What is dishonourable is never truly useful

Cicero 106 BC · 43 BCTrue law is right reason in agreement with nature.

What it claims

What is shameful is never truly useful, and what is honourable always is: the conflict between the useful and the honourable is only apparent.

Why

The honorable is natural and the truly useful is natural; one action cannot be both against nature and in line with it.

In short

"What is dishonourable is never truly useful" is an argument by Cicero (On Duties, III, 11; III, 35; III, 38 (Gyges' ring)) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: virtue). Its claim: What is shameful is never truly useful, and what is honourable always is: the conflict between the useful and the honourable is only apparent. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 2 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

On Duties, III, 11; III, 35; III, 38 (Gyges' ring)

Valid with an implicit premise

Lying to win a lawsuit, cheating to get rich: we often feel we must choose between what is right and what pays. Cicero, at the end of his life, writes to his son that this conflict is only apparent. What is shameful cannot be truly useful, and what is honourable always is. To show it, he borrows from Plato the story of the ring that makes you invisible.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds an action that is both shameful and useful: it would be at the same time contrary to nature and in accordance with it. One has to say this is impossible.

Two lines of reasoning meet. P1, P2 and P3 show that the shameful and the useful cannot go together. P4 and P5 show that the honourable is always useful. P3 looks obvious, but it hides the real issue: "useful" must mean "good for a life in accordance with human nature", not "bringing money or power". If "useful" is taken in its ordinary sense, P2 becomes doubtful, and that is where Glaucon and Machiavelli attack. Cicero knows it: he does not deny that cheating pays, he denies that it is a real advantage.

Analogy. An athlete can win a race by doping. He gets the medal, the money, the glory. But if he wants to be an athlete, what he was after was not only the medal: it was being the fastest. That victory is the one cheating can never give him.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Glaucon (in Plato's Republic) 375 BC · attacks premise 2

Give the just and the unjust man the ring of Gyges, which makes you invisible: both will steal, kill and take what they want. Nobody is just by choice, only under constraint. Everyone thinks injustice pays better, when you are sure not to be caught.

Cicéron replies

Cicéron

If the wise man had this ring, he would not think himself any more free to do wrong than without it: good people seek what is honourable, not what stays hidden. And to those who say the ring does not exist, I ask what they would do if it did: if they admit they would do what profits them, they admit they are criminals.

The debate goes on (our summary) Glaucon does not defend this thesis himself: he sets it out so that Socrates can refute it, which the whole Republic does. One can also object to Cicero that he says what the wise man would do, without proving that an ordinary person would really gain by it.

Machiavelli (The Prince) 1532 · attacks premise 5

For a prince, really having the qualities people praise (faithfulness, humanity, religion) and always practising them is harmful; appearing to have them is useful. A man who wants to be good in everything comes to ruin among so many who are not: he must learn how not to be good.

no reply

No reply possible: objection raised in 1532, after the author's death (-43).

The debate goes on (our summary) Machiavelli answers Cicero almost word for word. In On Duties (I, 41), Cicero had written that cunning belongs to the fox and force to the lion, both unworthy of man, and that the worst injustice is to deceive while looking like a good man. The Prince (chapter 18) reverses this passage: the prince must be fox and lion, and seem good. A Ciceronian would reply that Machiavelli speaks of what brings power, not of what is useful to a human life.