Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: You're listening to the On Duties Podcast, a project of the Ciceronian Society.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Each week we read and discuss a.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: Portion of Marcus Tullius Cicero's massively influential De officiis, written in 44 BC. You're invited to read and think through this great work with us, and we welcome your questions, comments and suggestions. Please note that we are a Christian organization and that perspective shapes our engagement with Cicero's works, but we hope our reflections are edifying. For anyone who tunes in, we recommend listening to these episodes in order and getting your own copy of Cicero's On Duties to follow along. We also encourage you to listen in on our other show called the Sower. And to learn more about our organization, go to ciceroniansociety.org thank you for listening.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Cicero Podcast. We're reading On Duties as members of the Ciceronian Society, looking through this incredibly important work by Marcus Tullius Cicero and what it means in his time and for us today. We're just reading it, thinking through it.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: What does it provoke?
[00:01:19] Speaker B: How does it shape what we're thinking and what we're doing? And, and we're also, as I said in the first episode, we're coming at this not only as professional philosophy and humanities people, but also as Christians. Right. Chris is a Roman Catholic, I am an Anglican, and we appreciate the contribution that these ancient Roman thinkers have given to all of the heritage that we have, the tradition, the language and who we are in the Western world and elsewhere.
We got through what are called, they call them chapters. There's these little marks in the. In the translation that we're using. Again, we talked about that in episode one, the Cambridge.
What is it called? The Cambridge Text in the History of Political Thought.
And we are going to pick back up at chapter five.
So if you haven't watched episode one, go ahead and take a look at that.
I think that'll make a lot more sense if you do it that way. All right, I'll go ahead and read chapter five.
The debate is. And this is the debate about duties.
The debate is one in which all philosophers share. For who would dare to call himself a philosopher if he had handed down no rules of duty?
But there are some teachings that undermine all duty by the ends of good and evil things that they propound.
The man who defines the highest good in such a way that it has no connection with virtue, measuring it by his own advantages rather than by honorableness, cannot, if he is in agreement with himself and is not occasionally overcome by the goodness of his own nature cultivate either friendship or justice or liberality.
There can certainly be no brave man who judges that pain is the greatest evil, nor a man of restraint who defines pleasure as the highest good.
All right, let's just stop there for a second. So I mean, a good philosopher is going to hand down some idea of what it, of what duty is.
Right.
And I like that he says there can certainly be no brave man who judges that pain is the greatest evil, nor a man of restraint who defines pleasure as the highest good. To me, he's going after the Epicureans here. Right, that's pretty clear.
And by the way, I am joined by, I'm Josh Bowman, executive director of the Ciceronean Society. I am once again joined by my good friend Chris Anadale, professor of philosophy at Mount St. Mary's University.
So Chris, what do you take from this opening paragraph here?
[00:03:49] Speaker C: Well, I mean, he's talking about, I mean, we spoke last episode about the fact that this is going to be a work of practical philosophy. So it's advice about how to live your life. And it will include, of course, ethical truth. It will align you to the truth of things about yourself and about virtue.
But it's not going to be concerned with sort of acquiring a purely intellectual understanding of the good and of the good life. It's going to be very action focused. And so I think the first thing that Cicero is doing here is when he, when he brings up the concept of duty is to say, obviously certain theoretical frameworks are completely incompatible with living a good life. So if you were to think that pain is the greatest pain is the greatest harm that can ever befall a human being, obviously you'll never be a courageous person. You won't have a theory of virtue.
Same thing's going to happen with a person who believes that pleasure is the highest good. You'll never have self restraint or self discipline or control that's necessary to lead a virtuous life.
So in a sense, we're almost beginning with the practical virtue. You want to live an honorable virtue, virtuous, just great life, life. You want to be a good man.
Well, sort of reverse engineering from that. Obviously you're going to reject certain ethical frameworks as being completely incompatible with that. So there's the relevance of the abstract to daily life is that first off, set aside anything that's incompatible with it.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And it makes me think of later, Thomas Hobbes, the Utilitarians.
There's an element in which Cicero is assuming or begins from the. The premise that There are, there are goods, right? That there is a good. Right.
He's not necessarily ascribing it to a God in the way we as Christians do. But there is a nature, capital nature, right? There is a order to the universe. He does not find himself in a purely materialistic universe. This is not a chaos, this is a cosmos, right? And, and I think he sees like, look, you have to start from there. This doesn't even make any sense. How can you have duty in a purely materialistic world, right? How can you have duty in a world where pleasure is, you know, physical pleasure in particular is everything? Now, of course, the Epicureans were not that crude necessarily, depending on who you talk to, but the later ones in some senses were right. The utilitarians in my view, ultimately are that way, where it's simply physical pleasure and pain that, that determines whether or not you should, should or should not do something. The honorableness is, and this also comes later, especially in our own time in the last 200 years, where there is no higher definition of honorable. There is no natural law. It's honorable as whatever.
It's the will of the stronger, right? Some, some group has imposed a definition of honorable on you, and that's just what you're living by. And Cicero is not saying that. He's not saying that I'm imposing a definition of honorable on anyone. I'm not forcing you to define honorable in the way I'm defined. Like, look, this is just the way it is.
This is what is honorable. I didn't make this up.
[00:07:04] Speaker C: Yeah, well, in a sense, also remember, this is a father writing to his son. And part of the way that begins, the way you. I would speak to our sons, you know, well, look, look, son, you've got some responsibilities.
You got some things you have to do that are your, you know, if you don't do them, you will have failed in some important sense at being the kind of man that you are in your current situation. So let's, you know, let's get to it. That seems to be, it's not, it's not anti intellectual, but it's going to have just as much of the abstract as is necessary to sort of frame the arena of action in which actual virtual living is going to take place. Virtuous living.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Let's move on to chapter six.
All that is so obvious that the matter does not need to be debated. But I have in any case discussed it elsewhere. And in that case, he's referring to his book Definibus, which we're not going to discuss here. But if such systems of teaching were wanting to be consistent, they could say nothing about duty, nor any advice on duty that is steady, stable, and joined to nature be handed down except by those who believe that what is to be sought for its own sake is honorableness alone, as some say, or honorableness above all, as others say.
Therefore the giving of such advice is the peculiar province of the Stoics, Aristotelians and Peripatetics. Since the opinions of Aristo, Pyro and Arillis have long since been driven out, they would have had the right to dispute about duty if they had left any means of choice. But between things, so that there might be a path to the discovering of duty. I shall therefore, for the present and on this question follow the Stoics above all, not as an expositor, but, as is my custom, drawing from their fountains when and as it seems best, using my own judgment and discretion. Now, let's take a step back there. He's putting himself in context with these other thinkers, right? So we already kind of. He's dismissed the Epicureans.
I don't know who Aristo, Pyro and Aryllus are. Are these other Epicureans.
[00:09:06] Speaker C: Pyro would be a skeptic. Aristo and the others, I don't know at first glance, but Pyrrho, founder of Pyrrhonism, radical skepticism, as the footnote, the footnote here will note, these are all philosophical schools that reject the relevance of external things, of actual action in the world, for ethical goodness. So, you know, I'm going to set those aside, he says, and follow the Stoic model, which includes both this kind of abstract concern for virtue, but also the necessity of acting well in the context of society and of daily life. Those are the places where you find the idea of duty as fulfilling your responsibilities in the relationships that you have.
So I'll set aside the systems of these other thinkers, the Epicureans, the radical skeptics, because either, like the Epicureans, they have no place for virtue, or the skeptics and some others, they really don't have any place for action and for the active life as part of, of moral and ethical excellence. That, that's, that's my take on it.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: They just, they, they just criticize, essentially, or a question, right? To, to a point where, like, let's just, you know. Yeah, it's all up in the head. It's all theoretical and they, they spend so much time, you know, because.
And we're all guilty of that at some point, right? I mean, I, I certainly am where you can overthink something to the point of inaction, right? Or you. You just. You just keep asking questions and dealing with all the doubts, so you don't have to act on faith. Well, I don't have all the information. I'm just not going to act well.
[00:10:38] Speaker C: And I think. I think a lot of us have been there, right? This is a common experience for people, you know, both, not, not just. Not just professors and former professors and. And academics, but just some people are way too inside their head.
They need practical advice, which is this book's going to be full of.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: And the Stoics in particular, he wants to.
That's who he sees as being quite valuable. In this particular instance, it might be good just to mention who the Stoics are, which we cannot do justice to here, actually, on the. So we would have recently had a podcast with William Spears. We talked about this.
But the Stoics, of course, a very old school of thought that he's going to be drawing from, going back to Zeno, who's learning from Socrates. We don't have any Zeno's writings.
But over time, the Stoics are certainly going to be focusing on virtue. I think it's an important piece of this. The virtues that they kind of articulate are going to be part of what Cicero's drawing on.
And again, action. It's not just in kind of the popular Stoic movement today, where it's essentially emotionless statues of people, right? It's. It's how do we live and act according to virtue in the world and in the place that we find ourselves?
There's plenty to criticize about the, The Stoics. I don't think Cicero adopts their entire metaphysics.
I think he's, for example, for a Stoic, there's no In Chris, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's nothing that is not embodied, right?
That everything has a corporeal existence.
I, I don't get the impression that Cicero would say that maybe, I don't know. We. We can always, you know, wrestle with that. Again, we're not dealing with Cicero's metaphysics. We're dealing with how he's. His ethics, right? How he says we ought to live.
He's not portraying himself as kind of the Stoic sage, although in some ways he's like, you should still listen to me. But he's basically saying, I'm going to pick and choose the parts of the Stoics that I like.
And, and not, not everything Right. And of course, Stoicism is still in development at this point. Marcus Aurelius hasn't come yet. Seneca hasn't come yet.
So there's. There's a lot more to happen here.
[00:12:52] Speaker C: Well might add as well. Just remember that the goal here is living well. It's doing your duty. It's being excellent. It's. And so the, you know, it's not being dogmatic or being fully consistent and correct. It's not working out a philosophical system, it's working out a system for life. And those, those are continuous. They, they, they link together. But his primary focus here is again, upon activity. Right.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: So chapters. So we're in book one. We've only read chapters, as they're called, one through six. And this is a kind of the introduction to the book, his address to Marcus. Hey, Marcus. This is what I'm going to do in the next few chapters seven through ten. He's going to aim at giving us the scope of the discussion and outline some questions about duty, types of deliberation about duties. He's going to frame the conversation this way. So let's read chapter seven.
Since the whole discussion is going to be about duty, I propose first to define what duty is.
I am surprised that Panaetius or Panaeus. I'm not sure how to pronounce it. I'm surprised that Panaeus admitted to do this. For every piece of rational instruction upon any matter ought to begin with a definition so that everyone understands what the subject of discussion is. Pretty straightforward there. We need to know what our terms are, what we're talking about. This is what. If you're a student listening here, especially if you're one of Chris's students. Define your terms in your papers.
Oh, my goodness. Because there's. Don't ever take for granted that we know what you mean, because so many people use words and they don't know what. Like, the biggest culprit lately for me has been democracy. Every time someone says democracy, I want to throw up. It's not because I hate democracy. It's that I have no idea what you're talking about. It seems to mean anything you want it to mean. And for duty. He really doesn't want to do that. So what is he going to say here?
The whole. You were going to say something, Chris.
[00:14:47] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: The whole debate about duty is twofold. One kind of question relates to the end of good things.
The other depends upon advice by which one ought to be fortified for all areas of life.
The following are examples of the former. Are all duties complete. Is one duty more important than another? And other questions of that type. The duties for which advice has been offered do indeed relate to the end of good things. But here it is less obvious because they appear rather to have in view instruction for a life that is shared.
It is these that I must expound in these books.
So if I'm reading him right, and again, I might not be, he's basically saying, don't. This isn't about cataloging duties.
This isn't about giving a comprehensive list of them.
It is about understanding duty in the context of relationships and situations. It's a very, for lack of a better word, historicized concept of duty.
[00:15:48] Speaker C: That duty is very much practical, not theoretical. I'm sorry.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
Is this the same as prudence?
[00:15:59] Speaker C: I would say it kind of depends on what. What flavor of prudence you're thinking about, but it certainly seems to have that. He doesn't use that language. But we want to be right where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, in terms of the ethical life, where you're actually making decisions in real time about what course of action you're going to pursue. You have to make judgments about what is honorable, about what is just, et cetera. And if your theoretical catalog of virtues that has them all sort of broken down by type and subtype and part, et cetera, doesn't help you make those decisions, then it's not going to be useful to you. And this is, I think, again, intended to be a useful manual of ethical decision making for his son and for us, rather than a sort of, you know, abstract catalog of seven virtues, each with seven types, each with seven parts that we can sort of look at as a sort of geometrical, you know, object to examine. This is going to be. What does he say more about the instruction for a life that is shared. You live among other people, you have relationships to those people. You have duties that you have to fulfill here and now. I think that's the focus. Historicized is a good language for it as well.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: I think it's time for a tangent, Chris. We should make a segment on this show where it's just like tangent time, where, again, I don't want to go too crazy here, but this gets to a point again where I think Cicero is just so good, because today when we think of, like, what a quality education is, we're often thinking about, like, skills you acquire and resume, lines that you develop.
Look, those are useless if you do not know how to live and work with other people. Right?
That if all we do as educators in a college or some kind of school is okay, you left, you passed a bunch. You know, you got good grades, you passed a bunch of tests, you have a bunch. You have this reservoir of knowledge, but you don't know how to live with other people, don't know how to relate to them, don't know how to act with and for them.
Then, then what have you learned? I think this goes back. I mean, you know, it's a huge argument for why you need philosophy. I mean, the tragedy of many liberal arts institutions getting rid of the liberal arts, particularly philosophy, is just. Is. It's. It's an egregious abandonment of what any reasonable person would think of as education, right? And for Cicero, and that's. And there's so many ways in which we. We need to learn that better. And philosophy, again, philosophy is not just living in an ivory tower and ignoring human. Human interaction. It's trying to understand what. What. What is life? What is the good. What is the good life?
Again, that's my tangent there on your behalf. And you kind of get to this in your Life after philosophy podcast, right? Essentially, why did I learn this?
[00:19:01] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Well, again, in Cicero. This is the great value of Cicero, right, Is that he's not just an abstract thinker who's breaking new frontiers. He's a synthesizer, right? He brings what he's learned, Stoic ethics, perhaps, here, down to earth, to his own particular place in time, to his own life, to his son's life, and he offers it to us. And thinking of, well, how do you think about how to choose between two different courses of action, one of which seems to be honorable, one of which seems to be advantageous or beneficial?
How do you choose between courage and honesty? Should I break my promise to a friend in order to do something courageous, or should I do what seems to be the more cowardly thing, but remain true to a promise that I've made? And that's where the real world, that's where we engage with the real. There's where prudence comes in, right? That's where we have to engage with the actual material out of which our life is being made, rather than the sort of the abstract theories which. Which we might appreciate in themselves.
So, you know, again, Cicero, not. Not neglecting the intellectual, but engaging it right down at ground level where we're going to see the good or the bad decisions which lead to our happiness or misery.
Those decisions are being made right there in real time for us by us.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Going on to chapter eight. Then he says, There is also another division to be made concerning duty. For a duty can be called either middle or complete.
Complete duty we may, I think, label right as the Greeks called it.
Katathorma, I think I'm pronouncing that right. While the duty that is shared they call cathaycon.
They gay. They give their definitions in such a way as to define complete duty as what is right. While middle duty, they say, is that for which a persuasive reason can be given as to why it has to be done that I have. I have a big old question mark there that was confusing to me.
I mean, is it. On the one hand, it almost sounds like Kathorma. Complete duty is when you know, you.
It's. It's obvious that you need to do this. You don't really have to. It's almost like a natural duty, just like natural rights. It's.
[00:21:27] Speaker C: It.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: You don't necessarily have to argue for it as much.
It is self evident, maybe or. And then the other one you need.
You need kind of like second precepts of reason or something where you have to argue and persuade your way to it. It almost sounds like prudence and something else. Again, I don't know if that's what this is. How do you read that? That's a difficult distinction for me.
[00:21:51] Speaker C: Yeah, this is tricky. And Greek is not one of my languages, but as far as I understand this with the help of some of the footnotes as well that the editors have provided.
I think what we're talking about is a kind of complete virtue is the. I'm sorry, complete duty.
The duty that the truly excellent, the wise person can do sort of with the person who's kind of leveled up in every virtue and in every good quality, is capable of fully understanding the reasons for the action that he's performing. We might say he does it best. Other people do their duty, but he does his duty best because he does it with kind of full understanding, full comprehension of the intellect and ascent of the will. And like there, yes, it's shining. There's the human. The human business being done at the maximum possible intensity and level of perfection. But there's also this middle duty that most of us would get by with most of the time not being wise men. Perhaps we can perceive our duty. We can do our duty, we can fulfill it. And that seems to be one of those things that I don't want to say it's inferior, it's good, but it's less than perfect because it doesn't have the kind of full power of wisdom and of understanding and of comprehension of all of the reasons for it behind it. It's still very, very good as fulfillment of duty. That's my take on it. But I'm willing to admit some people may point out in the comments that. That I've badly misunderstood Cicero on just this one point.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Yeah, just. Just that one point.
Yeah. I think it's a. I think it's a really good way to put it because there's.
There is a sense in which when someone, you know, someone does something right.
Do you know why that was right? No, it just felt right. Well, okay. All right, all right. Well, you did the right thing.
I think there is something to be said about. Our children seem to show this at times. Right. They just. Oh, no one taught you that was the right thing to do, but you just. You just knew it.
I don't think he gets to the notion of natural law here, but it is an interesting, interesting idea. I'd love to know if those terms show up in the Bible and where they, where they appear.
Cathort. Cat. Cat. Orma, Cator, Katorma.
This here. Yeah, we're just gonna. This is not a Greek podcast. We'll just refer you to some much, much more intelligent people.
Let's go on to chapter nine, then. There's a lot here.
There are inconsequents, as it seems to Panaetius and Panadeus. As I understand he's a Stoic, Right? That particularly Stoic philosopher that Cicero is learning from. There are three questions to deliberate when deciding upon a plan of action.
In the first place, men may be uncertain whether the thing that falls under consideration is an honorable or dishonorable thing to do.
Often when they ponder this, their spirits are pulled between opposing opinions.
Secondly, they investigate or debate whether or not the course they are considering is conducive to the advantageousness and pleasantness of life, to opportunities and resources for doing things, to wealth and to power, all of which enable them to benefit themselves and those dear to them. All such deliberation falls under reasoning about what is beneficial.
So again, number one, first question, honorable, second question. Is it beneficial? The third type of uncertainty arises when something apparently beneficial appears to conflict with what is honorable.
Benefit seems to snatch you to its side, and honorableness in its turn to call you back. Consequently, the spirit is pulled this way and that, and it's deliberation and it arouses in its reflection a care that is double edged.
So essentially, we got three qu. We got three questions here.
Okay. This action that I could take Is it honorable? Okay. Is it beneficial? Okay, what if. What if it's one but not the other? What do I do?
[00:25:57] Speaker C: Right?
Or what? Yeah, what if. Yeah, what if I'm pulled between two actions, one of which is beneficial, one of which is honorable.
Only being able to do one. Which shall I choose?
[00:26:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
So that's interesting. So let's take the.
Take a biblical example, the Good Samaritan, right? There's a. A Samaritan has been beaten, robbed, thrown in a ditch and passed by. This is in. Is it. I think It's Luke, chapter 15. I could be wrong.
And so finally.
No, it's. It's a. Who. Who. Who's. It's just a. It's just a man. They just say it's a man thrown in a ditch. Right?
[00:26:37] Speaker C: Traveler.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Traveler. Yeah, it's just a traveler. The Samaritan's the one going by. Okay, so the Samaritan's the one going by.
The Samaritan has a decision to make. Is it honorable to save this man who's been beaten and robbed?
Is it beneficial?
It certainly seems honorable. Right. I think we can make an argument there that it is honorable to save someone who has been. Who is, first of all, innocent. Right.
They didn't deserve this mugging that they got.
It is honorable to use one's resources and time and energy to help save someone from what would likely have been their death had they been left, you know, just left there to die.
But is it beneficial? Well, this person's been robbed.
They have nothing to give this Good Samaritan. They can't repay them.
It's going to cost the Samaritan money and time and energy. It's going to make them late, probably, for wherever they're trying to get to, because they're on a journey.
It's not been. You know, so I. Other than making you. You know, there's no evidence that this.
Of course, it's a parable, but it plays out in real life on many occasions. Right. There's.
It's not clear that the Samaritan is gaining anything, at least in this. In this life, in this side of heaven, if you will, from doing this. And so that might be an example where it's not beneficial, but it's honorable for Cicero. Do you do it? I mean, I think we're going to get to that, right?
[00:28:13] Speaker C: Yeah. This is funny. My approach to this was a little bit different from yours. I didn't imagine a single action being evaluated on all three axes with all three questions.
I took him to be Saying, this works just fine. I'll get to the scriptural example in a second. But the first question is, you know, I'm. I'm torn between. I'm considering an action, and I have to ask, is this the honorable thing to do, or is there some other course of action that is honorable or, as we'll see later on, more honorable?
So I say, is this honorable or shameful for me to do this? And it may be sort of to reach into the story a little bit. It may have been shameful for the Levite to help the man. Why? Because it would require him to compromise his position in the temple. I mean, this is not a context of which Cicero would have been. Would have thought. But I could say, given me and my relationships, my responsibilities, can honor be satisfied? Does honor demand that I act in this way?
Am I. Am I, you know, on my way to an important appointment now? The fact that the man might die seems to override any, you know, concern for mine, for. For honor. You know, if I have to, you know, be late to an appointment with my boss, unless it was a, you know, vitally important appointment, we would say that's less important than the man's life. But you can think about the reasoning about honor is the honorable thing to do, and we can come up with examples like that, including the Samaritan example.
Is it beneficial, he specifically says here, just get at it.
How does it relate to the advantageousness and pleasantness of life, to opportunities and resources for doing things, to wealth and to power which allow us to benefit ourselves and those near to us? So we could say, you know, the. The man, the Samaritan, who does spend the money on the inn and the food for the recovery of the wounded man, can't spend that money on something else, Right? There's something else he's taking it away from. Perhaps he's a very wealthy Samaritan, or perhaps he now has to go home to his family and to say, you know, it's going to be beans and rice for. For the next week because I gave the money that I was carrying with me to save this man's life. And so here's a question of, you know, I did what was disadvantageous. Why? Perhaps because it was honorable. So that's the third kind. Right. Is the conflict between those two factors.
But there's more maybe to each of those than we're letting on right now. But what do you think? How does that affect what you think?
[00:30:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm starting to think also about where this could go wrong.
We keep using the word honorable.
And you know, there are certainly there are certain cultures, including the Stoics at times, as well as later among the Japanese. Right. Where the honorable thing to do is commit suicide. Right. When you can't answer this question, you know, when that, you know, there are certain moments in history where as a Christian, I'm like, I can't. I can't consider that honorable right. Is honorable a cultural construct?
Is Cicero not appreciate? Because I don't think Cicero thinks that. I think Cicero thinks it's there. There is a capital nature from which honor is being determined here. But yeah, I was thinking about as you were talking, like how this could go wrong, where the question of honorableness. Does honor demand that I do this?
You know, it may.
You know, I'm grateful Jesus did not ask that question to a point. Right. There's nothing honorable about the cross.
Right. There is there, There is a sense in which this can't. We can't take this too, too far.
[00:31:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:57] Speaker B: Or, you know, the Romans, for example. I mean, think of the, the, the. The mar.
Warrior life right. Of a Roman.
Is it honorable to. To kill someone in war? Now, we're not going to get in just war theory here. I don't think he. That shows up here.
But you know, that, that, that's where another issue is going to, going to. Going to show up. Right. Is it honorable to. It may be honorable to die for one's country. Is it honorable to kill for one's country?
[00:32:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: And so I think there's. Yeah, go ahead, Chris.
[00:32:34] Speaker C: Well, thanks. I just looked back again at the notes on the translation. The glossary from this is roman numeral.
Let's see, 44 and 45 in the introduction to this text just helps a little bit here with the specifics of what honorable means.
Honorable translates Honestus.
Book one is a guide to discovering whether an action is onestus or turpus. You think turpists sort of, you know, think of turpentine or things that are things that are offensive.
Honestus is analyzed as consisting of the four primary virtues.
But the nature of honest is connected with honor, an honor or an office. And reputation is public. I think this is another important point that we've made before.
Our culture tends to internalize virtue and divorce it from social standing. But for, for Cicero, you know, what counts as honorable is your behavior in public. It's the good man is the man who is well regarded. Why? Because he is a man of excellence. And getting into the point that you just made. Right.
Is this A cultural construct. It has some elements to it, but the good man is in principle honorable and deserves honor, respect and admiration from other men.
So onestus here is translated as honorable and its opposite, turpus, is dishonorable. But this is in the sense of putting yourself in a situation that you're doing things that object that would call down upon you the objective negative judgment, the disdain of good people. So perhaps that helps a little bit in terms of what precise concept he's getting at here.
Yeah, a little bit.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: Although again, I think it get it complicates his, you know, how we can read him. Right. Because there is a sense in which, well, look, you know, do we want to discard the idea of honor? I'm not ready to do that yet. I think some would.
I think there's reasons to, to be skeptical of being focusing on honor too much because of what you just said. Because if it's, it's. Well, if, if it, the deserving honor means that someone has to bestow the honor upon you, you cannot bestow it on yourself.
You do the actions and then others honor you.
From a Christian perspective, the only one who deserves the honor is God. And the only person that we should care about who, who they, who and what they think of us, again, is God.
And so again, now I'm not criticizing, I'm not saying, well, Cicero, you're insufficiently Christian. But you could also say that this, this is where Christianity is going to be when it comes around, because Cicero is not, he's not being innovative here in a sense like he's speaking, he is kind of saying, not, it's not even the quiet part out loud. He's saying out loud what the, the kind of the Roman ethos is or ought to be or the kind of the, the ideal of it. And so when Christianity comes on the scene, they're going to be rewiring the way the Romans think about honor. And they might not, they may not even use that term.
[00:35:52] Speaker C: No, I think that's right. You might substitute, instead of behave in such a way that you objectively deserve the admiration of your fellow, you know, aristocrats in your social class, you say, you know, neglect all of that, throw all that away and act in such a way that you deserve the, the approval of God and that, that's enough for you. That seems to be part of the lesson of the Good Samaritan story. Right. Whereas a man in Cicero's position in Jewish society might have praised the, the Levite, if I have the name right, for passing by because he had a higher duty to the temple to retain a certain kind of ritual purity.
You know, a lot of people depend upon that. And Cicero, someone like Cicero might have, might have approved and said, okay, doing the honorable thing there under some circumstance would be, would be superior. We might say that's not even the honorable thing. Yeah. That in the eyes of the Lord it is only the Samaritan who is, who is justified by his behavior. Everybody else made some kind of mistake, but that, that's the rewiring, as you say, from, you know, social class as the highest moral arbiter and sort of deliverer of the sought after approval to the Lord himself, to God who sees into your heart. So that's going to require different thinking about the relation between the internal and the external as well from what Cicero has. But here's an important background document then for understanding what gets rewired by the Christians eventually.
[00:37:15] Speaker B: Exactly. This gets to a point where I hope this series is helpful to, to our listeners because in many ways we're all. There's. We may not have been influenced by Roman Stoics in.
As we become more Christian. Right.
There's a lot of kind of underlying assumptions about what is right, wrong, good, true and beautiful that we are raised with. And that as we especially as Christians seek to be more Christlike, we're going to have to ask ourselves, well, where did this idea come from? Right.
Why does this feel so different? Right. Why does Christianity, especially nowadays, as we become more.
It's more of a post Christian Western world.
The stark contrast that Christianity brings is going to be important. And again, I don't want to. This is also a reason why I think it's so helpful for Christians to read classical authors like this. It reminds us of the, the first of all, a lot of the things that we take for granted about our own faith and our own tradition. Right. What it, what it came into and changed. Also it reveals to us because there's plenty of times in Cicero where I might think, yeah, you're right, Cicero. And then if I go to read Augustine, who's commenting on the same passage, he's going to say, no, Cicero's wrong. And I'd be like, well, crap, you know, where am I here? And I don't think Cicero's wrong about everything. I want to make sure, make that very clear. Clear. I think this is, this is a valuable exercise.
Chapter 10.
This is our. We'll, we'll conclude with this section. Cicero has gone through these three questions. He's essentially going to add two more.
Chapter 10, he writes, although it is a very great fault to omit anything when categorizing this division leaves out two things, the three questions we just talked about. That leaves out two things. For one often deliberates not only whether a thing is honorable or dishonorable, but also which of two proposed courses that are honorable is the more honorable, or of two that are beneficial, the more beneficial. Therefore, the method that Panadeus thought should be threefold turns out to require division into five parts.
First, therefore, we must discuss what is honorable. But asking of it two questions.
Then what is beneficial by a parallel method and then the comparison of the two.
I like that he's.
Because it's this, this, this is real life. Right.
A lot of times it's. You're stuck between what is right and what seems right, and you can't decide what is, you know, what it is. Or there are more, there's more than one honorable or beneficial course of action.
Was one more honorable or beneficial than the other?
What if we don't know? Right.
I think there's, I think that's. This again, gets to Cicero is. He's, he's being real, to use that phrase. Right. He's not.
He's very much in tune with the way that this, this is, you know, think of, you know, he's going to have to deal with this at some point in this book. Right.
Was it honorable to kill Julius Caesar?
Was it more honorable to, I don't know, put him in exile? Would be more honorable to bribe, you know, buy Caesar off. You know, there's, there's more than one way to deal with a tyrant. So, you know, he's, he's, he's me wrestling this with.
He's wrestling with this himself as well. Would it have been more honorable or less honorable to kill Mark Antony?
It sounds like it'd be more beneficial. Right. So there's, there's, he's, he's dealing with that here. Yeah.
[00:40:53] Speaker C: So, yeah, I think what we've got here is to set up for the remainder of the book. Book one is going to be about the honorable versus the dishonorable, the. The onestas versus the, the turpis.
First, is this action honorable or not? And then between two proposed actions, which one is more honorable and therefore more worthy of choice? Book two, the same thing, but with.
Same two types of questions, but with the advantageous.
Right. Is. Is this action advantageous? And then between two actions that are both advantageous, which one is superior? How do we choose between them?
And then book three, how to resolve conflicts between one action that's honorable and a rival possible action which is advantageous but seems to be lacking in honor. How do we choose between those? That seems to be the place where we would really be stuck. But presumably, if we've thought through our principles and then also the practical applications of the rule, both for deciding on the honorable and deciding about the advantageous, we'll be in a good position to wrap up conflicts between them. And then presumably, we've got a whole picture of practical life, how we're going to live our lives.
[00:42:06] Speaker B: There's a lot of, yeah, there'll be limitations at the end of it, but I think again, just gets to Cicero's practicality here. And because it's very, very real that so many times in life we're faced with, it's not always obvious what the right thing is or what the more right thing is.
[00:42:20] Speaker C: Right.
[00:42:22] Speaker B: You know, life does not come at you with, you know, mathematical precision. Right. It's so difficult to decide to make certain decisions. But you're going to have to act. You're going to have to do the, you know, figure out what in the world it is to do.
I mean, I think that's. This also gets the notions of, you know, certainly an idea that's missing in, in non Christian thought is grace, right. Without grace, this, this sucks, right? You, you could, you could be faced with some really, really awful situations. And look, if you fail, that's it, right?
But the. There, there is this. And I, again, I think there is a stoic teaching where things can be. They wouldn't say that God works all things to the good, but there is a way in which things can be worked toward the good in stoic thought. But I think there is.
You almost feel bad to a point where you need to do the right thing. Yes. Try your hardest, young Marcus.
But if only Marcus knew about grace, you know, there'd be less. You know, there's, there's, there's. That's a lot of weight to put on someone. Right?
[00:43:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
The only thing I'd add maybe from a philosophical perspective is the default way that a lot of young people approach ethics is in terms of rule following.
What's the rule that I have to follow?
Have I followed the rule? In which case I've got a check mark next to the rule and I'm okay, I've done my duty, I've done what I'm supposed to do. But this is not the sort of checklist rule following that Cicero's giving us. He's giving us. He says, look, you have to make some very careful, difficult, prudential judgments between rival courses of action, some of which are going to be more or less honorable, some of which more or less advantageous, some of which involve conflict between the two. You need to think through not just the principles and the sort of abstract rules. And people know this, even following rules seems simple until you realize that you have to decide which rule is the right rule to follow in this situation, in which case you're right back where prudence would have taken you in the first place.
So I think that's, again, testimony to the value of this work and its practicality for even for us, you know, many centuries millennia later, as a work of as sort of a manual, a guide to life and sort of training in how to do the kind of decision making we're going to need to do in order to live well. In order to live excellent lives.
[00:44:41] Speaker B: Excellent. Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining me on this discussion. Another really, really, really good, good time. Didn't get super far, but we're through. You know, almost all of the introductory material of this book, and I'm looking forward to the next episode.
[00:44:54] Speaker C: Me, too.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: All right, thanks, Chris.
Sam.
