Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the On Duties podcast. I am Josh Bowman, executive director of the Ciceronean Society, and we're reading Cicero's most influential work, On Duties De Officis, and seeing what it inspires in us, what it. What kind of conversation it provokes. We're using the Cambridge Text in History of Political Thought version of this, the translation by Griffin and Atkins. And I am joined today by my good friend, Chris Anadale.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Hi. Hi, Josh. I'm Chris Anadale, associate professor of Philosophy at Mount St. Mary's University and a longtime contributor to the Ciceronian Society.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Chris. Sorry, when I gestured over to you, I hit my computer. Hope everyone didn't get sick there. If you're listening, you don't know, but if you're watching on YouTube now, you wonder if you just had a stroke.
Well, last few episodes, it's all introductory material. He's writing to his son. He's laying out honorableness, if it's beneficial or not, when they conflict with each other. What is duty?
And he's going to root this in human nature, human reason, and especially the four virtues. And finally, after these episodes, we're finally getting to the first virtue, wisdom. He's not going to talk about it. A ton of it doesn't mean that it's not important. It means that, as Chris has been saying throughout these episodes, Cicero is a man of action.
You can't. It's not just about thinking. Thinking well and thinking right is important.
But you have to live, you have to act in a world, in the world that you find yourself in. So let's start with chapter 18. This is book one, chapter 18.
We have divided the nature and power of that which is honorable under four headings.
The first of these, that consisting of the learning of truth, most closely relates to human nature.
For all of us feel the pull that leads us to desire, to learn and to know.
We think it a fine thing to excel in this, while considering it bad and dishonorable, to stumble, to wander, to be ignorant, to be deceived.
In this category, which is both natural and honorable, one must avoid two faults. First, we should not take things that have been, that have not been ascertained for things that have, and rashly assent to them.
Anyone who wants to avoid that fault, as everyone indeed should, will take time and care when he ponders any matter.
So a couple things right away that strike me here. First of all, as he's laid out the different. You know, what distinguishes humans from animals? We want to learn. We want to Know, he would hate the phrase that ignorance is bliss. Right. That just doesn't make sense to the ancient mind. Why would you ever want to be ignorant?
But you can also see, you know, there is a sense in which you understand why someone gets to that point, and maybe we can talk about that as we go.
There is something in which, like when you know more about the world, especially today, when you know more about what's going on, does it bring you joy or does it bring you frustration and despair?
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: So there's. There is a sense in which, if you've ever met someone who can qualify as ignorant, you don't act like you don't know someone in that category.
Sometimes they seem happier, sometimes they don't.
Are they truly happy? Right. Does Cicero wrong or right here? I think that's an open question.
And this also gets to, you know, what is he going to mean by ignorant and knowledgeable?
Is there a hidden arrogance here as well? Is there something dangerous about that knowledge that actually could lead you astray?
This, of course, is going to come up. And is this with Christianity?
The Bible will say the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. That whole dichotomy.
Is that counter Cicero? I don't think so. But I also think there is an interesting contrast here between perhaps wisdom in the Christian sense and wisdom in the classical sense. Are they the same? And then he gets to.
In this category, you know, you want to avoid the first fault. The first fault, really vague here.
We should not take things that have not been ascertained for things that have and rashly assent to them. Anyone who wants to avoid that fault, as anyone indeed should, will take time and care when he ponders any matter. What does it mean for something to be ascertained?
I mean, does it. I mean, you can.
Is it because he doesn't have the scientific method? Is he.
Okay, well, it's not. It has not been ascertained. Who gets to decide what has and has not been ascertained? I don't know. What do you.
Those two, those two thoughts, the first being, you know, that it's, it's part of human nature. Don't be ignorant. And also don't assent to anything that hasn't been ascertained. What. What are your thoughts on those, those two pieces?
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Well, excuse me. I think, interestingly here he says the love of truth is most closely connected to human nature. So of all the things about us, it seems that this is the one that cuts closest to the core of what we are.
All of us feel the Pull that leads to the desire to learn and to know. We all approve of learning. We all disapprove of ignorance. And there's something we might either call this wisdom or naivete. Depending upon our modern attitude, we might tend to think of ignorance as being a problem chiefly because it leads to errors in practice. Like if you're wrong about the world, you'll make bad choices and then the world will treat you harshly. You'll suffer pain or loss as a result of your acting upon your ignorance. But I think here in classical Roman style, Cicero's going deeper on this. That right down, written like right into the sort of source code of human nature, is a desire for truth and approbation, of learning, and a sort of instinctive kind of disgust or disdain for people who are deliberately or blamefully ignorant or in error. And he just takes that. He's just asserting this, of course, for his son and for us. But this is just the way it is with human beings. We might ask again, do we have a more modern attitude where we think of reason as being practical? And the trouble with ignorance and error is that it leads you to do things that result in your desires being frustrated, to not having as good an outcome as you would want, that it frustrates your will.
That's my first take on that, is that he's really giving us this kind of anthropology where love of truth is very close to the heart of what it means to be human. And to not love truth sufficiently is to fail at being human in a very significant way that's not just cashed out in terms of practical problems.
My second take here, I think, is that the first error he gives us. I don't know about ascertaining. I don't know. Again, I don't know the Latin. Perhaps we can consult a scholar on that. Is that the first error is to rashly assent. It's just simply to make mistakes. It's to believe that what is false is true or to believe something to be true where it really is a better candidate for some kind of doubt.
So you want to avoid that. And that's the sort of obvious problem that everybody wants. Nobody wants to be wrong. So first rule, don't be wrong. And take steps to ensure that you don't rush ahead and form a bunch of beliefs that are or could be wrong.
Maybe the one reason this is dealt with quickly is that a lot of this stuff is pretty obvious to anybody who's thought about the life of the mind. So those are my first reactions.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: First rule for being Right. Don't be wrong.
Or.
But there's also this sense in which. And this is certainly true today. Right. We.
I want this to be true, therefore it is true. That does not mean it has been ascertained. It just means it's desired. I want the truth whether I want it or. Well, I want the truth whether the reality is what I would prefer not. Does that make sense? Right.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Fundamental failure of prudence. Yeah.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Right, Right. And so I think he's getting to that. Also interesting, there's a footnote here. Of the two faults mentioned, the first reflects Cicero's profound dislike of dogmatism, which made the skeptical academic tradition so attractive to him.
So I think there's also a sense in which, if dogmatism is kind of an.
It's a truth that's asserted but not ascertained. Yeah. If you think of ascertained as being the opposite of asserted, I mean, I guess you can assert what has been ascertained. But what I'm saying is that I could just say two plus two equals five, and you're like, no, we have ascertained that two plus two equals four.
So you can. No matter how much you assert that, no matter how much you want it to be true, it cannot be true.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: And I think that's, you know, that's where he's saying it's obvious. But in 2026, now it's not, as we take for granted, how obvious that is.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Why don't you go ahead and read chapter 19 then, and we'll look at that second fault.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Okay, we're on page eight here.
The second fault is that some men bestow excessive devotion and effort on. Upon matters that are both abstruse and difficult and unnecessary.
When those faults are avoided, then the amount of effort and care that is given to things honorable and worth learning will rightly be praised.
Just as we have heard happened regarding Gaius Supicius in astronomy, and as we have learnt ourselves regarding Sextus Pompeius in geometry, many men in dialectical arguments, and yet more in civil law. For these arts are all associated with the investigation of what is true.
It is, however, contrary to duty to be drawn by such a devotion away from practical achievements.
All the praise that belongs to virtue lies in action.
On the other hand, there is often a break from it, and we are given many opportunities to return to our studies.
Besides, the activity of the mind, which is never at rest, can maintain in us our pursuit of learning, even without effort on our part.
For reflective movements of the spirit occur in one of Two.
Either when taking counsel about honorable matters that pertain to living well and blessedly, or in the pursuit of knowledge and learning.
We have now discussed the first source of duty. That's the final line of chapter 19, right?
[00:11:10] Speaker A: There's a lot there.
It's. The first source of duty is. Again, these two chapters are on wisdom. The second fault, I'm going to read that again, is that some men bestow excessive devotion and effort upon matters that are both abstruse and difficult and unnecessary.
This was going back to the footnote. It says the second fault reflects Roman priorities, which also lets Cicero to justify his philosophical writing in terms of his involuntary exclusion from public life and his hope of helping his countrymen in another way.
Devotion and effort upon matters that are both abstruse and difficult and unnecessary.
Does. Does this.
Is. Is he.
Is he discouraging other philosophers or just.
Maybe I'm misreading it, because when I read that, it sounds. I immediately think of people who are like, they're obsessed with something that is really complicated but just profoundly uninteresting and doesn't really help anyone.
Again, I don't think that's what he's getting at because he seems to appreciate the pursuit of truth for its own sake.
I mean, but at the same time, he's going to say later, right, in the same chapter that all praise that belongs to virtue lies in action.
So what's the point, for example, of learning Old English?
What action are you going to take if you love Old English? Which, again, I'm not discouraging, just let our audience know. But why learn Elvish, right? Which I want to do. I would on everyone to know, um.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: What are you going to do with that?
[00:12:47] Speaker A: Right, what am I going to do?
That's right. I'm going to find. Yeah, what are you going to do with that degree, Chris? You can go to the Philosophy Factory.
But there is. There is, you know, what is he getting at here? He's trying to justify himself.
He's trying to back up his philosophical writing. Is he just trying to say, look, at least I'm doing philosophy that matters to action. Is that what he's saying?
[00:13:10] Speaker B: I think that's part of it. I mean, there's the sort of. What I described before as kind of Athens versus Rome, right? The sort of the elite kind of outside of the cave, Platonism versus the let's make a difference in the world, let's create and govern the republic, et cetera. But I think there's also this distinction he's made previously back in chapter 17.
Between this kind of purely intellectual virtue of wisdom, which is love of truth, and then the other three virtues which he says aim at necessities, that is what is needful right, what we have to do in order to live well in this life. These are the virtues of action. This is where I said before Cicero's heart is going to be. And I think that's really where his ambition for his son is as well.
He's praised love of truth. He said it's closest to our nature.
And in terms of the second error to avoid is to overvalue love of truth separated from the life of action, from the arena of politics, from which, as the footnote notes, from which he's now been excluded, he's writing this in the final year or so of his life before his execution, that he's no longer able to do these great and noble deeds. But fantastic line, right. All the praise that belongs to virtue lies in action. So if you're going to become wise, well, to what end, for what action will you take as a man in the world as a result of your wisdom, using your wisdom, don't think of it as this kind of bank account that you have to pile up a higher and higher balance in. That's the wrong way to think about wisdom, which I think is the second error, second fault that one can have in respect to wisdom is this kind of meta fault, you know, of valuing wisdom inordinately and in the wrong way, which neglects the life of action, which is what the rest of this discussion of virtue is going to be about.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Right? Right. Cicero does not, is not an ivory tower philosopher. He is a forum philosopher. Right. He wants to get in the forum, he wants to get his hands dirty, and he's upset that in this point in his life he can't, at least not without getting killed quite, quite quickly.
I also think it looks ahead to the issue of ideology too, depending on how you define it, namely that because the other fault here would be, and I don't think Cicero adds this, is that you can have these great ideas, although they're not necessarily true, where you have these great ideas and intentions and beliefs and you've ascertained them, presumably, but when put into action, they don't do what you expect them to do. They don't achieve the goals and the ends for which you hope that they would. And so I think in some ways Cicero is also saying, look, if it's. There's, you know, right, there's. Let's just keep reading that all the praise that belongs to virtue lies in action. Is it virtuous to be a utopian, let me say it that way. And I think again, that word doesn't exist yet. But that's what Cicero, I think, could also get at here, where he said there's no point in praising something that cannot be right.
And that's what becomes dangerous later on is you have the mass ideological movements and others of the 19th and 20th century in particular, where you have people like, I mean, let's just go with the easy one, Hitler, right, Who. I would not say that he has wisdom, but he certainly has ideas and they are not.
He doesn't care whether they've been ascertained. He wants this to be true.
And he's, you know, excessive devotion to that idea. The idea is, is more important than people themselves, more important than reality. His vision is more important than reality. I, I'm taking Cicero way beyond what he's intending here. But you could also say, I mean, is, Is Caesar guilty of this? Is Caesar, Was Caesar wise?
Did Caesar fail at these, at these two faults? Right.
I don't know. What are your thoughts? That's actually interesting question. Is Caesar guilty here?
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah. I think you could add here as well. One condition of virtue, of virtuous action is success.
You've got to succeed in doing virtuous deeds. So for the benefit of the community, to elevate your spirit, etc. Etc. If you're not able to succeed, then what use are you? That doesn't deserve praise? So that seems to be another element of the kind of life that Cicero is praising. It's virtue in action, successful for bringing about the good. And if you look ahead to the modern period, you think these are things that Machiavelli will begin sort of prying apart. Right. Well, can we be successful without being virtuous? But for Cicero, I think who. Against whom Machiavelli is arguing, in part, those things are just tightly tied together.
So I think to be wise is to arrive at the correct beliefs and also to value wisdom as an abstraction appropriately and not inappropriately, and then turn your attention towards living, doing virtuous deeds, living a life of virtuous action. It's a Aristotelian element in that, in the world, in the arena.
So that seems to me to be his chief advice to his son. The first source of duty is, well, get to the truth, be wise, act in light of that.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: And then he gives examples which, frankly, I'm not that familiar with. Gaius so Picius in astronomy, Sextus Pompeius in geometry, many men in dialectical arguments, and yet more in civil law. For these arts are all associated with that.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: The effort and care given to things honorable and worth learning will rightly be praised. Well, provided that you haven't fallen into error or overvalued the intellectual as opposed to the active.
Right.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: So let's look at this passage after that, then. So he says, all the praise that belongs to virtue lies in action. Then he says, on the other hand, there is often a break from it, and we are given many opportunities to return to our studies. Besides, the activity of the mind, which is never at rest, can maintain in us our pursuit of learning, even without effort on our part.
For reflective movements of the spirit. I like that occur in one of two ways. Either when taking counsel about honorable matters that pertain to living well and blessedly, or in the pursuit of knowledge and learning.
So he's not saying don't study, just act. Right?
[00:20:13] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: But he is saying, like, don't feel like you need to run away from the active life.
There are ways that you can continue to develop your mind, develop wisdom, either when taking counsel about honorable matters. So he's like, don't do this alone.
And I think we could say here, you know, counsel from teachers living and not living. Right. That I can take counsel from Augustine. I can take counsel from Aquinas. I can take counsel from many people, from Cicero, of course. Right.
But also from those around that pertain well to living well and blessedly or just in the pursuit of knowledge and learning.
Right. This is.
This is what education is. Right.
That there is a place for education in some way for intellectual formation of some kind. And that we shouldn't disdain that at all. We just don't want to commit the second fault, which is over devotion. Is that a word? Over devotion to it.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
So, yeah, there's some.
Those last two.
Those two ways for reflective movements of the spirit. I like that.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I think reading this again, I was sort of in dad mode again. I'm a father of adult and teenage children, and I take part of what he's doing here, again, thinking that he's writing to his son, is he's saying all praise the book to virtualize an action. And he's thinking your immediate objection will be, look, I can't be a man of action. I have to devote myself to my books, to my studies. I have to learn more to fill my mind more. So his immediate dad reaction is there is often a break from Study, I'm sorry, from the life of action, you'll have a chance to go back to your studies. So it's not as though when you enter the arena, you have to be 247 on doing active things and never learning again.
And furthermore, when your mind is at rest, even when you're not specifically hitting the books, reading, thinking, contemplating, engaging in conversation about philosophy, your mind is still gaining wisdom and using this kind of wisdom. So I think he's in a sense defending his advice to his son to live and devote himself to the active life, not to think of withdrawing from the world and becoming an ivory tower scholar.
That was my take on that. So the rest of that was aimed at sort of explaining to him why any of his initial hesitancy about this prioritization of action over the intellectual life in the purest sense is valuable.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: It makes me also think of the distinction we'll hear on college campuses of there's the classroom and the so called real world. Right. It makes you wonder. I mean, on the one hand you can kind of see the critique in which you've.
It's hard to reflect on actions and life and challenges you haven't faced yet. Right. So if I go to college and I take a class on parenting, but I've never had kids, I could learn a lot.
But there's, I mean, the amount of reflection I've done since having kids is hilariously different. Right. There's a lot to be said about the fact that no textbook could have taught me most of this.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Does that mean education is worthless? No.
But I wonder sometimes if there's, if there's something to what he's saying here. Where do we have it wrong?
I don't know if this is the case or not. You know, do we go to college, get all this wisdom, but we're not doing anything, presumably. Like, would he look at the modern university and say, what are you, what are you doing, Chris? You're just teaching philosophy, you're reading all these great books, but none of your students are doing anything. They're just, you know, they're just working in downtown Emmitsburg and maybe they're going to D.C. you know, I mean, they're just, they're probably at a restaurant somewhere.
I don't know if the Carriage Inn is still there. I used to love that place. But there's, there's a lot to, to be said about, like is, is he get, is he unintentionally critiquing modern education? Separation of, you know, gaining wisdom and action or is that, is that the wrong way to look at it?
[00:24:36] Speaker B: Oh, I think it's, it's, it seems like a valid critique. I mean the, I think the Ciceronean critique of the modern university might go in the direction of what are you doing to train your students in the practice of the other three virtues? How are you making them just, how are they, how are they engaging in political society and in doing good and noble things that could be done through student government perhaps and in other areas on campus? How are they becoming great spirited? How are they pursuing or moderation in their lives? So looking at something more like a kind of whole self formation that I think would be the direction that he would push modern universities in as opposed to kind of, you know, a research and purely intellectual focus.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Well, that's also interesting too when you think about. Because on the one hand he's not at the pursuit of wisdom is not so much the pursuit of skills, right?
If I understand it right that there's, there's. What's the word techne like there's. He's not pursuing, he's trying to put all the different pieces together about what, what is wisdom, what is truth, what is beauty, what is goodness that realizes itself in action. The skills will come later. You know, today modern education can get really obsessed with skills, right? What are you going to do with this? What? How are you going to use this in your life?
Well, in some ways you don't know yet.
But also life is not just about the application of skills. And so that's why I think things like philosophy and history are so important. Because it may not be obvious to you right now why you're taking this class, but you life's gonna throw a lot of different things at you. And you need more than just skill, right? You need more than just the ability to apply some kind of tool or mathematical equation to this problem.
Some kind of best practices language, right at right there's. The world doesn't work like that. You need the ability to reflect on what is true and what is needful, what is honorable, what is beneficial. How am I going to act in the world today with what I have and philosophy, I think philosophy and history and other disciplines, literature actually I think helps with this, helps you think through that more carefully in a way that, that brings wisdom and I think would challenge much of modern education.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. I think that a virtue focused education unites the student to reality, to the reality upon which he'll be acting, which he does act in the course of trying to, of Being virtuous. I think a skills based education is more about sort of placing tools within reach of the individual student's will in order to achieve whatever his objects of desire are. That seems much more modern and it's based upon a much thinner anthropology than the one that Cicero is relying upon and articulating here.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Right. In the chapters previous, he's giving that thicker anthropology of a more advanced, reasonable animal. He doesn't really get to the religious or spiritual side here.
I don't know why. I mean, his relationship to religion is weird. He's not an atheist, but he's.
Yeah. I mean, he's the one who invents the word. Right. Religion.
As far as we know, he's the one who actually brings it to our attention. He doesn't bring it up here because I think there'd be a lot here to build on. There's also this sense of what do you do with the mystery. Right. I don't think he has a great answer for that necessarily. On the one hand, he'd say you have to respond to necessity, you have to respond to the world you find yourself in.
But, you know, where's the place for faith? Right. I mean, this is where the classical world doesn't know what to do with later Christians in the sense that why would you.
To go back to the first fall, why would you act on something that hasn't necessarily been ascertained yet?
Well, the weird thing I would say about Christianity in particular is sometimes you do have to act in faith on something that has not been ascertained or necessarily asserted. But you're acting in faith and then you realize, oh, it is true. Right. Yeah, it's the leap of faith you see in the. What's the Indiana Jones movie? Right.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: Last Crusade.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Thanks. Right. It's that leap of faith. To me, Cicero doesn't offer that. But I think I would like to leave our listeners with.
There's more to the story here. Right. Wisdom is.
What is the relationship between wisdom and faith?
What does that look like? I think that's an open question.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Absolutely. I think in a sense this is Cicero at his most Roman. Go ahead, please.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, we have covered a lot of ground in this episode, I think, on wisdom, just two chapters, but this is the first virtue. Now we're going to talk about the other three through the next few books and there's a lot to be to worry about here or to deal with here. The next one we're going to talk about is justice, and that's going to take us through several episodes, or the social virtues, as he calls it. We think about negative justice, positive justice.
What is injustice? How do we avoid injustice? What is liberality? He fits that under the themes of justice as well, if I'm understanding this correctly. But a lot to cover. We hope to see you in future episodes. We're going to have some guests come up soon. I know you're probably sick of hearing our voices and seeing our faces. Not sorry, but we are looking forward to bringing some more Ciceronean Society members and friends on this journey with us. So thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you next time.
Sam.
