[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Hello. Welcome back to the Cicero on Duties podcast with the scholars of the Ciceronian Society. I'm Chris Anadale from Mount St. Mary's University, and joining me today are our regular co hosts Catherine Bradshaw of the Ancient Language Institute, Ben Peterson of Abilene Christian University, and Coyle Neal of College of the Ozarks. We've come now to book three, chapter seven of On Duties, and Cicero will now walk us through his summary and evaluation of Panaetius approach to this same topic. We'll begin with chapter seven and eight. Ben, may I ask you to read those for Catherine? Lead off comment.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Now. Panaetius indisputably discussed the question of duties with extreme precision, and I have followed him. In particular, though, applying some amendments, he proposed three headings under which men are accustomed to deliberate upon and discuss the matter of duties.
The first, when they doubt whether the course in question is honorable or dishonorable. The second, whether it is beneficial or harmful. And and the third, if that which has the appearance of honorableness conflicts with that which seems beneficial, how one should decide between them. He gave an exposition of two of these topics in his first three books, but though he wrote that he was going to discuss the third in its turn, he did not, however, fulfill his promise. I'm all the more surprised by this, because his pupil Posidonius wrote that Panadeus lived for 30 years after he had produced those books.
I'm surprised also that Posidonius touched only briefly upon the topic in some of his notebooks, particularly when he writes that no topic in the whole of philosophy is so essential,
[00:02:01] Speaker C: and this is where everyone goes, oh, alas for all of them lost manuscripts.
Because the. The treatise that Cicero is drawing upon largely for On Duties for De Officiis is a treatise by Panaetius, who's a Stoic philosopher, on duties and on the useful and all these things. And unfortunately we cannot go and compare because that one's lost to the point that scholars debate largely and lots of ink has been spilled over which parts of On Duties are Cicero and which ones are Panaetius, because it's very of course, the ancients don't do citation the way that we do, nor do they value citation the way that we do. And so it's very difficult sometimes to figure out what is Panaetius and what is Cicero, unless it's something like this, where he's saying Panaetius says such and such, but I say such and such.
So that is one of the difficulties here.
It is interesting also just how Cicero is Very respectful of Panaetius, obviously. He thinks very highly of him to base a lot of this on his work. But he's not above criticism.
Where earlier Cicero has said, well, Panaetius makes three divisions, but there's actually five.
And I'm going to talk about these five.
And so there is a way in which it is. It is perfectly possible and allowable and good for the Romans to criticize an authority, even though they greatly respect these authorities. So there is. They seem to find that balance that I think is very difficult for many eras to find, where they either run into, oh, no, we can't criticize. And therefore we have to make entire schools of thought on how to reconcile contradictory authors or, well, they all contradict. Let's just throw them out. We don't really care.
Nice balance here.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Right. On the question of lost manuscripts, I hold out a perhaps faint hope that some of the charred Herculaneum manuscripts, which they seem to be able to read now in 2026, as we're recording this, may turn out to include some lost Stoic texts of philosophy. It would be wonderful if you had a partial or whole of Panaetius on duties among those many, many scrolls. I believe that they'll be trying to digitize and read over the next years. So there's maybe hope, as there hasn't been renewed hope then for recovery of some of these things, which would be marvelous, would change our understanding of a lot of things at this late date.
My only take on this is that this is a gap in the literature. This Panaetius promised us he would talk about this. His students said, this is the most important thing to talk about. And yet neither of them wrote anything about it that Cicero even has in his own time. And so this may be, again, the sort of indirect praise of his own project. I'm here to tell you to supply what these people unaccountably have not done and even promised to do and then didn't supply over the remaining 20 years of his writing career.
And again, it's essential, it's vital. We have to talk about the conflict, the seeming conflict between the honorable and the useful. And so. So here we go.
[00:05:28] Speaker D: Yeah, I think two things on this. First, that conflict between the honorable and the useful. I'm glad Cicero writes this because I don't know that that's a thing I would ever have thought about.
That specific combination of topics is not on my daily Point of Reflection calendar. Not that I have one of those, but if I had one, it wouldn't be on it. So I think it's, it's interesting and I'm looking forward to kind of walking with Cicero in a little more depth. He's obviously touched on a lot of this already in terms of the lost text. I think in some ways the most important part of this is, yeah, it's Cicero who's following up on what these Stoics wrote, but Cicero himself is not a Stoic. So it doesn't mean it's automatically wrong, but it does sort of throw a monkey wrench into the discussion. When you have a skeptic trying to complete the work of a Stoic, that makes it for an interesting conversation. It means that we have to take everything he says.
Maybe not with a, with a full grain of salt, but we should definitely be thinking about that. Like, is this something that these Stoics would have actually agreed with or not?
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll echo just the, you know, the division. The, the basic division here is of topics in the question of duties is a really interesting one.
You know, it's an interesting way to slice it out.
You know, first of all, the nature of the honorable and the dishonorable, the nature of the beneficial and the harmful. And then what happens if they appear to conflict? I mean, it's a.
I mean, I think we do sometimes run into these kinds of issues when we deal with.
I mean, think about how people are debating contemporary wars, right? It's kind of like, well, there's, we, you know, there seems to be some challenge that we need to use military force for, but a lot of civilians are going to be killed in pursuit of this good objective, right? Is that, how do we balance? You know, is that honorable? And is that going to. If it's dishonorable, is that going to conflict with the beneficial goal? Right. I mean, I do, I can sometimes see us in our contemporary discourse dealing with these, with these things, but maybe not in this distinctive a way, in this careful of a way.
And then, yeah, just the interesting point of, you know, Cicero always being careful to give nods to the people he's building on. You know, he says, yeah, I love the Greeks, you know, Plato's awesome, amazing philosopher. But, you know, I'm going to add a toga wearing account. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put my Roman spin on it. And I'm not just gonna follow blindly, right? What kind of a thinker would I be if I was just going to, you know, I've got my amendments here. He says, I'll make amendments from time to time. And so, you know, it's I actually think it's not a bad aspiration for scholars. It's kind of like, hey, we want to give attention to the tradition and to people who have worked before, but also think, to use the kind of cliche version of think for yourself.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: Very good.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Thank you, Ben.
Catherine, would you read chapters nine and ten and I'll take first comment.
[00:08:41] Speaker C: Certainly.
I do not at all agree with those who say that this topic was not overlooked by Panaetius but deliberately omitted, and that in any case it ought not to have been written because what is beneficial could never conflict with what is honorable. One may entertain a doubt on the latter question whether the class that is third in Panaetius division should have been added or should have been omitted altogether. On the former question, however, one cannot doubt that Panaetius undertook to include it, but omitted it. For if someone has completed two parts of a work divided into three, then necessarily the third remains to be done. Besides, in his third and final book he promises that he will go on to speak of this part in its turn. Posidonius comes forward as a reliable witness to the same point, for he also wrote in a letter that that Publius Rutilius Rufus, who was a pupil of Panaetius, was accustomed to say that just as no painter could be found who would complete the part of Venus of Cos. That Apelles had only begun and then left, for the beauty of the face dispelled any hope of representing the rest of the body.
So no one had attempted the part that Panaetius had overlooked and not finished because of the excellence of the part that he had finished.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: This is a case where the modern reader might wonder, why are we still talking about Panaetius? Why are we not talking about Cicero's thoughts about this? Is it really necessary to investigate the sources to find out whether he omitted this on purpose or not?
He is here denying explicitly the Stoic view that, well, he didn't write it because there's no need to, because the honorable and the beneficial never come into conflict. They are always in harmony. And so there's no question to answer, really. It's just a matter of your perception of the issue, and he'll give his own answer to that.
I don't know quite what to make of this reasoning. Well, the book has three parts. He only wrote two parts. Therefore, necessarily the third part was deliberately unfinished. It doesn't seem to me. I don't know if he's maybe having a bit of irony there or sort of belaboring the obvious that he promised it, he didn't deliver on it.
And perhaps it was because he did such excellent work that nobody would touch what he unaccountably left unfinished, like the beautiful Venus.
Again, there's a bit of sort of stylish kind of. Well, it's left to me with my inferior tools to complete the work of the master, who's much more brilliant than I. Coyle.
[00:11:22] Speaker D: Yeah, I don't know that I have a whole lot to add to this. There's obviously the emphasis on kind of the head to hand train of teaching. Right. Rufus learned this from Posidonius. Posidonius learned this from Panaetius.
I think that only has a certain limited value, but I'm not an ancient Roman and they would have put much more emphasis on that train of teaching.
I have it vaguely in mind and I'd have to look this up to verify it. I think Cicero was a student of Posidonius also.
So I think he was involved like he. He was in that chain of thought. I think.
Don't hold me too tightly to that.
But again, I don't know how much value that adds to it. So, yeah, I don't have a whole lot to add here.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: I can maybe chime in here just from the biographies of major thinkers at the back, it says of Posidonius, died in 51.
He was on good terms with Pompey and with Cicero, who first heard of him in Rhodes as a young man and later tried unsuccessfully to elicit from him an account in Greek of Cicero's consulship. So it sounds like they knew each other. I don't know that he was a student, just judging from this brief account.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Ben, I'll just underscore what you said a moment ago, Chris. It is, I think what, what's really interesting we get here is that he definitely wants to come down on the side of, hey, if anybody thinks that there actually aren't cases where the honorable and the beneficial come into conflict, you know, buckle up because I'm about to tell you there definitely are. Right.
I wonder if that's even. I mean, would that even contradict like the Socratic and Platonic traditions, like the idea that ultimately, what is the virtuous, it is always ultimately beneficial. Maybe not in a sort of extrinsic sense, right. You might not get wealth, you might not get honor, you might not get status, but anything that's really valuable that you will actually achieve if you are just and virtuous. Right. So I wonder if that here there's even a, you know, he's taking a different stance there. That. No, we have to acknowledge there are times when genuine benefits might be in conflict with the course of action that is most honorable or required, you know, obligatory in duty. Right.
[00:13:43] Speaker C: It'd be interesting to. As we keep going, because Cicero is going to get a little bit closer to the Stoics than I think he wants to admit right here by the end of the book. Sorry, spoilers for our listeners.
But I think that also, Coil, you mentioned that this is more important to the Romans than. Than it would be to us, this kind of chain of. Of provenance, if you will, of this idea.
It would have been. And partially because they would have. Marcus at least will know who all these people are in a deeper way than. Than we do.
And then also that I think this is sort of. This whole section is sort of like that part when we're putting forward a paper or an article or something like that and saying, okay, here is the gap that I'm filling. I'm not just writing for the sake of writing. There's actually a gap that I'm trying to fill.
And so Cicero's already addressed that by saying, panaetius left this out, but now he's addressing kind of the other side of it, which is, well, if Panaetius left it out, don't you think it's just wiser to leave it alone rather than trying to rush in where angels fear to tread, to use a later metaphor.
And so here Cicero is admitting, like, yes, this project is very big. Yes, it's like trying to complete the Venus of Kos, which was never finished because the face was so gorgeous that the painter then died before he could finish it. And so nobody tried to finish it because the face was just too beautiful. And they couldn't. They couldn't make a body to match.
But Cicero is. I think. I think there's an out for Cicero here where he's like, yes, I'm up to the task, because this is in Latin, because Panaetius is writing in Greek. And so there's a. There's a way in another. In another text where Cicero is saying, I'm bringing this into Latin. I'm bringing philosophical tradition in into Latin. Yeah, Latin's not that great for philosophical language. Greek is better, but at least I can do this kind of popularizing work.
And so this is kind of, I think, how he can get into this project, even though it's a project that Panaetius decided to leave unfinished.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: Right, right.
That brings us up to chapter 11. I think I'll read chapters 11 through 13 for Coyle to lead. Comments.
One can therefore have no doubt about Panaetius's decision.
However, we can perhaps debate whether or not he was right to add this third class of questions about duty for whether the honorable is the only good, as is the Stoics view, or whether what is honorable is the highest good, just as it seems to your peripatetics so that if everything on the other side were accumulated, it would hardly amount to the smallest weight. In either case, it cannot be doubted that what is beneficial can never compete with what is honorable. Consequently we are told that Socrates used to curse those who first fancied that they could sever things that were by nature combined. The Stoics have so agreed with him that they hold that everything that is honorable is beneficial, and nothing beneficial that is not honorable.
If, therefore, Panaetius were the kind of man to say that virtue should be cultivated on the grounds that it produces what is beneficial, as they do, who measure the desirability of things by pleasure or absence of pain, it would be possible for him to say that what is beneficial sometimes conflicts with honourableness.
However, he is the kind of man who deems that the only good is that which is honourable, and moreover that life can be made no better by the presence of, nor any worse by the absence of of such things as conflict with it in so far as they appear to be beneficial.
It seems then that he ought not to have introduced the sort of deliberation where that which may appear useful is compared with that which is honorable.
Indeed, when the Stoics say that the greatest good is to live agreeably with nature, this means in my view the always to concur with virtue and as for other things that are in accordance with nature, to choose them if they do not conflict with virtue.
Since this is so, some think that it was not right to introduce this comparison and that no advice at all should have been given about this category.
And what is more, the honorableness that is properly and truly so called is found in wise men only, and can never be severed from virtue in those whose wisdom is not complete. This honorableness, complete as it is, cannot exist at all, however semblances of the honorable can exist.
[00:18:52] Speaker D: Yeah, thanks for giving me the hard part first, that's first comment on the challenging section, so there's a lot here.
This is Cicero walking over the Stoic view of what is not included in Panaetius book, and he does what the Stoics try to do and identifies the unity of virtue and nature in this case meaning the unity of honorableness and something being beneficial. And he's trying to map on honorable and beneficial onto that virtue, nature, parallel.
And I think the interesting part. Well, I mean, it's all interesting, if somewhat philosophically dense, but that last bit in 13 where he talks about honorableness is found in wise men only.
So the Stoics have this idea of the sage as sort of the exemplar, like Catherine was saying in a previous episode of an exemplar, as the model that we are supposed to aspire to. And if I remember right, they could only find one or two. It was basically Socrates and then maybe Cato.
So the Greeks had one and the Romans had one, and everyone else, as he says at the end there, has symbols, semblances of the honorable.
You and I can. Can maybe appear honorable, but true, pure, sort of internal, shining outward honor. That's. That's not for. For you and me. That's. That's really only for the best. And. And what is that? That true, pure in internal honor? Well, that's a. A life of virtue properly aligned with nature. Right. Where you look at the world and align yourself with the world. The. The standard is always.
The standard is always ex.
So, and he goes through and rejects the Epicureans. Right. It's not your feelings. That's not the standard. It's always nature.
And the Epicureans have responses to that, but Cicero mostly waves them away, which is, I think, also kind of interesting. So, yeah, there's a lot there. I won't keep going on it.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I have a little trouble following this section as well, and I'm actually wondering because, I mean, it sounds like he is saying, as you just said, Coyle, that. Yeah.
You know, Panidius, I think you said, it's Catherine. That's how we should pronounce it. Panaetius. Right.
He does accord with this Stoic view. Right. That it's, you know, he is. That he says on. On page 105, you know, he is the kind of man who deems that the only good is that which is honorable and that life can be made no better by the presence of, nor any worse by the absence of such things as conflict with the honorable insofar as they appear to be beneficial. He says before, you know, he. If he wasn't that kind of person, if he were the kind of man to say virtue should be cultivated on the grounds, you know, that it produces what is beneficial, then he could say there would be conflict sometimes between the honorable and beneficial. He's not that kind of man, though. He's the kind of, the Stoic kind of guy. So to me then that, that actually makes the case for.
Yeah, he, it was deliberately omitted. Right. He didn't need to write that, you know, that third book. But he's expressly rejected that position. Right. He said, no, that's totally wrong. He overlooked it. Right. He really should have written this. So I don't know. I'm a little confused on his logic.
Nevertheless, I think it is a really helpful passage to set up so far. It seems to me he's setting up the view he's not going to agree with. But that is an influential view of honorableness and how it relates to benefits.
[00:22:36] Speaker C: Yes, this section, these sections are a lot. And Ben, I think you're, you're getting to the. The something that does seem contradictory where it's, you know, Panaetius is a Stoic. Stoics don't think that the honorable and the, the useful or the beneficial, Utile, which is the, the Latin word for. This is where we get our word utility.
And so it's the useful or the beneficial. It can be translated both ways.
That's the Stoic position. The Stoic position is they never conflict. It's just our ignorance. And, and you all were mentioning Socrates a minute ago. That's. It gets mentioned here that Socrates, you know, said that there is no such thing as a conflict and why are you separating things that always go together?
But I think that Cicero's case, I think that's why he belabored that, that point about, well, Panaetius promised us that we were going to get a third topic. I think that's why he belabors it because he says, like, this is the Stoic case. So it would make sense if Panaetius had just left it out because he's a Stoic. But he said he was going to.
So it's not there. But he said it was going to be there.
And so I think that's why Cicero just really emphasizes that Panite is promised.
But there is that, that bit about the Stoics, that they are so interested in nature and they are so interested in the unity of the virtues, because the Stoics, sage, as you were mentioning, Coyle, is going to have all the virtues. It's not just he's going to have some of the virtues.
It's that, as Cicero said earlier, that if we're talking about virtues in and of themselves, they are so united that they're not going to. You can't pick them out, but we have to talk on a practical level. And so we have to talk about as if you can pick them and say, oh, this man is just, but he's not temperate.
Whereas if he had the perfection of all the virtues, then he would be just and temperate because you can't be one without the other. Perfectly.
And so I think this is Cicero again, trying to bring the Stoics down to earth a little bit. This is one of his big projects in his philosophical things as he's trying to bring the Stoics down to earth.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I just. My brief comment would be that I think part of this is Cicero the salesman elevating the stakes. Right. I'm about to tell you about this, but this is really, you know, this seems like a difficult question to ask and to answer. And why. Why again, are we talking about.
Does seem to me that I take coil your point that if it is only the wise man who has true honorableness, that suggests that the rest of us are left with merely the semblance of honor. Aren't we then just kind of making do with the second best and with the sham.
That's an important question, it seems to me.
And the idea that of course, if everything honorable is advantageous, you just redefine advantage or beneficial to the result of doing what's honorable. If the only good is virtue, then if you want to be good, you be virtuous. There's no more questions to ask or to answer.
There plainly are. There's more to be said. He's going to go on to talk about how he's going to say something interesting and useful to us. We who, like Marcus, want to do our duty in everyday life, maybe without getting bogged down in abstractions about the.
The nature of virtue and the unity of virtue in itself. How do I live my daily life in a world where these things seem to conflict? And I think that's what we'll go on to.
Coyle, may I ask you to read chapters 14 through 16 and Ben to comment?
[00:26:37] Speaker D: The duties that I discuss in these books are then those that the Stoics call middle. They are shared and widely accessible.
Many achieve them by the goodness of their intellectual talent and by their progress in learning. But the duty that the same men call right is complete and unconditional, and as they say, fulfills all the numbers. And it cannot belong to anyone except the wise man.
However, when some action is performed where middle duties are in evidence, it is seen as being abundantly complete. That is because ordinary people cannot really understand how it falls short of being complete. Insofar as they do understand it, they think that nothing has been overlooked.
The same thing tends to happen with poems, pictures and many other things by which inexperienced people are delighted, praising them when they ought not to be praised. The reason, as I believe, is that there is some worth in them that attracts the ignorant, but they are unable to judge what faults each may have. Therefore, when they are taught by experienced people, they readily abandon their view.
Such duties then, which I am treating in these books are said by them to be honorable in a second rate way, so to speak. They are not appropriate to wise men only, but shared with the whole human race.
Consequently, everyone who has the disposition for virtue is moved by that. Again, when the two Deci or the two Scipiones are mentioned as brave men or, or when Fabricius or Aristides is called just, we're not seeking an example of courage in the former, nor of justice in the latter, as if in a wise man. For none of them is wise in the way we want to understand wise. Not even Marcus Cato and Gaius Laelius were in fact wise, although they were called and considered wise. And nor were the famous seven.
Rather, because of their repeated practice of middle duties, they exhibited a kind of likeness and an appearance of wise men.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: This is a great section here. You know, the kind of middle brow virtue idea, right?
I mean, I do think this is an enduring problem in philosophy, right? If, if sort of true knowledge of our duties and of, of goodness. Right. Is only accessible to the few wise, will the many even be able to recognize who the wise ones are? Right. Or who has knowledge or understand, you know, goodness when it's expounded to them, right? Or will they, you know, kill Socrates, for instance? Right?
And so I do think there's, there's kind of an interesting enduring problem here. You know, it has to do with education, it has to do with virtue in general.
But I do think it seems like he falls on the side of this question that says, yeah, most people may not be able to achieve virtue in its fullest sense and be completely, you know, that may be only accessible to the wise person, the few wise people, but most people are inclined by nature, you know, to maybe smuggle in some language he uses in other, in other of his works, to seek virtue to some degree, right? To try to fulfill our duties by the fact that we're social beings, the fact that we are different from the other animals in our capacity for speech and deliberation about the good and all these Things we are inclined toward virtue and we can recognize something of it. And I think you even find something like this in Aristotle where maybe most people aren't fitted for political leadership, but they could at least recognize good leaders and distinguish them from bad ones. And so there's a kind of interesting tier of ability to exhibit, understand and exhibit the virtues.
[00:30:12] Speaker C: Yes. And the, the, the discussion of the, the pictures and how the ignorant are drawn to something good in the picture. They just don't know enough to know all the bad parts of the picture.
So similarly, I think, I think we can do this with film now of just. There's something in a film that's very artistically poor, but there's something that draws us to it because we are attracted to how the characters work or how the plot works or something like that.
And so there is that level of. But there's something good here. It's not just, just because there's something difficult or something that is not good.
We don't have to throw out the entire thing. We just have to educate the viewer or the person just to the point that they can say, oh, this is the good part that I like and should follow. This is the part that I can reject now because I know better.
And so that, that Platonic tradition of educating out of ignorance is still. Even though Cicero is an academic, so he's not a Platonist, he's still in the Socrates tradition. And so this does call back to that.
[00:31:27] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: And I think that my take on this, I like the way he says the duties. I'm going to be talking about the middle virtues. Middle duties are what's sometimes called honorable in a second rate way because it applies to us, we inferior people, we who are still on our way towards perfection. Not to the wise men, maybe a little bit here of kind of the Roman, again faux humility in comparison to the Greek. The Greeks, well, they've perfected philosophy as an abstract science. But we of the imperium, we having more practical affairs, have had to be content with simply being virtuous in our everyday life and making the right choices every single day. That's too bad. But that's our specific virtue and excellence. And it sort of being, I think, praised minimally in order to highlight how, how really excellent it is. That's my comment on this one. Hoyle, what do you think?
[00:32:27] Speaker D: Yeah, and again, it comes back to that, comes back to that idea of what is the role of the person with perfect virtue. Right.
And he's wrestling with how do we balance the virtues that are available to you and me, right? The common people, those of us who are inseparable peasants who think that Die Hard's a great movie because we like watching explosions, right? And I, I will, I will out myself as one of those immediately.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: And a Christmas movie.
[00:32:56] Speaker D: Oh, and a Christmas.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Definitely a Christmas.
[00:32:58] Speaker D: Definitely a Christmas movie. Honestly, if robots are fighting, you know, dinosaurs, I'm there. Like, I will watch that movie and enjoy it.
But there, there, there still needs to be some kind of balance, right? There, There needs to be an. An access for virtue for the common people as well as for the individual of perfect virtue, for the. The Socrates, for. For the Cato, for whoever. Although he does say cat, the sage, which I think is an interesting, interesting position in Christian terms. We might want to draw the distinction between Christ and being Christlike, right?
Those are. Are they the same thing, or are they really two different things? Well, they're not the same thing in one sense, of course. Right. Of course they're not. But what does it mean to talk about, well, we should be Christ. Like, are we really just setting a lower standard that we're able to meet, or are we talking about something aspirational?
Everybody has to deal with that. How do you deal with the ideal versus the pract? Practical? And this is Cicero wrestling with the Stoics. Wrestling with that.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: Very good. Thank you, Coyle.
Ben, may I ask you to finish us up by reading chapters 17 and 18 for Catherine to begin? Comment?
[00:34:15] Speaker A: It is therefore impious to compare that which is truly honorable with any conflicting benefit.
Nor, on the other hand, must one ever compare profit with what we call honorable in the common sense which men cultivate when they want to be thought good. For we ourselves must guard and preserve the honorableness that is accessible to our understanding, just as much as wise men must that other which is appropriately and truly called honorable. For otherwise any progress that may have been made towards virtue cannot be maintained.
But that is enough about those who have a reputation for goodness because of their observation of duties. As for those who measure everything by profits and advantages, and do not want these to be outweighed by honorableness. They are accustomed to compare in their deliberations what is honorable with what they think to be beneficial.
Good men are not accustomed to do that. Therefore, I am of the opinion that that when Panidius said that men were accustomed to hesitate about such a comparison, he meant only what he said were accustomed to, and not also were right to. For it is extremely dishonorable not only to value that which seems beneficial at more than that which is honorable. But even to compare the two with one another and hesitate between them, what is it then that sometimes tends to raise a doubt and seems to need consideration? Such occasions arise, I believe, whenever there is doubt over the nature of the action that one is considering.
[00:35:53] Speaker C: Yes. So here Cicero starts planting his flag where it's not just wrong to choose the beneficial over the honorable, it's wrong even to hesitate about it.
One should be so virtuous that if there is a conflict, and that's a big if, and Cicero is going to get into that if later, if there's a conflict, no contest, we should. We should just go with the honorable at any point. And so there is a difference between what people do and what they ought to do, even for Panaetius and Cicero's clarifying that.
[00:36:37] Speaker B: No, I agree. And I see here it may be helpful to remember that for this virtue tradition, that what you do is a reflection of what you are. So if I find myself choosing the wrong thing, I ought to, in the course of my reflecting on it, remark that there's something about the way that I am. I'm not sufficiently virtuous, not sufficiently wise or attentive to the nature of.
Of the honorable. So good men are not accustomed to do this, the people, to prefer or even to compare the beneficial with the honorable, and to hesitate. Well, you know, how much money are we talking about here? I might say we've already answered the question.
Next candidate, please. We might say, so something feels a little bit content about this. But obviously this is Cicero. This is Ciceronian.
You have to always prefer the virtuous when there's a clear conflict. But he gives us a hint at the end of where he's going next. The question is going to be about what is the nature of the action. Maybe we're unclear about that. We're confused. Out of that confusion, then comes the rest of what he's going to say.
[00:37:44] Speaker D: Well, yeah, that's exactly where I was going to go. You should be a virtuous person, an honorable person, always.
But he fully admits there are times when you won't know what that means. Right. There are times when I don't know what the honorable thing is to do. I don't know if it's honorable to take the job and be able to feed my family, or if it's honorable not to take the job because there are ethical questions that might come along with it.
Those are competing options. And the limitation is not my desire to be honorable. The limitation is the circumstance where I have kind of Imperfect knowledge and don't know what the right direction is.
[00:38:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it's an interesting. Like, he, He. He doesn't want to be dismissive of the idea that these things could be in conflict. Right. The honorable and the useful.
But he also does want to firmly plant his flag on the side of it is you shouldn't. Like, like we said, like Catherine said at the beginning, we. You. You can't even consider the. In some ways it's interesting because he's saying they're not even on comparable scales.
Like, his answer is, why. Why shouldn't you do that? Because it's dishonorable.
Right? It's like, so, you know, honor is the only scale that matters. I mean, I wonder if it almost, it, it almost dissolves back into the, the stoic position. It seems to me, because it's saying, you know, no. That if you're gonna even consider the. The beneficial compared to the honorable, like, it, it's, it's not even comp. They're not even comparable with each other. Right. The only thing that really matters is the honorableness. And so.
But he does want to. I think, to your point, Coyle, he does want to say, look, there are times when you're going to have to pay a cost for that.
It will be a kind of cost in terms of lesser matters. But you should always prefer honor. That's ultimately, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters.
Virtue.
But yeah, I'm interested about.
I think that's an insightful point about.
It may not always be obvious what. But because we've seen him wrestling with things like this before about if your fellow countryman is in need versus your family member versus the neighbor in need versus all the different times where your duties can.
There isn't a fixed calculus of duties. They have to be reassessed depending on the particulars of the situation.
So, yeah, he has an interesting kind of set of gymnastics he's doing.
[00:40:15] Speaker B: All right, thanks very much, Ben. That brings us to the end of our discussion of Chapter 18 of Book 3 of On Duties. You've been listening to the Cicero On Duties podcast from the Ciceronian Society. Please visit our
[email protected] to learn more about us. I want to conclude by thanking my co hosts today, Catherine Bradshaw, Ben Peterson, and Coyle Neal. And thank you for watching. Goodbye.
