Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the On Duties podcast by the Ciceronean Society. This is a great opportunity to continue reading Cicero's most influential work, On Duties. And I am Josh Bowman, executive director of the Ciceronean Society, and I am joined by Chris Anadale.
Hi.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: How you doing? Chris Anadale of Mount St. Mary's University in Philosophy.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Yeah, so glad to have y' all back. If you haven't been reading with us, go back and read the first listen to the first two episodes or watch the first two episodes. We are.
We're not that far into this. We're in book one of Cicero's On Duties. We're using the Cambridge text in the History of Political Thought. We put a link to the translation we're using down there. And again, we're just reading this and seeing what it inspires us to talk about and connecting it to other ideas and thoughts and things, trying to keep it as accessible as we can for a broad audience. But also, just as a reminder, Chris and I are Christians, and we bring that perspective to the show and to this book. And we also are people who have an admiration for Cicero. And so while we will be critical of him, we also appreciate his influence and importance in the history of. Of Western thought.
So let's start with chapter 11.
From the beginning, nature has assigned to every type of creature the tendency to preserve itself, its life and body, and to reject anything that seems likely to harm them, seeking and procuring everything necessary for life, such as nourishment, shelter, and so on. Common also to all animals is the impulse to unite for the purpose of procreation and a certain care for those who are born.
The great difference between man and beast, however, is the latter adapts itself only in responding to the senses and only to something that is present and at hand, scarcely aware of the past or future. Man, however, is a sharer in reason. This enables him to perceive consequences, to comprehend the causes of things, their precursors and their antecedents, so to speak, to compare similarities and to link and combine future with present events. And by seeing with ease the whole course of life, to prepare whatever is necessary for living it.
Now, remember, up to this point, Cicero has been. He's introducing his topic. He's talking about duties. He wants to. He began by talking about, you know, what is or is not honorable, right? If we're going to define what duty is, we got to figure out what is honorable, what is dishonorable, what is beneficial, what is not beneficial, what do we do when they conflict?
How do we Think about. And then he adds to additional questions of what is more or less honorable, what is more or less beneficial. That's going to be an important piece of this as well. But we got to get to human nature. Why does this even matter to us?
I think this is a really important point because a lot of people today, that's a really general thing to say. But a lot of people today operate or proceed from a unreflective anthropology. Does that make sense?
So we haven't asked the question of what does it mean to be human and be a person. We just assume a bunch. Right.
And for Cicero, he, he wants to lay it out right away. And it kind of reminds me of later social contract theorists. But what he's saying is man's not just an animal, just a point. He is an animal, but he's distinguished by his, by reason. And this is, this is a really key point for all Roman philosophers and as well as the Greeks. Right. Is that, that, that notion of reason? You're not just.
He doesn't say this explicitly, but I would also add, he seems to appreciate the fact that humans have something like imagination and memory.
We, we, we can see ourselves historically in time in a way that, that perhaps animals, at least according to Cicero can't. Now obviously he doesn't have all the knowledge we do biologically about animals today and that there are a lot more advances. Right. Than he, than he would have ever realized.
He, I don't know how much he knew about an octopus, for example. They, they're quite bright. But he's, you know, he's onto something here. He notices, you know, what Christians will, will emphasize as well as Jews that we are made in the image of God. Something is different. Right. And so, yeah, I just give you a second to comment on that.
Chris, about chapter 11. He's laying out his anthropology there. What do you think?
[00:04:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I think here he's obviously giving us the, he wants to talk about the roots of the virtues in the next few chapters. And here we're talking about the root of all virtues. So we begin with nature.
Our nature is animal. We have a biological nature. And then this is very classical, very romantic on this biological foundation. Then we build with reason what is additional to it. So we are animals, so we have this animal biology. So we need what is needful for life, for nutrition, for creating and caring for our young. So we're oriented by nature towards this kind of self preservation and flourishing and building up of ourselves and our families.
But going beyond the beasts, we, we have not Just the senses, but reason. Reason puts us in relationship with time. And so now we have a relationship to the past and the future. This gives us a sense of history, a sense of anticipation. It allows us to build culture. It allows a father to write a letter to his son instructing him on how to live well, because he has to live not just as an animal, but as a man. That means to live rationally. It means to live as a philosopher in some key sense. So all these virtues, although they're very practical, are devoted to this kind of philosophical perfection of the rational man, which is going to converge with and build upon the biological man. That's my takeaway from this part.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Yeah, we could build on this throughout. But is there something here that a more modern reader might scoff at? I mean, is there reason?
Is the classical concept of reason more elevated than the modern one? Does that make sense that to me, there's a kind of notion of modern reason that seems to almost, you know, for lack of a better word, reduce reason to calculating right to.
To what an algorithm can do. Right. But. But Cicero means something more right.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: I think he does. But then again, you know, he is, as we said in the previous episode, he's a man of action. And so he wants to focus upon the virtues of action, not upon just sort of speculative reason grasping truth in itself. He's not about contemplation as a kind of human perfection.
Here he seems to be presenting a vision of reason, which at least is kind of friendly towards this sort of more instrumental focus that we'd associate with modern kind of, you know, the reason from David Hume forward. Reason is about helping us to achieve our goals. But the difference here is that I think, without going sort of full on all the way up to 11 on speculative reason, he is seeing this reason in the context of building upon our nature and our natural instinct. So he does say here the man is a sharer in reason, and this share in reason enables him to perceive consequences and to comprehend the causes of things. And so we do grasp the reality that's out there. That's the sort of speculative element that I think is still in Cicero. But as we'll see in some later chapters, when he comes to wisdom, he's going to sort of deal with wisdom very quickly and then move on to the virtues of political life and of action, which is really where his heart is and where his focus is. Because I don't think he believes that some sort of perfection of an abstract speculative reason constitutes the true perfection, the true sense of duty. That he's trying to instruct his son in here.
Right, right.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Chris, why don't you go ahead and read chapter 12 to keep us going here?
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Sure, sure. We're on page six of the Cambridge version.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Chapter 12.
The same nature, by the power of reason, unites one man to another for the fellowship both of common speech and of life, creating above all a particular love for his offspring.
It drives him to desire that men should meet together and congregate and that he should join them himself, and for the same reason to devote himself to providing whatever may contribute to the comfort and sustenance not only of himself, but also of his wife, his children, and others whom he holds dear and ought to protect.
Furthermore, such concern also arouses men's spirits, rendering. Rendering them greater for achieving whatever they attempt. It's the end of chapter 12.
You want to take the lead commentary on that, Josh?
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll start with that and then I'll hand it back over to you pretty quickly here. There's, you know, first of all, I just want to commend to our listeners one of the strategies of studying a book like this is similar to what Christians will call lectio divina. I don't want to get into this too much, but some Christians, they'll, you know, I'll read a Bible passage, reflect on it, someone else will read it, and you experience a passage differently between when you read it and when you listen to it, I think.
And while there's a spiritual element to the Christian lectio divina reading of the Bible, I think there's also something to be said about listening to someone else read, you know, going back and forth, as I think we're going to try and do now, listening to these different paragraphs, it's just a recommendation if you're reading this book or any other one. But I was struck here by. It sounds Aristotelian in a way. Right. We, by nature of the power of reason, we come together. We're made for one another. Right. We are by nature political, communal animals. We're not isolated, we're not meant to be, to live away from one another.
And this is reflected in Cicero's writing on friendship and elsewhere. And it's not just, as I see it, he's not strictly Habesian in the sense that it's not just some kind of cold calculating, we need to get together to survive that there seems to be more here. In fact, I think this is where some people see in him kind of a proto Lockean liberalism.
I don't want to get into this too much, but there's a sense in which Cicero recognizes that in the state of nature, right before civilization, if there was ever a thing that we are already driven toward community, that community, family, reason, all of this stuff is pre political. You don't need a government to figure it out.
And I think the reality of pre political community in that sense is really important for Cicero, the Romans and others. Yeah. What are your thoughts on this chapter?
[00:11:21] Speaker B: Well, I'm thinking here, he's obviously, he's talked about the foundation, the roots of reason generally in nature and reason. And now he's going to go through the next few chapters, specific virtues. And this is where I think he introduces the virtue of justice, which is the virtue that the of excellence in communal living. Well, where does it come from? It comes from reason.
Reason drives us to live in community, to relate to each other. As you say, this grows out of our nature, driven also by reason.
I was thinking, as you were reading it, of the fact that Cicero is often taken as the kind of opposite number by Machiavelli, by Hobbes and some other early moderns as the main figure who needs to be refuted or to be broken with in the creation of modern contract theory, where the emergence of political society is artificial and is distinct from the natural. Here it seems to be an Aristotelian style, kind of more continuous. Right. Nature and reason bring us into community. So both by nature and by reason, we beget children, we marry, we care for our family, we seek to provide them with goods that they need in order to flourish and to do well. So we seek prosperity for ourselves, our loved ones and. And those we respect and care about. In communities, there's a sort of natural extension of the human spirit of generosity and hard work. And I love the way that this chapter ends with a sort of teaser, looking forward. It also elevates man's spirit. It makes him better and more noble and better able to achieve great things. Right. And that it's the doing of great and noble deeds in the arena of justice and the arena of politics that I think is Cicero's great love and where he's gonna focus a lot of his attention in g this advice to his son on duties and you need.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: I think Cicero recognizes here, elsewhere, the need for friends, for society to do these great things. I mean, I think he's.
Cicero doesn't strike me as someone who's elevating.
I mean, the individual needs to act right in kind of a Aristotelian spudios the great man of prudence in action, or however you're meant to say it's is.
You know, there's a sense in which there needs to be a community behind you. And I find that's true in life generally, that we have more courage, we have more. Yeah, it elevates our spirit. We're more creative with one another in that sense.
Let's move on to chapter 13. I'll go ahead and read that there.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: Great.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: The search for truth and its investigation are above all peculiar to man.
Therefore, whenever we are free from necessary business and other concerns, we are eager to see or to hear, or to learn, considering that the discovery of obscure or wonderful things is necessary for a blessed life. Consequently, we understand that what is true, simple and pure is most fitted to the nature of man. In addition to this desire for seeing the truth, the. There is a kind of impulse towards preeminence, so that a spirit that is well trained by nature will not be willing to obey for its own benefit. Someone whose advice, teaching and commands are not just and lawful. Greatness of spirit and a disdain for human things arise as a result.
I don't have a ton of notes for this particular chapter. I mean, he seems to be getting into the concept of leisure to a point. Right. Humans pursue the truth.
Consequently, he says, we understand that what is true, simple and pure, is most fitted to the nature of man.
But it's the second half that interests me here of this little chapter, this impulse toward preeminence, that we want to be better.
There's this greatness of spirit, he says, in a disdain for human things. I question that. I wonder if that translation is good. But that to me strikes me as very not modern, and I think in a positive sense. Where the ancients said, it's okay to be better, it's okay to be great, but today it's viewed as inegalitarian, undemocratic, arrogant.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: Is that kind of. What. Is that what he means by greatness of spirit? The desire to be preeminent and honorable and.
And good?
[00:15:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. I think it's interesting to me, talking here about the roots of wisdom. The natural root of wisdom is, as you say, it comes out of leisure. Right. So when we have leisure, we're able to pursue the truth. We see the truth. We love what is simple and pure, which is most fitted to our nature.
And this is where this idea. I think of it under the label of nobility. Right. There's something about knowing the truth that ennobles us, that raises us up that makes us want more truth. That makes us want to be pure and great and admirable like the truth. And you might suppose, just sight unseen, that greatness of spirit would fall into the category of justice. That somehow my concern for doing great things in the arena for the sake of the community is where my greatness of spirit would come from. But Cicero here seems to be placing its origin with wisdom. It's when I know the truth, when I love the truth, that I become nobler and better. And I desire to be even nobler and better still so that I can be more of the character of the truth that I know. So that does seem Aristotelian in its sense. Although it's still going to be, I think, more practically focused. Not focused upon contemplation as a kind of withdrawal from the world of action, but yeah. So a spirit that is well trained by nature, well trained by nature, will not be willing to obey for its own benefit someone whose advice and commands are not just and lawful. That is, I won't. I won't be willing to stain myself by getting ahead by cooperating with an unjust law or an unjust ruler. That itself would disgust me. Right. Because of my love of truth and my desire to become more like the truth myself.
That's my take on it, approximately.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: Yeah, it definitely distinguishes him from Machiavelli later on.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: In many ways. Let's continue on. Chris, if you could read chapter. Let's read chapter 14 and 15 together. Well, yeah, let's read chapter 14 first and then go from there in the interest of time.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: All right. Chapter 14 on page 7.
The power of nature and reason is not insignificant in this too. That the animal, that this animal alone perceives, what order there is, what seemliness, what limit to words and deeds.
No other animal therefore perceives the beauty, the loveliness, and the consequence of the parts of the things that sight perceives.
Nature and reason transfer this by analogy from the eyes to the mind, thinking that beauty, constancy and order should be preserved, and much more so in one's decisions and in one's deeds.
They are careful also to do nothing in an unseemly or effeminate way. In all their opinions and actions, thinking and doing nothing licentiously.
The honorableness that we seek is created from and accomplished by these things.
Even if it is not accorded a claim, it is still honorable. And as we truly claim, even if no one praises it, it is by nature worthy of praise.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: This is great. I wrote next to this passage, imagination and that There's.
We humans are able to live in a world of meaning in a way that I'm not sure any other animal could claim.
I think that there's certainly feeling. I mean, I have a dog. Dogs can love and be sad.
But, you know, there's, you know, I, I was watch. This is really random, but I was watching a, a short video on YouTube. It was yesterday, some guy, he strapped a. Like a GoPro camera to a mountain goat.
And so you get the perspective of the mountain goat running through the mountains. And this, the stuff that this mountain goat would see is amazing. Like, to me, it's gorgeous. Inspirational. It's beautiful.
Does the mountain goat care right?
Does the mountain goat stop and be like, wow, that valley. I've seen it a hundred times, but it never gets old. Like, I don't know. And I think he's. I like the fact that Cicero is kind of bringing up this, this fact that humans can look at the world and see the meaning, see the analogies, put the pieces together.
If I understand it right, I don't know of a word at this point in Latin, in classical Latin, where the, where the word imagination exists.
Aristotle has something like it. Is it fantasia or fan?
Yeah, something like that. Ph. Anyways. But it's not really until Augustine that we get the word imagination as we know it today in Detrina Tate, I believe, where it first emerges. And I think in some ways Cicero is pointing in that direction. I don't know, it's just some brief thoughts on this chapter.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: Sure, sure. I think from my own perspective, I think here he's talking about the roots of moderation. Now, how is it that we become moderate? We seek to govern ourselves in a certain way, to grow in a certain virtue, to conform ourselves to the truth that we know.
We see beauty and order in nature. Obviously this is sort of subsequent to wisdom, to seeing the truth. We see beauty and order and then we apply it imaginatively, as you say, backwards to ourselves, to our soul. We say, I also should be orderly and beautiful inside, spiritually, mentally as well.
So that's an interesting sort of origin, right? It's the external order that I perceive through senses and then reason that is then applied backwards to me, right? And so I say, okay, now, now I have an obligation now I have a duty. Now I have something that is. That is needful, that is appropriate, which is for me to become, to preserve constancy and order in my decisions and my deeds. That is to be moderate, to be well governed and self controlled, to do nothing unseemly or effeminate. Both of those, I think, contrary to the idea of what is appropriate to one's station, which is the sort of key concept of duty, of officiis here.
I think I was especially interested in the final two sentences of this chapter, that even if it is accorded no acclaim, it is still. Still honorable in itself and deserving of honor. And this is where I remembered. Ah, this is a father writing to his son who is, you know, studying abroad in Athens, as it were, and reminding him, even if you're the only one who sees this, it still has its value in itself and is worthy of being pursued by an excellent man, even if nobody thinks so.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: Right. And that certainly contrasts with a lot of. Well, if no one values what you're looking at, that truth and, you know, what good is it?
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Right. Well, the distinction between what is honorable and what is called honorable.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: Right, right, right.
Okay. Well, you know, we could obviously expound on that, but he's going to do that. So we'll come back to it. Let's read chapter 15. You are seeing, my son, the very face and form, so to speak, of the honorable. If it could be seen with the eyes, as Plato says, it would inspire an amazing love of wisdom.
Everything that is honorable arises from one of four parts. It is involved either with the perception of truth and with ingenuity, or with preserving fellowship among men, with assigning to each his own and with faithfulness to agreements one has made, or with the greatness and strength of a lofty and unconquered spirit, or with order and limit in everything that is said and done. Modesty and restraint are included here. There's a lot in that passage right there. I'm going to keep going. Although these four are bound together and interwoven, certain kinds of duties have their origin in each individually. For example, in the part that we described as first, in which we placed wisdom and good sense, there lie the investigation and discovery of what is true. And that is the peculiar function of that virtue.
So here he's basically.
He's giving the four virtues, right. And he's going to now expound on them just some. I mean, he's going to root it in virtue, he's going to root it in nature.
And.
Yeah, I like the way he introduced. He doesn't just come out and say it. Right. Yet he knows that everyone talks about virtue. Well, I'm kind of going to hint at it. Right. He's rhetorically.
He's building you toward it. Right. He's leading you there any Thoughts on this little transitional paragraph here?
[00:24:32] Speaker B: Yeah, well, as you said, he's walking us through the virtues he's just expounded. So he talks about virtue, the honorable, which is what we're pursuing. We want to do honorable things, to be honorable in ourselves.
Its origins are in one of four places, in the love of truth. And that comes under the category of wisdom. In seeking to benefit the community.
And that's justice. That also involves giving to each what is due. That's sort of the classic definition of justice.
To have a lofty, unconquered spirit. And here's that third virtue of the virtue of great spiritedness. Of being sort of, you know, bold and sort of noble. What I've tried to call nobility before and of orderliness and limit, self control, moderation. Sort of seeing the order of the cosmos and bringing it within yourself to control and order yourself correctly.
And the only other note I have from this chapter is that for some duties that we have will come some responsibilities or appropriate actions. Keep in mind that the translation of officium here, more like what is appropriate, what is needful, will be more in one of these areas than in another. So we're going to be talking in what's ahead of the interrelation between these different virtues. How you might perform a certain action or have a certain duty. Which would proceed from more than one of these sources. Or maybe just primarily from one. So he's beginning to sort of set out and fill in the details for his son's sake. Of the kind of advice he's going to be giving us.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: Great. Why don't you read then? Because that's how we conclude this section here. If you could read both chapters 16 and 17.
This gets to the relation of the four virtues to each other, which we're already starting there. But, yeah, go ahead and read 16 and 17.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Absolutely.
For when a man is extremely good at perceiving what is most true in each particular thing.
And when he is able with great acuity and speed, to see and to explain the reason, then he is rightly considered extremely sensible and wise.
Therefore, the thing that underlies this virtue, the matter, as it were, that it handles and treats, is truth.
As for the other three virtues, their aim is necessities. They are to procure and to conserve whatever is required for the activities of life. In order both to preserve the fellowship and bonding between men. And to allow excellence and greatness of spirit to shine out, both in increasing influence and in acquiring benefits for oneself and those dear to one.
And also, and much more in disdaining the very same things again, order, constancy, moderation, and the qualities similar to these are associated with the group that requires not only mental activity, but. But also some action.
For we shall conceive honorableness and seemliness. We shall conserve honorableness and seemliness if we apply some limit and order to the things with which we deal in our life.
That's the end of chapter 17.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Yeah. And I want to get just a few more comments before we end this episode. But we.
I want to get to that disdain word here in a minute, because here it sounds like, okay, on the one hand, wisdom, you want to go for truth. Here. That's the end of this pursuit to quickly and accurately pursue what is true, and that underlies that virtue. But the other ones deal with necessities. Now, one of the ways we could. I think we can read that there is kind of a, you know, a kind of practical and theoretical reason. In a way, he's not using those words, but in a way that the wisdom deals with more the theoretical. I don't know if speculative is the right word, but theoretical side of it, pursuing truth. And then the rest of them are like, okay, what do we need to do with what we have right now? Right. How do we act in the world as it is necessarily historically where we are, right? Not just applying some principle to the world.
What's the word? Casual street. Right. It's not just kind of forcing our principles onto the world, but realizing, look, look, we're. He doesn't use the word fortuna, right, as Machiavelli will, but he's kind of talking in a similar vein in the sense that, look, you have to play the hand you're dealt.
Wisdom helps you see the truth, no matter what hand you're dealt. But these other three virtues are going to help you live in a world that you're where you. You can't control these things, but you can control how you respond to them, right? And then finally he says, but you disdain these things, which to me is a little. Is. I mean, is that just him being very Platoish, Right? This. These changing things, these. This worldly realities and necessities are frustrating, right? That I disdain them, but I gotta deal with them. Like, I can't ignore it. Is that how you read that?
[00:29:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. Later on, Boethius will have lady philosophy say that, you know, we safe within the fortress of wisdom, we look down upon the forces of the world, and we. We disdain them. We laugh at them, we sort of hold ourselves aloof because what they have is nothing. But I think here there is. You're right. There's something kind of anti Platonic in Cicero's whole orientation. I was thinking here the way he deals first with wisdom and says, that's fine, but everything else treats with what's needful, with necessities.
That he is, of course, writing to his son, who is studying in Athens. And he's previously warned him, in a sense, don't get sort of too full of yourself that you're reading philosophy in Greek at the heart of the sort of origin of philosophy. Don't get so inside your head that you think that this sort of Platonic outside the cave, you know, contemplation is the true goal of human life.
That's one virtue, but the other virtues, just as important, maybe the key virtues for life are going to be the ones that take you back down into the cave, that have you deal with the contingent circumstances of your own place and time, your social station, the limitations that that imposes, and doing well and being excellent, being a great spirited man there. So I think you're quite right about that. Including.
It's not a concession to Fortuna in the sense that we're her plaything, but that we need to have a certain kind of. I'd love to talk to somebody who's. Latin philology is very good about just the tenor of this word disdain. That's come up now twice in this episode. But we have a certain aloofness from worldly things, but we still use them and act upon them because that's the arena in which we demonstrate our virtue.
[00:31:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'm hoping that, by the way, as we conclude this episode, that we do get at least one Latin philologist on here. I know a couple, but there's a lot to deal with there. And I'm grateful that you all joined us for this episode.
Again, we haven't gotten that far into this book, but look how rich it is. Look how much it offers for this discussion when you read it with other people. And so I hope that you have been blessed by these first 17 chapters of book one. In our next episode, we're going to look at wisdom. He deals with it in just two chapters, but there's a lot there. We look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you.
