It’s interesting to speculate what sort of person he was in person. I could see him being kind and emotionally open, but I could equally–and with perhaps more justice–see him as cold and distant and emotionally uninvolved. You can easily accommodate the THOUGHT of loving your neighbors without offering the emotional reality in a visible way. All thoughts are invisible. We can only see the emotions which follow them. And he, like many overly analytical, hiding, souls may have been an emotional Invisible Man.
I have enough of that in me to suspect this. And I will note that what you know about me is only what I write. I could be anyone.
In fact, I am a bit of a voluptuary (without sex, but everything else legal), and patent enthusiast. I get excited easily at times, but other times I am often mistaken for a cop or soldier. This has happened often. I am a mix of many things, which is perhaps why I see many things.
Aurelius’ son Commodus, though, was a disaster. He brought an era to an end. He was a megalomaniac–in a still useful term one does not often see anymore–and you have to wonder if this was perhaps a reaction to his fathers distance and coldness. The smaller you are made to feel, the larger you become when freed to do as you please.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodus
I will stipulate as a principle that all philosophers and psychologists–and indeed writers of all sorts–should be taken with a grain of salt. What if Ted Bundy had been a gifted poet? What if Hitler had IN FACT possessed artistic talent?
Never take things as they seem to be on the outside. Take them inside yourself, and marinate and digest them, and see what perhaps hidden realities emerge. It is also always useful to read the biographies of writers of all sorts, to see how well their reality matched their portrayals of themselves through their ideas and images.
Marx, for example, was a complete asshole in every possible way. He was the grumpy old (and young, and middle aged) man who shouted at everyone who disagreed with the slightest details of his ideas or personal conduct (and held long term grudges), felt entitled to criticize ruthlessly the smallest flaws in others, was emotionally abusive to everyone, lazy, smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a long time most of the time (usually since he hadn’t), and who was controlling of everyone around him. Small wonder his political children are such ugly monstrosities.
Where are the people of good will, living in that world, capable of telling the difference between shit and a rose?