溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
If Both Rememberer and Remembered Fade, What Is Fame?
If even those who would remember me will one day be gone, for what is the effort to leave a name?
Soon gone is the one who remembers, and soon gone the one remembered.
Aurelius's reflection that "the rememberer too fades" honed the question of whether posthumous fame is worth leaving at all. The Stoics saw fame as a vain thing beyond our control, teaching us to focus not on others' memory but on our own virtue now. The Roman republican tradition and later humanism, by contrast, exalted posthumous fame (gloria) as a rightful motive that leads a life toward the noble — that the wish not to be forgotten makes people great. Is posthumous fame a vain illusion or a force that guides a life? The question still divides Stoic detachment from fame against humanist pride that makes fame life's engine.
In an age brimming with the craving to be remembered and known by more people, Aurelius's question — that even the rememberer fades — asks back the direction of our striving for a name.
An emperor who enjoyed the world's greatest fame engraves that fame's emptiness into himself: soon gone is the one who remembers, and soon gone the one remembered.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
An emperor who enjoyed the world's greatest fame engraves that fame's emptiness into himself: soon gone is the one who remembers, and soon gone the one remembered. When even those who would remember me become dust, where does my name remain? I feel this question shatters the illusion of what we leave. The wish to leave a name for posterity collapses before the fact that posterity too will vanish. Yet he does not despair; he turns direction — from others' memory toward doing what is right now. If not a name, then for what do I live? I stand before that turning too.
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