The Ways of Estrangement
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Εἰ ξένος κόσμου ὁ μὴ γνωρίζων τὰ ἐν αὐτῷ ὄντα, οὐχ ἧττον ξένος καὶ ὁ μὴ γνωρίζων τὰ γινόμενα. φυγὰς ὁ φεύγων τὸν πολιτικὸν λόγον· τυφλὸς ὁ καταμύων τῷ νοερῷ ὄμματι· πτωχὸς ὁ ἐνδεὴς ἑτέρου καὶ μὴ πάντα ἔχων παρ’ ἑαυτοῦ τὰ εἰς τὸν βίον χρήσιμα· ἀπόστημα κόσμου ὁ ἀφιστάμενος καὶ χωρίζων ἑαυτὸν τοῦ τῆς κοινῆς φύσεως λόγου διὰ τοῦ δυσαρεστεῖν τοῖς συμβαίνουσιν· ἐκείνη γὰρ φέρει τοῦτο, ἣ καὶ σὲ ἤνεγκεν· ἀπόσχισμα πόλεως ὁ τὴν ἰδίαν ψυχὴν τῆς τῶν λογικῶν ἀποσχίζων, μιᾶς οὔσης.
If a stranger to the cosmos is one who does not recognize the things that are in it, no less a stranger is one who does not recognize the things that happen. A fugitive is he who flees the social principle; blind, he who shuts the eye of the mind; a beggar, he who is in need of another and does not have from himself all things useful for life; an abscess of the cosmos is he who stands apart and cuts himself off from the reason of the common nature through discontent with what happens — for that nature brings this to pass, the same that brought you forth as well; a splinter from the city is he who splits his own soul off from the soul of rational beings, though it is one.
A series of vivid definitions of the man who cuts himself off: he is a stranger, a fugitive, blind, a beggar — and worst, an abscess and a splinter, a festering piece torn from the body of the cosmos and the city of rational beings, all through discontent with what happens.
Marcus builds a series of sharp definitions, each naming a type of self-estrangement by the harm it really is. To not understand τὰ ἐν αὐτῷ, the contents of the cosmos, makes one a ξένος, a foreigner in one’s own world — but he adds that not understanding τὰ γινόμενα, the things that happen, is no less an estrangement: physics and providence are both native knowledge for a rational being. Then the escalating images: a φυγάς, a runaway, is whoever flees the "social principle," the bond of fellowship; a blind man is whoever closes the mind’s eye; a beggar is whoever cannot supply his own needs from within and depends on another for the goods of life. Each vice is redescribed as a lack or a flight.
The last two definitions are the most violent and the most Stoic. The man who withdraws from "the reason of the common nature" out of δυσαρέστησις, discontent with events, is an ἀπόστημα κόσμου — an abscess on the universe, a festering lump that has set itself against the healthy body. And Marcus twists the knife: the very Nature he resents "brings this to pass, the same that brought you forth" — to rage at events is to rage at your own parent. Finally, whoever tears his soul away from the soul of all rational beings is an ἀπόσχισμα πόλεως, a splinter broken off the city, "though it is one" — μιᾶς οὔσης: there is really only a single rational soul, and to secede from it is to amputate oneself. The whole chapter turns the language of belonging inside out, so that every fault appears as a self-inflicted exile from a whole to which one cannot stop belonging without ceasing to be oneself.
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Meditations 4.29 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/meditations-greek/4.29/