governance of the whole world, so one can react to it reasonably. Marcus explains, “The time and stopping point are set by nature […] [Death is] a good thing—scheduled by the world, promoting it, promoted by it. This is how we become godlike—following God's path, and reason's goals.” By recognizing that nature governs life, and that death is part of nature’s harmonious goals, one can maintain a reasonable attitude about death. Acting reasonably (in accordance with nature) means that no matter what, one is staying on a divine path.

Not only is death natural and therefore subject to human reason, it’s also inevitable, so a person can only control one’s reaction to its arrival. A person can’t control the predetermined length of their life, but they can anticipate its eventual end and prepare for it. “Five years or a hundred—what's the difference? […] the length [was] fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine. So make your exit with grace—the same grace shown to you,” Marcus writes. A person cannot determine their length of life, but no matter the timing of their “exit,” they can choose to react to death with “grace,” thankful for the time they’ve been granted.

In the end, death’s inevitability doesn’t stop a person from pursuing what’s most important—acting in harmony with God: “What is it you want? To keep on breathing? What about feeling? desiring? growing? […] But if you can do without them all, then continue to follow the logos [the divine reason within a person] and God. […] To prize those other things […] is an obstacle.” Marcus suggests that though people get hung up on living, desiring indefinite life (in its current form) isn’t necessarily reasonable. He further implies that death doesn’t end a person’s ability to follow God by following reason, so it’s short-sighted to focus on the things that do end with death.

Marcus repeatedly comes back to the subject of death in Meditations. Though one could read this as a sign of Marcus’s personal anxiety, it also makes sense that for him, death was simply the ultimate example of the daily battle everyone faces—to control one’s thoughts in order to act, as much as humanly possible, in harmony with nature.