Recommendations
Books Like Meditations
Best books to read after Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Meditations is the private journal of a Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher — two millennia old and still among the most widely read books in philosophy. These 8 books extend into Stoic philosophy, the other Stoic masters, the history of ancient philosophy, and the modern application of Stoic principles to contemporary life.
- 1Buy
Letters from a Stoic
by Seneca
The other great foundational Stoic text — Seneca's 124 letters to his friend Lucilius on how to live, written in the first person with more rhetorical polish and personal warmth than Marcus Aurelius's notes to himself. The essential companion to Meditations.
- 2Buy
Discourses
by Epictetus
The reconstructed teachings of Epictetus, the slave-turned-philosopher who was Marcus Aurelius's primary Stoic influence — the foundational source for the specific Stoic practices that Meditations applies, including the dichotomy of control.
- 3Buy
The Obstacle Is the Way
by Ryan Holiday
The most widely read modern application of Stoic principles — applying the Stoic framework of Meditations and Epictetus to contemporary life through historical examples, and the book most responsible for the current Stoicism revival.
- 4Buy
How to Think Like a Roman Emperor
by Donald Robertson
Cognitive therapist Donald Robertson's account of Marcus Aurelius's life and the Stoic practices in Meditations — the most scholarly and therapeutically oriented modern engagement with the text, connecting Stoicism to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
- 5Buy
A Guide to the Good Life
by William B. Irvine
Philosophy professor William Irvine's accessible introduction to Stoic philosophy and its application to contemporary life — covering negative visualization, the dichotomy of control, and tranquility as the Stoic goal in a clear, systematic way.
- 6Buy
The Republic
by Plato
Plato's account of justice, the ideal state, and the life of the philosopher — the foundational text of Western philosophy that provides the intellectual context for Stoicism and for the philosopher-king ideal that Marcus Aurelius embodied.
- 7Buy
Nicomachean Ethics
by Aristotle
Aristotle's account of eudaimonia (human flourishing) and the virtues — the foundational text of virtue ethics that is in dialogue with Stoicism throughout the ancient world and that provides the philosophical background for understanding what Meditations is arguing.
- 8Buy
Man's Search for Meaning
by Viktor E. Frankl
Frankl's account of finding meaning in unavoidable suffering — written two millennia after Meditations but making essentially the same argument that Marcus Aurelius makes: that we cannot always choose what happens to us, but we can always choose our response, and that response is the source of our dignity and our freedom.
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