Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Explanatory Synthesis Notes

What am I explaining?

In the explainer I am writing, I am talking about Marcus Aurelius and his impact on Stoic philosophy. The reasoning for doing this is because often wisdom that was once unique and unheard insight, eventually becomes assimilated into everyday thinking, and eventually vanishes from wisdom as the original context is lost, thus the wisdom is thrown out. Another scenario is that there is wisdom that becomes everyday common fact and people end up forgetting where it comes from and what it really means. By digging back into history and finding where these insights come from, it is possible to expand the context of the wisdom and gain a fuller understanding of what is being said, than simply knowing the general jist of the idea at surface level. My goal is to explain the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius and his impact on stoic philosophy, which in turn impacted society.

Sources.
The first sources is the book that Marcus Aurelius wrote, which is Meditations. Meditations is a collected or short, pieces of wisdom and insight from his life. Usually from 1 line in length to generally no more than a page long. His book is a book of aphorisms. This will be the sources from where I will draw examples the original pieces of wisdom.

Another source will be the a biography of the life of Marcus Aurelius. By knowing his life I can explain who Marcus exactly was and what made him so good as an emperor and how his philsophy might of influences his rule and why it brought him so much praise, to the point where he was often considered the "ideal" roman emperor. 

I am also considering using Epictetus's book Discourses, as he was the most important Stoic philosopher from Marcus Aurelius's time. Marcus considered him only a humble student of philosophy so it is expected that he was deeply influences by Epictetus's work.

Finally my last source will be some kind of video on either stoic philosophy or Marcus Aurelius's life. Currently I am not sure which one I will be doing yet, however I have collected a few videos that I could use.

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