Cicéron
True law is right reason in agreement with nature.
Cicéron (106 – 43 av. J.-C., Rome (Roman Republic)) : new academy (academic scepticism) and stoicism. Cicero looks for what is most probable, not for absolute certainty: he lets each school speak, then judges. On morality, he concludes that justice and moral goodness come from nature and from the reason all humans share, not from votes or customs. On AskPhilosophy: 4 reconstructed arguments, 5 quotes checked word for word against the original texts, and 4 common beliefs examined; every text carries an authenticity badge (written by the author, posthumous, student notes, reported, apocryphal).
Why he matters
He made Greek philosophy speak Latin, and invented some of the words needed to do so: many European philosophical terms pass through him. For centuries, people learned ethics and politics from his books. His definition of natural law, one law for all peoples, nourished Aquinas, Grotius, Locke and the modern idea of universal rights.
His times
A famous advocate, consul in 63 BC (he foiled Catiline's conspiracy), he lived through the end of the Roman Republic. Sidelined by Caesar, he wrote almost all his philosophical treatises in two years (45-44), after the death of his daughter Tullia. After Caesar's murder, he attacked Mark Antony in his speeches: he was killed on Antony's orders in December 43.
How to read him
Many of his books are dialogues. When Balbus defends the Stoics or Cotta attacks them, these are not necessarily Cicero's own views: we always say who is speaking. In On Duties and the Tusculan Disputations, on the other hand, he speaks for himself.
His positions
click a row to see the evidenceIn the Laws, he speaks in his own name of a "supreme God" who generated man. In On the Nature of the Gods, he has Cotta attack every proof, then concludes that the Stoic Balbus's position seems to him "closer to probability". A believer in the probable rather than the certain: scholars still debate how sincere that conclusion is.
He offers no theory of where ideas come from. He trusts the senses and notions "sketched" in every mind, but his method is to weigh the arguments on both sides to find the most probable.
An Academic: nothing can be grasped with absolute certainty, but one can follow what is probable. He makes this a freedom: bound to no system, he says each day what seems most probable to him.
In Scipio's Dream, "each person is his mind, not the figure one can point at". In the Tusculans, philosophising means learning to detach the soul from the body. But he also examines the hypothesis that death extinguishes everything, without deciding.
The wise man "refers everything to his own judgement". In On Fate (not yet in our corpus), he argues against the Stoics that our decisions are not fixed in advance by fate.
Justice and moral goodness exist by nature, not by opinion: if a vote were enough to make right, a vote would be enough to make theft just.
He wants reasons in philosophy, but he also defends the religion of the ancestors as an institution of Rome. His character Cotta sums up this double attitude: as a priest, he believes tradition without proof; as a philosopher, he demands reasons.
We are not born for ourselves alone: our country and our friends have a claim on part of our life. In Scipio's Dream, those who served their country well have a place in heaven.
Nature has placed "sparks" of virtue in us, which bad habits smother. Any person, from any people, can reach virtue by taking nature as a guide.
The country comes before the individual, and he defends the order of the Republic and the Senate. But he also holds that cities were founded first so that each person could keep their property, and he opposes equal division of land.
His book is called On Duties, but everything in it rests on the honourable, that is, the four virtues (wisdom, justice, courage, moderation). What is honourable is the only good, or the highest.