Marcus Aurelius: Don't Be Too Bookish
When rereading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations the other day, a curious passage stood out to me in which Marcus Aurelius warns against the dangers of being too bookish:
Cast your books from you; distract yourself no more; for you have not the right to do so. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book II, No. 2)
This passage should strike all educated people as strange. After all, think how much we owe as individuals and as a society to literacy. And here is Marcus Aurelius telling us to cast our books aside and that we have no right to lose ourself in such distractions. But distractions from what? What could books possibly distract us from? Life!—both our experience of it and our duty within it.
Although Marcus Aurelius himself was quite educated, elsewhere in his Meditations Marcus Aurelius gives thanks for the fact that he did not lose himself in “many volumes” or in “solving syllogisms”:
The Gods watched over me also when I first applied myself to philosophy. For I fell not into the hands of any Sophist, nor sat poring over many volumes, nor devoted myself to solving syllogisms, or star-gazing. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book I, No. 17).
It’s clear from Marcus Aurelius’s statements here and elsewhere that he finds an excess of reading, reading which does not turn itself into action or application, to be irresponsible at best and contrary to nature at worst. Being lost in books is akin to checking out of the world, being derelict in your duty to do your part to build an orderly universe, as he says elsewhere in Book V of his Meditations:
Do you not see the smallest plants, the little sparrows, the ants, the spiders, the bees, all doing their part, and working for order in the Universe, as far as in them lies? And will you refuse the part in this design which is laid on man? Will you not pursue the course which accords with your own nature? (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book V, No. 1)
I interpret Marcus Aurelius’s criticism of bookish behavior as advocating for a kind of Aristotelian middle ground between the opposing vices of being illiterate or uneducated and overly literate or bookish. Given the many thanks that Marcus Aurelius gives to his teachers and family members who were positive influences in his life in Book I of his Meditations, it doesn’t make sense to interpret Marcus Aurelius as being opposed to all reading, all learning, or all education. Instead, we should interpret Marcus Aurelius as being critical of unproductive reading, unproductive learning, and unproductive education—reading and learning and teaching that don’t have a practical effect in our lives, either externally as we meet our responsibilities in the world or internally in our character and virtues.
How much of our higher education serves the purposes that Marcus Aurelius has in mind for productive reading and education? How much of our reading and learning and teaching are put into practice day in and day out in our lives, or in the lives of our students? And how much of our education has practical import for the development of character and virtue—whether in Marcus Aurelius’s sense of living in harmony with and building order in an otherwise chaotic universe, or in Aristotle’s sense of virtue as the formation of good habits of action?
Does Marcus Aurelius’s pragmatism in education and study disqualify him as a pure philosopher? (Many unjustifiably pretentious philosophers unfortunately don’t take Marcus Aurelius seriously as a philosopher. Their loss!) Or does it place him firmly within a rich tradition of wisdom literature because of that very pragmatism? How much of what we do as philosophers is idle wheel-spinning, and how much is put to use in the world at large, or within ourselves and in our character? I’ve met many a professional philosopher that can run circles around me recounting every little nuance of Hegel but who doesn’t know which end is up, like Thales falling into a well having lost sight of the ground before his feet for all his thoughts of the cosmos above. And I likewise know immensely practical people, as witty as can be but with no spark of intellectual life or curiosity to speak of. Marcus Aurelius seems to be advocating for the middle ground between these opposing undesirable ways of being, as it relates to education and literacy.
So if you find yourself getting excessively lost in books, in your studies, or in your own thoughts, remind yourself of Marcus Aurelius’s admonition against being overly bookish. If you aren’t careful, you can waste away your whole life reading about everything under the sun but experiencing none of it firsthand, and accomplishing even less. Like the many creatures of the world Marcus Aurelius mentions above, the spiders and the bees, all doing their little part in the world to live and survive and build order in the universe around them, pop your head up out of your books more often, look around and see what’s what, figure out what you can accomplish or what problems need solving, and set your sights and efforts on those things instead of hiding in your books all day. Don’t shut out the world in the name of learning about it!
As teachers, we cannot merely teach our students to be good readers and learners, we must teach them to be good doers, to be actors and agents using their mental and physical talents to make a difference in a world desperately in need not just of learning, however important and necessary education may be, both to us today and to Marcus Aurelius back then, but also of action on the part of people willing to step up and shoulder the many challenges in the world that need shouldering.
A more formal way of putting Marcus Aurelius’s warning against bookishness is that learning and literacy are necessary but not sufficient for a life lived in harmony with the universe. An unlearned, illiterate person won’t have the capacity or mental training to make full use of his or her uniquely human gifts and abilities. An overly educated, bookish person, however, is no closer to human virtue being a person of inaction hiding in the dark corners of the universe with his or her nose in the books instead of out in the light working with his or her fellow human beings to build a better corner of the universe for all humanity, indeed for all the world.
How many times have we failed to tell our students to cast their books aside when we should have done just that? And how many times have we philosophers and educators failed to do just that ourselves and in our own lives, hiding in our dissertations and classrooms instead of bringing philosophy and virtue to life through action, teaching with our own lives as an example instead of with only our syllabi and our rubrics? Marcus Aurelius is rolling over in his grave at such weak and ineffective forms of education and philosophy, however well intended our philosophical and pedagogical bookishness may be.
For Further Reading:
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
