Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Hello and welcome back to the On Duties podcast, a production of the Ciceronian Society.
We will be publishing episodes every Wednesday throughout 2026, reading through all of On Duties with commentary from a variety of of hosts and guests. I am Chris Anadale, podcast editor for the Society. I teach philosophy at Mount St. Mary's University and I also run a small YouTube channel of my own.
Joining me today is Ethan Alexander Davy, an associate professor of Political science at Campbell University and the co editor of Aristocratic Souls in Democratic Times and Aristocratic Voices Forgotten Arguments About Virtue, Authority and Inequality, both personality published by Lexington Books. Ethan's also an occasional host on our other podcast, the Sower, especially with episodes about obscure 19th century Russian thinkers.
Joining us today for the first time is a new host. This is Dr. Ben Peterson, an assistant professor of political science at Abilene Christian University.
His research and teaching focus on political theory. He writes about constitutional theory and the institutional implications of differing philosophical, philosophical and religious foundations. Ben, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Thanks so much for the invitation. I'm really glad to be here. I've been excited to follow along and read along with you and Josh and everybody who's been involved. So thanks for the invitation.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: No, you're most welcome. Let me also here give a shout out and a big thanks to our prior hosts. That's Josh Bowman, executive director of the Ciceronean Society and Catherine Bradshaw of the Ancient Languages Institute. We hope to have both of them back on here as part of a rotating cast of hosts over the course of the entire year podcast. So thanks to them. And thanks also of course to Ethan and Ben for joining us today. Ben, since you're new on the podcast, why don't you tell us a bit about your experience with Cicero and your approach to his work.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Thanks. Certainly. So yeah, I teach, you know, a kind of grab bag of courses on American politics, political theory, research methods, these kinds of things.
I do teach a course on ancient political theory and that's where we read. In that course we read the Republic and the laws by Cicero, along with works of other thinkers.
So I'm by no means an expert on Cicero or Cicero's writings, but I've kind of backed into interest in Cicero from writing I've done on the American founders, specifically John Adams.
And so he paid attention certainly to Cicero's work very closely and even some scholars think, modeled himself off of, to some degree of Cicero on Cicero and his life. The other thing I'll say is this summer I had occasion to read a book by Josiah Osgood called Lawless the Rise of Cicero and the Decline of Rome. And he's a classicist. And it's a really fascinating book of, you know, sort of Cicero about Cicero in action in the legal sphere and the political sphere. And so I've kind of have that in the back of my mind as I'm reading through On Duties as well.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Excellent. That's great. Fantastic.
We are partway through still book one of the three books of On Duties. Ethan, last time in last episode, you and I ended with chapter 54 of book one, which ends actually in the middle of a sentence. So why don't I ask you to begin us reading, perhaps going back to the beginning of the sentence and taking us through chapter 55.
And why don't we say 56 as well? Because they're both short.
[00:03:52] Speaker C: All right, sure. Yeah. I was going to do that anyway. Let's not start mid sentence.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: This is on page 23.
[00:04:00] Speaker C: Page 23, that's right.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Translation we're using.
[00:04:03] Speaker C: In such propagation and increase, political communities have their origin. Moreover, the bonding of blood holds men together by goodwill and by love.
For it is a great thing to have the same ancestral memorials, to practice the same religious rites, and to share common ancestral tombs. Of all fellowships, however, none is more important and none stronger than when good men of similar conduct are bound by familiarity for honorableness. The thing that I so often mention moves us, even if we see it in someone else and makes us friends of him in whom it seems to reside.
All virtue indeed lures us to itself and leads us to love those in whom it seems to reside. But justice and liberality do so the most.
Moreover, nothing is more lovable and nothing more tightly binding than similarity in conduct that is good. For when men have similar pursuits and inclinations, it comes about that each one is as much delighted with the other as he is with himself.
The result is what Pythagoras wanted in friendship, that several be united into one.
Important also are the common bonds that are created by kindnesses reciprocally given and received, which, provided that they are mutual and gratefully received, bind together those concerned in an unshakable fellowship.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Thank you, Ethan. That's very good.
So we are forgot to mention we have left behind justice. We're moving now into.
We are now in the middle of Cicero's treatment of liberality, which is actions that. Generous actions that are motivated by our justice. Ben, what do you make of what we've just read?
[00:05:51] Speaker A: I'll make kind of two points that stick out to me. One, just. You know, it seems that counter to As I think I heard both of you talking about on a previous episode, counter to a kind of habitian view of human nature, it seems to me Cicero highlights the attractiveness of the virtues we're talking about of liberality and justice in particular, that there's something that sort of pulls us to. Pulls people who, you know, especially people who are trying to, you know, inculcate those virtues and live by those virtues. They see that in other people, other people of similar good conduct, and it's. There's a natural attraction and kind of, you know, bonding and forced multiplication that kind of happens. So we're kind of naturally attracted to these virtues and we appreciate seeing them in others and want to be close to them, these kinds of things. So that's one thing. A second is more of a complicating point. I mean, in the previous few chapters, Cicero has started with our most general bonds, right? With all of humankind, all of human beings, working down to our most narrow bonds in the city and the family. But here there's kind of this interesting kind of bond that's introduced as well between people of good conduct, you know, people who similarly have good contact, who have familiarity because of that kind of shared sense of virtue. And that, that could be a kind of cross cutting, you know, there's nothing that has to be based only on proximity in that kind of connection. Right. And so it's just an interesting kind of complicating factor there as well. So those are two things that I'll throw out.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. I would add also, I see the same thing here. He begins chapters 53 and 54. He begins from describing the most general human fellowship and then narrows it down to tribe, to city, to relation, and then expands back out again a bit. Of course, we begin in the family and marriage. The family is the foundation of virtue, out to the city. And then he tells us in the passage that Ethan's just read, that of fellowships, none is more important than honor. In a sense, friendship, right honorable friendship between good men. And this is the thing that will tie us all together. It seems to, in a sense, ride atop the kind of natural familial affection. And even in a sense, it seems to fill out and occupy some of the space of political fellowship, because he's going to talk later about our duty to the republic and the way in which we're tied together by it.
But it seems to me when he's talking about the strengthening of this bond of honor between good people, men of good conduct, by this kind of mutual kindness, that they show to each other. It seems to me he's talking primarily about friendship as this kind of noble ideal. Of course, he has another dialogue on friendship as well.
Ethan, did you have anything to add?
[00:08:44] Speaker C: I was just going to point out. Here's the dialogue on friendship. So this is.
These reflections here are a small portion of what he says elsewhere about this. But I think one should note that, of course, there's Aristotle's notion of virtue. Friendship is one of the sources behind what he's saying here.
This is something that Aristotle speaks of at length in the Ethics. I think there are two whole books devoted to it. That the best kind of friendship is the one in which people come together on the basis of shared virtues. And they recognize in each other those shared virtues.
And they are also inspired by each other to pursue what virtue demands by seeing this in other people as well. And this is also, if you think about the way Cicero describes statesmanship, we're going to see in a later passage the opposition between a virtuous group of statesmen who are in some sense equal to each other, and then the one man who wants to be the most preeminent of all. And, of course, it's the former model that Cicero prefers and that Cicero thinks is best for a republic.
And also, I was going to note. Right. So we have these different bonds that people have. So before this discussion of friendship, on the basis of virtue, we also have the more primordial bonds of the family, which he says are the basis of political communities. So the marriages that join together different families.
And then we have these communities based on common ancestral memorials, common religious rights, common ancestral tombs. That is the basis, the first origin, of a political community. And then it can develop other ties as well. But that's the most primordial root of it.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Right? Right.
Excellent. Well, we're well on our way. Ben, would you like to read chapter 57 for us?
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Certainly. But when you have surveyed everything with reason and spirit, of all fellowships, none is more serious and none dearer than that of each of us. With the republic, parents are dear and children, relatives and acquaintances are dear. But our country has, on its own, embraced all the affections of all of us.
What good man would hesitate to face death on her behalf if it would do her a service?
How much more detestable, then, is the monstrousness of those who have savage their country with all manner of crime. Crime. And who have been and are still engaged in destroying her utterly.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: All right.
Well, this is a short section, but worthy of some comments. And we're talking about the, the kind of obligation, the, the officium that we owe to the Republic, to the, the common, the common good, the, the res publica. Parents are dear and children, but above all of these is the. The. The polity to which we owe everything.
My first thought on listening to this is that Cicero doesn't really present us with an argument for this. This is just sort of a very forceful orator's observation, right? How glorious is the love of the republic, how, how primordial, how fundamental, how demanding it is, and of course, how disgusting. And what could be worse than a man like, you know, Mark Antony, who is attempting to subvert and undermine and destroy the Republic. Now, I'm keeping in mind, of course, this is at least in part, a book written by a. F. His son to sort of strengthen him in his knowledge of, and ability to calculate and follow out his duty. But is this a shift of tone?
[00:12:43] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: We've talked about natural bonds. We've talked about bonds of virtue and friendship and mutual kindness between good men. And then sort of here supreme above all of these things, is the love and duty and obedience and defense that we owe to the republic, even more so than to our parents and to our children. But either one of you care to comment on that or add to that?
[00:13:06] Speaker C: Well, he's going to give an argument for it in the next paragraph, but, yes, it might not be what we moderns would expect to hear. We might be more likely as moderns to say that our family is first or that country is not first, or that our, our religion is first. But for Cicero, and this also reflects, for instance, what is said in Plato's apology of Socrates, where the fatherland is first, that your first duty is to your fatherland, because without it, you wouldn't be able to enjoy any of these other things. You wouldn't be able to enjoy these other loves that you have. So this is consistent with also the ancient Greek view that fatherland is first, although the Greeks didn't have, as far as I could tell, the additional duties to the rest of humanity that Cicero expresses.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: BEN.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Yes, we'll see a bit more of an argument in a second, but I think you're right to see a kind of shift in tone here.
It's interesting he says, at least in this translation, you know, this is the most serious fellowship, right? And there's something weighty about this, you know, our connection with our country. It's also, unless I'm mistaken, all the other sort of possible fellowships he mentioned or bonds that we have with People sort of naturally draw us, but this one, there are people who are interested in trashing it, right? There are people who are committing crimes against it. And so it's sort of a delicate kind of fellowship that needs.
And it's. I think it's also the first thing he's mentioned, you know, willingness to die for. Right? And so it requires sacrifice in a special way. It requires defense in a way that maybe some of the other bonds are more natural, and they sort of draw out, naturally draw our loyalties, whereas this one requires a certain kind of, you know, motivation and intentionality, to use a common word today, you know, that kind of thing.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Okay, absolutely. Well, let me push us forward. I'll read chapter 58, and we'll move on. Ben, I'll give you first comment so we know who's. Who's going in what order.
Now, were there a comparison or competition as to who ought most to receive our dutiful services, our country and our parents would be foremost, for we are obliged to them for the greatest kindnesses.
Next would be our children and our whole household, which looks to us alone and can have no other refuge then our relations who are congenial to us and with whom even our fortunes are generally shared.
Therefore, whatever is necessary to support life is most owed to those whom I have just mentioned. On the other hand, a shared life and a shared living and counsel and conversation, encouragement, comfort, and sometimes even reproofs flourish most of all in friendships. And friendship is most pleasing when it is cemented by similarity of conduct.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: So I think here, you know, we start to see some of the argument. And we've. We've. We've sort of gotten all these different kinds of bonds on the table, and now we have to start figuring out, okay, where. How do we. If. If there were a competition, right? It's kind of if we had to choose. How do you rank these? And I do think there's a kind of logic here, and it connects with something he's talking about in chapter 47, where he says that duties owed on the basis of gratitude are kind of like. If there's one principle, you must fulfill those, right? Those are the most important to fulfill. And so I do think that's part of his argument here, is that the duties we owe to our country are on the basis of gratitude. And our parents. Right.
Also connected in the. In those chapters where he's discussing that principle that we ought to pay back people who have done, you know, good turns for us, we should make it a priority to do good turns for them.
And that's so, you know, our temptation, if you want to call it our tendency is going to be to do good to those that we expect to receive good from in the future.
Or we might, if we do good to them. And so here the order is country first. It's already given us our life, our, you know, lots of things. Our parents, then our children, who we really don't expect, you know, we. That's on the big. We don't really expect to receive a lot from them. They depend on us. Right. And so I think that's something like part of the order here. And then we get further differentiation about, you know, what friends are owed and things like that.
But I think that might get, you know, there's a logic he's incorporating here.
[00:18:06] Speaker C: I would agree. Good.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: If I could add to that. It does strike me that it seems like the two lowest levels of this hierarchy of duties are both connected to gratitude. First, those to whom we owe gratitude, our parents and our country, both in their way, bring us into being and sustain us. And those to whom those who owe us gratitude. And it strikes me again whenever I read this, it is in part because they can have no other refuge. If you don't take care of them, they don't get taken care of. They are widows and orphans. They are without a defender that imposes a special burden upon you as the one who receives and should receive their gratitude to actually perform your duty with respect to them. Then we can begin talking about the other kinds of duties, the duties that go beyond just providing that Go. Sorry. That require less than perhaps giving what is necessary for life, but can give other kinds of goods. Ethan.
[00:19:05] Speaker C: Right. Well, I think I agree that gratitude seems to be the basis for the ranking here. Right. So we owe most.
Our country has given us the most. Without it, we might not even be able to enjoy family life.
And then next, we owe our parents so much. Without them, we wouldn't exist.
And so I think the basis for the ranking is how much we owed to those, how much our country and our parents have given us.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: Very good, Ben. Any final thoughts before we move on?
[00:19:40] Speaker A: I do have a quick thought, and this is a bit anachronistic, I suppose, but I believe that thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and other Christian thinkers would also kind of connect the command in the Ten Commandments to honor your father and mother with your duty to your country. Right. And there's a. On the basis of gratitude and thankfulness for life and the gifts that we've received from them and that kind of thing. The other kind of anachronistic question I'll throw at as Christians is, you know, where does the church fit on this list? Or it could be involved in, you know, in an intersecting way or in all of them. And so just an interesting, you know, thing to kind of think from that perspective.
[00:20:24] Speaker C: Right?
That is an interesting question. And Cicero doesn't really have that as a distinct category, does he? But I mean, church and state were sort of part of the same thing for him and the other work that we've both taught. Ben, you might remember the dream of Scipio, where Cicero imagines the afterlife, where people are rewarded for performing their duty to the fatherland. So that's the ancient Roman conception of heaven is where you are rewarded for serving your fatherland.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Ethan, why don't we move on and have you read chapter 59?
[00:21:14] Speaker C: But one ought, when bestowing all these dutiful services, to look at what each person most greatly needs and what each would or would not be able to secure without our help. Thus, the degrees of ties of relationship will not be the same as those of circumstance. Some duties are owed to one group of people rather than to another. You should, for example, assist your neighbor sooner than. Than your brother or companion in gathering his harvest. But you should, in a suit in the law courts, defend a relative or friend rather than your neighbor in every case of duty. Therefore, considerations such as these ought to be examined and we should adopt this habit and should practice so that we can become good calculators of our duties and can see by adding and subtracting what is the sum that remains.
From this you can understand how much is owed to each person.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Thank you, Ethan. I like very much the expression to become good calculators of duties. That's really the kind of intellectual and moral skill that we need to get out of a work like this and similar works.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: Ben, your thoughts just on what you just said there, that passage kind of brought to mind the, you know, the so called philosophic calculus from the utilitarian way of thinking, right? Thinkers like Jeremy Bentham, who promoted this idea. And here we have, you know, something like a kind of honorific calculus, right? Is that they're all different, you know, or maybe the honorific, honorific arithmetic, right? He's just adding and subtracting, right. And you know, it does strike me as a little interesting that Cicero a couple times kind of says, you know, once you. Once you kind of think through all these things, it's actually pretty easy to figure out what you owe to whom at what times you just got to think about all these things.
But he will, at the same time, in that last part of that passage, talk about how it really takes experience. You have to figure out when does the closeness of the bond demand an immediate response, or when is the need less, such that even someone with a more distant bond, with a greater need might demand your attention more. And so there's this kind of dynamic weighing of responsibilities.
I think one thing I take away from what Cicero is trying to do is to say, and you all mentioned this in a previous episode about even duties to slaves in this culture, right?
Everybody is a potential claimant on our time and attention in some situation and in some way. But then it becomes a matter of weighing all these different factors about how we relate to them, their needs and our needs.
Gratitude, as we talked about all these different things. And so it's a very rich conception, if not clearly formulaic.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Right. Prudence came to mind when I was thinking about this as well, as well as the following chapter. Ethan.
[00:24:17] Speaker C: Right. And it seems to me that unless one has experience, this would not be easy.
The gentleman is going to have to cultivate this prudence and probably over a fairly long period of time before he understands when to give to whom and under what circumstances. So this is right.
One would have to have sufficient leisure and education even to understand how to do this, I think.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Right.
Ben, why don't you finish us off this episode by reading chapter 60, and we'll. We'll discuss that, and that'll bring us to the end of this discussion of liberality.
[00:24:59] Speaker C: Okay?
[00:25:01] Speaker A: But neither doctors nor generals nor orators are able, however much they have taken to heart, advice about their art, to achieve anything very worthy of praise without experience and practice.
Similarly, advice on observing duty certainly has been handed down, as I myself am now handing it down. But a matter of such importance also demands experience and practice.
And now I have said enough on the question of how honorableness upon which duty hangs is derived from those things that constitute the justice of human fellowship.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Very good.
[00:25:39] Speaker C: Thanks.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Thank you, Ben. That takes us to the top of page 25.
This is. We were just speaking about this prudence and experience, and it occurs to me there's a kind of a parallel oratorical structure here with chapter 41, which ended his discussion of justice by observing sort of a sort of concluding thought, sort of an orator's final image that you can take away. That he said there, justice can be done by force or by deceit, by the lion or by the fox. And here we have after gone through all the different hierarchy of obligations, that one would feel the kind of services that we would owe and why and to whom he ends up saying, well, of course, you need experience and good judgment and practice in order to implement these things. These are not when they're handed down, they're handed down as general rules and guidelines to be understood through implementing them in your life and in practice. That seems to be kind of the exclamation point at the end of this multi page consideration of liberality. Ethan, what do you think?
[00:26:42] Speaker C: Right. And. Well, I like to say things that are expected of me is the person who writes about aristocracy in this line.
Cicero is saying, and I am handing down my experience to you, my son. And so the tradition in the Roman Senate was that the son was expected to take his father's place. So there's this notion of hereditary knowledge here, or knowledge that is transmitted from the father to the son. And that's before the young gentleman has experience. He would rely on his father's experience about how to make these decisions.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Ben.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Just to underscore what we've said about prudence and experience, I mean, it is interesting to think about, to compare learning, honorableness, virtue, duty with an art, right. An art form that requires cultivation and practice and yes, you know, book learning, but also, and maybe even more importantly, confrontation with actual situations that require you to make decisions and require you to make judgments about where your, you know, your duties most lie or where what. How your actions can. Can meet your duties. Right. And I do. I just find the language is again, rich with this idea that these are the specific duties that are about, you know, justice and liberality, that are about kind of continuing, fostering, supporting the bonds of human fellowship. Right. It's, I think, a really, you know, rich way to think about duties.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: Excellent. Thank you, Ben.
I would just add myself that I note he introduces chapter 60 by saying neither doctors nor generals nor orators are able to work without experience. And you might think here there's a kind of collection, generals who pursue victory in war, the doctor who pursues health, the health of the body. And then I think in the class in which he places himself, not the philosopher, the sort of abstract thinker, but the orator who sort of exhorts to virtue, who is passing down what he's doing, even he requires experience, and he's therefore recommending experience for whatever walk of life, whatever arena of excellence his son will be trying to prove himself in.
So that takes us to this conclusion of this thought about liberality and how liberality flows from justice. The next chapters are about greatness of spirit, both the benefits, the glory of having a great spirit, its necessity, and also the temptations and the hazards that can come to the great spirited person or the ambitious person.
So that brings us to the close of this episode 11 of the On Duties podcast. I want to thank my co hosts Ethan Alexander Davy and Ben Peterson. Thank you, gentlemen.
If you've enjoyed this, we hope that you will subscribe to this channel or this podcast, share this episode with a friend, tell some people about it, and look for more content. We'll be back with you next Wednesday for another episode looking at reading further into On Duties. Thank you for listening.
