Glossary
View from above
ἄνωθεν ἐπιθεωρεῖν (anōthen epitheōrein)
The view from above is a modern name for an exercise Marcus Aurelius describes without naming it: imagining oneself raised above the earth and looking down on human affairs. In George Long’s 1862 translation, Meditations IX, 30 opens “Look down from above on the countless herds of men”, and the third rule of XII, 24 begins “if thou shouldst suddenly be raised up above the earth”. The label is not his. The French historian Pierre Hadot gave it currency as “le regard d’en haut”, a spiritual exercise he studied in La Citadelle intérieure (1992); the English phrase spread through translations of his work.
What the height shows is variety and repetition. IX, 30 passes from crowds, voyages, births and deaths to past and future generations and to all who do not know one’s name, and concludes that neither a posthumous name nor reputation is of any value. XII, 24 ends on “sameness of form and shortness of duration”. The exercise corrects a sense of scale, as does Meditations, X, 17, where each thing is a grain of a fig against the whole of substance and the turning of a gimlet against the whole of time.
Marcus credits the image to Plato: Meditations VII, 48 calls it “a fine saying of Plato” that he who discourses about men should look at earthly things as if from some higher place. Long remarks that the saying is not in Plato’s extant writings. In the Meditations the view from above works like memento mori: it takes from fame and possessions the size they borrow from nearness. It is not contempt for people. The height places each person inside the whole of which, in the doctrine of sympatheia, he is a part.
In the texts
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, IX, 30
Look down from above on the countless herds of men and their countless solemnities, and the infinitely varied voyagings in storms and calms, and the differences among those who are born, who live together, and die.
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, XII, 24
Third, if thou shouldst suddenly be raised up above the earth, and shouldst look down on human things, and observe the variety of them how great it is
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, VII, 48
That he who is discoursing about men should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher place
What the term does not mean
- “View from above” is not Marcus’s phrase. It is a modern label, given currency by Pierre Hadot; the Meditations describe the act, “Look down from above”, without making it the name of an exercise.
- It is not the astronauts’ overview effect. These passages know no image of the earth seen from space; the height is imagined, and what it shows is moral: the smallness of fame, the repetition of human affairs.
- The “saying of Plato” in VII, 48 is Marcus’s attribution. Long remarks that it is not in Plato’s extant writings, so quoting it with a reference to a dialogue goes beyond the evidence.
Related terms
- Memento mori — memento mori (latin)
- Sympatheia — συμπάθεια (sympatheia)
- Living according to nature — ὁμολογουμένως τῇ φύσει ζῆν (homologoumenōs tēi physei zēn) / secundum naturam vivere (latin)
Every passage in Stoïque carries its reference — the work and its locator, the author too wherever the room allows — in the app and in its widgets, on the Home Screen and the Lock Screen.