Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Welcome back to the On Duties podcast, a production of the Ciceronian Society. We are reading through chapter by chapter with commentary, Cicero's great work On Duties, and we've come as far as the end of book one, chapter 27, in the middle of Cicero's discussion of justice. We've just finished talking about positive injustice, and now we'll be talking in this chapter about negative injustice and the chapters that follow.
I'm Chris Anadale. I teach philosophy at Mount St. Mary's University. I'm the podcast editor for the Ciceronian Society and have been coming to their conferences for a long time. Joining me is Catherine Bradshaw.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Catherine hello. I'm Katherine Bradshaw. I'm a Latin and Ancient Greek fellow at the Ancient Language Institute, which is an online school, and I teach college level Latin and Ancient Greek online for them, as well as beginning Ancient Greek for Abilene Christian University.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Wonderful. Thanks again for being on this episode with us.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Catherine it's my pleasure.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: I want to pick up where we left off, which is chapter 28 of of book one. We are at the top of page 12 of this Cambridge edition, if you want to read along at home.
I'll take the first chapter, if you don't mind.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: All right, sounds great.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: As for neglecting to defend others and deserting one's duty, there tend to be several causes of this.
For some men do not wish to incur enmities, or toil or expense.
Others are hindered by indifference, laziness, indeed inactivity, or some pursuits or business of their own, to the extent that they allow the people whom they ought to protect to be abandoned.
We must therefore watch out in case Plato's words about philosophers prove not to be sufficient. For he said that they are immersed in the investigation of the truth, and that disdaining the very things for which most men vigorously strive and even fight one another to the death, they count them as nothing.
Because of this he calls them just.
They observe one type of justice indeed, that they should harm no one else by inflicting injury. But they fall into another. For hindered by their devotion to learning, they abandon those whom they ought to protect.
And so he thinks that they should not even embark upon public life unless they are forced to do so.
But that is something done more fairly when done voluntarily. For something that is done rightly is only just if it is voluntary.
Let's stop there. Of course, this concerns me greatly, as I teach Plato to undergraduates frequently.
What are your thoughts on this chapter?
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Catherine well, this is very bold of Cicero, first of all, but it actually goes well with something he says in De Oratore on the orator, where it gets back to what you've talked about with Josh before, about the practical versus the speculative.
And so Cicero in De Oratore says that Socrates is actually responsible for separating wisdom and eloquence, so the. The speculative and the. The practical.
And that before Socrates, according to Cicero, they were together at least theoretically.
And so it seems that there is this sense of, well, theoretically, the. The philosopher should be just because he does no injury to anyone else, but practically because there is another side of injustice.
The philosopher, if he just sticks to what Plato's description says, will commit some kind of injustice and actually commits injustice by not getting involved in his community and by staying out of it.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: It's interesting to me that of course, we talk about what officium means. It's a duty, it's a service that is owed by virtue of a relationship that. That you have. And he says that the Platonic philosopher, who wants to live outside of the cave, to dwell among the forms and not think about these things, is failing in his duty.
He is abandoning those for whom he ought to care. And again, I recognize those as being fighting words for Cicero. Right. You have an officium and you are neglecting it to go off and do something else, which he introduces first as being. I noticed this.
What does he call this?
They inactivity or some pursuits of business of their own. Right. I've just got something better to do than actually look after the health of the res publica. I'm going to go read my books. I'm going to go do my own thing. And that this is a kind of injustice because it's abandoning people who depend on you, people to whom you owe a service.
And that's, you know, he's rhetorically here, maybe it's a little bit. Seems balanced. Well, they do justice in one way, but injustice another way. But honestly, I can sort of feel the thrust of the. Of the knife there. Am I on track, you think, with that?
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. This is, this is it again.
Cicero, the consummate orator.
He makes it sound nice, but it is an enormous dig at anyone who thinks that he should not be involved in the res publica unless he's forced to do so. And I, I love that last little thing that he says, that it is only something that is done rightly, is only just if it is voluntary, because just because ofikia are obligatory, like I'm obligated to do them, that doesn't mean that I'm forced to do them. I still have to choose to fulfill my ophi.
Now it's wrong if I don't, but it's a choice.
And so that element there, I think, is part of this as well for Cicero, that you should want to serve the community as well as do it.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. This fits in with. We had a sort of theme from the early episodes of this podcast. I told Josh, I think some of this is Cicero, the public man, even in exile from public life, writing to his son studying in Athens, saying, hey, you know what? The public life is still far worthier and nobler of your attention and your effort than the ivory tower studies of just becoming wise, learning the Forbes, devoting yourself purely to the life of the intellect.
It's by its very nature much more humane and sort of, well, dutiful to. To do, even with the risks and the errors and the compromises that it involves.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Right, Definitely.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: So I do love that something is done well only when it is voluntary. And if Plato says the philosopher rules involuntarily, the philosopher's not really virtuous then, is he? He's doing what he must.
He's bowing to compulsion.
So.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: Oh, my.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Would you like to read chapter 29?
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Certainly.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: And why don't you take 30 as well? Because they're both short.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Will do.
There are also some who, whether through devotion to preserving their personal wealth or through some kind of dislike of mankind, claim to be attending to their own business and appear to do no one any injustice.
But though they are free from one type of injustice, they run into another. Such men abandon the fellowship of life because they contribute to it. Nothing of their devotion, nothing of their effort, nothing of their means.
Since we have set out the two types of injustice and added the causes of each, and since we established previously what are the things that constitute justice, we shall now be able to judge with ease what is our duty on each occasion. That is, if we do not love ourselves too much, for it is difficult to be concerned about another's affairs. Terence's chremes, however, thinks nothing that is human is another's affair.
Yet, in fact, we do tend to notice and feel our own good and bad fortune more than that of others, which we see as if at a great distance, as if a great distance intervenes accordingly. We do not make the same judgments about them and about ourselves.
It is good advice, therefore, that prevents you from doing anything if you are unsure whether it is fair or unfair. For fairness shines out by itself, and hesitation signifies that one is contemplating Injustice.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Very good, thank you. Well, we have the conclusion here in chapter 29 of this very brief consideration of what we might call negative injustice, the injustice of neglect of one's duty to defend others who are presumably therefore, in one's charge, right. To whom one owes a duty of service.
And this is related to the critique of the Platonic philosopher kings who have to be called down, sort of dragged down.
Now, there's a funny symmetry, right, because the non philosopher has to be dragged up the path into the light in Plato's cave. And now the philosopher kings, the wise men, have to be dragged back down into the cave in a sense, in order to rule over it, which has a kind of absurdity to it.
People wiser than I can make sense of it perhaps, but this section 29, some people devotion to preserving their personal wealth. We understand that in our time, or some kind of dislike of mankind, just a sort of general misanthropy, right? I'm teaching a course on Schopenhauer this coming semester and I think, well, there's. There's a man who had a sort of general disdain for humanity at at least some level.
They will attend to their own business. This is the desire to leave a purely private life, right? Say, well, I'm just gonna look after myself. You guys look after yourselves. You guys get together and vote and look after the raised publica. And I'm just gonna devote myself to learning or money making or whatever else.
Such men abandon the fellowship of life. They contribute nothing to it. They're not invested in public affairs. That seems to him to be a pretty serious offense against justice and against sort of fellow feeling. Everybody around them ought to be offended that they're not taking part. Is that right?
[00:10:42] Speaker A: Yes.
And again, this is not an abnormal view.
I think because of the influence of Plato, we tend to hear about the unwilling philosopher king a lot. But with even the Athenians, their word for private person is idiotes.
And you can hear that we get our word idiot from that word because an idiotes is a purely private person who only cares about his own affairs and participates not at all in public life.
And so he is not interested. And so this was a very common idea for the ancient world, particularly for, I mean, Athens is a democracy, so that's a different thing. But that feeling of no, if I am part of a community, I have an obligation to care about that community and therefore to act in a way that will benefit that community is very much in the water for Cicero and his contemporaries.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah.
I did not know about Idiotes. That's something else. I'll have to share that with some of my students when the time comes.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: My students always enjoy that one.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: What are your thoughts on section 30 here?
This explaining why it is that we genuinely do have a sort of selfish preference for ourselves. We should at least acknowledge that.
[00:12:13] Speaker A: Yes, it's definitely there. And it's interesting that Cicero quotes Terence here because the character who says, nothing that is human is another's affair.
It's usually translated something like, I am a human being. Nothing that is human is foreign to me. Which sounds very altruistic. But the character Chromaes is actually kind of a busybody. And so, yeah, so it's a double edged quote. Even so, there is this sense that the privatized view is on the one hand, something that is very modern in its emphasis, but it is not modern in its existence because each of us views our own things from our own perspective. But then also, that's the thing that's closest to us. That's the thing that affects us most.
That's the thing. It's kind of like you, can you. Each of us hears our own voice through our head, and so we never, unless we record our voice and hear it back, we never hear ourselves the way other people hear us.
And so that same kind of blocking in of our perspective works morally as well as acoustically, if we are not careful.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes great sense. I love that metaphor. That's very strong. I think this sounded to me again like sort of Cicero in dad mode. Right. Well, obviously everyone sort of, you know, sees his own affairs most clearly and those are the things that are most important to him. We'll acknowledge that that's a sort of built in bias. But to be a mature member of the community means to rise above that on the occasions when it's demanded. To embrace that and say, that's the kind of life I'm going to live is to be somewhat childish, I suppose.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: I think Cicero would heartily agree.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Well, let me take sections 31 and 32, and if we have time, perhaps you can take 33. That'll take us, I think, to the next division in book one.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: Perfect.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: Thanks.
Occasions often arise when the actions that seem most worthy of a just man, of him whom we call good, undergo a change and the opposite becomes the case. For example, from time to time it becomes just to set aside such requirements as the returning of a deposit or the carrying out of a promise, or other things that relate to truth and to keeping faith, and not to observe them for it is seemly that they should be referred to those fundamentals of justice that I laid out at the beginning. First, that one should harm no one, and secondly, that one serve the common advantage. Such actions alter with the circumstances, and duty alters likewise, and is not invariable.
For it can happen that something that has been promised and agreed, if carried out, would be disadvantageous to the person to whom the promise has been made, or else to him who gave the promise. If Neptune in the myth had not done what he had promised to Theseus, Theseus would not have been deprived of his son Hippolytus.
He made three wishes, as we read, and the third was he wished, in his anger, that Hippolytus would die.
When it was granted, he fell into the deepest grief. Therefore, promises should not be kept if they are disadvantageous to those to whom you have made them, nor if they harm you more than they benefit the person to whom you have promised.
Is it contrary to duty to prefer the greater good to the lesser? For example, if you had made an appointment to appear for someone as advocate in the near future, and in the meantime your son had fallen seriously ill, it would not be contrary to your duty not to do as you had said. Rather, the person to whom you had made the promise would be failing in his duty if he complained that he had been abandoned. Again, who does not see that if someone is forced to make a promise through fear, were deceived into it by trickery, the promise ought not to stand.
One is released from such promises in most cases by the praetor's code of justice, and sometimes by the laws.
Very interesting talk of promises here and circumstances, when duty seems not to be duty. If we think of duty as what ought to be done, how on earth do we have these escape hatches and sort of conditional. Well, not under these circumstances, obviously. What do you think, Catherine?
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Well, I think this is where Cicero is becoming eminently practical, because the.
The interesting things, the interesting stories about duty are those moments when a person has multiple duties and they conflict.
And, I mean, the one that springs to mind for me greatest is. Is the story of Coriolanus, who has a duty to the people that he has promised to go and attack Rome. He's a Roman, though, and he has a duty to his mother to listen to her. And so there's this question of which ophicium is he going to pick?
And that's from Roman history, but it's also one of Shakespeare's plays. And so those stories keep going because it's that moment Of I have multiple officia here.
Which one do I pick? And which one is more important? And so here I think promises are something that.
If I remember correctly, even Plato talks about this situation where if I promise to. If someone gives me a sword to keep safely, if that person then comes and is temporarily insane and asks the sword from me, I ought not to give it to him, even though I have promised to give it back when he asks.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: Right, right. That's early in Republic. That's one of the refutation of the example of the proposed definition that justice simply means paying debts, keeping promises, giving what is owed. But obviously justice is deeper than that, because there are some promises that one ought not to repay.
But it does seem like Cicero is introducing this kind of sliding scale of circumstances. Right. Well, you ought to keep your promises, yes, but not if it would be disadvantageous to the person, nor to you. And that's the one place where my ears pricked up. If you would suffer more har. Than you would do good to the person by keeping the promise. Well, obviously the promise is not binding, and it's unjust of him to think that it should be.
That's. I suppose, because the purpose is to benefit everybody. Yeah, please.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Sorry.
Yes, and I think that's the key here. The purpose is to benefit everyone because the example he offers is not a selfish one.
The example of I have promised.
The reader has promised to be a lawyer for someone and then cannot because his son has fallen ill and he must go take care of his son. This is not a, oh, I don't feel like it, or oh, it's inconvenient for me. It is. No, I must go. I have another officium to a closer relative who has a greater claim upon me, and therefore, I have to break this officium temporarily or permanently.
And it is incumbent upon that person to recognize that greater claim as part of his officium.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: Right. There is always this relationship, isn't there? There's a reciprocity, right. That my service, the service that I owe, is service owed to someone, that they receive it. And there are officia, as it seems, or duties, obligations, and correct judgments to be made on both sides.
[00:20:18] Speaker A: Mm, definitely.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: That's great.
Was there anything else in here?
I'm probably mispronouncing the. The Roman and the Greek names. I hope you will excuse me.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Oh, no worries. There are multiple possible English pronunciations of everything.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: Okay, excellent.
No, I think. I think we've about covered it here. Of course, the. The case that promises to be kept are not Absolute interests me, because the other, other philosophers would teach just the opposite.
I am curious, and I don't know. This will come up at some point, later on. Later on, in section 39, in his discussion of war, he does consider the fact that a promise made to the enemy in war to deliver oneself for ransom or whatever, must be kept. And maybe we'll talk about that, or whoever is reading for those chapters will talk about that. Is that in conflict with this idea that a promise extorted through fear, or a promise that is coerced or tricked need not be, need not be kept? It probably has to do something to do with the specific officia that are relevant to warfare, to the duty of a warrior who has surrendered himself, perhaps to the enemy for some reason, and the deal that he's struck. Why don't we finish with chapter 33 and that'll wrap us up, I think, for this, for this episode. Would you like to read that one, Catherine?
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Certainly.
Injustices can also arise from a kind of trickery by an extremely cunning but ill intentioned interpretation of the law.
In consequence, the saying, the more justice, the less injustice. Sorry, excuse me. The more justice, the more injustice has by now become a proverb well worn in conversation.
Many wrongs of this type are committed even in public affairs. An example is that of the man who, during a truce of 30 days, when he had agreed with the enemy, laid waste the fields by night on the grounds that the truce had been established for days, but not for nights. We should not approve the action even of our own countrymen, if the story is true about Quintus, Fabius, Labio, or some other person, for I know of it only by hearsay.
He was assigned by the Senate to arbitrate about the boundary between the Nolani and the Neapolitani.
When he arrived at the place, he spoke with each group separately, urging it to do nothing out of covetousness or greed, and to be prepared to retreat rather than to advance. When both of them did that, there was some land left in the middle. Therefore he set a limit to their boundaries exactly where they themselves had said. But he assigned the land that was left in the middle to the people of Rome.
That was not arbitration, that was deception. Cleverness of such a kind ought in every case to be avoided.
Moreover, certain duties must be observed, even toward those at whose hands you may have received unjust treatment. There is a limit to revenge and to punishment. I am not even sure that it is enough simply that the man who did the harm should repent of his Injustice so that he himself will do no such thing again and others will be slower to act unjustly.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: Very good, thank you. That last bit, I think maybe you left out a word. It's not even sure that it is not enough simply to force the man to repent.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Whoops.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: Well, take that very last paragraph first. This is a very brief what, two sentence treatment of injustice to the wrongdoer. He doesn't say a lot affirmatively, but you have justice towards somebody who actually has done you injustice. There are limits to the amount of punishment and revenge that you can seek. It is possible to overstep the boundaries of justice, to be excessive, sort of in an Aristotelian way.
And then this kind of, sort of musing aloud. Right. Perhaps it's even enough just to say, look, if you repent of doing injustice so that sincerely, maybe sort of wholeheartedly, so that you will do no such thing again.
And others who see this will see sort of maybe perhaps his shame or his turn of character and would be slower to imitate him to act in justice. Maybe that's enough. He doesn't say a whole lot more. But that's his sort of concession too, that the justice owed to the wrongdoer, to the person who has victimized you.
Would you care to comment on that or maybe the first half of that chapter as well?
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Sure.
The interesting thing with the willingness to take repentance just as that might be enough, I think has several elements here. It's, it's interesting because there's a sense in which the shame that you, you touched on, that is a real thing.
The Romans are very honor conscious as, as we've seen even in the early chapters of De Officiis.
And so just the shame of having to publicly say like I did something and I will never do it again. That is such a, that, that is we not being in a very like honor conscious culture do not have that same kind of feeling that would be there. So I think that, that it is a stronger punishment than one might think just reading it. And then the other thing is that Caesar oddly enough, was famous for this. He was, he was well known for being clement, for his, for his clemency, forgiving people who just fought against him. And then they said, I'm sorry, you know, can, can, can I serve you now? And he said, sure, fine.
Now that didn't turn out too well for him because Brutus and Cassius were two people he forgave, but this wasn't something that he was known for. And so the, the the clemency here is an interesting little piece that Cicero throws in there.
I think the other thing is the more justice, the more injustice. That proverb that he's got, it's a pun in Latin. And so the translation has rendered it well, because the word for justice here is.
There's a lot of interesting things that can be done with that other translations have done, like the more law, the less, the more injustice. So the idea of piling up laws and then you get more problems.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: Very good. Well, he gives examples of trickery, right? Injustice by trickery. And we might say at some point we sort of smile and applaud and say, okay, well, that's a clever solution to the problem. Right?
You said days, not nights. This is the kind of what the 12 year old boy would say if you were negotiating with him. And you say, oh, come on.
He says, this is not to be praised. This is not the sort of thing we should tolerate in a leader, in a king or anyone.
And then of course, also the example of claiming the strip in between the two warring armies. This wasn't arbitration. This wasn't the thing that you agreed to do. You've not fulfilled your officia with regard to the duty of being an arbitrator, which is what people trusted you to do. You did something different instead. And that's blameworthy, right? That's a violation of duty. It's unjust.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: And it is unjust, no matter the fact that he claimed it for the people of Rome. So just because he said that he was doing it for the res publica, that doesn't matter.
It's still an unjust thing, objectively.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
That's great.
I'd say Cicero is more and more fun to read as I sort of get deeper into this reading and rereading this text and talking it over with friends like you and Josh. And we will have, I think, a rotating series of hosts and guests. It won't always be me, it won't always be Josh, and I hope it'll be you, Catherine, again sometime soon. But I think we've come to the end of this half hour for the On Duties podcast. I want to thank you all for watching, for listening to us, and we look forward to getting into Cicero's treatment in the next chapters of the Nature of Justice in Warfare. So thanks very much. Bye bye.
