Volontà e coerenza. Il senso dell'esistenza secondo Marco Aurelio

In his Meditations Marcus Aurelius insistently returns to the purely Stoic ques- tion of accepting destiny and the role that every human being must play in the world. This contribution focuses on the ‘will’, essential to make this acceptance effective and operational. It is a will resulting from a severe path of self-education and serious train- ing favoured by friends and influential teachers. A will which, within the folds of Marcus Aurelius’ Selbsbetrachtungen, can be qualified as the expression of an emotion (i.e. of a desire) or as the expression of a decision. A will which is at the service of hêgemonikon and is configured as a necessary means to achieve the ‘coherence’ that every human being (not necessarily the sapiens) must set as an objective, once what is ‘up to him’ has been defined.