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It is interesting that you shared that last quote of MA. No doubt that quote was referenced by many a Whig who wished to trace the commonwealthman/country ideology back to the Romans where civilized law and virtue supposedly began. I think it funny to view Marcus Aurelius as a Whig debating Tories in Parliament. 😀
Getting back to Plato, and the Symposium, what do you think of the story recounted by Socrates concerning the hermaphrodites or the Manwomen as he called them? Got to love how a Greek philosopher can draw from mythology to explain homosexuality! Elsewhere we see Socrates play the "mentor" to Timaeus thus proving where he stood on the issue.
My favorites include: The Apology, The Crito, The Republic, and The Symposium.I can imagine that the Stoics owe a lot to Plato. I flipped through an old copy of Plato’s Symposium that I had read years back (a good read) and I can definitely see the similarities there – particularly Socrates’ resistance to temptation and to the inebriating effects of wine.
But I didn't mean to suggest that Marcus Aurelius had a particular connection to Hegel's philosophy. It was just that a quote or two of MA's sounded like it had Hegelian elements. For instance:
If mind is common to us, then also the reason, whereby we are reasoning beings, is common. If this be so, then also the reason which enjoins what is to be done or left undone is common. If this be so, law also is common; if this be so, we are citizens; if this be so, we are partakers in one constitution; if this be so, the Universe is a kind of Commonwealth.
Marcus Aurelius is a good choice. I haven’t read Meditations, though I should do that sometime. I found some quotes from him, a few of which I put below. They sound like a combination of Plato, Proverbs, and perhaps Hegel.
Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill.
Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised.
