So how did Marcus overcome his total lack of experience and become such an accomplished military leader? How did he remain composed in the face of uncertain odds against such formidable enemies? One of the most important Stoic techniques that he employed was called acting “with a reserve clause” (hupexhairesis), a technical term that he mentions at least five times in The Meditations. Although the idea goes back to the early Stoics, Marcus actually learned how to perform every action cautiously and with a “reserve clause” from reading Epictetus’s Discourses.3 In essence, it means undertaking any action while calmly accepting that the outcome isn’t entirely under your control. We learn from Seneca and others that it could take the form of a caveat, such as “Fate permitting,” “God willing,” or “If nothing prevents me.” It implies that one is taking action while excluding something: assumptions regarding the eventual outcome, particularly any expectations of success. We say “reserve clause,” incidentally, because our expectations are reserved for what is within our sphere of control. We’re pursuing an external result “with the reservation” that the outcome is not entirely up to us. “Do what you must, let happen what may,” as the saying goes.
In Cicero’s dialogue De Finibus, the Roman Stoic hero Cato of Utica uses the memorable image of an archer or spearman to explain this subtle concept. The Stoic-minded archer’s true goal should be to fire his bow skillfully, insofar as doing so is within his power. Paradoxically, though, he’s indifferent to whether or not his arrow actually hits the target. He controls his aim but not the arrow’s flight. So he does the best he can and accepts whatever happens next. The target—perhaps an animal he’s hunting—could move unexpectedly. Marcus perhaps had this analogy in mind when he was spearing birds and hunting wild boar as a young man. Virtue consists in doing your very best and yet not becoming upset if you come home from the hunt empty-handed—we typically admire people who approach life in this way.
Marcus makes it clear that his internal goal is to live with virtue, particularly wisdom and justice, but his external aim, his preferred outcome, is the common welfare of mankind (not just of his Roman subjects, incidentally). Although the outcome is ultimately indifferent to Stoics, it’s precisely the action of pursuing the common good that constitutes the virtue of justice. Indeed, whether you succeed or fail in your attempts to benefit others, you may still be perfectly virtuous as long as your efforts are sincere. It’s your intentions that count, both morally and psychologically. Nevertheless, you must aim them at an appropriate outcome. For instance, acting in accord with justice means preferring to achieve, Fate willing, an external outcome that is both fair and beneficial for humankind. Marcus refers to this countless times throughout The Meditations.
Indeed, whereas other philosophical schools sometimes advised their students to preserve their equanimity by avoiding the stress and responsibilities of public life, Chrysippus told the Stoics that “the wise man will take part in politics, if nothing prevents him.” The wise man, in other words, desires to act virtuously with wisdom and justice in the social sphere, insofar as he’s practically able to do so. He simultaneously accepts, though, that the outcome of his actions is not under his direct control. There’s no guarantee that he’ll succeed in benefiting his fellow citizens, but he does his best anyway. In a sense, the Stoic gets to have his cake and eat it: to retain his emotional detachment while nevertheless taking action in the world. Like Cato’s archer, his goal is to do what’s within his sphere of control to the best of his ability while remaining somewhat aloof from the outcome. Likewise, we can imagine that on taking command of the legions in the north, Marcus might have said to himself something along the lines of “I will quell the Marcomanni and protect Rome, Fate permitting.”
Later, Christians would take to adding D.V. (Deo volente, “God willing”) to the end of their letters, and Muslims likewise say inshallah to this day. There’s a wonderfully clear description of this sentiment in the New Testament:
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”4
Marcus Aurelius could easily have said those words in reference to the Stoic Zeus. They remind us that nothing is certain in life. Nothing is entirely under your control, except your own volition. Always accepting this and preparing yourself in advance to meet both success and failure with equanimity can help you avoid feeling angry, surprised, or frustrated when events don’t turn out as you might have wished. It can also stop you from worrying about things in anticipation of them going wrong. We naturally focus our attention on what’s most important to us. Stoics treat their own judgments and actions as the only thing truly good or bad. That inevitably shifts focus to the present and lessens emotional investment in the past and future. The worried mind is always getting too far ahead of itself; it is always in suspense over the future. The Stoic Sage, by contrast, is grounded in the here and now.
Marcus uses the analogy of a blazing fire to describe the wise man acting with the reserve clause. Imagine a fire so intense that its flames naturally consume everything cast upon them. Likewise, the mind of the Sage, acting with the reserve clause, adapts itself, without hesitation, to whatever befalls him. Whether he meets with success or failure, he makes good use of his experience. Stoics can only be obstructed externally, not internally, as long as they attach the caveat “Fate permitting” to their desires. For instance, when people disagreed with Marcus, he first tried to persuade them to see things from his perspective. However, if they persisted in obstructing what he believed to be a just course of action, he remained calm and transformed the obstacle into an opportunity to exercise some other virtue, such as patience, restraint, or understanding. His equanimity remained intact as long as he never desired what was beyond his grasp, which constitutes one of the foundations of the Stoic remedy for worry and anxiety.5
Indeed, Marcus goes so far as to say that if you don’t act with the reserve clause in mind, then any failure immediately becomes an evil to you or a potential source of distress. By contrast, if you accept that the outcome couldn’t have been other than it was and wasn’t under your direct control, then you should suffer no harm or frustration. In this way, the mind is saved from anxiety and preserved in its natural equanimity, like the sacred sphere described by the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles, “round and true,” touched by neither fire nor steel, tyrant nor public censure.6 The poet Horace also employed this image of the pure sphere when describing the Stoic ideal of a wise man who is master of himself, undaunted by poverty, chains, or death, defying his passions and looking down on positions of power. A man “complete in himself, smooth and round, who prevents extraneous elements clinging to his polished surface, who is such that when Fortune attacks him she maims only herself.”7 Misfortune gains no foothold in his mind because he remains detached from external events, refusing to invest them with any intrinsic value. We could also simply describe this as “adopting a philosophical attitude” toward the outcome of our actions: being resigned to whatever happens and remaining unperturbed come what may. THE PREMEDITATION OF ADVERSITY