5

Cicero
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The Cosmic Significance of Politics

In this brief chapter, I turn to the political and legal thought of

the Roman orator, statesman, and philosopher Marcus Tullius
Cicero (106–43 b.c.) as representative of a historically important
ancient attempt to develop a normative anthropology with cos-
mic significance. In particular, Cicero appeals to the Stoic account
of human beings as loci of the divine reason that governs the
whole universe or cosmos as a cosmopolis—in a way analogous to
that in which human reason should govern the polis or res publica.
For Aristotle, politics is a largely local affair. It is within the
individual polis or city-state that his normative anthropology
finds expression, for it is enculturation into such a complete
community that is necessary for a human being, in a biological
sense, to develop into a human person fulfilling the function
(ergon), achieving the end (telos), proper to human beings as a
natural kind. Aristotle undoubtedly assumes that the normative
human nature or function places constraints on the features of
what constitutes a “good” polis and what particular moral virtues
Copyright 2012. Oxford University Press.

(êthikai aretai), as well as intellectual virtues, are recognized and

cultivated in such a polis. However, he does not seem to have
accorded this assumption much critical attention. It is perhaps
significant that most of the few extant Aristotelian references to

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a notion of law and of justice that transcend the local polis appear
in his Rhetoric, rather than the Ethics or Politics. In the Rhetoric,
Aristotle remarks that

we may describe wrong-doing as injury voluntarily inflicted

contrary to law. Law [nomos] is either special [idios] or gen-
eral [koinos]. By special law I mean that written law which
regulates the life of a particular community; by general law,
all those unwritten principles which are supposed to be
acknowledged everywhere.1

Several chapters later, he reiterates this distinction:

It will now be well to make a complete classification of just

and unjust actions. We may begin by observing that they
have been defined relatively to two kinds of law, and also rel-
atively to two classes of persons. By the two kinds of law I
mean particular [idion] law and universal [koinon] law. Partic-
ular law is that which each community lays down and applies
to its own members: this is partly written and partly unwrit-
ten. Universal law is the law of nature [kata physin, literally
“in accord with nature”]. For there really is, as everyone to
some extent divines, a natural justice [dikaion] and injustice
[adikon] that is common to all, even to those who have no
association or covenant with each other. It is this that Sopho-
cles’ Antigone clearly means when she says that the burial of
Polyneices was a just act in spite of the prohibition: she
means that is was just by nature.2

These texts, I believe, are about as close as Aristotle comes to the

explicit enunciation of a conception of “natural law.” But this
conception seems to amount to little more than (1) the empirical
assumption there is an overlapping core of moral principles and

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 100 | P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y

beliefs shared by all or most human societies, and (2) the meta-
physical assumption that the existence of such a universal moral
core of convictions is not simply accidental but, rather, a conse-
quence of (human) nature (physis). Cicero, as we shall see, fol-
lows the Stoic philosophical tradition in elaborating at great
length the second, metaphysical assumption.

Cicero as Champion of the Res Publica

Although Cicero came from a wealthy, provincial aristocratic

family of Arpinum, in central Italy, he was a homo novus (“new
man” or parvenu) in Roman politics. Nonetheless, he enjoyed a
spectacular career as a legal advocate and politician, becoming
consul at an unusually young age in 63 b.c. In his successful
attempt to thwart the conspiracy of Cataline, he had the conspir-
ators extralegally executed and later, in 58 b.c., he was forced
into exile for sixteen months as a result. With the aid of the
Roman general Pompey, Cicero was soon able to resume his polit-
ical career. In the decade following his return from exile, he com-
posed political and legal works, most notably the De re publica
and De legibus, which were loosely modeled on Plato’s Republic
and Laws, respectively.
Pompey, with Marcus Licinius Crassus and Julius Caesar,
formed the First Triumvirate, but an ensuing civil war ultimately
resulted in the dictatorship of Julius Caesar. After the fall of the
Roman republic and rise of Caesar, Cicero largely withdrew from
politics and produced a series of literary and philosophical works
beginning in about 46 b.c. After Caesar’s assassination in 44
b.c., Cicero hoped for the reestablishment of republican rule. As
a leader of the republican movement, he attacked Mark Antony,
a leader of the Caesarian faction, in a series of fourteen speeches
(the Philippics). Cicero’s political hopes were dashed with the

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formation in 43 b.c. of the Second Triumvirate, consisting of

Antony, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and Caesar’s great-nephew,
Octavius (who later became Augustus Caesar). Cicero was pro-
scribed as an enemy of the state and killed by Antony’s soldiers
later that same year.
The standard modern view is that, while Cicero was of great
importance in translating Greek philosophical concepts into
Latin terminology, he himself was not much of a philosopher. In
my own view, although it would be fanciful to include Cicero
among those in the very first rank of philosophy, he possessed
considerable philosophical intelligence and was, in general, an
able and sophisticated exponent of philosophical ideas. Like
other intellectually inclined young men of his age and class, he
received training in Greek philosophy. As a young man, he had
been exposed to the teaching of Philo of Larissa, then head of the
Academy (Plato’s school), and of the Stoic Diodotus. After his
first marriage in 79, Cicero traveled extensively in Greece and the
eastern Mediterranean, where he heard the Academic philoso-
pher Antiochus of Ascalon and the Stoic Posidonius.
Under Arcesilaus (316–241 b.c.) the Academy entered a skep-
tical phase, which came to be known as the New Academy. It
seems that a great strength of Arcesilaus was the “dialectical”
examination of the positive philosophical doctrines of other
schools, in order to reveal weaknesses or problematic features of
those doctrines. The skeptical character which Arcesilaus intro-
duced into the Academy was continued under Carneades (214–
128 b.c.) and his student Clitomachus (187–110 b.c.). Antiochus
of Ascalon (c.130–c.68 b.c.) was a rather unorthodox Academic,
who parted ways with Philo of Larissa and set up a competing
Old Academy in Athens sometime before Philo’s departure for
Rome in 88 b.c. Antiochus was known for his philosophical syn-
cretism, particularly his conviction that Platonism, Aristotelian-
ism, and Stoicism are in essential agreement concerning the

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 102 | P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y

human good or end (telos) and the centrality of virtue with

respect to the human good. While Philo continued in the official
tradition of Arcesilaus and Carneades, Harold Tarrant remarks
the “supposed ‘skepticism’ of the Carneadean school had with
Philo become little more than an ideal of continued investiga-
tion, unhampered either by unwarranted conviction or by the
uncritical acceptance of the doctrines of an authoritative figure.”3
In view of Cicero’s philosophical antecedents, then, it is not sur-
prising that he officially identified himself as an adherent of the
New Academy. But, like that of Philo, his skepticism was an
urbane, sophisticated antidogmatism that was quite compatible
with making at least provisional judgments concerning the pref-
erability of one doctrine to that of others. And, like that of Antio-
chus, his skepticism was quite capable of reconciliation with his
adoption and development of positive doctrine from other
sources—in particular Aristotelianism and Stoicism. He was par-
ticularly influenced by Stoicism in his moral, political, and legal
thought, to which we now turn.
The Latin term res publica literally translates as “public thing,”
“public property,” or “public business.” In the first book of his
Republic, Cicero characterizes it as

the res of the public. But a public [or “people”: populus] is not
any kind of human gathering, congregating in any manner,
but a numerous gathering brought together by agreement
with respect to what is right [or “of law”: iuris consensu] and
community of interest. The primary reason for its coming
together is not so much weakness as a sort of innate desire on
the part of human being to form communities. For our species
is not made up of solitary individuals or lonely wanderers.4

Cicero then proceeds to give a standard account (like that of

Plato and of Aristotle) of different kinds of constitution in terms

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 C icero | 103

of the number of persons involved in political decision-making:

monarchy (regio or regnum), aristocracy (civitas optimatium),
democracy (civitas popularis). The strengths and weaknesses of
each of these “pure” forms of constitution are discussed by
Cicero’s character Scipio, who prefers monarchy. However, Scipio
adds that

monarchy is itself surpassed by an even and judicious blend

of the three simple forms at their best. A state should possess
an element of regal supremacy; something else should be
assigned and allotted to the authority of aristocrats; and cer-
tain affairs should be reserved for the judgement and desires
of the masses. Such a constitution has, in the first place, a
widespread element of equality which free men cannot long
do without. Secondly, it has stability; for although those
three original forms easily degenerate into their corrupt ver-
sions (producing a despot instead of a king, an oligarchy
instead of an aristocracy, and a disorganized rabble instead
of a democracy), and although those simple forms often
change into others, such things rarely happen in a political
structure which represents a combination and a judicious
mixture—unless, that is, the politicians are deeply corrupt.5

It is not surprising that Scipio, evidently speaking for Cicero,

regards the Roman form of government, “the one which our
fathers received from their forebears and have handed down to
us,”6 as an instantiation of this superior, mixed constitution. In
other places, Cicero sometimes uses the term res publica specifi-
cally for the form of government of the late Roman republic,
often in the course of lamenting its displacement by what he
regards as despotic rule. Indeed, it is as an eloquent defender of
the government and society of the Roman republic that Cicero
has been primarily known in later history.

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 104 | P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y

In his general account of res publicae as “legitimate” forms of

government, however, Cicero stresses two salient features. One
is the idea of the state’s serving a common interest or good, an
idea that is evident in the political thought of both Plato and
Aristotle. The other is a Stoic idea of the state’s instantiating the
rule of law or “right” (ius).

What is Right (Ius): The Rule of Law (Lex) and

Normative Anthropology

In his De legibus, Cicero explicitly dismisses what, for the Roman

of his time, would have been the two most salient “positivist”
sources of law: the ancient Twelve Tablets and the edicts issued
by urban praetor on his assumption of office.7 The former was a
codification of criminal and civil law dating from about 450 b.c.;
the latter statements issued by chief magistrates, detailing forms
and procedures for the administration of civil law and building
upon similar edicts by their predecessors in office. According to
Cicero (who serves as his own principal spokesperson in the De
legibus), in order to understand law, “we must clarify the nature
of what is right [ius], and that has to be deduced from the nature
of man. Then we must consider the laws by which states ought to
be governed, and finally deal with the laws and enactments which
peoples have compiled and written down.”8
The strategy outlined by Cicero is the following. The “princi-
ples of what is right” (ius) are to be located in law (lex). And the
essence of law is to be found in nature—both the nature of the
universe as a whole and in the particular nature of the human
part of the universe:

law is the highest reason [ratio], inherent in nature, which

enjoins what ought to be done and forbids the opposite. When

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 C icero | 105

that reason is fully formed and completed in the human mind,

it, too, is law. So [the most learned authorities] think that law,
whose function is to enjoin right action and to forbid wrong-
doing, is wisdom [or “practical rationality”: prudentia].9

Ius is the Latin noun that is most frequently used—as by the

Roman Jurists—for “law” in the most general sense, or a whole
legal system. It typically has moral connotations and is often
used, like the Greek dikê, to connote “what is (morally) right or
correct.” Among the Jurists, lex typically has the narrower signi-
fication of some sort of statute. Gaius (who is followed, much
later, by Justinian) goes so far to limit it to a particular kind of
statute—a statute “that is commanded by the Roman people, the
question having been put by the consul.”10 Cicero, however,
inverts this order: it is lex that is “deeper” and grounds ius, in its
general sense. Why the inversion? And why does Cicero particu-
larly connect lex with reason (ratio and prudentia)?
The answers to both questions, I think, lie in his Stoic concep-
tion of the whole universe as a cosmopolis, ruled by an immanent
Reason with a capital R, which dictates the details of each succes-
sive world history. In orthodox Stoicism, each of these histories
or cycles is identical in detail to all the others—because, since
Reason is responsible for each history, there would be no reason
for differences among cycles. Reason “gets it right” (ius) each and
every time. Since the universe is analogized to a human polis or
res publica (although the universe is a perfectly governed one), it
is natural enough to think of objective moral correctness or
rightness (ius) as founded in the “statutes” (leges, plural of lex) of
that all-encompassing cosmopolis. And so Cicero does. He also
thinks of human persons as sharing, along with any other ratio-
nal inhabitants of the universe, in the divine Reason that is
immanent in that universe and that gives the universe the ratio-
nal, intelligible nature of a cosmos:

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 106 | P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y

when that same mind [that has pursued the path of “per-
ceiving and recognizing the virtues”] examines the heavens,
the earth, the sea, and the nature of all things, and perceives
where those thing have come from and to where they will
return, when and how they are due to die, what part of them
is mortal and perishable, and what is divine and everlasting;
and when it almost apprehends the very good who governs
and rules them, and realizes that it itself is not a resident in
some particular locality surrounded by man-made walls, but
a citizen of the whole world as though it were a single city;
then, in the majesty of these surroundings, in this contem-
plation and comprehension of nature, great God! how well it
will know itself, as the Pythian Apollo commanded.11

The cultivation of human reason, according to Cicero’s Stoic

doctrine in De legibus, leads to our recognition of what is “fine,”
noble, or morally good (to kalon, in Greek; honestum, in Cicero’s
Latin). This process is allied with something like the identifica-
tion of each person’s own, true individual good with the “common
good”—in the sense of the good of all rational beings—through
oikeiôsis, the Stoic technical concept of “sociation” or “appropria-
tion,” that is, developing a moral perspective the ideal culmina-
tion of which is described as follows:

Once the mind, on perceiving and recognizing the virtues,

has ceased to serve and gratify the body, and has expunged
pleasure as a kind of discreditable stain; and once it has put
behind it all fear of pain and death, and entered a loving fel-
lowship with its own kind, regarding as its own kind all who
are akin to it by nature, and once it has begun to worship the
gods in a pure form of religion, and has sharpened the edge of
moral judgment, like that of the eyes, so that it can choose
the good and reject its opposite (a virtue that is called prudentia

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 C icero | 107

from providendum)—what can be described or conceived as

more blessed than such a mind?12

The essential unity of all human beings, and of what the good is
for human beings, is a Stoic theme that is stressed by Cicero:

If corrupt habits and foolish opinions did not twist and turn
aside our feeble minds from their original paths, no indi-
vidual would be more like himself than everyone would be
like everyone else. Thus, however one defines man, the same
definition applies to us all. This is sufficient proof that there
is no essential difference within mankind. Reason in fact—
the one thing in which we are superior to the beasts . . . —
that is certainly common to us all. While it may vary in what
it teaches, it is constant in its ability to learn.13

The constancy of what reason, as instantiated in different human

persons, is capable of learning leads to an ideal of universal mo-
rality, of what is honestum, since Cicero also follows the Stoics in
conceiving of the moral virtues—in particular, the four “cardinal
virtues,” which will be discussed below—as manifestations of
reason as applied to universal human nature.

Virtues, Duties, and Laws

There are two propositions concerning ancient ethical thought

that are now widely regarded as truisms. The first is that ancient
ethics is more or less universally “virtue ethics.” That is, ancient
ethical theory is primarily focused on the virtues (and vices): the
character traits that make a human person a (morally) good per-
son (and their contraries) rather than the duties, obligations, and
rights that are proper to human beings. The second proposition

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 108 | P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y

is that the classical natural-law theory of ethics and politics—

that is, the tradition that derives especially from St. Thomas
Aquinas in the thirteenth century a.d.—is a Christianized devel-
opment of ancient moral theory, particularly that of Aristotle.
The rather obvious problem is how one gets from antiquity’s
emphasis on the virtues to what is taken to be the natural-law
theory’s development of a complex moral system of prescrip-
tions and proscriptions, which is suggestive of a “deontological”
rather than a “virtue” ethics. The term “deontological” appears to
have been first used in its modern sense by the English philoso-
pher C. D. Broad in the 1930s but derives from the Greek deon
(“that which is obligatory, needful, or right”). It is often used to
connote an ethical theory that emphasized rules (moral “laws”),
the application of which can be used to determine our moral
duties in various circumstances.
The first point that needs to be made is that the “rule-bound”
character of classical natural-law theory has been exaggerated by
later writers. Nonetheless, the transformation from virtue to law
is striking. An important element in that transformation, I
believe, is to be found in Cicero’s use of the Stoic tradition in his
moral and political writings. In schematic terms, Cicero’s theory
is the following. Human beings have the ability to participate in
the universal, cosmic reason through the development of human
practical reason, that is, reason directed towards action. Because
of human nature’s being what it is, human practical reason man-
ifests itself through the four cardinal virtues of wisdom (sapien-
tia or prudentia, which is the preeminent virtue), fortitude,
justice, and temperance. The application of these virtues within
the context of a person’s living his life in community with his
fellows involves the discernment and performance of “offices” or
duties (officia, in Cicero’s Latin). And, finally, practical wisdom
must effect the formation of political structures, human or “pos-
itive” law, and systems of teaching that codify certain of these

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 C icero | 109

duties. “There is,” Cicero says, “no doubt that, as the law should
correct wickedness and promote goodness, a code of conduct
(doctrina) may be derived from it.”14
In his De officiis (usually now rendered in English On
Duties, formerly referred to as “Tully’s Offices”), Cicero dis-
cusses the kinds of behavior (officia) that ought to manifest
the virtues in different circumstances. Officia (singular: offi-
cium), which can be rendered as “duties,” “responsibilities,” or
“benefits,” is the Latin noun that Cicero uses to translate a
Stoic technical term ta kathêkonta, or “what is appropriate.”
Orthodox Stoicism distinguished ta kathêkonta from ta
katorthômata, “what is perfectly correct.” The latter, appar-
ently a kind of Stoic ideal or “limit case” of the former, are the
perfectly rational or moral actions that perhaps can be per-
formed only by the Stoic sage (if any such person, in fact, ever
exists). Cicero, who does not seem to make such a rigorous
distinction between really (i.e., perfectly) moral behavior and
behavior that only approximates (but does not really instan-
tiate, according to Stoic orthodoxy) what is moral, begins with
the cardinal virtues.
Justice is founded in the desire for self-preservation. By
oikeiôsis, it is first transformed to a desire of a person “to devote
himself to providing whatever may contribute to the comfort
and sustenance not only of himself, but also of his wife, his chil-
dren, and others whom he holds dear and ought to protect.”15
Then, it (ideally) is transformed into a like concern for all humans
as beings who are capable of partaking in reason. Thus, justice is
the part of practical reason involved “with preserving fellowship
among men, with assigning to each his own, and with faithful-
ness to agreements one has made.”16
Wisdom (sapientia) and practical rationality (prudentia) are
initially conflated in the De officiis as pertaining to “the search for
truth and its investigation [as], above all, peculiar to man”:

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Therefore, whenever we are free from necessary business and

other concerns we are eager to see or to hear or to learn, con-
sidering that the discovery of obscure or wonderful things is
necessary for a blessed life. Consequently, we understand
that what is true, simple, and pure is most fitted to the nature
of man.17

Very shortly thereafter in the text, Cicero makes a quite

un-Aristotelian assertion of the primacy of practical rationality
(prudentia). A fault or vice (vitium) opposed to reason is “that
some men bestow excessive devotion and effort upon matters
that are both abstruse and difficult, and unnecessary.”18 It is,
Cicero claims,

contrary to duty to be drawn by such a devotion away from

practical achievements: all the praise that belongs to virtue
lies in action. On the other hand, there is often a break from
it, and we are given many opportunities to return to our
studies. Besides, the activity of the mind, which is never at
rest, can maintain in us our pursuit of learning even without
effort on our part. For reflective moments of the spirit occur
in one of two ways: either when taking counsel about hon-
ourable matters, that pertain to living well and blessedly, or
in the pursuit of knowledge and learning.19

It is practical rationality’s connection with human commu-

nity (communitas) and society (societas) that he later invokes as
the reason why the application of reason to distinctively human
matters “should be ranked above mere learning.”20 As an aside, it
is interesting to note that the Stoic–Ciceronian divinity, Reason
immanent in the cosmos, is essentially practical. With the excep-
tion of the conflagration that separates successive world his-
tories, in which Reason is found in what might be termed its

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purest form (analogous perhaps to a Ciceronian interlude of lei-

surely study, in the midst of an active life), cosmic Reason is
always doing something—that is, directing the unfolding history
of the cosmos. Recollect, however, that the Aristotelian divin-
ities—whatever their cosmic effects with respect to celestial
motions may be—do not do anything, in the sense of exercising
praxis (moral action) or poiêsis (production); they merely think
(“about” themselves).
While martial and, more generally, physical bravery certainly
is included in Cicero’s conception of the virtue of courage or for-
titude, his emphasis is in some ways strikingly modern. He par-
ticularly associates the virtue with “a kind of impulse towards
pre-eminence, so that a spirit that is well trained by nature will
not be willing to obey for its own benefit someone whose advice,
teaching, and commands are not just and lawful.”21 This impulse
is identified “with the greatness and strength of a lofty and
unconquered spirit.”22 It is possible to associate Cicero’s account
of this virtue with the self-respect that is so important in some
strands of contemporary liberal and “republican” political theory.
One might infer that, insofar as action in conformity with forti-
tude, in this sense, is part of fulfilling the human function or
ergon—that is, living up to the human nature and achieving the
human end or telos—that fact would favor a “democratic” form
of political organization.
Cicero agrees, at least to a point. Part of his enthusiasm for
the specifically Roman republican form of res publica lay in his
conviction that that particular form of constitution afforded the
best opportunity to men of talent and virtue to exercise their
abilities for the common good. However, with the example of
Julius Caesar in mind, Cicero holds that “too much” of this virtue
(which, of course, makes it not a virtue at all, according to Aristo-
tle) had the tendency to undermine another of the agent’s vir-
tues, that of justice:

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 112 | P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y

[Caesar] overturned all the laws of gods and men for the sake
of the pre-eminence that he had imagined for himself in his
mistaken fancy. There is something troubling in this kind of
case, in that the desire for honour, command, power and
glory usually exists in the greatest spirit and most brilliant
intellectual talent. Therefore one must be all the more careful
not to do wrong in this way.23

Cicero’s conception of the fourth cardinal virtue, temperance,

is also broad—but not so distinctly modern. Temperance is the
aspect of the morally good or honorable (honestum) that is con-
cerned “with order and limit in everything that is said and done
(modesty and restraint are included here).”24 This virtue pos-
sesses what might be called, from the contemporary perspective,
a peculiarly aesthetic character. The order and limit—conceived
in aesthetic terms, as a kind of beauty—in human behavior to
which this virtue pertains is closely allied with the human ability
to discern similar qualities in nature:

this one animal alone [the human animal] perceives what

order there is, what seemliness, what limit to words and
deeds. No other animal, therefore, perceives the beauty, the
loveliness, the congruence of the parts, of the things that
sight perceives. Nature and reason [natura ratioque] transfer
this by analogy from the eyes to the mind, thinking that
beauty, constancy and order should be preserved, and much
more so, in one’s decisions and in one’s deeds.25

Cicero is clear that the preeminent virtue is wisdom or ratio-

nality. Since this virtue pertains to “the investigation and discovery
of what is true,”26 it is the common virtue of all rational beings. As
for the other three virtues, he says that “their aim is necessities:
they are to procure and conserve whatever is required for the

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 C icero | 113

action of life [actio vitae].”27 Actio vitae here connotes more than
just life in its biological sense of being born, taking nutrition,
growing, maturing, reproducing, aging, and dying. It connotes the
distinctively human life assigned to us by nature and reason:
“preserv[ing] the fellowship and bonding between men,” “allow[ing]
excellence and greatness of spirit to shine out,” “conserv[ing] hon-
ourableness and seemliness when we apply some limit and order to
the things with which we deal in our life.”28
In Cicero’s view, then, the cardinal virtues, as well as the offi-
cia, the duties to which they give rise in particular circumstances,
are grounded in “nature and reason.” And, as he conceives of
nature and reason as the “ruling element” (in Stoic terminology,
to hêgemonikon) of the grand cosmopolis of which all beings par-
taking in reason are the citizens, it makes sense to think of this
rational, ruling element in terms of law (lex):

there is one single “moral rightness” [ius]. It binds together

human society and has been established by one, single law
[lex]. That law is right reason in commanding and forbidding.
A man who does not acknowledge this law is unjust [iniustus],
whether it has been written down anywhere or not. If justice
[iustitia] is a matter of obeying the written laws and customs
of particular communities, and if, as our opponents allege,
everything is to be measured by self-interest, then a person
will ignore and break the laws when he can, if he thinks it will
be to his own advantage. That is why justice is completely
non-existent if it is not derived from nature, and that kind of
justice which is established to serve self-interest is wrecked
by that same self-interest. And that is why every virtue is
abolished if nature is not going to support what is right [ius].29

We might describe Cicero, who here follows the lead of the Stoics,
as “rationalizing” the moral virtues and as “legalizing” ethics.

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 114 | P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y

According to Aristotle, the connection between the moral and

intellectual virtues is indirect and, it might seem, essentially pas-
sive. While the intellectual virtues are cultivated by teaching, the
moral virtues are acquired by habituation and training. They are,
for Aristotle, those habits of character that make an agent ame-
nable to—or “docile” to—direction by reason; and in this respect
at least, Aristotle’s conception of the moral virtues resembles
Plato’s conception of the virtues other than nous or reason. For
Cicero, however, the moral virtues are more directly expressions
of rationality with respect to the nature, rational and social, of
human beings. Since human rationality is an expression of divine
Reason, viewed in terms of the lex governing the whole cosmop-
olis, there is a sense in which Cicero “legalizes” ethics. This phe-
nomenon is less a matter of viewing ethical matters as a matter
of a code of proscriptions and prescriptions than it is of seeing
moral and ethical matters as devolving from a universal, author-
itative source, Reason with a capital R.
With respect to law in the sense of what is now termed posi-
tive law, it is thus not surprising that Cicero should be strongly
committed to legal moralism, the doctrine that in order for posi-
tive law to qualify as “law” it is has to reflect law in the fullest,
normative sense, that is, Reason:

I note, then, that according to the opinion of the best author-

ities law was not thought up by the intelligence of human
beings, nor is it some kind or resolution passed by commu-
nities, but rather an eternal force which rules the world by
the wisdom of its command and prohibitions. . . .
Well then, as the divine mind is the highest law (divina
mens summa lex est), so, in the case of a human being, when
it is fully developed, that is law; and it is fully developed in
the mind of the wise man [the Stoic sage]. Those laws, how-
ever, which have been formulated in various terms to meet

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 C icero | 115

the temporary needs of communities, enjoy the name of law

thanks to popular approval rather than actual fact. . . . From
this it is reasonable to infer that those who framed harmful
and unjust rules for their communities, acting in a way quite
contrary to their claim and promises, introduced measures
which were anything but laws. So, when it comes to inter-
preting the word, it is clear that inherent in the very name of
law is the sense and idea of choosing what is just and true
(iusta et veri legendi).30

It turns out, then, that politics is not for Cicero a local affair—
at least not politics as a normative ideal embodied in the Cicero-
nian notion of a res publica. Magistrates should observe the rule
of law. But the relevant law is not necessarily a particular code, or
the decrees of their predecessors:

You appreciate, then, that a magistrate’s function is to take

charge and to issue directives which are right, beneficial, and
in accordance with the laws. As magistrates are subject to the
laws, the people are subject to the magistrates. In fact it is
true to say that a magistrate is a speaking law, and law a
silent magistrate. Nothing is so closely bound up with the
decrees and terms of nature (and by that I wish to be under-
stood as meaning law) as authority [imperium]. Without that
no house or state [civitas] or clan can survive—nor the
human race, nor the whole of nature, nor the very universe
itself. For the universe obeys God; land and sea abide by the
laws of the universe, and human life is subject to the com-
mand of the supreme law.31

Cicero’s view of the universe and of human beings is certainly

not a Christian (or Judaic, or Muslim) view. However, there are
some elements of his thought that are both obviously congenial to

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 116 | P O L I T I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y

a Christian conception of man and universe and that have polit-

ical implications. I do not believe that those implications were
completely realized in a Christian context prior to St. Thomas
Aquinas in the thirteenth century. Between Cicero and Aquinas,
there is a space of more than twelve hundred years—and consid-
erable Christian thought concerning political matters. In the next
chapter, I begin a brief consideration of that intervening thought.

Notes

1. Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. W. Rhys Roberts, 1.10.1368b7–10.

2. Ibid., 1.13.1373b1–11.
3. Harold A. S. Tarrant, “Philo,” Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy, ed.
Donald J. Zeyl (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 380.
4. Cicero, De re publica, in Cicero: The Republic and the Laws, trans. Niall
Rudd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1.39 (hereafter cited as
Rep. 1.39)
5. Ibid., 1.69.
6. Ibid., 1.70.
7. Cicero, De legibus, in Cicero: The Republic and the Laws, trans. Niall
Rudd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1.
8. Ibid., 1.17.
9. Ibid., 1.18–19.
10. The Institutes of Justinian: Text, Translation and Commentary, ed. J. A.
C. Thomas (Amsterdam and Oxford: North-Holland Publishing Com-
pany, 1975), 1.4.
11. Cicero, De legibus, trans. Rudd, 1.61.
12. Ibid., 1.60.
13. Ibid., 1.29–30.
14. Ibid., 1.58.
15. Cicero, De officiis, in Cicero: On Duties, ed. M. T. Griffin and E. M.
Atkins, trans. E. M. Atkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), 1.12.

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 C icero | 117

16. Ibid., 1.15.

17. Ibid., 1.13.
18. Ibid., 1.19.
19. Ibid., 1.19.
20. Ibid., 1.153.
21. Ibid., 1.13.
22. Ibid., 1.15.
23. Ibid., 1.26.
24. Ibid., 1.15.
25. Ibid., 1.14.
26. Ibid., 1.15.
27. Ibid., 1.17.
28. Ibid., 1.17.
29. Cicero, De Legibus, trans. Rudd, 1.42–43.
30. Ibid., 2.8–11.
31. Ibid., 3.2–3.

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