Series | History of Ancient Western Philosophy, Pt. 18
Cicero’s De Re Publica and De Legibus
Right Reason in Agreement with Nature
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Welcome back! This is Part 18 in the series.
Now that we’ve finished our whirlwind tour of the Greek Hellenistic schools, it’s time to fix our gaze upon Rome. You can review previous entries by clicking here:
In this installment we’ll be looking at the eclectic philosophy of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Even though there was no soft C-sound in classical Latin, English speakers today know him better as “Sisero.”
Rome in the 1st Century BCE
The Rome into which Cicero was born, in 106 BCE, led a kind of Janus-faced existence.
On the one hand, Rome’s complete domination over the Mediterranean was nearly complete. Its territory stretched from the Iberian Peninsula in the west, to the defeated Carthaginian territories in the south, all the way past Greece and the Aegean Sea to Asia Minor in the east.
On the other hand, historians and philosophers WITHIN the republic had begun to predict how such complete hegemony might spell disaster for Rome internally.
Citing the cycle of political decline found in Bk. VIII of Plato’s Republic, a Greek-born historian named Polybius wrote:
“It is impossible to find a better form of constitution than [Rome’s]… [and yet] For this state, [which] takes its foundation and growth from natural causes, will pass through a natural evolution to its decline.” (Histories, Bk VI)
And, as the Roman-born Sallust would intimate— as Rome extended itself further and further abroad — he had witnessed within the city “the steady degeneration of its noble character into vice and corruption.”
A similar story could be told about the philosophical thought of the day.
The Romans claimed to despise the Greeks, and yet, the ascendancy of their power coincided with their total embrace of Hellenic culture, art, religion, and philosophy — especially that of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.
By the time Cicero as born, most young Roman elites would spend time studying in Athens, and nearly all could speak and read Greek.
Cicero was no exception. In fact, he excelled in mastering the foreign tongue. Although he came from a fairly common background, his rhetorical and legal acumen helped him to achieve some of the highest political offices in the Roman republic.
But, as you can see from this timeline, Cicero lived during a time of great political upheaval, as Rome quickly shifted from republic to empire.
His Platonic and Aristotelian appeals for republican reformation fell upon deaf ears and ultimately led to his demise when the second triumvirate ordered his execution — as reason gave way to demagoguery.
Although Cicero is today considered a minor philosophical figure whose views are often characterized as derivative, there have been periods in history in which he was absolutely REVERED.
The high tides of his popularity were during the early Medieval and Renaissance periods, which admired greatly both the beauty of his prose and the elegance of his Greek translations.
Probably an accurate assessment of Cicero’s importance lies somewhere in the middle. For Cicero surely relied heavily upon his Greek sources, but there’s also originality in the way he synthesized their ideas.
In what follows we’ll take a look at that eclectic synthesis.
Rhetoric as a Conduit between Wisdom and Law
The recipe for the eclectic philosophy of Cicero — whose name literally meant chickpea — is a lot like making hummus.
Start by combining equal parts Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Ethics, add a generous amount of Academic skepticism, a dash of Stoic virtue, and an acerbic criticism of Epicureanism, then mix all the ingredients thoroughly with Plato’s Laws and Aristotle’s Rhetoric until you have a silky-smooth paste, with a thick, logical consistency.
In other words, for Cicero, human virtue is linked to rhetoric — which he saw as the means for turning wisdom into law — and he applied this philosophical dressing to everything… especially his efforts to glue together the crumbling Roman republic.
Cicero followed Aristotle in seeing rhetoric as an inherently moral exercise.
He was well aware of the abuses and corruptions fine speaking could produce when plied by vicious men. But, the noblest and most enduring rhetoric — he believed — was that which combined equal measures of good reason, passion, and moral character… or, in Aristotle’s words, logos, pathos, and ethos.
As Cicero writes in De Re Publica (a.k.a. On the Commonwealth)…
“[Virtue’s] noblest use is the government of the State, and the realization in fact… of those very things that the philosophers… are continuously dinning in our ears. For there is no principle enunciated by the philosophers — at least none that is just and honorable — that has not been discovered and established by those who have drawn up codes of law for States.” (De Re Publica, Bk. I)
Legislating Wisdom
Cicero believed a moral philosophy that could not CONVINCE OTHERS to follow it was basically worthless. That’s why he held law in such high regard. In his words,
“the citizen who compels all men, by the authority of magistrates and the penalties imposed by law… to follow [the philosophers’] rules… must be considered superior even to the teachers who enunciated these principles. For what speech of theirs is excellent enough to be preferred to a State well provided with law and custom?” (De Re Publica, Bk. I)
In the video below you can see a snippet of Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
This is one of the greatest speeches in all of American cinema! Unfortunately, YouTube is being a d!ck about copyrights, so I can only show you the first half…
This performance is relevant to our discussion in several ways.
First, Mark Antony is the one who demanded Cicero’s execution — mainly for the eloquent ways in which Cicero had spoken out against Caesar and Antony’s power grab.
Second, Brando’s performance of this speech stands head and shoulders above all others (which includes some very famous actors in their own right) and illustrates how the right pathos can truly breathe life into the words on a page.
Third, the speech itself affirms Cicero’s belief in the power of rhetoric to shape the world — as the second half shows how decisively Antony’s rhetoric is able to sway the mob against Caesar’s assassins. It’s my sincere hope, dear reader, that you will someday watch the film and see this speech in its entirety.
Cicero’s Dialectic
As a student of Philo of the Old Academy, Cicero learned a mitigated form of skepticism that considered both sides of any question. Thus, he equated good rhetoric with dialectic.
As an Academic skeptic, Cicero felt free to change his mind about a position whenever a better one presented itself and that’s why his dialogues often leave the reader to make up their own mind.
But, Cicero found skepticism philosophically inadequate in ethics and politics, so there he’d often make use of Stoic ideas… especially the Stoic beliefs that 1) human beings are all meant to follow natural law, which arises from reason, and 2) that natural law is the source and inspiration of all properly made human laws and communities.
For most of his life, Cicero heavily criticized the quietism of Epicureanism. However, once he retired from public life, he confessed a newfound appreciation of its tenets… a pretty common theme among retired Roman statesmen.
The Discovery of De Re Publica
De Re Publica is arguably one of Cicero’s most important works — even though we don’t have a complete version of it… only what was discovered in 1819 in a palimpsest.
In fact, it was a series of TOTAL accidents of history which led to us having ANY of this text at all!
First, because animal-skin parchment was so expensive, medieval scribes and copyists were in the habit of “scraping” writing from older texts to make room for more “important” works. (Since such scribes were almost always Catholic monks, we’re mostly talking about Christian documents here.) In the early middle ages, the scraping process involved a combination of milk and oats, rubbed into the parchment until the original ink was barely visible.
BUT, as time passed, the overwritten text would begin to reappear — kind of like a medieval version of “reappearing ink” — to the point that the original document could be read by the naked eye.
By the late middle ages, though, this scraping process had been replaced by one involving pumice powder — which would thoroughly scrub the older text from the page.
Another historical accident making the survival of De Re Publica possible has to do with the unlikelihood of it being selected for copying, at all.
It’s worth quoting here the way Steven Greenblatt has described medieval copyist culture in The Swerve: How the World Became Modern…
To be sure, there were a certain number of abbots and of monastic librarians who treasured not only the parchment but also the pagan works written on them. Steeped in classical literature, some believed that they could rifle its treasures without contamination, the way the ancient Hebrews had been permitted by God to steal the riches of the Egyptians. But over the generations, as a substantial Christian literature was created, it became less easy to make such an argument. Fewer and fewer monks were inclined, in any case, to make it. Between the sixth century and the middle of the eighth century, Greek and Latin classics virtually ceased to be copied at all. What had begun as an active campaign to forget — a pious attack on pagan ideas — had evolved into actual forgetting….
Fortunately, modern imaging technologies using X-rays and ultraviolet light are making it possible for classicists to uncover even more of these hidden texts.
In a sense, these modern “book-hunters” are successors to a small group of men who discovered rare classical works in the 14th and 15th centuries — figures like Francesco Petrarca (a.k.a. Petrarch), Giovanni Boccaccio, Coluccio Salutati, and Poggio Bracciolini.
In fact, Petrarch’s publishing of Cicero’s letters to Atticus — the first of these “rediscoveries” in 1345— inspired others to search for lost intellectual treasures and is often credited with ushering in the Renaissance.
Talk about your history-changing accidents!
From what we’ve recovered, we can see that De Re Publica was written like a Socratic dialogue, using Plato’s Republic as a model. The dialogue takes place in Scipio’s estate, during 3 consecutive days.
Book one: Contains a discussion between the protagonists of the political situation of their time. The theme of the work is given and some comments are made about the theory of constitutions.
Book two: An outline of Roman history and the development of the constitution.
Book three: The role of justice in government is examined, as are the different types of constitutions.
Book four: A discourse about education.
Book five: The characters converse about the qualities of the ideal citizen in government.
Book Six: Little of this book survives except the Somnium Scipionis, which functions as the conclusion to the work.
Civic Duty and Citizenship…
Just as we saw in Plato’s and Aristotle’s political writings, Cicero believed citizens had a moral OBLIGATION to engage in public life.
It was every citizen’s civic duty to ensure they were “…not to be ruled by wicked men and not to allow the republic to be destroyed by them…” (De Re Publica, Bk I).
Like Aristotle, Cicero emphasizes the common good at which any just state must aim, and emphasizes how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Here are just a few relevant passages:
“…a commonwealth is the property of a people. But a people is not any collection of human beings… but an assemblage of people in large numbers associated in an agreement with respect to justice and a partnership for the common good.” (De Re Publica, Bk. I)
“For what is a State except an association or partnership in justice…?” (De Re Publica, Bk. I)
“The first cause of such an association… [is the] social spirit which nature has implanted in man.” (De Re Publica, Bk. I)
Equality before the Law
In his work On the Laws — or De Legibus — Cicero again produces a mashup of Plato and Aristotle. The title and style is inspired by the Platonic dialogue known as the Laws, and it follows Aristotle’s lead by emphasizing the equal potential of all human beings.
However, Cicero extends Aristotle’s limited, xenophobic account of equality by emphasizing the contingencies that preclude some from actualizing their potential.
In other words, Aristotle’s view seems to take its first cosmopolitan steps in Cicero’s application.
He writes,
“…if bad habits and false beliefs did not twist the weaker minds… all men would be like all others. … there is no difference in kind between man and man…
…there is no human being of any race who, if he finds a guide, cannot attain to virtue.” (De Legibus, Bk. I)
And, he uses this human predicament of possessing a universal POTENTIAL for equality and our ACTUAL particularities of inequality to build a case for ensuring equality under the law. As he put it,
“For if we cannot agree to equalize men’s wealth, and equality of innate ability is impossible, the legal rights at least of those who are citizens of the same commonwealth ought to be equal.” (De Re Publica, Bk. I)
In this way, he thought, the discovery of true, enduring law could come about through “right reason in agreement with nature.” (De Re Publica, Bk. III)
By his lights,
“law is not a product of human thought, nor is it any enactment of peoples, but something eternal which rules the whole universe by its wisdom in command and prohibition” (De Legibus, Bk. II)
Realizing Justice
Cicero continued to channel the ideas of his Greek predecessors as he turned to the topic of Justice. Like Plato and Aristotle, he claimed Justice to be a matter of rational choice, or what Aristotle had called prohairesis.
But, whereas for Aristotle, such rational choice is central to a virtuous person doing the right thing… in the right way… at the right time, Cicero elevated it to a cosmological principle, saying that right reason in agreement with nature is a singular, universal law.
“Justice is one; it binds all human society, and is based on one Law, which is right reason applied to command and prohibition. Whoever knows not this Law, whether it has been recorded in writing anywhere or not, is without justice.” (De Legibus, Bk. I)
Where Aristotle had claimed Justice was necessary only wherever love did not prevail, Cicero believed that the one natural law was the source of Justice, and therefore also that of friendship, peace, and love.
Under this account, the good magistrate ought to be a spokesperson for the law, guided to the truth by right reason.
The Universe as a Commonwealth of Gods & Men
In this way, Cicero arrived at the conclusion that the entire universe was a commonwealth of both gods and humanity, who share the capacity for right reason in common…
“…since there is nothing better than reason, and since it exists both in man and God, the first common possession of man and God is reason. But those who have reason in common must also have right reason in common. And since right reason is Law, we must believe that men have Law also in common with the gods. Further, those who share Law must also share Justice… Hence we must now conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.” (De Re Publica, Bk. I)
The laws of humankind — if true and good — should therefore mirror the universal, natural law and their Justice should likewise mirror Justice itself.
The echoes of Plato’s Crito are obvious here and Cicero’s synthesis of this notion with the foregoing Aristotelian ideas would go on to influence some of the biggest names in the history of philosophy.
In Part 19 and Part 20, we’ll take a look at a few more Roman thinkers, including the Epicurean philosopher Lucretius and the Roman Stoics — Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.
See you there!
