Chapter 3 Duties and Virtue

Above Chap. 1 and Vlastos (1991: Chap. 8) for the Socratic basis of the Stoic view of happiness.

James Wilson as quoted in Richard (1994: 65).

Cicero takes pains to indicate (Off. 1.6; 2.7) that he is not following the Stoics or Panaetius in a servile way or as a mere translator, but in the fashion, it seems, of an Academic philosopher who will select what he judges appropriate. In fact, when he initially mentions Panaetius (Off. 1.7), Cicero faults him for failing to define duty in his work on the subject, and at several points later in Officiis he draws attention to inadequacies in the way Panaetius treated duties. Discussions utilizing Cicero’s correspondence that deal with his dependence on and independence from Panaetius in Officiis are found in MacKendrick (1989: 254–56), Griffin (1991: xix–xxi), and Long (1995a: 219, n.14). Gill (1988: 169–99) has explored an aspect of Cicero’s difference from Panaetius.

Off. 1.9; 2.35; 3.18; Fin. 4.23. Noting the great “renown and influence of Officiis “from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century,” Long draws the interesting and persuasive conclusion that “through Cicero Panaetius might fairly be regarded as the most influential of all Stoic philosophers” (1986: 211).

This is not to say that Cicero knew the Nicomachean Ethics in the form we have it, or if he did have it in this form, knew it to be Aristotle’s; see Fin. 5.11–12, Rawson (1985: 290) and How (1930: 27). Long (1986: 212–13, also 10, 112) has noted the Aristotelian features of Officiis.

The fairly common practice of translating officium as duty is followed here. See Griffin (1991: xlv). Cicero himself directly ties officium to the Greek kathākon (e.g. Att. 417; 420), and this Greek source-term and its use in the Stoic tradition leads some to prefer rendering officium as “proper,” “appropriate,” or simply “human” “function.” However, see Dyck (1997: 3–8). Long makes the case for “function” (1986: 188–89) by observing that Stoics applied kathākon to infants, animals, and plants and that it is hardly right to speak of the duty of such beings. What makes officia duties, he adds, “is the fact that they are functions of a rational being. Nothing in the moral sense obliges a non-rational creature to behave in a certain way. It is therefore best to translate officium by ‘function’ throughout….” Since Cicero’s Officiis is limited to providing guidance for human action, and the term “duty” strongly connotes a moral sense, it seems to be the most effective and sensible English translation for officium in this book. Powell (1995: xvi–xvii) demurs on associating the moral sense with all of the right or appropriate behavior commended in Off. Walsh, in the recent Oxford English translation (2001), renders officiis as “obligations,” in an effort to restore the moral sense that he thinks is diminished or lost in a translation as “duties.” “Note on the Translation,” liv.

Off. 1.8; also 3.14 and Fin. 4.15 and Lévy (1992a: 104–05). Medium officium is here distinguished from perfectum officium, absolute or perfect duty, which is simply the fully right (rectum) in a self-evident sense, meaning, it appears, that no plausible argument (ratio probabilis) needs to be made for it; rather, it is simply unambiguously the right course as apprehended by one possessed of comprehensive knowledge and the proper intention. Such a one is the perfect Wiseman of the Stoic tradition. Though properly seeing the focus of Off. on “mean” duties, Kidd tends to go further than seems warranted in insisting that honestum belongs only to the perfect Wiseman and that “officium is not honestum” (1971: 160–62, nn. 49, 50).

Would such a perfect Wiseman have “duties”? What one would do as a result of that hypothetical comprehensive knowledge and virtue does not seem to have a character, specifically the moral sense, that, it seems, we should expect with duty in this case. Earlier Stoics may have avoided this difficulty. According to Ac. 1.37, Zeno, the Stoic founder, explicitly chose not to use officium (presumably kathākon) to describe the right action of the Wiseman. The traditional Stoic term for this right action, or the simply and fully right, is katorthōma, which Cicero renders as perfectum officium. Mitsis has provided an exceptionally lucid explanation of the Stoic terms kathākon and katorthōma: He is inclined to see the Wiseman marked by katorthōma as yet having duties (1994: 4825 ff., 4830–31 n.46, 4843). This makes sense if the Stoic Wiseman or sage has neither detailed knowledge of what will produce the best results nor omniscience but has comprehensive knowledge in the sense of a firm knowledge of essentials—of the nature of the whole and his place in it. There is disagreement among scholars on the nature of the sage’s knowledge, but there is a general agreement that the formal intention to act rightly is perfect and complete and independent of any assessment of consequences. See Mitsis (1994: 4826), Vander Waerdt (1994a: 274–77), Lévy (1992: 523–25), Frede (1987 :153–54, 170), Long (1986: 130), Bett (1989: 64–65), Kerford (1978:125–36), and Engberg–Pedersen (1986: 182–83). Relevant Stoic texts are presented and explored in Long and Sedley (1987:1:359–68, also 257, 345). See also Striker (1991: 37–40). Officium (kathākon) for humans seems, in Cicero’s usage, usually co-extensive with what came to be called medium officium (Fin. 3.20–25). It seems that in the Stoic tradition, down to Cicero, medium came to be associated with officium because the latter was concerned with bodily and external advantages (for the Stoics, these were indifferent or intermediate [media] things, that is, neither good nor evil); see Fin. 3.58; 4.26; 5.69, and see Rist on medium officium and its relationship to “natural ends” which are “indifferent as to virtue and vice” and Sandbach’s related suggestion (1969: 99, 102 n. 4). Also see Engberg-Pedersen (1986: 179), Irwin (1986: 234–35) and Reesor (1951: 102–110).

Rist (1969: 97 ff.) thinks that Cicero, specifically at Ac. 1.37, has the Stoic teaching wrong or muddled and believes that the Wiseman still has media officia, that, in other words, the Wiseman utilizes plausible argument (probabilis ratio) and is perfected morally but not with respect to certain and comprehensive knowledge. Without attempting here to sort out the complex history of Stoicism with respect to the distinction between kathākon and katorthōma, but strongly suspecting that Rist has portrayed it as clearer and more settled than it was, I find that Cicero consistently seems to take his bearings from there being a difference between these terms. Cicero also regards katorthōma or perfectum honestum as the product of perfect knowledge as well as an entirely proper disposition, an aspect that does not clearly come to the surface in Rist and in some other writings on the Stoic kathākon.

Rist is apparently not interested in whether Cicero’s thinking on officium is consistent and coherent, for he fails to even cite Officiis in his chapter (Chap. 6, 97–111) on kathākon which begins with his criticism of Cicero. In a later chapter (Chap. 10, “The Innovations of Panaetius,” 197), Rist argues that Panaetius is not an orthodox Stoic with respect to kathākon and that Officiis 1.8 does not stem from Panaetius. Those conclusions should, it seems, increase interest in Cicero’s own consistency and coherence, for his understanding of the matter may be the Stoic understanding, or a widely held Stoic one in his time. Mitsis dissents from Rist on this (1994: 4842–43 n. 82). Consider Long (1967: esp. 89–90).

Thus the importance of the concept of the supreme good to moral action, considered in an important way in Chap. 1.

The notion that one might inquire into what is already in some sense known was discussed in Chap. 1. See also Engberg-Pedersen (1986: 178, 182).

Off. 1.5; similarly in Sest. 23. Cicero elaborates on this statement in the paragraph that follows (Off. 1.6), where he makes clear that, opposed to an ethics of calculation, in the form of what later might be either crude or high-toned utilitarianism (in either case, a form of the “hedonistic calculus”), duty for him entails at least some precepts that are settled, stable, and based on nature (officii praecepta firma, stabilia, conjuncta naturae). For examples of such praecepta in the Stoic tradition, see Diogenes Laertius, 59E (in Long and Sedley 1987: vol. 1); see also Rist (1969: 101) and Engberg-Pedersen (1986: 180–81). The slide into a mere ethics of calculation, where convenience or interest is measured, can be averted and the notion of duty saved only by pursuing virtue alone (sola honestatas) or primarily virtue (maxime honestas) as the supreme good. Cicero finds such acceptable understandings of the supreme good only in the Stoic, Academic, and Peripatetic schools. A very similar statement of the argument in Off. 1.4–6 is found in the mouth of the Peripatetic Piso in Fin. 5.21–22. Also see Off. 3.33; Tusc. 5.119–120; Leg. 1.57. Honestas is Cicero’s term for overall virtue, goodness, right, or integrity; Leg. 1. 44–45 and consider Annas (1993: 121 and n. 243); David Londey (1984: 144–45), assessing the difficulties of translating honestas and his choice translation as “moral integrity.” Honestas characterizes the consular philosophers, treated in earlier chapters. An eloquent appreciation of the role of a “primeval, natural sense of justice” that functions as a check on a utilitarian slide of Cicero’s “naturalism” is found in Arkes (1992: esp. 259, 272–74).

Cicero’s use of the terms sua commoda, to describe the operative goal of those who he here thinks have no business teaching duties, accommodates well the various understandings of pleasure (voluptas) and tranquillity (ataraxia/tranquillitas), which are offered to function as the polestar or ultimate good in the Epicurean tradition. The basis of the Epicurean ethic is that individual benefit or convenience—in Cicero’s view always reducible to sensual pleasure (Tusc. 3.41 ff.)—is the supreme good. Cicero’s, and no doubt others’, struggle for a clear understanding of Epicurus and the Epicurean tradition on the nature of the ultimate good is presented primarily in the first two books of Finibus (see especially Fin. 2. 36–37). As indicated earlier (Chap. 1 n. 53), there is a long tradition of protesting that Cicero misrepresents or treats uncharitably the Epicurean teaching. It includes Thomas Jefferson and extends to contemporary scholars. For a more direct extensive consideration of these charges in the light of the texts of Cicero, see Nicgorski (2002). On the reliability of Cicero’s account of Epicureanism in Fin., see Mitsis (1988: 7–8, 73). Overall there is much confidence in Cicero’s account. See Stokes (1995: 145, 150–53, passim), who finds in Fin. “the fullest consecutive account extant” of Epicureanism. He claims that Cicero does not “misrepresent” Epicureanism and believes that is “not yet proved” that Cicero failed to pay careful attention to the extant texts of Epicurus. Similar confidence in Cicero’s account is found in Lévy (1984: 111–17, 1992); Striker (1996: 196–208); Brunschwig (1986: 113–44, esp. 127) and Hossenfelder (1986: 245–63). Hossenfelder finds Cicero overall reliable except in one instance (257).

Not overall supportive of the adequacy and/or fairness of Cicero’s account are Inwood (1990: 143–64); Long (1986) 30; Vander Waerdt (1987: 408). MacKendrick (1989: 146), taking what seems an indefensible position in the light of Cicero’s writings and argument, but a position partly shared by Harris (1961: 17), claims that Cicero was selective in what he chose to use and attack among the writings of Epicurus and that Cicero is not “a safe source for understanding Epicureanism, chiefly because he assumes a viciousness not inherent in the doctrine.” Inwood (144) reveals that the recurrent attraction of Epicureanism likely plays a part in the severe reaction one sometimes find to Cicero’s critique of Epicureanism when he observes that “there is much in Cicero’s treatment of Epicureanism which sympathetic modern students of the school find unfair.”

Among a few contemporary scholars there is a specific sense that exists is an altruism in Epicurus’s teaching on friendship and justice to which Cicero is blind. See Mitsis (1988: 97, 102 n. 7) for some explicit indication of his interpreting Epicurus in a way to find altruism and aspects of a virtue-based justice rather than simply a contractual or instrumental understanding of justice. Qualified support for the interpretive direction of Mitsis is found in Annas (1993: 293, 448), Striker (1988: 177), (1996: 198 ff.), Nussbaum with respect to friendship (1994: 250) and Griffin (1997: 102). Opposing this interpretive direction are Inwood (1990: 157 n. 26); O’Connor (1989: 167, 182); Vander Waerdt (1987: 407 n. 22, 416 n. 56, 420–421). At 405, Vander Waerdt touches on the struggle over this matter within the Epicurean tradition; such differences are explored further by him later (1988: esp. 102–03).

Recall above, Chap. 2 and Cicero’s writing of the need of philosophy to treat the supreme good “with its own proper arguments and promptings.”

Div. 2.5, 7. In the year 46, as Cicero is starting into that major set of philosophical writings of his last years, he writes (Fam. 177.5) urging Varro to join him in efforts toward strengthening the political community (ad aedificandam rempublicam), by studies and writings in the fashion of the most learned men of earlier times.

Hunt (1954: 187) and Tanner (1972: 109 ff). Also, consider the function of Off. for Arkes (1992). See Kries’s interpretation of Off. as intended for two distinct audiences (2003: 377 ff.).

See epigraph from Leg. above, p. l; also, Off. 3.11. After noting these passages, Off. 3.34 can be seen as indicating that Panaetius is perceived to be following Socrates in respect to his view of the person who separates the useful from the just. Did Panaetius and/or other later Stoics renew this formulation of the essential moral problem, and was Cicero attracted to it because it engaged the Epicurean agenda and Epicureanism was then attracting a wide following? See Kries (2003) on the rhetorical intent of Officiis. For the centrality of utility to Epicurean ethics, see Long and Sedley (1987: 1:129–35) and Fin. 1. passim. Also, the very structure of earlier Stoic ethical thought strongly suggests a development that would pose the common moral problem in terms of the right and the useful, given the role in the Stoic tradition of the distinction between the right and intermediate or indifferent (media) things, bodily and external advantages (see n.10 above) to which humans are drawn by nature. The link is apparent in Cicero’s concept of utilitas being at times expressed as vitae commoditates (Off. 1.9, n.16 above) or commoda vitae(Off. 2.9), the very terminology attributed to the Stoics when they set right off against advantages (commoda, Leg. 1.55; Nat. D.1.16; Tusc. 5.120). Griffin brought this relationship to my attention in her suggestive comments (1991: xxxvi). For the struggle in the Stoic tradition to distinguish advantages from the right and yet tie them with the good, see Long (1986: 195 ff., esp. 203); also, Long and Sedley (1987: vol. 1: 345–46); Annas (1993: 397, 404–05). Consider Kries (2003: 384 ff.). This aspect of Stoicism enters upon the concerns of this chapter later in the segment on “assessing the philosophical schools.”

1253^a10–15, Benjamin Jowett, trans.

Inv.2.53–55; 156 ff.; De Or. 2.334; Part. Or. 89 f.

Everything we know about Cicero’s thought overall and the very structure and dramatic detail of Finibus make it reasonable to see Piso in this text as his spokesman in most, though not necessarily all, respects. Cicero indicates in other works his approval of a developmental perspective in attaining virtue, both personal (e.g. Leg. 1.60) and communal (e.g. Rep. 2). Piso is portrayed as a spokesman for the Old Academy, a type of Peripatetic, a Stoicizing follower of Antiochus, whom Cicero admires much and with whom he appears to agree on much. In the Officiis (1.2), as well as elsewhere, Cicero stresses the essential agreement between the Peripatetics and the Stoics. Here in Finibus, Piso has the last word, save for a guarded and limited demurrer by Cicero; Piso’s position is thus treated markedly differently from earlier Epicurean and Stoic spokesmen whom Cicero rebuts.

Prima commendatio naturae is the phrase used at Fin. 5.40, 46.

Amic. 18: the perspective of the perfect Wiseman is criticized and that in usu vitaque commune is commended.

Though this maxim and in good part a similar one, secundum naturam vivere, first appears in Officiis at 3.13, it describes well his turn to nature at Off. 1.11 ff. in search of the basis of right. See also Fin. 1.11; 5.17,44. Fin. 5.20–22 shows Cicero claiming through Piso that the idea of following nature was among those matters of moral philosophy which the Stoics took from the Peripatetics and earlier Academics. Striker (1991: 12) provides a valuable and insight-filled exploration of this theme and its problems in the Stoic tradition. Her reconstruction of the basis for the Stoic view that the human end is to follow nature leads her to explicate a developmental conception of grasping nature’s ways that seems clearly to have influenced Cicero’s own thinking and is well summarized in her statement “that the Stoics held the end to be what one should desire, not what every one of us does desire. The Stoic conception of the end does not arise as a natural continuation of one’s concern for self-preservation, but rather as a result of one’s reflection upon the way nature has arranged human behavior in the context of an admirable cosmic order.” Long, earlier (1967: 59–90), had traced the discussion in the Stoic school of the concept of “living in accord with nature.” See also 59B, 61 in Long and Sedley (1997: 1: 398).

Striker’s explication of a developmental conception of coming to know the self fully in the context of the whole is a way of describing a progressive realization of the Stoic concept of oikeiōsis, or of realization of how one is “situated.” This concept, given varying expressions in the Stoic school and other schools, has clearly informed the philosophy of Cicero as it comes to light in this section of this chapter. See Powell (1990: 88). For some significant treatments of this concept: Engberg-Pedersen, (1986) and his subsequent book (1990); Wright (1995: 164–65); Kidd (1971: 164–67); Mitsis, drawing on Kidd, (1994: 4828); Schofield (1991: Chap. 3) and (1995a: 195 ff.); Striker, on the role of Antiochus in developing oikeiōsis, (1986: 200–01 n.16); Vander Waerdt (1988: 90–91, 95–106) on the limited admission of oikeiōsis to the Epicurean tradition.

Inv. 2.65 ff., 160–61; Leg. 1.19.

Chrysippus (c.281–208), a leading Stoic and the most noted head of the school after Zeno, the founder, captures the experiential ground of the Stoic formulations in saying “What am I to begin from, and what am I to take as the foundation of proper function [duty] and the material of virtue if I pass over nature and what accords with nature.” Reported by Plutarch, 59A in Long and Sedley (1987: vol. 1: 359).

Doubts that the early Stoics ever used the expression “natural law” or had much of a natural law theory are raised along with speculation that Cicero “may be the legitimate father of the natural law theory” in Fortin (1978: 182–83). Fortin claims that Cicero’s appeal to the concept of natural law was “for political rather than theoretically valid reasons” (186); he holds that if this were not so, Cicero would be involved in “a substantial deviation from the teaching of his Greek masters” (183). Fortin’s doubts about the Stoic use of natural law are based on the work of Koester (1968: 521–41). Koester notes (522) “very little evidence for the occurrence of the term ‘law of nature’ (nomos phuseōs) in classical Greek texts” and specifically concludes that the term natural law is (529) “almost totally absent from Stoic writings” and that “all evidence for the concept ‘natural law’ in Stoicism comes from Cicero or from Philo.” Philo of Alexandria (30 B.C–45 A.D.) is claimed as (540) “most probably…the creator” of the “theory of natural law.” In Philo’s work, which is marked by a frequent use of nomos phuseōs, Koester finds (534) that “the fundamental Greek antithesis of law and nature is overcome…by virtue of the Jewish belief in the universality of the Law of God.” As to explaining Cicero’s use of natural law, it is for Koester (540) at the end a “still unanswered problem,” and his best thought on a solution is that this use “developed independently by a productive misunderstanding and mistranslation of a Greek Stoic concept.” The nature of the mistranslation was explained earlier (529), when he concluded from a review of likely Greek Stoic sources, “[W]hat actually corresponds to the Latin lex in the term lex naturalis is not the Greek term nomos, but the Greek logos.” Horsley (1978) takes up the challenge of Koester’s “unanswered problem” and more. He convincingly insists (36) that “the parallel passages on the law of nature in Philo and Cicero derive ultimately from a Stoic tradition on universal law and right reason…But this Stoic tradition had been reinterpreted by a revived and eclectic Platonism upon which both Cicero and Philo drew,” and “the key figure in the Platonic revival and the thinker upon whom Cicero and (probably) Philo depend was Antiochus….” Horsley finds (57) Cicero on natural law, like Philo and presumably Antiochus, moving away from “the fatalism of Stoic materialism and determinism” and seeing “the true, universal reason or law as the mind of the divine Creator and Lawgiver—a divine mind which transcended the sense-perceptible creation and worldly affairs….”

Horsley’s argument for Stoic elements in Cicero’s concept of the law of nature properly drew attention to (39 f.) the sense of being bound by true or right reason and of being in one community as pervasive features of Stoicism before Cicero (see also, Long and Sedley (1987: vol 1: 435). The Stoic provenance, if not direct parentage, of the concept of natural law and Cicero’s use of it is defended and carefully explored in Schofield (1991: esp. 70–73, 102–03). Schofield not only calls attention to the Stoic use of a concept of basic, fundamental, or natural law to express right reason but also emphasizes the authoritative prescriptiveness of this law and its focus on the social relation of gods and men. See also (1995a: 205 ff). Other recent arguments for this traditional view of a Stoic provenance are found in Vander Waerdt (1991: 195–97, 1994a, 1994b). Here, Vander Waerdt is interested in showing how Cicero, largely following Antiochus, used the earlier Stoic tradition to forge his own position. Mitsis (1994: 4843 and passim) sees more continuity between the early Stoa and Cicero in this matter and less of an Antiochean influence. Also see Erskine (1990: 16, n. 13, pp. 119, 194), and Striker (1987: 80 ff). Ferrary (1995) emphasizes the unorthodox Stoic aspects of Cicero’s understanding of natural law. Although the Stoic parentage of Cicero’s concept need not, in my view, preclude his thinking on this topic being fundamentally informed by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (for much depends on how one understands the Stoic elements entailed in his concept of natural law), Striker, it must be noted, is one who argues that there is a significant difference between the natural law concept of the Stoics and Cicero and natural justice in Plato and Aristotle. Mitsis (4813 n. 1) essentially supports Striker in this, while developing an argument on the consistency of Cicero’s teaching with the early Stoa’s appropriation of Socrates (4815 ff.). On the “non-rhetorical” genuineness of Cicero’s embrace of a Stoic appeal to nature, see Garsten (2009: 143–50, 155) on the probabilistic status of natural law for Cicero.

See Mitsis (1994: 4841–43, n. 81, also, 4828) on the relationship of duties to natural law in the Stoic tradition.

On the rhetorical mode, see Chap. 2, and on the adequacy of his treatment of the Epicureans, n. 19 in this chapter.

Fin. 2.51. Cicero is aware that Epicurus and the Epicureans have accommodated the traditional language of the virtues. He thinks that this makes Epicureanism all the more appealing (Fin. 2.44–55). Epicurus once suggested that the virtues were a necessary means to pleasure, and this observation can surely suggest that they are so implicated with the end or goal of the truly faithful Epicurean that they might appear to be the end itself (Fin. 1.25, 45–46; 2.73; 5.74, 93; Tusc. 3. 48–49; 5.93 ff.; Fam. 216.2–3; Off. 3.118; Lévy [1992: 424 ff.]). Both Epicurus and Cicero, however, seem clear that pleasure is one thing and virtue is another, and Cicero describes Epicurus’s view in a way that would seem acceptable to Epicurus, namely that the virtues are habitual practices instrumental to pleasure.

These practices or Epicurean virtues are developed from what I would call the calculative injunction, which is more commonly referred to as “the hedonistic calculus.” In Epicurean ethics, this calculative injunction is second only in importance to the supreme end itself: pleasure. Near the end of the Tusculans, Cicero gives expression to this injunction: the Epicurean “wise man will use a kind of balancing (compensatio—literally balancing of account books—we would say ‘looking to the bottom line’) so that he will flee pleasure if it is likely to bring greater pain, and he will embrace pain if such promises greater pleasure….”(Tusc. 5.95). One can see in the calculative injunction an opening to forms of social contract thinking, to one kind of basis for patriotism and, in sum, to all actions, habits, and institutions that might take their bearings chiefly from the dominant way of understanding “self-interest rightly understood,” namely maximizing pleasure in the long run.

It is important to notice Cicero’s recognition of the virtuous—even ascetically virtuous—way of life of Epicurus as well as of the overall laudable, decent lives of his own Epicurean acquaintances and friends such as Atticus. It is important, because a common error is to suppose that the philosophical hedonism that is Epicureanism is one and the same with crass or vulgar hedonism which expresses itself in excessive and usually self-destructive indulgence in one or another or various sensual pleasures. It seems that at least some of those who think that Cicero “gets Epicurus wrong” believe that Cicero committed this common error. However, this is patently not the case, though Cicero has an argument of another kind, considered later in this chapter, that connects vulgar hedonism to philosophical hedonism.

Epicurus, writes Cicero, was a “good” and “kindly” and “humane” man (bonus et comis et humanus), a kind and attentive friend, who expressed many noble opinions. His virtue, according to Cicero, was even severe, judged against the moderate indulgence in sense pleasures custom generally allows. He never intended licentiousness in his teachings. The issue is not, insists Cicero repeatedly, his character but a deficiency in intellect with a resulting unsoundness in the doctrine he shaped (e.g. Fin. 2.80; Tusc. 3.46; 5.26–31). In a similar assessment, Cicero confesses in a letter (To Memmius, June or July, 51, Fam. 63.2) to have lost respect for Phaedrus, the Epicurean teacher of his youth, as a philosopher but to continue to hold him as “a good, amiable, and dutiful man” (bonus et suavis et officiosus) (also, Fam. 216.2–3). The doctrine is not worthy of philosophy; it is the mask of philosophy, plebian philosophy at best. The doctrine does not warrant the kind of life that was exemplified by Epicurus and certain others of the Epicurean persuasion. On Epicurus himself as philosopher, Tusc. 5.73; Fin. 1.26. On popular Epicureanism of Cicero’s time, Ac. 1.5; Tusc. 4.6–7; Nicgorski (2002: n. 44). Cicero actually uses the phrase and concept of plebian philosophy in reference to thinkers who deny the Socratic/Platonic claims for the immortality of the soul. Tusc. 1.55; Sen. 85.

More on the interaction of inclination and reason is found at Off. 3.14–16; Tusc. 3.2–3; Fin. 2. 36–37, 44–45; 3.23; 4.47. Language apparently develops from a similar interaction (Rep. 3.3).

Off. 1.14. Also, Tusc. 3.3; 5.104–05.

Perhaps one has to concede, in Erskine’s phrase, “a degree of rigidity” in Cicero’s natural law (1990:16 n.13) insofar as some call “rigidity” any formulable guidance or real and useful content to the way of nature. Nature’s way is found by Cicero to involve certain constant aspects that give rise to stable precepts; see n.18 above. Inv. 2.174 provides an example of what “seems” to Cicero a certain and permanent duty: to tend to personal and civic survival and safety but never to do so without attention to right (honestas). I do not think Cicero’s texts allow an interpretation that he conceives of natural law as a “rigid and inflexible” detailed moral code; he does endeavor, primarily in Officiis, to determine specific duties that are both grounded in nature and necessarily formulated in the light of the circumstances of his time. Thus Watson (1971: 234) has been properly concerned that the ordinary understanding of law does not capture Cicero’s understanding of natural law. He writes, “Lex, then, is not lex in any restricted law sense in the lex naturae contexts of Cicero. The whole phrase is often better translated rationality or morality. It directs man’s response to his total environment, it is the guide of his reason.” Inwood (1987: 98) is inclined to see in Cicero more of the rigidity that is customarily associated with the term “law.” If Cicero understands natural law as I have suggested here, there would be less reason for those who see him as a genuine Socratic, endeavoring to distance him from the natural law formulations in his writings. See Nicgorski, (2012: 270–73). Also, Fott (2008: 158–60); however, consider Strauss writing “One may therefore call the rules circumscribing the general character of the good life ‘the natural law’” (1953: 127).

Association of this intelligence with god is explicit at Rep. 3.33, Leg. 1.21–23; 2.8–10; Fin. 5.11. Fortin properly observes (1978: 180) that the concept of natural law is “fully intelligible only within the context of divine revelation.” In saying “properly,” I pay due attention to the phrase “fully intelligible,” and think that it is a mistake to deny or underestimate the significant continuity between Stoic sources, Cicero’s usage and later Judeo–Christian uses of the concept of natural law. Horsley seems on the mark in his appreciation (1978: 58–59) for the significance and character of the “transformation of the Stoic concept of natural law” represented in the texts of Cicero and Philo. He concludes by observing that “transformed by connection with the Middle-Platonic idea of a transcendent God who was the Lawgiver as well as the Father and Maker of the world, the concept of natural law could be harmonized with the biblical ideas of divine creation and divine commandment as well as with belief in the transcendent Word of God.” Schofield (1991: 65,103 and passim) has brought forward, with reliance on Cicero, the role of a “metaphysical theory of providence,” meaning that the universe is created and provided for humankind, in the early Stoic tradition. At the very end of the book, Schofield notes that the idea of natural law comes to be “put to work in social ethics in contexts which make no appeal to the divine city or to a metaphysical theory of providence. In short, the stage is set for jus naturale as it appears in Cicero’s de officiis and the Digest [Justinian] and in Grotius, Pufendorf and beyond.” As to Cicero, this amounts to a suggestion that appeals to a divine mind and some sense of a creator disappear in his last work, Officiis. There is a degree of truth in this suggestion, but there are two caveats which need recording on this matter: Though Schofield’s point about jus naturale concerns the later, more strictly secularized idea of the law of nature, the actual phrase jus naturale is not employed in the Officiis. More importantly, there is a passage which can potentially mediate between fuller metaphysical elaborations of the idea of natural law and Cicero’s use in Officiis. At Off. 3.23, Cicero writes of ipsa naturae ratio quae est lex divina et humana. Also see Benardete (1987: esp. 312) as well as Caspar (2010: passim) regarding the descriptions of natural law in Leg. and the related role of piety and religion in political society.

We must depend, says Cicero, on “a sketch and semblance of true law and genuine justice” (veri juris germanaeque justitiae…umbra et imaginibus utimur), Off. 3.69. Supreme law (summa lex), which is the divine mind, is known only in that perfected reason of the Wiseman; Leg. 2.11.

Leg.1.18–19; 2.8. Nature is literally the source (fons) from which the mind draws in making judgments of the right; Leg. 1.16; Off. 3.71–72; Fin. 5. 17–18 (Piso speaking). See Caecin. 65, where Cicero acknowledges a distinction between equity (aequum et bonum) and the letter of the positive law. Off. 3.67–69 on positive or civil law being unable to reach to every wrong or to secure every good. Mitsis (1994: 4835–37) discusses the Stoic tradition’s use of moral rules but claims that one does not find exceptionless rules. J. Atkins (2013: Chap. 5) affirms the critical importance of natural law to Cicero’s thought while noting his “skeptical fingerprints” in approaching it.

Rep.3.33; the passage actually constitutes a fragment found in Lactantius and is not part of the partial manuscript of the Rep. we now have and which was first recovered in the early nineteenth century. See the discussion of this passage and its likely sources in Ferrary (1974). Ferrary (1995: 66–67) sees in the passage a “Christian reinterpretation” of Cicero’s understanding of natural law.

Cicero describes the idea of natural law or law of nature in a variety of terms besides vera lex and suprema lex, for example, communis lex naturae (Rep. 1.27), jus naturale (Rep. 3.13), naturae jus (Inv. 2.65, 161), naturae lex (Off. 3.27, 69), naturalis lex (Nat. D.1.36), universum jus (Leg. 1.14 and 17), sempiterna lex (Leg. 2.10). He does not appear to intend a distinction in meaning in his alternate uses of lex and jus; nor does it seem, overall, that the difference between these two terms can be given significance by considering the personae and dramatic contexts of their various uses. Philus, making the Carneadean attack on justice, is the speaker of jus naturale at Rep. 3.13. Law of nature, here, is in the universalist, determinist sense that appears in later Roman law and that comes widely to characterize modernity.

He also uses the term jus gentium, law of nations or all peoples, in ways that make it appear the equivalent of the natural law (Off. 3.23, 69; Har. Resp. 32); however, these passages when read along with his usage of the phrase at Rep. 1.2 seem to indicate that already in Cicero we find jus gentium used not simply as an equivalent of natural law but specifically as a referent to that portion of natural law generally if not universally actually in effect between and among the peoples of the world (Q. Rosc. 143; J. Atkins (2013: 220, 224). It appears that already in Cicero, who may have initiated the use of the phrase jus gentium, one finds “the ambivalent nature of jus gentium” which M. Zuckert discerned in prominent later Roman jurists (1989: 78, 76). Fortin has offered an interpretation of the meaning and significance of Cicero’s jus gentium (1996) and (1996a: 143–44, 187). For an interesting and persuasive argument that jus gentium is best translated as natural or “universal law” rather than “law of nations” or “law of peoples,” and that it develops within Roman law rather than from any “conscious search for uniformities in the laws of Rome and her neighbours,” see Lee (1954: 35, n. 89 and p. 37). At Tusc. 1.30, Cicero uses lex naturae in the sense of that on which the nations (gentes) invariably agree.

Here I am paraphrasing my own quite untraditional translation of neque est quaerendus explanator aut interpres eius alius. Other English translations interpret the passage as saying that natural law requires no interpreter other than oneself (Keyes, 1928, and Rudd, 1998) or that natural law requires no expert interpreter as Sextus Aelius, a legendary legal scholar who lived a century before Cicero, (Sabine/Smith, 1929, Zetzel, 1999, and Fott, 2014). My translation is “other than reason,” and it seems justified in terms of the context both of the passage and of Cicero’s thought as a whole. This translation is consistent with the evidence that Cicero does affirm human equality in terms of a minimal, humanity-defining level of rational potential yet says that the actual attainment of virtue depends on having the proper guide (Leg.1.28–30). This also seems consistent with Laelius’s fragmentary remarks which follow in Rep.3, defending a just inequality in human relations and institutions.

Cicero in his own name points to such a program in Leg. 1.58–62 and Tusc. 5.70 ff.; 1.64.

Off. 3.15–16, 76; Tusc. 2.16, 58; 3. 2. Horowitz (1998) explores this metaphor of the gift of the seeds in relation to the idea of natural law in her first chapter.

Gwynn (1926: 74) has described Philo, Cicero’s teacher in the tradition of Academic skepticism, as an “open skeptic in his metaphysical teaching” who “based whatever certitude he admitted on the testimony of moral conscience.” On Cicero’s role in Augustine’s development of “his uniquely Christian doctrine of conscience,” see Fortin (1996b: 67–68, 71).

Cicero’s absorption of the virtue of courage in magnanimity is more fully explored in Fetter and Nicgorski (2008).

Inv. 2.159 (Virtus est animi habitus naturae modo atque rationi consentaneus). At Leg. 1.25, Cicero writes of virtue as nothing other than nature perfected and brought to its peak (perfecta et ad summam perducta natura). That the test of possessing a virtue is actions (Rep. 1.2), rather than thought or talk about virtue, is, of course, wholly consistent with these definitions.

Fin.2.37; Amic. 18, 28.

Rightly taking the Officiis as not “a weakening of the early Stoic distinction between ‘perfect’ and ‘intermediate’ [duties or proper functions],” and seeing the virtues as “dispositions to perform” such duties “perfectly,” Long and Sedley (1987: vol. 1: 368) conclude that “it is legitimate to analyze ‘proper functions’ [duties] both ascendingly, by reference to the individual’s evolving rationality…, and descendingly, by reference to the virtues which are their ultimate fulfillment and justification….” The latter, they claim, is the way of Panaetius, which they apparently find in the Officiis. In my interpretation, here, of Cicero’s overall thought on the virtues as well as their specific role in Officiis, they have a role in the “ascent” to full rationality, and they often appear in this function as qualities of exemplars or traditional heroes, who are not necessarily “perfectly” virtuous. Philosophy might then develop or perfect the virtues (Tusc. 2. 10–11).

Leg. 1.17–19; 2. 13: law as the way of nature is made to precede justice in the sense that it is the source for justice and the other virtues. Virtues, then, can be seen as expressions of the natural law; so Cicero writes of lex fortitudinis at Leg. 2.10.

Off. 2.35; Fin. 5.67; Tusc. 2.32–33. The unity of the virtues appears to have been a key Stoic teaching, see Long and Sedley 1987: vol. 1: 377–80, 384. Eloquence joined to the other virtues makes for a perfect orator. See De Or. 1.83 and Gorman (2005: 153–54).

Off. 1.93–94,100; Hortensius (Grilli 1962: fr.59a, p.35 where non deceat and non oporteat are ways of speaking of the lack of honestum; Tusc. 2.46.

Cicero, at times, uses verecundia as a substitute for or in pleonasm with temperantia. Schofield (2012: esp. 53 ff.) examines closely the two terms, notably as used in Officiis, and finds the fourth virtue being reoriented to verecundia.

Off. 1.148; 2.15; Rep. 5.6; Amic. 82. Note the consideration earlier in this chapter on the expectation of beauty, consistency, and regularity in human matters. Overall, pudor appears to be used as synonymous with verecundia as translated here (note especially Fin. 4.18). Both pudor and verecundia, as well as honestas, to which they give rise, entail for Cicero sensitivity to societal norms and the opinion of the good but are not simply socially induced and socially dependent. See Arkes (1992: esp. 252.) Brunt (1986: 16 and n.14) cautiously, to be sure, suggests otherwise with respect to verecundia and honestas.

Leg. 1.32; Fin. 2.28; Fin. 5.61–63. This might help explain why, according to Cicero, Epicureans live better than their theories and Academics live, it might be said, better than their queries.

Off. 1.11 ff.; 2.18; Fin. 4.18.

Off. 2.1; also a version of this that Piso provides at Fin. 5.69.

The Stoics are seen by Cicero as connecting duty as officium with utility but removing it from the realm of right or morality; see Ac. 1.37; Fin. 3.37, 58.

Fin. 4.26–27. Late in 45 B.C., Cassius, having converted to Epicureanism, writes to Cicero that it is very hard to convince people that virtue and the good are to be sought simply for their own sake (Fam. 216.2–3). Perhaps this is an opening to Cicero’s state of mind before he begins work on Off. Utility in the ordinary sense, as distinct from right, is acknowledged by Cicero at Leg. 1.44. In this sense too, it masks itself behind the common appeal of pleasure, Fin. 2. 44–45. At Fin. 2. 78–79, utility in this ordinary sense is set in tension with genuine friendship.

While properly seeing Officiis as an effort to reintegrate honestum and utile, Zerba (2012: 153 f., 161, 199, 201) uses the language of “downgrading” honestum and, like Colish earlier, sees Cicero as collapsing honestum into utile. Colish (1978: 86–89), in her attempt to work out the relationship between honestum and utile in Cicero, goes too far in concluding that Cicero makes utile “the norm of honestum,” though she is right to see Cicero elevating utile and giving it ethical weight of its own. See Barlow’s persuasive detailed response (1999: 629 ff., esp. 639–40) to this aspect of Colish’s interpretation of Off. Long (1995a: 217) perceptively reads Off. as Cicero’s attempt “to reintegrate” the utile and the honestum. Dyck (1997: 492) writes perceptively of Cicero’s effort here to “reform the content of utile.” See Remer (2009: 2, 15 and 21), where he observes that Cicero’s “intermingling of the ethical and the useful” reflects “the fullness of our humanity.”

Marrou (1956: 238) describes the traditional Roman education that Cicero inherited as marked by a moral training that could not be separated “from real life and its responsibilities.” A fragment from Aetius (26A) in Long and Sedley (1987: vol. 1: 158) indicates that in Cicero’s time, if not before, this high sense of “utility” was employed in Stoic circles.

Leg. 1.42–43; Off. 2.42. At Off. 3.99 Cicero writes of the Roman hero Regulus being able to distinguish the appearance of utility (utilitatis species) from the real thing. Cicero overall approves the Stoic view, expressed by Cato (Fin. 3.70), that a stress on utility can undermine friendship and justice. Though aware of the role of the “virtues” for the Epicureans, Cicero appears to think that the hedonistic calculus undermines rather than supports the virtues.

The following passages concerning the basis for justice and society show Cicero’s tendency to view the virtues as “needs”: Off. 1.54 ff., 158; Rep. 1.39–41; Hortensius (Grilli 1962: fr.110, p.51). The role of the pursuit of glory in all of this is considered in the final chapter of this book.

Note Att. 425, where Cicero specifically endorses the use of officium with respect to political responsibilities. See Lévy (1962: 523). The degree to which Cicero sees political life in terms of the right and the useful is revealed in the definition (Rep. 1. 39) of the political community (res publica) as formed “by agreement in right and by common advantage” (juris consensu et utilitatis communione). When at Rep. 3.19–23, Philus in an Academic role is made to argue against justice being based on nature, he does it chiefly by showing that what rulers claim to be just is in fact simply what is useful or advantageous for them. See Cicero’s eloquent praise of the positive law in terms of utility, Caecin. 70 ff. That the Stoic tradition’s use of officium extended to politics, see Vander Waerdt (1991: 186). Schofield claims (1991: 71) that reason, natural law, and, hence, duties in the Stoic tradition provide “dictates” that “are principally social or communal norms.” This accords with Cicero’s emphasis in Off., though Cicero does say (Off. 1.4), and we have reason to believe that the Stoics in general also held, that duties are not exclusively social and other-directed.

At Off. 1.20, justice is said to consist in not harming another unless provoked and in using common or public things for the common good and private things for one’s own good. These are clearly ordinary terms of understanding, not the Socratic understanding which insists that one never harm even when harmed or that the useful and just are one and the same. Cicero moves from this ordinary horizon and shortly (Off. 1.22) is found saying that each of us and all of the earth’s goods come into being for the common good (communes utilitates). At Inv. 2.160, he had provided a definition of justice more directly in Socratic/Platonic terms: Justice is “a disposition of the soul that, while protecting the common good, gives to each what is deserved” (habitus animi communi utilitate conservata suam cuique tribuens dignitatem).

Cicero’s apparent lifetime vacillation and struggle between the two ways of life is thoroughly explored in Lévy (2012).

Off. 1.153; 3. 4; Rep. 6.1–20; Tusc. 1.44–45, 74–76; 5.66, 105, 111, 115; Fin. 4.18; 5.11 (here Cicero shows a clear comprehension that the Peripatetics regarded the life of inquiry and contemplation as the best human life, as possessing the highest virtue).

Above, 3.

Off. 1.153–159; 2.9; 3.11; Rep. 1.39; Leg. 1.33, 43 ff.; Inv. 2.173–75; Fin. 4.24–26. Necessity as a norm of utility, for Cicero, is not a necessity that is mechanically determinative but is always necessity in terms of an end. At Off. 1.56, Cicero notes that humans admire justice and generosity most among the various forms of virtue. In these social virtues, common utility is presumably most evident.

Tusc. 1.1–6; 4.5; Fin. 4.24–26; De Or. 1.197 and 3.137 (Crassus speaking).

Off. 1.95; 3.16, 77; Rep. 3.4–6; Tusc. 1.89 ff.: De Or. 3.77–80 (Crassus speaking); Fin. 5.80–81; Amic. 18–19 (Laelius speaking).

Off. 1.66, 19, 28, 69–73, 92, 153–60; Rep. 1.1–3,8–11; De Or. 1.1–4, 3.64; Tusc. 5.72; Ac. 2.6; Sen. 11. Nederman has properly emphasized that the peak of “republican virtue” for Cicero is statesmanship and not military command, though my analysis here leaves me uneasy with Nederman’s statement: “[T]he use of physical force may on occasion remain a necessity for civilized human beings, but it can never really be a virtue, according to Cicero” (2000: 17–29, esp. 22).

Rep. 1.19–20; Fin. 2.46; 4.12; Ac. 2.6,127; Hortensius (Grilli 1962: frs.55–56,106–110, pp. 32–33, 49–51). Fott’s interesting commentary (2014: 9) on the Dream of Scipio brings out the claims for priority of the life of political leadership and that of contemplative philosophy.

Cited by Seneca, De Otio. 3.2. As translated here by Basore (1935: in Moral Essays 2:185). Fowler (1989: 127 ff.) discusses this statement of Epicurus.

Long has written about a Stoic practice, as early as Zeno, to assimilate to and identify with traditional wisdom (1980: 164–65).

Rawson (1974: 306), (1985: ix), Habicht (1990: 92, 121–22 n. 29) and Nicgorski (2012: 252 ff).

“Perhaps” (forsitan) the superb genius devoted to learning should be allowed freedom from the responsibility of political leadership” (Off. 1.69–71); the larger context of this same passage makes sense out of Cicero’s friendly and clearly limited tolerance (minime reprehendenda ratio) of the principled withdrawal from politics by his close friend Atticus (Att. 17). At Off. 1.155–56 and Rep. 1.12, Cicero, with Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle in mind, notes that such outstanding men of genius have often come to serve the political community by their writings and through those whom they have educated. See also Off. 1.28; Fam. 177.5. It is important to note that it is not the exception but the rule which requires attention to one’s own specific nature in choosing a career (Off. 1.110); thus one must be suitably talented even to make applicable to oneself the rule that public service is a duty prior to philosophic inquiry and contemplation.

Leg. 1.32; Div. 2.4; Tusc. 2.28.

See above, 100-01.

Rep. 1.31–32; De Or. 3.226; Div. 1.4–7.

Through philosophical writings Cicero understood himself to be exercising a form of public leadership; according to Plutarch (1960: 172 [40.1]), his work in philosophy gave him great power even as the normal channels of political leadership closed to him.

There has been consideration earlier in this chapter regarding the fairness and accuracy of Cicero’s understanding of the “political stance” of the Epicureans. Overall, Cicero’s argument in this respect against the Epicureans falls under the form of via negativa that Cotta, the Academic spokesman, states in Nat. D. (1.60, 57): “nearly in all matters but especially in natural philosophy I would have argued more readily what is false than what is true” (omnibus fere in rebus sed maxime in physicis quid non sit citius quam quid sit dixerim). That the Epicureans can be treated first in Nat. D. and Fin. because they are the easiest to dismiss, most manifestly wrong. Consider that the three separate dialogues that make up Fin. are not in chronological order by dramatic dates; rather, they are ordered by Cicero in accord with his philosophical and rhetorical purposes.

De Or. 3.63–64; see Garsten’s comment on this passage (2009: 243–44, n. 21), where the Epicurean doctrine about retreat from politics is seen to undermine their very desire for tranquility; also, Rep. 1.1; Tusc. 2.27–28; 3.50–51; Fin. 1.23,71; 2.73 ff., 85,117–18; 3.40; Fam. 362.4. Cicero understands well the attraction of withdrawal from active politics. See Gildenhard (2007: 67) and Lévy (2012). Caspar (2010: 81) observes: “The Epicureans and the Skeptics must somehow reflect something permanent about human nature that is nevertheless unhealthy for sound politics, at least at the beginning of a regime when it is most politically vulnerable.”

Chap. 1: 22–23.

For the scholarly disputes on whether altruism and some sense of a virtue-based justice can be found in Epicurus, see the last paragraph of n.19 above.

Rep. 1.39; a fuller discussion of this passage, along with textual evidence that jus here is understood as a binding in nature, occurs in the following chapter.

Above, Chap. 1: 20–21.

Similarly, regarding De Or. 3.63–4, the inappropriateness of a philosophy, in the light of the need for persuasion and public leadership, does not settle the question of its truth, but it becomes a factor in determining whether the philosophy is consistent with human nature. At Tusc. 5.82, Cicero is inclined to think those very courageous Stoic statements about the self-sufficiency of the virtuous life are also the truest. Perhaps the utility of such statements plays an important part in making them appear true; see also Parad. 23, where the truest is also found to be the most useful. Cicero does seem to be using something like overall congruence or what is fitting (see Engberg-Pedersen, 1986: 179–81); eúlogon in relationship to mean duties was considered earlier in this chapter and can be seen as the standard of truth; humankind is attuned by nature in a number of ways to this truth. Consider the following description of Carneades’ criteria of truth and how faithful a follower of Carneades Cicero may indeed be:

Criteria may be discerned rather than proposed, and there are indications that Carneades considered his criteria to be recommended by the virtue of actual use…. The point of the criteria seems to be not to provide a systematic doctrine of truth but to sketch an informal method actually employed for deciding whether a given assertion or belief should be regarded as true (whether assent is justified) within the context of a whole network of beliefs already accepted as true… Stough (1969: 63); emphasis is mine.

Newman (1873: 271), a century earlier, described Carneades with these words:

…[Y]et, by allowing that the suspense of judgment was not always a duty, that the wise man might sometimes believe though he could not know; he in some measure restored the authority of those great instincts of our nature which his predecessor [Arcesilaus] appears to have discarded.

Above, 104-05, nn. 38 and 40.

Above, 100.

Fin. 4. 68–69; Leg. 3. 14.

De Or. 1.12, 43; 2.158–59; 3.65–66; Amic. 18; Fin. 4.5–7, 22, 55, 65; Mur. 6, 60–61, 63–64. See these Stoic characteristics exemplified: Ac. 2.137; Tusc. 5.103–05; Parad., passim; Long and Sedley, (1987: vol. 1: 253, 248). The context around Cicero’s discussion of the widespread appeal of Epicureanism (Pro Caelio, 40–41) suggests that the Stoic alternative may offer a too high and, therefore inhuman, standard for humans. Griffin (1989: 8–10), Englert (1990), and Vander Waerdt (1994b: 4862–64) comments on Cicero’s view of the rhetorical handicap of the Stoics and believes that the Stoics have more resources in this respect than Cicero allows. See Stem (2006) for an argument that the Pro Murena reflects not simply a rhetorical opportunity but rather Cicero’s overall stance on the political liabilities of Stoicism.

At least partly contrary to Cicero’s perception of the old Stoics, Erskine (1990) has argued that the Stoic tradition from Zeno was ever interested in politics, sought to influence political affairs, and had some successes. See also Vander Waerdt’s review essay (1991), where he questions the degree of political activism Erskine attributes to the Stoics and brings out the variety within Stoic political philosophy. Annas (2013: 302 ff., 311) stresses the pull of Stoicism away from politics. See Schofield (1991: 125) on a Stoic approach to political activity. Caspar, specifically with respect to Leg. but somewhat in general, discusses Cicero’s relationship to Stoicism, (2010: 8 ff. and passim.)

Chrysippus is alleged to have said that he never met in real life a Wiseman according to the Stoic expectation.

Ac. 2.107 and Fin. 4.23, 78–79 are places where Cicero favorably distinguishes Panaetius from the Stoics. His own emendation of Panaetius at Off. 1.10 can be seen as further pulling the Stoics down to earth. See also Rep. 1.34; Lévy (1992: 525–28), Long (1967) and Kidd (1971: 152–59) arguing persuasively against the dominant view, doubt that Panaetius altered the orthodox Stoic view on the supreme good. One can say that Cicero certainly resisted such an alteration. On Panaetius’s acceptance, more than orthodox Stoics, of the irrational or emotional part of the soul, see Remer (2004: 150–51). On the critical influence of Polybius on Rep., see How (1990: 28–29, 33); also on Polybius, Hahm (1995); on Cicero’s differences from Polybius, see especially J. Atkins (2013: Chap. 3) and Kidd (1989: 38–50).

See the index for several earlier discussions here of the “Scipionic Circle.”

In Thomas Pangle’s words (1998: 261=62), Cicero is refashioning “out of Stoicism a teaching that gives full weight or due to the dimensions of political existence neglected by Stoicism.”

Off. 3.20; Fin. 2. 45, 52; 5.64, 73–74; Tusc. 5.29–31, 37 ff. Cicero regards the Stoic teaching as lending itself to the rhetorical mode of philosophy, specifically to moral exhortation. Overall, Cicero hesitates between the Stoic teaching that virtue is the sole good and sufficient for supreme happiness and a Peripatetic approach that would acknowledge other goods besides virtue and thus be reluctant to conclude simply and definitively that virtue alone constitutes supreme happiness (Ac. 2.134). McConnell (2014: 184–85, passim) points to instances where Cicero prefers an “Academic” approach to moral/political dilemmas as more flexible than that of the Stoics. Cicero’s preference for the Stoic formulation appears to be grounded in the attractiveness (i.e. potential effectiveness) of this teaching for the needed moral exhortation. Consider how Cicero uses the way of honestas in Sest. 23: see also Gorman (2005: 170–72). Book 5 of the Tusculans shows Cicero working out a defense of the Stoic view, yet he holds back from claiming that it represents the truth about supreme happiness, emphasizes the need to build up the attractiveness of virtue, and sees the Stoic view as compelling in that respect above all. Considering the nemesis of pain (Tusc. 5. 76–78), Cicero can be seen to be arguing that even if Stoicism is not true, it uplifts and serves the public good, just as Epicureanism, even if true, degrades and undermines the public interest. Tusc. 5.33; Fin. 5.79, 83; yet at Tusc. 5.82 (also, 4.53), he is saying that the Stoic view seems the “truest” (verissime) at this point. The “courageous” of that view and how it serves to build up virtue may give it the edge in seeming truest. For Cicero, this Stoic view is essentially correct even if his endorsement is a troubled one. Griffin (1995: 335–36) notes that two Stoic paradoxes which Cicero does not mock in his letters: the only good is virtue and virtue is sufficient for happiness.

Douglas is inclined to see more of a resolution of the issue in Tusc. 5 than I am. He observes (1995: 213), with some noteworthy qualifications, “[T]he doubts of De Finibus are almost resolved in the Tusculans. The status of the sapiens…and of Virtue as the only requisite for the happy life are, so far as may be, assured.” Lévy (1992: 491) reminds us of all the indications in Tusc. 5 that the virtuous and supremely happy life defended here is the philosophical life, when he writes that we have here “neither confusion nor facile syncretism” but a serene affirmation of philosophy in the Platonic vein—that is the work of men of thought devoted to the ideal.

Parad. 4, 23; Tusc. 5.34, 48; Ac. 2.136. Cicero even has Piso, the Peripatetic spokesman, concede this at Fin. 5.84. In another sense of course, the New Academy is the Socratic school, yet Cicero also writes (Tusc. 4.6) of his own time being one in which the Socratic tradition has settled in the Peripatetic school, meaning, it seems, the Old Academy. This tradition may seem to Cicero more positive, in having some affirmations, than the New Academy, and at the same time less rigid and totalistic in its claims than the Stoics.

Michel (1992: 84) reflects on this lack of realism which Cicero finds in the Stoics. Fin. 3.29 shows Cato pointedly presenting what for Cicero were both the attractive and unattractive aspects of the Stoic understanding of happiness; see also Fin. 4.20 ff.; Leg. 1.53 ff. The latter two books of Fin. and Tusc. 5 reveal Cicero’s own struggle with the positive and negative features of the Stoic handling of happiness. See Algra’s discussion (1997: 122 ff.), largely with Lévy, of Cicero’s use of his sources for this dimension of Fin. and Cicero’s struggle (130 ff.) with his skeptical restraints on an embrace of Stoicism. Also, Long (1967). The fullest discussion beyond the texts of Cicero on the issue he struggles with is found in Annas (1993: Chaps. 19–20); note 432–33, where she explicitly credits Cicero with seeing the difficulties on each side of the divide between the Stoics and Peripatetics on virtue and happiness. See also 180 ff. for her reflections on Fin. 5.

Cicero’s struggle anticipates tensions that appear later in the history of moral philosophy between moral formalists and teleologists, the latter seemingly or made to appear to slide into utilitarianism. On distinguishing classical teleology, as found in Cicero and Aristotle, from modern utilitarianism, see an initial effort in Nicgorski (1984: 573–75). Cicero clings to the Stoic formulation because of an apparent fear that the Peripatetic position, as exemplified by Theophrastus, could slide into a utilitarian calculus or weighing of various goods. Fin. 5.12 (Piso speaking), 74 ff.; Off. 2.56. From such a calculated approach or weighing, Cicero appears to fear a weakening or undermining of the inherent appeal of the right. See also, S. White (1995: 236).

One can fairly say that the Peripatetic tradition has the resources for a distinction between the greatest single good—virtue or doing the right—and supreme happiness which would be virtue plus other “goods.” The formulation of the Peripatetic understanding of happiness or the supreme good as “chiefly virtue” (maxime honestas) accurately reflects Cicero’s overall understanding of the Peripatetic teaching. See also Off. 3.33, Leg. 1.54–55, Fin. 2.19, 68. There are clearly differences of emphasis within the Peripatetic school inclusive of Antiochus and the Old Academy (Fin. 5.12, 71 ff.; Ac. 2.132–34). It is the position of Antiochus that Piso is expounding and that Cicero is testing and partly criticizing in the fifth book of Fin.

Even when duty is shaped in the light of ordinary utilities, might it not be unpleasant and, therefore, not evidently productive of happiness or complete happiness? Cicero appears to be groping to say something like this: Doing the right, doing one’s duty, is always the highest good and at least the core of supreme happiness. He seems to require the distinction between the greatest good and supreme happiness so he might then say that by doing the right we do not attain every conceivable part of a happiness to which our nature points but the greatest happiness that our circumstances and context will allow.

A point that emerges and is developed in this book, especially in Chap. 2.

Nat. D. 3.66 ff.; Div. 1.6–7; 2.1; Tusc. 1.78; Off. 1.18.

Div. 2.37, 39; Ac. 2.128. At Nat. D. 3.60, Cotta argues that fables should be exposed so that religion may be saved.

Off. 1.2 (non multum a Peripateticis dissidentia, quoniam utrique Socratici et Platonici volumus esse…). Also 2.8, where Cicero does not use the term “Peripatetics,” as he often does, but rather writes of the school of Cratippus, his son’s Peripatetic teacher in Athens; the philosophy or school of Cratippus is called antiquissima nobilissimaque. Consider Brut. 250, where Cicero associates his own thinking with that of Cratippus. Nonetheless, How (1930: 27) hit the mark when he observed, “[I]t remains clear that Cicero, though he makes good use of the Peripatetics, is no slavish disciple of the School.”

Tusc. 3.69, where Cicero indicates that he finds the understanding of philosophy in Aristotle and Theophrastus to be one of expecting philosophy to progress to complete explanation of all things. Also, Ac. 1.17 ff., Cicero has Varro speaking at this point.

Fin. 5.77, 80–81, 84. As noted earlier, Cicero, here, is specifically probing Piso’s Antiochean and very Stoic-like version of the Peripatetic teaching on the ultimate end; it speaks of other goods than virtue but treats them as irrelevant, or largely so, to happiness. See Vlastos (1991: 216 n. 63) on the Antiochean position distinguished from the Stoic. Long (1988: 165–70, esp. n. 68) explicates the Stoic view and discusses differences with Vlastos. Cicero appears to prefer a more Theophrastean version of the Peripatetic position, one that more honestly confronts the relevance of goods of fortune and body to happiness; see Fin. 5.75, 77, 85–86, yet at Ac. 2.134, he levels against Theophrastus essentially the same critique made against Antiochus in Fin. 5. A different line of criticism of Theophrastus on happiness, a line coming more from a Stoic perspective, is found at Fin. 5.12 and Tusc. 5.23 ff., 47–48, 85. Though Cicero was clearly drawn in a certain respect to a Stoic position, and found the difference between the Stoics and Peripatetics on this matter a very vexing one, in which he admittedly went back and forth. Ac. 2.134, Off. 3.33, Fin. 5.12 (Piso speaking) and the Tusculan’s passages above cannot readily and without additional argument be taken as Cicero’s view. Yet Cicero himself is concerned with a Theophrastean type of slide to an ethics of calculation. See Glucker’s thoughtful reflection (1995: 137) on Cicero’s apparent inconsistency on this point. Glucker, here, may be stepping back somewhat from his earlier suggestion of Cicero being an easy-going, day-to-day changeable eclectic; see (1988: 64–66). Irwin (1986: 205–44) analytically explores the conflict between Aristotle’s position and that of the Stoics on the nature of happiness, drawing heavily—but not exclusively—on Fin.

De Or. 1.43; 2.152, 160, 162; 3.67, 141; Div. 2.4; Ac. 2.119; Fin. 4.5–7; Tusc. 4.9; 5.85. Recall the earlier treatment of Cicero following Aristotle in joining practical wisdom to eloquence, and of his following the Aristotelian mode in his dialogues. Yet Cicero notes a hesitancy or reluctance that marked Aristotle’s, apparently in contrast with his own, turn to rhetoric, Aristotle doing so under the spur of competition with Isocrates for students, Off. 1.4; Tusc. 1.7; De Or. 3.141. At De Or. 2.160 in the voice of Antonius, Aristotle is seen to have “despised” the technical aspects of the art of rhetoric.

Within the Peripatetic tradition, Cicero inclines to Dicaearchus’s elevation of the active political life in opposition to Theophrastus’s more traditional Peripatetic defense of the superiority of the philosophical life and of the goodness of knowledge in itself. For a fuller discussion of Dicaearchus’s position and Cicero’s attraction to it, see Nicgorski, (2013). There is much evidence throughout McConnell (2014) of Cicero’s tendency on this issue. Cicero’s letter to Atticus of May 59 (Att. 36), coupled with his handling of this issue in Rep. and Off., his last philosophical work, indicate a profound and continuous struggle with this issue throughout his life.

Off. 3.33; Leg. 1.53; Fin. 2.38; Ac. 2.134.

Tusc. 5.120, 87; 4.6; Leg. 1.38, 54–55; Ac. 2.15; Off. 1.6; 3.11,35. This is possible, as we have seen, because Peripatetics, like Antiochus, can be found emphasizing that doing the right secures supreme happiness, and Stoics can be seen saying that certain indifferent things are “advantages” and are to be “preferred.” Irwin (1986: 240) properly denies that between Aristotle and the Stoics there is a mere verbal difference on this matter. Kidd (1971) provides a particularly lucid explanation of the Stoic “intermediates” and controversies related to that doctrine. Also see Douglas (1990: 153–54 n.47). Long (1967) explores Stoic efforts on the matter of “goods” to adapt in the light of dialectical probes of their position by Carneades.

Fin. 2.68; Ac. 2.132–34.

Tusc. 4.82: here, immediately after the Fin., Cicero speaks of handling the foundational question as far as reason allows.