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Stoicism

Interesting!

Minor points… We are in fact told that Socrates wrote poems, although these are lost. Marcus did write the Meditations, but it was not…

Interesting! Those are all valid observations, except the one about Socrates never having children. Socrates had three sons and very much like Marcus Aurelius, he was known for having sons who were a disappointment, leading people to debate to what extent a father could be held responsible for how his children grow up. Even wise men can have foolish sons, arguably.

Minor points… We are in fact told that Socrates wrote poems, although these are lost. Marcus did write the Meditations, but it was not intended for publication and was arguably a set of notes originally rather than a book. I agree with the gist of what you say here, though.

Socrates did question the powerful but he didn’t always simply conclude that he knew nothing. He notoriously does often claim to know things, and clearly implies moral knowledge of a sort – hence the term “Socratic irony”. We don’t know whether or not Marcus questioned the powerful. Perhaps he did to some extent although probably not in the way Socrates did.

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