### Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations for himself > [!zettel] > - keywords:: [[Marcus Aurelius]], [[write notes for yourself by default]] > - location:: > - period:: [[Marcus Aurelius]] wrote *Meditations* for himself, and for his own benefit. *Meditations* acted as a self-guide for moral improvement. It just happened to survive and serve as an example from antiquity of [[Stoicism|stoic]] thought. It seems to act as a form of mental preparation, and he referred to his writing as supports, records, and rules. > Scholars now generally agree (following Brunt 1974) that Marcus wrote for his own moral improvement, to remind himself of and render concrete the Stoic doctrines he wanted to live by, such as that the world is governed by Providence; that happiness lies in virtue, which is wholly in one's own power; and that one should not be angry at one's associates but regard them as siblings, offspring of the same God. While we do not have other examples of this kind of private writing from antiquity, we do have Epictetus' advice to write down (as well as to rehearse) daily the sorts of responses one ought to have to situations one encounters, so that one might have them ready at hand (procheiron) when circumstances demand (Epictetus Discourses i.1.21–25, iv.1.111; cf. iii.5.11, iii.26.39 on moral improvement being the appropriate aim of reading and writing). And Marcus describes his own writings as supports (parastêmata, iii.11), records (parapêgmata, ix.3.2) and rules (kanones, v.22, x.2). > [[kamtekar2018MarcusAurelius|Marcus Aurelius. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (Spring 2018)]] --- related:: [[write notes for yourself by default]]