Back to the Classics #8

I read this book for the reading challenge Back to the Classics 2022.

Pre-1800 Classic. Cicero, I gather, was popular in the Victorian age, but he fell out of favor among scholars and the thinking public in the 20^th century. Because of a growing interest in Stoicism in the last ten years, however, thinking people with an interest in ancient philosophy have turned to reading Cicero, who borrowed many ideas from Socrates and the Stoics.

On Obligations – Cicero (44 B.C.)

This text was the last that Cicero wrote before he was murdered by killers hired by Mark Antony[1]. The book is addressed to his son whom Cicero suspected was spending his dough living the idle life of a student in Athens. Cicero discusses ideas that his easy-going son – and us if we find them useful - can apply in daily life in order to flourish.

Cicero claims that what defines us as human beings is our rationality and our gift of speech. All of us have rationality in common. Our reason assists us in restraining our emotions so that we can think through issues of ethics and sharpen our ability to identify our duties (obligations) in situations that daily confront us. As human beings with reason, we are responsible for managing our feelings and leading our way of life. We have a free choice among alternatives. We decide where and when we commit our time, energy, talent.

The above paragraph seems familiar, echoing self-help advice we’ve all read during this wretched pandemic but maybe even before, if we have been into self-help writing. It is material that we have internalized so deeply that we don’t even wonder whether it’s true. Of course people should do these things. Conduct should be orderly i.e. done in the right way and seasonable, i.e. done at the right time. Do what you need to do in the best way you can whenever you have to do it and do it that way every time. Sounds like Bobby Knight.

To repeat, this book has been so influential in western culture that its ideas seem as givens. Another example: we have to use our reason determine what is honorable, useful, or virtuous, and which of two virtuous courses is more virtuous. We need to live and work in the real world and gain experience in defining what is expedient (merely tactful or shrewd or self-serving) and how to judge between two expedient things; and what to do when the honorable and the expedient appear to clash. Cicero claims that they only seem to conflict; that we are not analyzing the situation clearly or properly if we don’t see that the honorable action is the expedient and vice-versa. The lodestars here are justice (be fair), courage (tell the truth), prudence (foresee consequences), and temperance (restrain craving and emotion).

The book is also a political philosophy that claims there is no higher calling than public service. For Cicero, the pursuit of glory and good reputation is motivated by inherent benefits to society and the desire to be useful to one’s fellow citizens. What Cicero considers to be the foundation of society is being able to enjoy one’s possessions in complete safety. A rich conservative, Cicero deplores the property tax and any legislation that would reduce income inequality. For all his talk about justice,  Cicero is mum on imperialism of any kind much less Roman imperialism. Nor does he say anything about chattel slavery, not even about its bad effect on free labor and the alienation of the lower classes (whom he calls “the mob”).

Cicero echoes “Know thyself,” and it's an encouraging point that we lose may lose sight of as we age and insensibly change in ways we never anticipated. We have the duty to know ourselves well enough to identify when we are getting older disgracefully, with slower reasoning, narrower thinking, more permeable filter between brain and tongue, shorter tempers, or more forgetful of how polite people act.

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[1] vain loud thuggish greedy stupid muddled ambitious shameless with an insatiable hunger for women and sex – strong men like Mark and Orange follow the same old patterns.