Or, that's what your desire tells you to do, but you know there's more to it than that. You can't eat that food, you're dieting. You can't have sex with that person, you're married. Yet, we as humans insist on incessantly making reasons to defy our conscience. What Marcus Aurelius is saying here is that, at least in anger we are painfully rejecting morality to remedy our anger, but in desire we take pleasure in this rejection, making it much more heinous. What do you think?
"The offences which are committed through desire are more blameable than those which are committed through anger. For he who is excited by anger seems to turn away from reason with a certain pain and unconscious contraction; but he who offends through desire, being overpowered by pleasure, seems to be in a manner more intemperate and more womanish in his offences." - Marcus Aurelius
Comments