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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 3920904, member: 93416&quot;]Wow. Many thanks for this.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Yes, I agree. But I think there is more to be said.</p><p><br /></p><p>Looking at the guy in general, I would say he is a kind of half way house to what I am thinking of as “Post-Modern”. I make two points</p><p><br /></p><p>1) He places himself as opposed to the sort of hard science approach that traced back to Democritus. The key issue for him (and most ancients I think) was to do with the hard line taken on determinism by Democritus &amp; co. Actually Marcus comes across here, as everywhere, as a likeable and humble sort of thinker. He does not say Democritus &amp; co were wrong - merely that he hopes they were wrong.</p><p><br /></p><p>2) I am happy to accept your proposed version &quot;nothing is but what thinking makes it&quot; and its subjectivist leaning. Taken literally it supports an extremely negative attitude to scientific objectivity. As it seems does</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2133/Aurelius_1464_LFeBk.pdf" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2133/Aurelius_1464_LFeBk.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2133/Aurelius_1464_LFeBk.pdf</a></p><p><br /></p><p><i>Book VI 52. The external things themselves have no power of causing opinions in us.</i></p><p><br /></p><p>Read literally these are just wrong. As Epictetus says - our opinion about whether a coin is false very definitely depends on external factors.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now – what I take you as saying in reply is that Marcus is indulging in a bit of routine and forgivable hyperbole. He makes completely general statements but intends them to be understood in a restricted context. That is entirely plausible, but I make two points</p><p><br /></p><p>1) Can you offer a line from Marcus or any Stoic that corrects the obviously misleading impression given by these lines?</p><p><br /></p><p>2) Even if you are correct – they still put him at a half way house to what I am calling “Post-Modernism&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>**********************************************</p><p><br /></p><p>Moving on, there are two important tags I tend to associate with the Post-Modernist. One is a tendency to write in a mystifying/obscure way, and another is to routinely undermine rationality by pointing to paradoxes (these days involving Heisenberg and/or Goedel etc). I find both very irritating. Marcus absolutely never does either. So at worst for me he is only a halfway house to Post-Modernism.</p><p><br /></p><p>However – I argue his advisor Maecinanus more or less does both sorts of things (citing Aristotle not Goedel on the paradoxes of infinity!) – and he does it concerning profound matters to do with Roman economics and thus (I would argue) Roman coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here perhaps is a challenge for you to think about? Maecianus wrote arguably the most important classical text on the mysteries of weight standards. As far as I can discover - <b>it has never been translated!</b></p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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