Fame (δόξα), honour (τιμή), and above all posthumous fame (ὑστεροφημία) are not a good but an indifferent — and moreover an "empty" (κενόν) one. A thing's value is not increased by praise nor diminished without it; still less does it make sense to order one's life around the opinion of the not-yet-born. The one thing worth effort is one's own act, not another's report of it.

Marcus braces the thesis with several converging arguments:

1. The praisers are no better than the blamed. The chaser of posthumous fame does not see that the admirers to come will be "just such as" the tiresome people of now whom he cannot bear — and "they too are mortal" (08-44).
2. The rememberers will die too. Fame rests on memory, and memory on mortals: those who remember will soon be gone; the "ever-remembered" (τὸ ἀείμνηστον) is "wholly empty" (ὅλον κενόν) (04-19, 04-33).
3. Scale. In the cosmic frame the whole earth is a point, and fame is in a corner of it (08-21); the view from above annuls the claim.
4. No use to the dead. Even eternal remembrance gives nothing to the one honoured: he does not feel it (08-37).

A fine point of school doctrine: for the orthodox Stoics "good repute" (εὐδοξία) is counted among the προηγμένα — the preferred indifferents (TERMadiaphora), what one naturally prefers. Marcus, however, systematically radicalises it to κενόν (empty), drawing it toward the dispreferred. This is his personal emphasis: not "fame is a secondary good" but "fame is nothing."

Stoic axiology: "good repute" among the προηγμένα — DL VII 106; Stob. Ecl. II 79–85 W; the critique of the craving for fame — Epictetus, Ench. 24; Disc. 3.24; 4.6; Seneca, Ep. 79.13–18 (fame is "the shadow of virtue," it follows her but is not the aim), Ep. 102 (on posthumous fame). LS 58 (value and the indifferents). The Platonic background of contempt for reputation — Apology, Crito 44c–48a (not the opinion of the many but of the one who knows). In Marcus the motif is among the most frequent:

• 08-44 — posthumous fame (ὑστεροφημία): the admirers to come are no better than today's tiresome people, and mortal (the principal locus).
• 04-19 — the fame-lover forgets that those who remember him will also soon die.
• 07-06 — the same regress compressed: the much-hymned are given to oblivion, and those who hymned them are long dead.
• 04-33 — the names of the great grow antiquated; "eternal remembrance" is ὅλον κενόν (wholly empty).
• 08-21 — the whole earth is a point, and fame is in a corner of it; the smallness of the claim.
• 07-34 — look at the very judges (whose approval you are chasing).
• 08-53 — the worth of praise is measured by the praiser: why the approval of one who does not please himself and curses himself thrice an hour?
• 09-18 — "go in, into their ruling parts": the judges you fear judge even their own affairs awry — the worth of their approval collapses.
• 09-27 — under blame, "go to their poor souls": their opinion of you is not worth being "pulled about" (σπᾶσθαι) over.
• 09-29 — act "without looking round to see if anyone will notice" (μὴ περιβλέπου εἴ τις εἴσεται): work not for the onlooker.
• 09-30 — the view from above + through time: how many do not know your name, will soon forget it — "neither memory, nor fame, nor anything else is of account."
• 09-34 — "strip their souls bare": what conceit (ὅση οἴησις) — to think they harm by blame or help by praise.
• 07-21 — near too is your forgetting of everything, and everything's forgetting of you.
• 02-17 — posthumous fame is oblivion.
• 06-18 — the contradiction of the fame-lover: they crave the praise of a posterity they would not themselves have honoured.
• 03-10 — the brevity of all remembrance; live only the present.
• 10-08 — the δοξάριον ("scrap of reputation") set beside the motions of the flesh and death, as that over which ὑπέρφρων is stretched; and the proviso not to hanker to be called by these names by others.
• 10-10 — a spider is proud of a fly, another of Sarmatians: pride in the catch reduces to brigandage "if you examine the principles."
• 10-13 — the morning question: will it touch you if what is just is blamed? Those who "snort" in their praise and blame — see what they are like in bed and at table.
• 10-27 — five courts in a row, and two of them his own: Hadrian and Antoninus beside Philip, Alexander, Croesus — "only through others."
• 10-30 — the δοξάριον among the false goods over which you yourself go wrong.
• 10-19 — two frames butted together: first eating and sleeping, then lording it and rebuking "from their height"; the arrogance is set between two servitudes, the past one and the coming one.
• 10-31 — the substitution: on seeing a living man, picture one long dead, and yourself as "one of the Caesars"; "where are they?" — "nowhere, or who knows where"; hence human things are καπνὸς καὶ τὸ μηδέν, smoke and nothing.
• 10-34 — φυλλάρια three times over: little leaves are the children, the ones who acclaim "convincingly," the ones who blame in secret, and "those who will inherit the posthumous fame" (ὑστεροφημία); one name for all three ranks.
• 10-35 — "let everyone praise whatever I do" is set beside "let my children be kept safe" without gradation: both requests are an eye seeking green things.
• 11-14 — a fourfold ἀλλήλων: those who despise one another fawn on one another (ἀρεσκεύονται), and those who want to get above one another lay themselves lower (ὑποκατακλίνονται); not two classes of men but the same men in two movements at once.
• 11-23 — the Socratic saying: τὰ τῶν πολλῶν δόγματα are Λαμίαι, bogeys for children; fear of the opinion of the many is named not a vice but a residue of a child’s optics.
• 11-28 — Socrates in the sheepskin: it is not he who is ashamed but his companions, who "were ashamed and withdrew"; what is tested is not his composure but their ability to stay beside him.
• 11-32 — the Hesiodic line kept ready: they will revile virtue "prating with hard words" (βάζοντες) — abuse as noise rather than as a verdict.
• Beyond the formatted corpus — Med. 9.30 (the view from above on the swarming), 12.27, 12.36. In Book XII — 12-02 (clothes, house and reputation are called περιβολὴ καὶ σκηνή, "wrapping and stage-set"); 12-04 (we stand in awe of our neighbours more than of ourselves: fame examined from the side of the man who wants it). And 12-08 (τί δόξα — fame is set as the fourth τί-question, on a level with pain, pleasure and death). And 12-27 (the ubi sunt in its pure form: ποῦ νῦν πάντα ἐκεῖνα; — καπνὸς καὶ σποδὸς καὶ μῦθος ἢ οὐδὲ μῦθος).

The doctrine is an ethical target served by several practices and doctrines, and it must not be conflated with them:

• The view from above is the optical exercise that yields the conclusion of fame's smallness; the doctrine itself is the conclusion, not the device.
• TERMτιμή is the term "honour/esteem" (the thing itself); the doctrine is the judgment on its value (empty).
• The dichotomy of control is the axis of control: another's opinion is not up to me; here it is added that it is also worthless.
• The memory of death supplies the key argument (the rememberers are mortal, memory is effaced), but aims at accepting one's own death, not at devaluing repute.

The therapeutic move: to strip fame of the status of a good — and so to draw the sting both from vanity (the chase) and from being wounded by blame (cf. 8.44; 4.20 — the emerald is no worse without praise). It is linked to the TERMindifference of externals and to the norm that "the good of the rational being lies in his own action" (06-51).