Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Hello, you're listening to On Duties, a podcast of the Ciceronian Society. The Ciceronean Society encourages and equips Christian scholars as they serve the church. And one of the things we do in that process is read these great books together. And so one of the things that we're reading together is Cicero. On Duties, De officis. And thank you so much for following along. We're looking at the Cambridge text in the History of Political Thought edition, which we have a link to down below in the show notes, and there are several free versions online that are available. So grateful to my co hosts here, Chris Anadale at Mount St. Mary's University and Catherine Bradshaw at the Ancient Language Institute. Both have always been part of the Ciceronean Society in one way, shape or form. And we're so grateful. And this is a busy year for the Ciceronean Society. I don't want to go into too much detail here, but there's a lot going on.
We have our fall Symposium this October 22nd to the 24th in Holland, Michigan. Check that out. And we also just launched something called the Logres Institute for Classical Liberal Studies, which is a.
There's several certificates in the great Books, History of Western Civilization, C.S. lewis, Classical Education, et cetera. And these are great opportunities for you to get the content knowledge that you may not have gotten in college so that you can give the education to others that you never received. And that's a great opportunity that we're trying to provide through things like this podcast, Locust Institute, our other podcast, the Sower, our conferences, and more. So thank you so much for joining us today. We're still reading book two of Cicero's On Duties, and I believe we last time we finished with chapter eight, so we're going to start with chapter nine.
There's a lot going on here. Cicero just gave us a long intro where he's again addressing his son, Marcus Cicero, which of course doesn't help that, like in Rome, they keep naming their kids exactly the same names.
So there's that. But he's addressing him saying, hey, look, philosophy is not a bad gig.
You know, despite the fact that I'm an exile, this is something worth doing. And now he's going to turn to his main subject. So, Chris, who's going to read first for this one?
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Josh, I think I'd like to ask you to read first. Read chapters nine and ten together, and then, Catherine, take the first comment. We'll go counterclockwise around the circle. Okay?
[00:02:13] Speaker A: All right, sounds good. Starting with chapter nine, I Laid down, then, you may recall five methods for the accomplishment of duty, of which two related to seemliness and honorableness, and two to things advantageous for life, resources, wealth, power.
The fifth was concerned with deciding what to choose in case those already mentioned seem to conflict with one another. I have now completed the section with which I want you to be most familiar. That on honorableness, what I am going next to address is that which is labeled beneficial.
Custom has stumbled over this word and strayed from the path, gradually sinking to the point where she has severed honorableness from benefit, decreeing that something can be honorable which is not beneficial and beneficial which is not honorable. Nothing more destructive than this custom could have been introduced into human life.
It is indeed true that philosophers of the greatest authority make a distinction in thought, but between these two kinds combined though they are, and doubtless they do so honorably and strictly, for they hold that whatever is just is also beneficial. And again, whatever is honorable is also just.
Therefore it follows that whatever is honorable is also beneficial. Those who do not see this clearly often admire shrewd and crafty men and mistake wickedness for wisdom.
Theirs is an error that must be uprooted, and their fancy must be wholly converted to that hope, which consists of the understanding that they will achieve what they want by honorable policies and just deeds, and not by deceit and wickedness.
[00:03:52] Speaker C: Ah, now here we get into the. The meat of the book.
So Cicero, this is going to be basically the. The case for the rest of On Duties, book two, and then also book three.
So this is the big, like when people ask me what's On Duties about, I'll say, you know, well, it's a description of what virtue is. But then it also is a case being made that the only thing that is actually useful and actually expedient and actually beneficial is virtue, which every time I say that, people go, huh?
Because as Cicero said, the.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: The.
[00:04:34] Speaker C: The honorable and the useful, the. The utile.
Have been separated.
And yes, they're technically different concepts, as you know, he says the philosophers separate them. And yes, yes, yes, of course, that is. That is right and proper to. To fix, to. To separate them in the sense that they are actually different things.
Just as we would say, well, Aristotle and. And Homer are different people, but they're in the same tradition. They need to go together.
And similarly, Cicero is going to make the case that the two, the useful and the honorable ought to go together.
But it is interesting that Cicero likes to unite things and then say, well, but in the past they've been separated. They used to be together, but now they've been separated by somebody.
Because he says this about the useful and the honorable here. And then elsewhere in De Oratore he says, the contemplative and the practical life used to be together, but Socrates separated them.
And so there's this misconception. So Cicero is almost the person who says, oh, there's this misconception that these things are separate, but they're actually united and need to be together.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah. I would add that two things that I noted here.
First, I actually have marked with an exclamation mark in the margin, which I don't do often.
Nothing more destructive than this custom could have been introduced into human life. What is this custom? And notice, it's not an intellectual mistake. It's a custom, it's a habit that people just got into of thinking sloppily.
[00:06:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: That the beneficial and the honorable are completely divergent. Right. This is destroying our life.
Most destructive, it could be a bit of rhetorical exaggeration. Right. That's the sort of punch at the end of the speech. But the other thing that struck me, though, is, of course. Well, we think, of course, in the modern terms, we think of Machiavelli as the great sort of antagonist of the Ciceronian tradition, of Cicero, maybe even personally, in the sense that he wants to separate the virtuous from the useful.
But Cicero's reasoning here, as it's been presented so far, seems to me to leave a bit of a gap in it. He says these philosophers of the past identify, they say that what is just is beneficial, and what is honorable is just. And I can recognize a syllogism, Right.
If the honorable is a subset or a species of the just, and the just is a subset or species of the beneficial, well, plainly, then, everything honorable is beneficial. But I don't see that he's proved the converse, that everything beneficial must also be just and honorable. So I'm waiting for that sort of second half of the proof, realizing he's only just getting started here. But unless he wants to say that they're all identical, in which case to try to prove the identity of the beneficial and the honorable just by identifying them both with a third thing called the just.
Doesn't move the needle so far, but early in the entire argument, of course. Josh.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Yeah. I couldn't help but think of Machiavelli in this passage. Right. And this just makes him apoplectic in this particular idea, because later, for those who haven't read Machiavelli, he's going to have this concept of virtu that is not virtue in the sense that Cicero means it. It's more that what is effective and beneficial, that is, that's, you know, we're done asking questions. Then it worked. Okay, well, I don't want to hear about whether it's honorable or not. I mean, I'm overstating it, but there is an aspect here where, I mean, Cicero is not.
He's not. I mean, granted, Machiavelli is 1400 years later plus, so it's not. But Cicero does have in mind some Roman leaders who are certainly thinking in the same way. Crassus, Antony, Caesar, I would say less so Pompey, but not entirely. I mean, there's plenty of people that he could think of right away that would have had the same view as Machiavelli. And of course, Machiavelli is going to look back at some of the Romans and say, yeah, you screwed up. You screwed up. We're not that bad. Right? I'm also thinking of the distinction, and again, this is oversimplifying it, the distinction that Aristotle makes. So looking backwards now between cleverness and prudence, I think in Cicero's mind, there's some individuals in his moment that are overemphasizing cleverness. Cleverness is just, again, oversimplifying where you're really good at matching ends and means. Like, you're like, I know how to get the job done.
I might not do it morally right. I might not. You know, the end itself may be unjust, but at least I know how to do this right. If I know how to oppress someone, at least I'm going to do it well, right?
Something like that. That's cleverness. And so that's when he's saying that these. These shrewd and crafty men. But prudence is doing the right thing at the right time, the right reasons, et cetera. It is going toward a good end and matching good means and good ends again, I know it's more complicated than that, but that's how I see it here. And Cicero, squarely within that Aristotelian tradition. He is not. What is going to happen later. The question that I could. I'll just pose as a rhetorical question for our listeners, especially in later politics. And what I always like to bug my students with is, is this naive?
That's. That's Machiavelli's point, right? I mean, is this just this kind of the Mr. Smith goes to Washington look? I mean, do you really have the luxury of principles and virtue In a world like this, as screwed up as it is. I know that's a. That's really cynical thing to say, but I think we're also in a moment where one of the ways that Cicero would be less compelling, I think, especially to some folks actually on the left and the right politically, is that this just seems naive. Right. You have those on the right who are just like, look, let's just use power and do what we need to do with it, just like Lenin said. Right. I mean, essentially it's the same idea in different sides of the political aisle. And Cicero's like, look, none of you are. Are honorable in this respect because you are. Just because it is effective doesn't.
Is not the end of the story. But he's saying, look, it's a false choice. You can choose what is beneficial and honorable at the same time. So anyway, I don't want to get off on a tangent there, but that's what came to mind.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: That's great. Yeah. We could go on endlessly about the contrast between Cicero and Machiavelli, maybe even pairing off passages between them and insights and dueling worldviews.
Catherine, I'd like to ask you to read chapters 11 through 13 plus, if you don't mind, the first sentence of 14, which seems to me to belong with. With the rest, leaving off at the work of man.
And I'll do the first comment. Thank you.
[00:11:36] Speaker C: Of the things which concern the preservation of human life, some are inanimate. Gold and silver, for example, the produce of the earth, and so forth. And some are animate, having their own drives and impulses. Of the latter, some do not share in reason, but others do use it. Horses, cattle, and other herd animals and bees, all of whose efforts contribute something to the needs of human life, are without reason.
There are two groups which use gods and men. The gods are placated by devoutness and sacred observance. Next to the gods, however, and close after them, it is men who can bring most benefit to other men.
Things that are harmful or disadvantageous can be divided in the same way. But here the gods are accepted because they are not thought to do harm. Therefore, it is reckoned the greatest source of disadvantage to mankind is other men.
The things we have called inanimate are generally produced by man's efforts. We should not have them without the application of craft and manipulative skills, nor should we enjoy them without human organization.
Neither medical care, nor navigation, nor agriculture, nor the harvest and storage of fruits and other crops could have existed without the effort of man.
Then There would surely be no exporting of that which we have in excess, nor importing of that which we, if these services were not performed by other men, nor by the same reasoning would the stones be required for our needs to be quarried from the earth, nor the iron, copper, gold and silver hidden deep within be dug out unless by the labor of men's hands. Consider our houses, which repel the biting frosts and abate the oppressive heat. How could they have been provided for the human race in the first place? And how afterwards, if they had collapsed through a storm, through earthquake or through age, could they have been repaired had not a common way of life taught us in such cases to seek assistance from other men? You may add aqueducts, diversions of rivers, the irrigation of fields, breakwaters, artificial harbors. How could we have those without the work of man?
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Very good. Thank you, Catherine. Well, I think here this is a very oratorical and also very philosophical approach. So let's begin at the beginning. We start at the top. We have almost kind of a tree of porphyry, right? These of two kinds. Set that one aside. The second subset of two kinds, et cetera. So we progress from things that concern the preservation of human life. Inanimate, animate. Okay, set aside the animate things. Some have no reason, others have reason of the ones that have reason, gods and men.
So we placate the gods, and that's the job of that. There's piety, there's religion and other things involved.
Set that aside, there's men. And then we come to disadvantage. It's kind of a nice sort of rhetorical trick. We set aside the gods, then. So the good things come to us from gods and from men. Bad things come to us from men. That's the chief source of danger and harm to us. Thinking again of the entire category of the beneficial, the useful, the things that are required, in addition to virtue, in addition to righteousness, to make our lives excellent.
And then we have a passage that will continue in the following chapters about the nature of civilized life. And there's a passage parallel to this, which I often teach in Plato's Republic in book one or book two, where he begins to talk about the origin of human society. Cicero's account is a bit different. He's starting here from a position which includes the gods, for example, and going through in some detail, where do we get these things from? We get them from human beings, from human culture, from human civilization, from cooperation. And what is cooperation about? It's about politics. It's about Ethics, it's about virtue and being able to sort of organize our lives around behaving and acting correctly with regard to each other. So anything you care to think of, you can think of it from a material engineering standpoint, but you really need to think of it as the fruit of human cooperation, which is where he's going to be going next.
Josh.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a huge piece for Cicero, is that it's not this individual brilliantly changing the world. It's us, a community. In many ways. It is that cooperation. And he's seeing it as being incredible. Again, all these things that he's mentioned that men give us are both beneficial and honorable. So just let me just start with some examples here, right? They're not accidents. They didn't just happen.
I can see some having done work in environmental thought. I can see some folks looking at this passage of being angry all of a sudden, right? Because clear, he's saying horses don't have. I mean, horses are pretty smart cattle.
I mean, they, they. Yeah, they, they. I mean, but like an octopus. What does he know about an octopus? That they're brilliant.
And I, I also wonder too, here. There's something about how, how much the classical conception of reason and this came up in book one. As I remember when we started this podcast off was this distinction between classical understandings of reason and modern understandings of reason, I think is here. And if you maintain that difference, is there something deeply and indisputably human about reason in Cicero's sense that you could never ascribe to even the most brilliant of animals in this sense? I mean, humans are so much more advanced.
And I'm also thinking the thing that came to mind here too is when he says that therefore it is reckoned the greatest source of disadvantage to mankind is other men, right? We get in each other's way.
The importance of the concept of sin as a distinction with the classical world.
Right.
I don't want to go out too far down this, but I always just see like little hints of it both in the Greeks and the Romans, where if you understood sin, a lot of your problems would make more sense, both in yourself and communally. That it's not just a breakdown of reason or that, you know, you're getting hr that sin is this, this inherent but not permanent as necessarily brokenness to the world that, that you live within. And it's not simply.
It's not just disobedience, it's not just pride. It's all.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: It's.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: It is this at the heart of Our human condition is sin. Also. At the heart of the human condition is the opportunity for redemption and renewal and reconciliation and all that. And so to me, this, this focus on reason, and this is always my kind of personal Christian critique of the class. The classics is like you just.
Even if you got all the reason right, you may still screw this up.
Right. You may do a bunch of things that are beneficial and honorable, but the sin is still there. And until you take care of it, you're still going to have the problems. And so again, that's may not be a fair critique of Cicero, you know, given that he dies before Christ is born and all these things. But it brought to mind a limitation of classical thought here.
[00:18:44] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. And it is, it is an actual limitation. It is, it is something that makes the conversation stop before we can quite get to the solution.
But it is interesting how Cicero differs from his contemporaries here in the positive way he views quite a few of these endeavors.
So a lot of his examples now, yes, agriculture, things like that, those are things that there's kind of a widespread agreement on. This is a good thing. This is a fruit of civilization. This is something that is beneficial, period.
When we get to the part though, that he's talking about gold and silver mining, the, the breakwaters, the artificial harbors, the, the sailing to places, the importing, the exporting, all of these are kind of the commercial or luxury pieces of a civilization that Cicero presents positively here but are not universally presented positively in Roman literature.
Particularly for the, the kind of Roman literature that we who like the classical tradition and admire the classical tradition tend to go to, that is more the virtue promoting.
End of it.
Famously Cato the Elder, which I think several episode. Episodes ago, I misspoke and said Cato the Elder was the father of Cato the Younger. He's not. He's the great grandfather of Cato the Younger. They're just all named the same thing.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: So.
[00:20:30] Speaker C: But Cato the Elder very famously said, I don't want Greek philosophy, I don't want any of that stuff here because it undermines and innervates the Roman, hardy, rugged virtue that we have from our ancestors when we used to eat turnips and be very happy with it.
But.
And later poets like Horace, who's after Cicero, but, but is. Is appealing to that same tradition, is he'll say, you know, who came up with the idea of sailing across the sea?
I mean, whoever, whoever he is, may his name never be mentioned ever again and may he, his memory be condemned because it was horrible for him to. To say that it was a good idea to go to sea. So it's interesting that Cicero is saying, no, these are good human endeavors. He's recognizing the goodness of it. It's just that there are ways of twisting it. And this is one of the things that he gets to later is the abuse of something does not necessarily mean that the thing itself is bad.
So that is a way that he is more nuanced, actually, than quite a lot of his contemporaries.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that reminds me that I've been reading a lot about and by Rousseau lately. And it reminds me Rousseau sort of steals a base by pretending that nobody has ever thought to criticize the arts and sciences prior to his own time, where there's plenty of precedent for that.
But Josh, Wowska, I decided here, I'm gonna drop a little bit of quip here, that if we were to extend the idea of reason to horses and then to other, to octopi or other things, we would have to expand our definition of wisdom to be the knowledge of things human and equine and divine, which we might do if we had to, but perhaps we don't wish to.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: That's like a grandpa level joke, right? That goes from dad joke to grandpa level.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: Don't try this at home. Yeah, some of these are only for me kids.
So let me the last passage we'll read for today is going to be chapters 14 and 15, and I'll read those and ask Josh to lead off. Comment.
From these and many other instances, it is clear that without the labor of men's hands, we could not in any way have acquired the fruits and benefits that are culled from inanimate objects.
Finally, what fruit or advantage could be culled from animals unless men gave us assistance?
For those who were foremost in discovering what use we could make of each beast were without doubt men. And even now we could not feed them, nor tame them, nor protect them, nor take from them their fruits in due season. Without human labor by man too, are harmful animals killed, and those which can be of use captured.
Why do I need to enumerate the multitude of arts without which there could be no life at all?
What assistance would be given to the sick? What delights would there be for the healthy? What sustenance or comfort if there were not so many arts to minister to us? It is because of these that the civilized life of men differs so greatly from the sustenance and the comforts that animals have.
Nor indeed could cities have been built or populated if men did not gather together as A result, laws and customs were established and a fair system of justice and a regular training for the business of life.
These led to a softening of men's spirits and a sense of shame. The result was that life became less vulnerable. And through giving and receiving, through sharing our abilities and advantages, we came to lack nothing.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: You know, there are some later in the history of political thought who ask, you know, is Cicero a social contract theorist?
Is he Locke before Locke? Is he the liberal before liberalism?
And there's something compelling about that. I mean, Michael Hawley's book, I think it's called Natural Law Republicanism, is a brilliant exploration of this, where he goes through and he shows how he uses this passage explicitly, where basically, if you look at the liberal tradition and its precursors and everyone they're drawing from, including Locke and the founders, that you'll see Cicero's influence, his explicit language throughout all of this, because he's saying that, like, look, I mean, civilization is a good thing. It brings us out. You know, Cicero doesn't use this, the. The idea of a state of nature, but you could say that we're. We're not animals. We are civilized. And so that's in some ways a similar contrast. Right. It's not exactly the same, I know, but it's. It is a. It is moving in that direction, and I appreciate the fact. And this is also another very Ciceronean society thing. I mean, he appreciates the value and beauty and honorableness of what is now called the common arts. Right. We have a lot of. A large part of our community are those folks who either they dabble in, you know, vocational technology and, you know, mechanics and timber framing and things like that, where they see this as educational and formational. I think Cicero, to his credit, especially compared to others of his time, like Catherine was saying, is seeing that this does cultivate virtue. He doesn't say that explicitly here, but I mean, how else would we have this civilization? How else do we have all these benefits without these common arts of working together and building and doing these things? It also made me think about, you know, Cicero's relationship to the Greeks, I think, is important in this respect. And I wonder to what extent does this reflect his affection for. Admiration for Archimedes? Right. It's. It's Cicero who is.
And again, this is. I might be speaking out of ignorance here, because Cicero is. He goes to Sicily, right. Where he is.
I can't think of the role. He has equities. Doesn't sound right, basically, like. Like a governor, mayor thing. And he's there for a while. And this could be really important in, in later in against varies and all these, these famous cases.
And he, he famously goes in search of the, the, the, the grave of Archimedes which had been grown over, and he finds it. He's just really excited. That's a big claim to fame and to. He certainly admires Archimedes and the Greeks who, you know, these more mathematical, scientific discoveries he is just as appreciative of as their kind of moral and legal and political philosophy as well. He doesn't. I don't read Cicero as putting them on different, different footing, although certainly I think, you know, that for the love of the republic and for. And for what is best for a just government, I think he's gonna, he's gonna emphasize that over. Over other things. So these passages are really interesting. It's, it's very. It reminds me of the Renaissance and why he's going to be so thoroughly and well read by all the. The Renaissance thinkers and Renaissance humanists especially.
[00:27:47] Speaker C: Yes. And that, that connection with, with Archimedes, that's a really interesting thought. Josh. I hadn't.
I need to go think more about that. That's a really neat thing when he's quaestor that he goes and just is so admiring of Archimedes that he will go and find that.
And the arts he names are not just the common arts, but they're also the common arts particularly that involve very clear skill.
And so he talks about medicine, which is an interesting thing that he names because medicine has a very odd place in the Roman world. It's skill, but there's no regulatory body of any kind in the medical world. So.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: Magic.
[00:28:39] Speaker C: Yeah. So I could put up a sign and say I was a doctor in the ancient world, which anyone who knows me knows that that is absolutely laughable.
But there's, there's a level of, okay, you recognize, you know, Cicero, that there is a skill to real medicine that really heals the body or at least helps the body to heal itself.
And that is a recognition that seems to go against something that he said earlier where he said that the things where someone is paid for labor, quote, unquote, is that's not an honorable choice, except for the fact that he says, well, when they're skilled, that is honorable.
And so it is another one of those apparent contradictions that actually is not a contradiction in Cicero. So there is this consistency of. There's a respect for anything that requires skill for Cicero.
And therefore there's not just that, but not just Individual skill. But there's a thought that kind of starts in 13 and then continues into 14, which is that you have to have a common way of life, a common shared thing in order for this to work. It's not just that, you know, we have all these different things and we're sort of united by a, you know, a market or some. Some impersonal something. It's. No, there's a common body of traditions that we share and that's how we're able to work together.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: I'll add that this relentless emphasis upon it is men who give us these things. It is man. It is human cooperation. It is society, which means culture, but also means politics and rule and then rule with virtue, which means. You're back to philosophy again.
Reminds me of one of Julian Simon. Wasn't he the 20th century economist most identified with. I forget what they called it. The humanity, the ultimate resource or vague recollections.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Now he's basically kind of the anti.
Paul Ehrlich is right. The population bomb is stupid. And yeah, Julian Simon's brilliant, highly recommend.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Right, right.
The idea is that it's human beings who bring us these things. There are resources. Yes. Brought out of the ground by human beings. They are brought to market by human beings. They are made into the shapes that are useful to us by human beings. So it is human beings who are doing these things. Not the sort of finite, limited produce of the land. We will find a new way to. So it seems to be a little bit of this. I don't want to say he's doing Julian Simon in 1st century BC, but he's emphasizing the social of this one, I think to say it's not just the material. It's not that there's silver in those hills and you can go get some. It's that silver miners, people, prospectors, find that silver and bring it to you and finish it and make it into a form that is useful to us. So it's that humanity that is what we are. And what is philosophy? It is the study of all things human and divine. So there's the political and philosophical element. And also, Josh, you pointed this out before. It's not individualistic. It's not that I farm as much as I can personally with myself and my family and my clan. And then, well, we've sort of. We've reached the limit of that scale. We need to join together with other clans and with other villages and with other cities to form larger and larger units to increase our efficiency and gain greater economies of SC scale. It's never been that way. It's always been the case that groups of people will come together and we will have these institutions of civilization and cooperation. That comes in at a very early stage that I probably would argue against thinking of him as a social contractarian from an individual perspective.
But he's got plenty more still to say. Of course, we haven't gone any further than that.
So, any final thoughts about this passage before we wrap up the episode?
[00:32:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Something I thought about was, was it in this episode, were we talking about the customs of kind of cleverness and. And it's a proto Machiavellian idea.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:52] Speaker A: There's this custom of men who are doing this, this and this that are undermining this, the relationship between the beneficial and honorable. I think it's important that Cicero does not see. He never. And really, the Romans in general don't look at the existence of traditions or customs as themselves worth getting rid of just because there might be a bad one. For Cicero, it's always, look, there can be good and bad traditions.
So the best antidote to a bad tradition or a bad custom is a better one is a good tradition. Right. In that sense. And I think there's something that is maybe obvious to us when we see that, but not so obvious in the modern world where there's a whole school is multiple schools of thought that just want to discard tradition entirely.
And sometimes they're inspired by genuine and I think authentic critiques of things that are really bad, but they just want to throw tradition out entirely. So, no, no, the answer is that you. That that bad thing you found in history and in the behavior of this or that government or society or whatever is often rooted. It's always rooted in sin, but it's also not the fault of tradition as such.
And for Cicero, I think he's just great on this, that reminding us that the best antidote to bad thinking is good thinking, not thinking. The best antidote to bad traditions is good traditions, not no tradition. Right. And this goes back to his more humble understanding of philosophy. It's neither all certainty or nihilistic where there's nothing has meaning. Finding this middle ground that is humble and understands that there is an answer. Things are hard, but there's no reason to despair. Humans may fail over and over again. We may be the big obstacle to ourselves, but we're also, at least for Cicero, the greatest hope, I would add that Christ in us is the greatest hope. Cicero is getting there.
[00:34:47] Speaker C: Yeah. And this is.
That's such a good point, Josh.
That There is, for the Romans, particularly, the most majorum. The custom of the ancestors is a great pull, is a great authority. And this is the tradition that Cicero is working in. When he criticizes the custom of doing such and such, he's not criticizing it from the outside, he's criticizing from the inside of here are all of these good. Most, you know, here are all these mores, these customs that we have.
This one is not good. But I am in a. In a. In a situation where all of these ones are really great and we should adhere to them. And actually, he's even appealing to that by saying, look at all that we have. Look what the custom of cooperation has given to us.
It's given us all this good stuff. And so let's stay with it, let's make it better, let's clean it up a little bit. Let's make it not ossified, but it's a good thing, and let's continue it.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: Just.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: Just thinking of, you know, all this good stuff that we have as Romans. I'm always amazed whenever I've been reminded of the Roman creation of concrete. Right where Roman concrete is. I can't remember what it's. It's like it uses salt water, basically, when they. It keeps strengthening itself. And it lasts millennia while ours lasts. You know, here in Michigan, I mean, Grant, it's not all concrete, but our roads are crap. They just fall apart every five seconds.
Roman roads are still there. I mean, or when the fact that the Romans could figure out how to build, like piers made of stone with. No, they don't have cranes. They don't have barges. They don't have any way. I mean, not barges in the way we have. Right? They have no dredging equipment in the way we have today. It just blows my mind that, like, look, if you really think we're this bad, right, in some respects, look at what we've made.
Now. I know someone will come back and say, well, look at what your slaves did. Well, look, I'm not advocating for slavery here. I mean, I realized slaves were a big part of some of their technology, frankly.
But I would also add that their. One of their virtues was understanding how they could. They could use human. Human ingenuity, human creativity and math and science and all these things to do really, really great things that are. That continue to impress us and frankly, shame us to this day.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: It's a great place for us to wrap up. I want to thank my co hosts, Josh Bowman and Catherine Bradshaw. I'm Chris Anadale. You've been listening to the On Duties podcast production of the Ciceronian Society. To learn more about us and our programming, please Visit our website, ciceroniansociety.org we'll see you next week. Thanks for watching
[00:37:45] Speaker C: Sam.
