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Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy > Hellenistic and Later Ancient Philosophy > Academic Skeptics > Cicero
Cicero
Edited by Sean McConnell (University of Otago)
About this topic
| Summary | Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) was a Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher. As well as speeches, letters, and rhetorical treatises, Cicero wrote numerous philosophical works. There are two schools of thought on the novelty and value of Cicero’s philosophical works: (1) he is essentially just repackaging Greek material in Latin, offering renditions of existing ideas that are invaluable for saving much of the lost tradition of Hellenistic philosophy; (2) he is doing something more than that, developing distinctive philosophical contributions of his own. Most recent studies stress the innovative elements of Cicero’s philosophical thinking. Cicero's philosophical writings have been very influential in the history and development of European intellectual traditions. |
| Introductions | Woolf 2014 and Woolf 2022 are excellent and accessible introductions to Cicero’s philosophical thought for the general reader. MacKendrick 1989 offers useful plot summaries of each work. Atkins & Bénatouïl 2021 provides a comprehensive survey of all major areas of Cicero's philosophical thought and practice. Schofield 2021 offers a detailed account of Cicero's political philosophy in particular. |
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- Carneades (7)
- Academic Skeptics, Misc (20)
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- (1 other version)The Partial Coherence of Cicero’s De officiis.Thornton Lockwood - manuscriptMartha Nussbaum has provided a sustained critique of Cicero’s De officiis (or On Duties), concerning what she claims is Cicero’s incoherent distinction between duties of justice, which are strict, cosmopolitan, and impartial, and duties of material aid, which are elastic, weighted towards those who are near and dear, and partial. No doubt, from Nussbaum’s cosmopolitan perspective, Cicero’s distinction between justice and beneficence seems problematic and lies at the root of modern moral failures to conceptualize adequately our obligations in situations of (...)
- (1 other version)Cicero's Philosophy of Just War.Thornton Lockwood - manuscriptCicero’s ethical and political writings present a detailed and sophisticated philosophy of just war, namely an account of when armed conflict is morally right or wrong. Several of the philosophical moves or arguments that he makes, such as a critique of “Roman realism” or his incorporation of the ius fetiale—a form of archaic international law—are remarkable similar to those of the contemporary just war philosopher Michael Walzer, even if Walzer is describing inter-state war and Cicero is describing imperial war. But (...)
- Repentinvs in Cicero, Brvtvs 242.Nicoletta Bruno - forthcoming - Classical Quarterly:1-6.Cicero’s use of the adjective repentinus at Brut. 242 (C. L. Caepasii fratres … ignoti homines et repentini) has a singularly negative and offensive meaning. Both Tertullian (Adu. Marc. 4.7.7) and Ammianus Marcellinus (14.6.13, 21.16.3) echo Cicero, employing the same adjective in conjunction with ignotus or with its synonym incognitus, albeit without the same negative and defaming nuance.
- Notes on the Text and Interpretation of Cicero, De Harvspicvm Responsis.Andrew R. Dyck - forthcoming - Classical Quarterly:1-3.This note examines five passages of Cicero, De haruspicum responsis in light of the commented edition of A. Corbeill. New conjectures are offered on §§29 and 50; the transmitted text of §46 is defended; and a different interpretation of the text is offered at §§37 and 61.
- Cicero and Epicurus on Pleasure and Friendship – Erratum.Katharina Volk - forthcoming - Classical Quarterly:1-1.
- Cicero on Fate: Divination and the Problem of Free Will.Mark Kevin S. Cabural - 2026 - Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy (Philippine e-journal) 27 (1):63-74.Fatum, or fate, is a central theme in Marcus Tullius Cicero’s philosophical oeuvre, even lending its name to one of his works, De Fato or On Fate, which suggests its importance in his thought. Beyond this, the notion of fate also appears in De Natura Deorum or On the Nature of the Gods and De Divinatione or On Divination, making it a recurring theme across Cicero’s religious or theological trilogy. A key challenge in understanding fate in Cicero’s works lies in (...)
- Cicero’s Catilinarians in the Eighteenth Century: Constructing a Political Experience.Katherine A. East - 2026 - History of European Ideas 52 (2):340-357.This article explores how early modern editors of ancient texts used the tools available to them to curate a political experience of the text for the reader. In particular, it considers how the paratextual material prefacing the ancient text provided an opportunity to shape the reader’s perception of the work before they had even begun to read it. Using early modern English translations of Cicero’s speeches against Catiline, this article argues that paratexts could prepare the reader’s expectations to ensure that (...)
- Cicero on the Rhetorical Foundations of Human Society.Valerio Ricciardi - 2026 - Polis 43 (2):337-359.This article examines the issue of the ethical foundations of rhetoric in Cicero. Rather than focusing on the moral integrity of the orator, whose moral goodness cannot be guaranteed in Cicero’s view, I investigate whether there are morally good reasons why rhetoric itself is worth pursuing despite its potential misuse. My claim is that these can be found in Cicero’s view that reason and speech are essential traits of human nature, and that the interaction of these two natural faculties plays (...)
- Cicero & the Ideal of Virtue.Abdullah Shaikh - 2026 - Philosophy Now 172:12-15.
- Bittersweet History: Cicero on Mixed Affect in Experiencing Literature.Mario Baumann - 2025 - In Douglas Cairns & Pia Campeggiani, Mixed Feelings: An Interdisciplinary Phenomenology. Ancient Emotions V. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 155-170.This chapter focuses on one of Cicero’s letters, Ad familiares 5.12, which Cicero wrote to L. Lucceius in 56/55 BC to ask him for a historiographical treatment of Cicero’s consulate. To this end, Cicero performs a complex speech act that involves naming, explaining and employing several forms of mixed affect. The chapter first analyses Cicero’s take on the bittersweet experience of reading history before it then turns to Cicero’s “meta-affective” movements in Fam. 5.12 that not only portray Cicero himself as (...)Find it on Amazon.com (collection)Remove from this list Direct downloadExport citationBookmark 1 citation
- CICÉRON, Les Académiques – Tome I. Academicus Primus, Introduction générale, établissement du texte, traduction, commentaire par C. LÉVY, T. HUNT et E. MALASPINA, avec le concours de V. REVELLO, Collection des Universités de France, Les Belles Lettres, Paris 2025.Lévy Carlos, Hunt Terence & Ermanno Malaspina - 2025 - Paris: Les Belles Lettres.L’édition a été conçue et réalisée grâce à la collaboration des trois éditeurs, qui ont défini ensemble la structure générale et qui ont approuvé chaque page après une riche discussion commune depuis 2009, à la fois en présence à Paris ou en visioconférence. Depuis 2023, la discussion commune s’est élargie à Veronica Revello. Plus précisément, pour ce qui concerne l’introduction générale, toute la première partie (« Les idées et les mots des Académiques ») est de Carlos Lévy, alors que la (...)
- Grotius Contra Carneades: Natural Law and the Problem of Self-Interest.Scott Casleton - 2025 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 63 (1):49-74.In the Prolegomena to De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Hugo Grotius expounds his theory of natural law by way of reply to a skeptical challenge from the Greek Academic Carneades. Though this dialectical context is undeniably important for understanding Grotian natural law, commentators disagree about the substance of Carneades’s challenge. This paper aims to give a definitive reading of Carneades’s skeptical argument, and, by reconstructing Grotius’s reply, to settle some longstanding debates about Grotius’s conception of natural law. I argue that (...)
- The People’s Property and the Common Good: Cicero's On the Republic, Book I.Evan Dutmer - 2025 - The Philosophy Teaching Library.Marcus Tullius Cicero was an important Roman statesperson and philosopher who lived during the end of the Roman Republic. Widely read during his lifetime and in the centuries after his death, the influence of his writings was central to the development of the Renaissance, and he is among the most commonly cited ancient thinkers among the American and French revolutionaries. Cicero's On the Republic, modelled in some ways on Plato's Republic, was Cicero's most widely read work in antiquity. In On (...)
- Cicero and the Philosophic Grounds of Liberty.Michael C. Hawley - 2025 - Polis 42 (1):29-50.The prevailing view of the origin of the idea of republican liberty holds that it emerged as a polemical tool to wield against political opponents in the Roman republic. But viewing republican liberty as partisan rhetorical device has obscured the important philosophical innovations that were necessary to render it theoretically viable and coherent. Turning to Cicero, the earliest extant theorist of republican liberty, I seek to explore the depth of the conceptual revolution that made it possible to articulate that ideal. (...)
- (1 other version)The Partial Coherence of Cicero’s De officiis.Thornton Lockwood - 2025 - The Monist 108 (2):129-140.Martha Nussbaum has provided a sustained critique of Cicero’s De officiis (or On Duties), concerning what she claims is Cicero’s incoherent distinction between duties of justice, which are strict, cosmopolitan, and impartial, and duties of material aid, which are elastic, weighted towards those who are near and dear, and partial. No doubt, from Nussbaum’s cosmopolitan perspective, Cicero’s distinction between justice and beneficence seems problematic and lies at the root of modern moral failures to conceptualize adequately our obligations in situations of (...)
- R. Caldini Montanari, Tradizione Medievale ed Edizione Critica del Somnium Scipionis, Firenze, Sismel Edizioni del Galluzo, Millennio Medievale 33, Testi 10, 2002, 577 pp. [REVIEW]Gabriela Marrón - 2025 - Argos 27:159-160.
- Cicerón y el estoicismo. La construcción estética de la palabra en la retórica latina.Nora Múgica & Liliana Pérez - 2025 - Argos 27:113-121.En el presente trabajo se indaga sobre la concepción ciceroniana del lenguaje en la relación gramática-retórica. El abordaje toma como un punto de partida las concepciones estoicas referentes al lenguaje, para marcar el distanciamiento de la retórica latina y la constitución de una estética de la palabra en vistas a la persuasión. Conformada esta perspectiva, se avanza en el estudio de la relación entre dialéctica y retórica y la consiguiente definición de elocuencia, en la concepción de oratio como elaboración artística (...)
- Cicero’s compromise between stoic and rethorical pathos.Simon Noriega-Olmos - 2025 - Filosofía (Mérida, Venezuela) 31 (31):29-52.In the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero admires the Stoic theory of emotions. According to this theory, emotions are failures of reason, and a healthy soul must be free of them. Yet, in his rhetorical writings, Cicero holds that an Orator must experience the emotion he seeks to transmit to be truthful. Cicero’s Stoic theory and rhetorical theory of emotions are irreconcilable. However, this paper argues that we cannot speak of an inconsistency in Cicero’s thought. As a skeptic and rhetorician, Cicero never (...)
- Imperio, virtud e historia trascendental en Roma: Cicerón y Séneca.Francisco Miguel Ortiz-Delgado - 2025 - Ciudad de México: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana/ LibrObjeto.Texto que analiza el pensamiento de Marco Tulio Cicerón y Séneca el Joven en torno a las razones del imperialismo romano, la posibilidad de un expansionismo virtuoso, la idea de que la historia muestra la posibilidad de actuar de forma moral-virtuosa. This book studies Cicero's and Seneca's ideas on the reasons of the Roman imperialism, the possibility of a virtuous expansionismo or war, how history demonstrates the recurrent virtuous behaviour in the past.
- CICERO's USE OF GREEK IN THE LETTERS - (S.) Aubert-Baillot Le grec et la philosophie dans la correspondance de Cicéron. (Philosophie hellénistique et romaine 12.) Pp. 696. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. Paper, €120. ISBN: 978-2-503-59155-1. [REVIEW]Peter Osorio - 2025 - The Classical Review 75 (2):483-484.
- La transmisión del texto de Cicerón en Egipto.Ana María Pendás & Rodolfo Pedro Buzón - 2025 - Argos 17:71-80.
- Might Makes Rights: a Ciceronian Critique of Pettit’s Theory of Liberty.Phillip Pinell - 2025 - Polis 42 (2):279-304.Philip Pettit is best known for his defense of liberty as non-domination. Since his initial defense of this concept in Republicanism (1997), scholars have critiqued his normative defense of liberty for failing to capture key aspects of the classical republican conception of liberty. This article contributes to this critique by comparing Pettit’s defense of liberty with an account from his most famous classical source, Cicero. It argues that Pettit misses necessary conceptual and institutional components that allow non-domination to emerge. Through (...)
- Reimagining Political Legitimacy: Ancestral Imagines in the Contional Speeches of Marius and Cicero.Emily Salamanca - 2025 - Polis 42 (2):305-338.Upon election, new consuls were expected to give a public address (contio) to legitimize their rule, traditionally by referencing the ancestor masks (imagines) of their gens, which stood as signifiers of their family’s honor and civic commitment. However, for new men (novi homines) lacking prestigious ancestors, such avenues for legitimization were unavailable. Instead, new men had to re-imagine ancestral legitimacy in light of their own qualifications, often to the discredit of traditional sources of inherited authority. By critically examining the first (...)
- Brian Krostenko, Cicero, Catullus, and the language of Social Performance. [REVIEW]Leonor Silvestri - 2025 - Argos 25:166-169.
- E. Gavoille, Ars. Étude sémantique de Plaute à Cicéron. [REVIEW]Eleonora Tola - 2025 - Argos 24:205-206.
- Kant’s Rejection of Stoic Eudaimonism.Michael Vazquez - 2025 - In Melissa Merritt, Kant and Stoic ethics. New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.This chapter situates Kant’s rejection of Stoic eudaimonism within his overarching anti-eudaimonist agenda. I begin by emphasizing the importance of the Stoic tradition for Kant’s critical reception of ancient ethical theory. I then reconstruct the central commitments of ancient Stoic eudaimonism and of Christian Garve’s quasi-Stoic eudaimonism. Turning to Kant’s anti-Stoic argument in the Dialectic of the Second Critique, I argue that the primary target of Kant’s error of subreption (vitium subreptionis) is the Stoic Seneca, specifically his account of joy (...)Find it on Amazon.com (collection)Remove from this list Direct downloadExport citationBookmark 1 citation
- Commitment without Conviction: Cicero’s Skeptical Eudaimonism.Michael Vazquez - 2025 - Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 40:99-129.In this paper I offer an account of how Cicero governed his practical life as an Academic skeptic, which I call “commitment without conviction.” While Cicero was committed to the universal suspension of assent, he was nonetheless entitled to form rationally warranted, diachronically stable beliefs. At the same time, I argue, Cicero lacked conviction in two senses. First, he did not believe with conviction, or with a level of confidence exceeding the bounds set by Academic arguments for akatalēpsia. Second, he (...)
- Cicero's Academici Libri.Francesco Verde (ed.) - 2025 - Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.This chapter examines the reception of the thought of the so-called skeptical Academy, as expounded in Cicero’s Academics, within contemporary philosophy. This task is more complex than evaluating the reception of Pyrrhonian skepticism. While Pyrrhonism, as presented in the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus, has been the subject of considerable discussion among contemporary philosophers, Academic skepticism is rarely mentioned. Moreover, when it is mentioned, the ancient source cited is more often Sextus than Cicero. Finally, rather than observing a direct influence (...)
- India en Cicerón y los líricos latinos.Rosalía C. Vofchuk - 2025 - Argos 9:143-158.
- Pain, Shame, and Manliness in Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 2.James Warren - 2025 - In James Warren & Charles F. Brittain, Cicero's _Tusculan Disputations_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 79-101.In Tusculans 2 the interlocutors discuss the value of physical pain. They swiftly agree that it is not the greatest evil but take longer to consider whether it is bad or, as the Stoics think, merely indifferent. Enduring pain is taken to be an indication of courage and manliness (virtus) and this is undermined by the claim that physical pain is not bad. Therefore neither the Epicureans nor the Stoics provide a wholly satisfactory account of the value of physical pain (...)
- Introducing the Tusculans.James Warren - 2025 - In James Warren & Charles F. Brittain, Cicero's _Tusculan Disputations_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1-11.An introduction to the historical and philosophical context of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations and an overview of some general questions to be investigated in the volume, particularly: the question of Cicero’s ‘Socratic method’, his use of dialogue, his claim to argue on both sides of a question, and the relationship between this and his Academic scepticism.
- Cicero's Tusculan Disputations.James Warren & Charles F. Brittain (eds.) - 2025 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.-/- Cicero composed the Tusculan Disputations in the summer of 45 BC at a time of great personal and political turmoil. He was grieving for the death of his daughter Tullia earlier that year, while Caesar's defeat of Pompey's forces at Munda and return to Rome as dictator was causing him great fears and concerns for himself, his friends and the Republic itself. This collection of new essays offers a holistic critical commentary on this important work. World-leading experts consider its (...)
- Cicero in the German Enlightenment.Hahmann Andree & Michael Vazquez - 2024 - In Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez, Cicero as Philosopher: New Perspectives on His Philosophy and Its Legacy. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 391-408.This chapter explores Cicero’s reception in the German Enlightenment, a topic that has garnered less scholarly attention compared to his influence in the Anglosphere. Focusing on Johann Joachim Spalding and Christian Garve as case studies, we highlight Cicero’s profound and often underappreciated impact on German intellectual thought, particularly in shaping ideas about the human vocation (Bestimmung des Menschen)—a legacy that extends even to the towering figure of the German Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant.Find it on Amazon.com (collection)Remove from this list Direct download (3 more)Export citationBookmark
- Cicero on Money and Property.Jed W. Atkins - 2024 - In Joseph J. Tinguely, Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Money--Volume 1: Ancient and Medieval Thought. Cham: Springer Verlag. pp. 363-383.Cicero’s treatment of property and money stands squarely within the twin currents of the wide stream of Cicero’s political thought: commitments to human sociability and the limits of reason in political affairs. It bears on many of the major questions of political theory he explores: justice; rights; the character, purposes, and foundations of a republic; empire; slavery; virtue; rational planning and its limits; the constitution; just war theory; natural law; the relationship between ethics and politics; statesmanship that seeks to balance (...)
- Cicero and Wang Chong: On Divination as an Ancient Science.Mark Kevin S. Cabural - 2024 - Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy (Philippine e-journal) 25 (2):252-268.In this article, I delve into divination as an ancient science. My examination focuses on Cicero’s two types of divination and Wang Chong’s interpretation of the concept of spontaneity (ziran 自然), along with his critical attitude. Furthermore, I describe the similarities, differences, or connections between divination and modern science across three domains, including methodology, the place of humans in the world or universe, and the issue of inclusivity and exclusivity of disciplines or areas of inquiry. Ultimately, I highlight three key (...)
- Cicero : statesman and teacher of statesmen.Timothy W. Caspar - 2024 - In Michael Anton, Glenn Ellmers & Charles R. Kesler, Leisure with dignity: essays in celebration of Charles R. Kesler. New York: Encounter Books.
- Ad impellendum satis, ad edocendum parum. Note sul presunto elogio di Varrone ovvero sull'elogio menippeo in Ac. 1,9.Diomira Gattafoni - 2024 - Ciceroniana on Line 8 (1):245-276.This paper proposes an alternative reading of the praise addressed by Cicero to Varro in Ac.1 9, interpreting the passage not litteratim but in a Menippean key. The author seems to take this dedication to Varro as a literary and philosophical challenge — a reading for which there are other clues in the dedicatory letter and in the Letters to Atticus. The initial reticence of Varro’s character resembles that attributed by Szlezák to Socrates in the Euthydemus: before being Cicero encourages (...)
- CICERO'S INTELLECTUAL MANIFESTO - (J.E.G.) Zetzel The Lost Republic. Cicero's De oratore and De re publica. Pp. xii + 367. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. Cased, £64, US$99. ISBN: 978-0-19-762609-2.Margaret R. Graver - 2024 - The Classical Review 74 (1):99-101.
- Cicero on Natural and Artificial Divination.Andree Hahmann - 2024 - Ancient Philosophy 44 (1):225-246.Cicero distinguishes between two forms of divination: natural and artificial divination. Most contemporary scholars assume that Cicero presents a Stoic division and some even draw far-reaching conclusions about the scientific status of divination based on this distinction. However, his justification for the division is apparently contradictory and neither fits with Stoic nor Peripatetic claims that are found elsewhere. This paper examines the exact meaning of the division and sheds light on its Stoic and Peripatetic origin. In this way, we will (...)
- Cicero’s De Officiis: A Cradle for Modern Ethics?Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez - 2024 - In Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez, Cicero as Philosopher: New Perspectives on His Philosophy and Its Legacy. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 173-196.
- Augustine’s Reception of the Ciceronian Civitas.Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez - 2024 - In Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez, Cicero as Philosopher: New Perspectives on His Philosophy and Its Legacy. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 247-264.
- (1 other version)Cicero’s Philosophy of Just War.Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez - 2024 - In Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez, Cicero as Philosopher: New Perspectives on His Philosophy and Its Legacy. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 197-222.
- Sunt autem privata nulla natura: Cicero and the Early Modern History of Property.Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez - 2024 - In Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez, Cicero as Philosopher: New Perspectives on His Philosophy and Its Legacy. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 347-366.
- “From the innermost and deepest grounds of philosophy”: On the Place of Cicero in Francisco Suárez’s De Legibus ac Deo Legislatore.Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez - 2024 - In Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez, Cicero as Philosopher: New Perspectives on His Philosophy and Its Legacy. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 285-306.
- Cicero as Philosopher: New Perspectives on His Philosophy and Its Legacy.Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez - 2024 - Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.Few philosophers present themselves with as much complexity as Marcus Tullius Cicero. At once a philosopher, statesman, orator, and lawyer, Cicero consciously fashioned his own image for posterity and wrote philosophical texts as invitations for his readers to think for themselves. His philosophy has continued to unfold over the centuries, repeatedly inspiring new and independent philosophical positions. Since J.G.F. Powell’s pivotal contribution in 1995, we have witnessed countless translations and scholarly treatments of Cicero’s philosophy that emphasize his creativity and influence. (...)
- Testing the Limits of Reason: The Place of Cicero in Locke’s Doctrine of Natural Law.Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez - 2024 - In Andree Hahmann & Michael Vazquez, Cicero as Philosopher: New Perspectives on His Philosophy and Its Legacy. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 367-390.
- GUIDANCE ON CICERO'S DE OFFICIIS- (R.) Woolf (ed.) Cicero's De Officiis. A Critical Guide. Pp. xii + 256. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Cased, £85, US$110. ISBN: 978-1-316-51801-4.Michele Kennerly - 2024 - The Classical Review 74 (2):464-466.
- Ring Composition and the Skepticism of the De Republica.Benjamin Keoseyan - 2024 - Polis 41 (3):479-508.The fragmentary state of Cicero’s De Republica makes it difficult to see how it is a unified work. In this article, I argue that Cicero uses ring composition to unify the dialogue as a polemic against the Epicurean prohibition on political involvement. Cicero is following Plato in his use of ring composition, and just as Plato uses ring composition in the Republic to express his views about philosophical method, so does Cicero. Ring composition turns out to be central to a (...)
- Cicero’s Ad Familiares Book Four and the Hermeneutics of the Pro Marcello.Nathan Kish - 2024 - Classical Antiquity 43 (2):364-409.Regarding Cicero’s “sincerity” in the Pro Marcello (46 BCE), interpretative ore resides in Ad familiares 4.4, an artfully composed letter to Servius Sulpicius from fall 46, preserved in a posthumously edited letter-book (Ad familiares Book 4) about civil war and its aftermath. In these minor-key renditions of the dramatic senate scene, Caesar’s pardon of Marcellus, and Cicero’s subsequent speech of thanks, darker themes evoke dissonant, despondent voicings, and Cicero’s response to Caesar’s act rings less sincere than ironic. Read in this (...)
- Legal Analogies in Cicero's Political Thought.Maarten Klink - 2024 - Journal of the History of Ideas 85 (1):1-17.Cicero's political thought is pervaded by analogies of private law that helped him to overcome philosophical difficulties. One serious difficulty was the demand of natural law that property must be owned by the one capable of managing it. This posed a problem to that most remarkable piece of property of all: the res publica. While incapable of managing it, the people was the only theoretically possible owner of the res publica. The legal concept "guardianship" offered a solution. In Cicero's writings (...)
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