Political Philosophy and the Republican Future: Reconsidering Cicero 0268103895, 9780268103897

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POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE REPUBLICAN FUTURE

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE REPUBLICAN FUTURE Reconsidering Cicero

GREGORY BRUCE SMITH University of Notre Dame P ress Notre Dame, Indiana

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 undpress.nd.edu Copyright © 2018 by the University of Notre Dame All Rights Reserved Published in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Smith, Gregory B., 1949– author. Title: Political philosophy and the Republican future : reconsidering Cicero / Gregory Bruce Smith. Description: Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018011955 (print) | LCCN 2018012123 (ebook) | ISBN 9780268103910 (pdf ) | ISBN 9780268103927 (epub) | ISBN 9780268103897 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268103895 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Cicero, Marcus Tullius. | Political science —Philosophy. | Republicanism. Classification: LCC B553 (ebook) | LCC B553 .S65 2018 (print) | DDC 321.8/6— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018011955 ∞ This paper meets the requirements of

ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [email protected]

For my wife, Betty, once again and forever

Contents

Introduction 1 on e .  Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism  13 t wo.  Initial Reflections on Political Philosophy  39 t hr e e .  Who Was Cicero?  65 f ou r .  Cicero on the Nature of Philosophy  93 f i v e .  Cicero on Cosmology and Natural Philosophy  127 si x .  Cicero on Natural Theology  153 se v e n.  Cicero on Ethics  187 e igh t.  Cicero on Oratory and the Language Arts  223 n in e .  Cicero on Politics  245 t e n.  A Brief Reflection on Nietzsche  273 Conclusion: Political Philosophy and the Republican Future  285 Notes 317

Bibliography 399 Index 405

Introduction Every age is determined by its past. It operates within a dispensation those in the present did not choose and cannot outrun. What has our dawning postmodern age bequeathed to us? For many it seems that we are moving inevitably into an irreversible era of postnationalism and a universal homogenous cosmopolitan state. But the tradition of republicanism has always assumed that republics have to be small enough that some element of participation and self-government could remain central in political life. In the thinking of the republican tradition, the larger a political entity becomes, the more despotic it becomes. Without the possibility of participation, citizens are inevitably transformed into subjects. No matter how comfortably and softly administered a regime might be, if participation in self-government is not central to our vision of the good, does not a form of despotism become inevitable, especially on a global basis? Is that our irreversible fate? By becoming postnational cosmopolitans would we become postpolitical and postrepublican? Would we not simultaneously become posthuman? The great modern republican Montesquieu helped republican thought find a path toward crafting republics larger than the premoderns thought possible with his notion of “confederated republics.” And he among other 1

2  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

modern authors helped find a basis for republicanism in commerce rather than slavery and imperial conquest, as was true of premodern republics. That thinking found its way into the U.S. Constitution. The participants at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 built on the philosophical premises of modern republicanism, and more than a few classical and Christian ones also, and crafted an argument for a republic larger than any seen since Rome.1 The large American “extended republic” was to be moderated by strong elements of decentralization and federalism, but as large and extended as the American republic was at the Founding, and is now, it is minuscule compared to the postnationalist state predicted and/or longed for by many. Will this leap to a new global scale of life be the final death knell of republicanism as a political possibility? What would now be required for the continuation of the republican tradition? In other words, what political, philosophical, and ethical commitments must remain central? A second and related issue in this book is that from almost the beginnings of the republican tradition in Greece, that tradition has been intertwined with the tradition of political philosophy. This is true in various and competing ways from ancient authors like Aristotle and Cicero to modern authors like Machiavelli, Locke, Montesquieu, Smith, Hume, Madison, Hamilton, and even Rousseau. But in our time, both the republican tradition and the larger philosophical tradition have been called into question by the philosophical assaults of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and their various epigones. Those assaults cannot be ignored; they are a part of the legacy of our age. Therefore we must also consider what would be required for the continuation of the tradition of political philosophy as something more than a nostalgic picking and choosing from among past authors attempting to declare a winner. My thesis is that these two issues, the future of republicanism and the future of political philosophy, are inextricably connected. The question becomes, where do we start? My suggestion is that we cannot start with the famous self-grounding, self-legislating modern Ego or with its ironic descendant postfoundationalism or postmodernism with its philosophical midair tap dance that only works for cartoon characters. We must find a way to get a purchase on our present situation, a way of putting the central issues that cannot be transcended into a manageable perspective. My suggestion is that there is always only one place to start

Introduction 3

such reflections. We always start our questioning in a particular place, at a particular time, with a particular past we did not choose but cannot dismiss — especially if we hope to have a future. This starting place is captured by Plato’s metaphor of the cave. Cicero designated the same notion as res publica, a shared “public space.” This is also, I will argue, the inevitable foundation of political philosophy, which, when correctly understood, is proto-philosophy itself. In short, the starting point for our discussion is the present political, moral, and philosophi­ cal situation, together with how it emerged. To that starting point must be added our responsible reflections on plausible future possibilities that are consistent with our past and present. We always stand between past and future with the need to link the two. Philosophy is set in motion by this practical necessity it shares with the republican need for maintaining a tradition of self-government. We achieve our greatest insight and clarity when we have made both the past and future more present for us than the actual, given, inert, present moment. In short, we must link past and present in an ongoing tradition. We do this by taking responsibility for the future, by extending the essential past into that future. I would suggest that this notion is surprisingly similar to what Leo Strauss once designated as “the loyal and loving reshaping or reinterpretation of the inherited.”2 I would add one caveat: in doing so we must leave open the possibility of actual novelty, that something unique is always still possible. We need be neither at the end of history nor limited to an eternal return of finite past possibilities, and with it Nietzsche’s repeated return to a barbaric “retranslation of man back into nature.”3 And for Nietzsche that retranslation was to be preceded by “innocence and forgetting.”4 The loss of openness to the past and the closure of the future go hand in hand, and it is a spiritually deadening region to colonize. I have already suggested that in our time various high-level attacks on the philosophic tradition, especially as those attacks descend from Heidegger and Nietzsche, stand as an impediment that cannot be ignored.5 In their deconstructions of the entire tradition, Nietzsche and Heidegger would destroy not just the philosophic tradition but also the republican tradition. But in various ways, these authors open the door for us to go back and reappropriate both premodern and modern moments of our tradition in a new and revivified fashion.6

4  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

No amount of intellectual gymnastics will ever find a way to admit the fathers of our nihilistic, deconstructive moment, Heidegger or Nietz­ sche, to the republican tradition. At the end of modernity, what we can do is recover the insights of the premodernity that modernity closed down, and thereby also understand our modernity more clearly. We do this with an eye to the recovery of the best of our tradition as something to be extended, and not simply to be rejected or repeated. Despite having almost dropped out of discussions of the greats of the philosophic tradition, Marcus Tullius Cicero was once considered one of the philosophical greats throughout the Christian era and well into the modern era. And he was not only a republican theorist; he was a republican practitioner. I will argue that our late modern nihilists Nietzsche and Heidegger knew little that Cicero did not already know. Precisely on Heidegger’s own central issue, temporality, I am going to argue that Hei­ degger knew little that wasn’t already known by Cicero. While remaining close to Cicero’s own arguments and texts, what follows will also remain ever mindful of a dialogue with the two great German antagonists of the philosophic tradition of our time. In our situation, they cannot be ignored, especially given that neither was anything resembling a proponent of self-government. This confrontation is obligatory because we cannot co-opt their principles, and fall into deconstructionist self-forgetting, without simultaneously advancing despotic po­liti­ cal and moral outcomes. When Cicero turned to the production of what has come down to us as his philosophical corpus, his Roman Republic was already doomed. Cicero hoped that through his philosophical reflections he might still bequeath a republican possibility for untold future generations. Our republican present is troubling for a myriad of reasons, including increasing rootlessness, runaway technological autonomy, moral relativism, philosophic irrationalism, bureaucratization, self-selecting elitism, just to name a few of the ills. Our late modern republican situation is not yet as dire as what Cicero confronted, but there are enough causes for concern to turn our thoughts to the first things and fundamental questions that we must self-consciously reconsider if we are to bequeath a republican future to our posterity. Reflections on republicanism in our time have become divorced from a relation to and discussion of the first things and the fundamental

Introduction 5

questions that should ground all political philosophy if it is to be more than special pleading. And philosophically grounded discussion is what our public debates cry out for. Even in academic debate, it frequently seems that in our time skyscrapers are being built starting with the eighty-fifth floor — this is the only outcome predictable for postfoundationalism or postmodernism. But we are surrounded by other intellectual currents that also foster the abstractness and technical jargon and fragmentation of knowledge that create a disconnection between academic and public debates. This frustrating and problematic gap is to the disadvantage of both. Through Cicero we can thematically access the issue of a healthier relation between philosophy and public discourse. Perhaps an abstract and technical theoretical building without a foundation allows one to speak in shorthand to those of the same ideological inclination, but it makes both fundamental philosophical and serious public debates ultimately impossible. It is one of the causes of the incivility of contemporary debate, both public and academic. One admits in advance that there is no real foundation for persuasion. When that happens, everything devolves into power politics, and this is true of both conventional understandings of political life and in contemporary philosophic and academic debate. Everything becomes an exercise in power politics more or less subtly disguised. The deliberative element that republican government demands, with its openness and toleration, is lost. Cicero confronted a similar situation of an environment of abstract school philosophies. And he is the perfect author to help us see that all fun­ damental philosophical discourse always implies answers to fundamental questions in ethics, political science, psychology, cosmology, natu­ral theology, and epistemology, whether those questions are openly discussed or not.7 Seeing this is especially important in an age of the fragmentation of knowledge where there is seemingly no integrating vision. Fundamental political philosophy, as displayed in Cicero, represented his conscious, attempted return to the architectonic phenomenologist Plato, a return to a first philosophy that must address the first things and the fundamental questions directly and thematically and in a discourse that is unified and available for public discussion. The great advantage of approaching the question regarding the future of republicanism through Cicero is that he still presented his thought

6  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

in a holistic and architectonic fashion that was accessible to a public audience. This unity of fundamental thinking displayed in Cicero’s philosophi­ cal corpus was then seen throughout the tradition of political philosophy, but with a declining openness as modern political philosophy evolved, especially as it spun off independent disciplines. Cicero was at work at a moment when political philosophy still understood itself as architectonic and as addressed at least significantly to an intelligent public audience. The philosophical present that Cicero confronted was one of fragmentation and isolated school philosophies and sects that seemed determined to talk only to fellow members and in a language that was increasingly divorced from the language of everyday life. Our own intellectual fragmentation is well documented, and is even celebrated in some circles as a moral and political good. In what follows I am going to suggest that we need something similar to the philosophical recovery and phenomenological regrounding that Cicero attempted if we are to offer future republican possibilities. We must again address the simple and primary questions of the good for man and the best regime for pursuing the good. There is much that is similar in our age and Cicero’s age, but ours is nonetheless an unprecedented time. The rapid social and technological change we have seen in the last one hundred years will be as nothing compared to what is coming in the next one hundred years. This alone will have powerful transformative effects on political and moral life on this planet. Indeed, looking back from one hundred years in the future, readers will know many things about which we can now only speculate more or less blindly. It is this predictable rapid change that makes it imperative that we find access to the things that do not change. I am going to argue that we late moderns find ourselves in one of history’s rare transitional moments. We must try to find our bearings in that transition so that we can bequeath to those who follow a satisfying and fully human existence. Let us hope those who are our heirs can still freely read thoughtful philosophical texts in some format, whatever that may be, and openly address the fundamental issues of human existence. It must be hoped that future individuals are still free to think and choose, that they are still responsible “human” beings and citizens — not subjects of some large and distant never-before-seen global postnational state that can only be despotic, no matter how softly and comfortably it may dole out its gifts. And we must hope that we have helped forestall that most appalling and chilling of euphemisms: “the posthuman condition.”

Introduction 7

We must realize that there are forces other than technology and the social change it drives that are operating in the present and that will be transformative. At the philosophical peaks of our age we find the powerful assaults on modernity, and the Western tradition more generally, by Nietzsche and Heidegger and their various epigones, who in a variety of permutations now dominate contemporary discussion. The ramifications of the critiques of Nietzsche and Heidegger have been percolating down into our public life for decades; that discourse has more or less taken over the thinking of major portions of our intellectual elites.8 That modernity has philosophically reached a moment of decision, and that we cannot go back to any concrete premodern or earlier modern moments in history, is not to say that the premodern thinkers, and even the best of the moderns, the greatest of whom were precisely “untimely,” did not see and understand some fundamental things more clearly than we do. Perhaps only now do we live in a concrete world where elements of the noblest parts of premodern understanding can have true efficacy. If nothing else, it is a thought experiment worth conducting on our way to the future. It is part of how we can fruitfully stand between past and future without the nihilistic determination to simply obliterate the past and blindly wander forward in mass self-forgetting. In what follows I do not attempt to recover an understanding of Cicero merely to reenthrone him as the one author who got it right for all times. We turn to Cicero to see a mode of thinking that can be redeployed in any given present. Yet that thinking will still have to be ours and turned loose on our unique present. We have one significant impediment to approaching Cicero. The Cicero who is offered up for present audiences is but a vague, and boring, facsimile of the original. To be of anything but antiquarian interest to us we have to gain access to this noble author who has fallen into eclipse. It can be hoped that this effort will reinspirit a sense of our responsibility to the future like the one shown by Cicero. We will need more than a little genuine remembrance of our past to do that. Tocqueville has unfortunately been proven correct when he predicted that the people of the modern world, especially as presented in that vanguard of modernity among Americans, would become among the most ahistorical peoples of all times. We are close to accomplishing the “innocence and forgetting” posited by Nietzsche’s Zarathustra as the gateway to the future.

8  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

Past concrete political, social, and moral possibilities that have been available to human beings in their pursuit of the good, the noble, and the just are closing down; the spaces for future possibilities are not being opened. The present is fraught with the danger of losing what we have that is valuable, the majority of which was gained in the era of modern republics. Our present political environment, with all its aimless but blindingly passionate selfishness and partisanship, threatens to undermine republican government in any serious sense and with it genuine individualism and personal autonomy, personal responsibility, liberty, self-­ government, and openness to those things that transcend the mundane, everyday world. These, and many other goods, will not be saved in the future that is coming if we cannot recur to the first things that help us see why they are good in the first place. For example, we must remember why republican goods such as liberty and self-government are ends in themselves and not just means to wealth and our private comfort. It is necessary to remember that modern commerce itself was not seen by many of its original champions as an end in itself but as a means to republican ends. Modernity has given us the highest form of republicanism to date. It has offered a centuries-long object for aspiration, namely, to modernize, enlighten, and liberate. But what comes next? We late moderns are left to rethink the highest objects of our aspiration and attachment and rethink the fundamental questions in the same penetrating fashion as our proto-­ modern predecessors. Our world is different than theirs; undoubtedly our informed choices will be different too. It is precisely their successes that made our world what it is. We now stand in the same relation to the future that they stood to our present. Among other things, modern republicanism gave us individual rights, self-government, individual personality development, and a ground for dignity for all, private property, and a free market with rewards for individual effort rather than those based on mere birth or false claims to “merit.” Modern republicanism also supplied the environment for the progress of modern technology — and modern science in its essence is technological, not ontological. All of these things are good but not inevitably sustainable in the changed environment of the future. But simultaneously modernity has increasingly alienated us from the fundamental human experiences of core phenomena, such as civic

Introduction 9

dedication and social and familial attachment, to say nothing of the highest striving for excellence as an end in itself. Too infrequently do we experience the genuinely transforming virtues: a sense of the divine and the beautiful or a true encounter with honor, nobility, solidarity, shame, and awe. With this modern alienation from core phenomena of a genuinely human existence, we have fallen into a spiritual hollowness and the resultant reign of a utilitarian selfishness. Even Mandeville would have a hard time defending these things in our age as leading to public virtues. We must reclaim what is becoming a dispirited — if not increasingly nonexistent — public space from which individuals withdraw to a hollow private existence. This is a witches’ brew that, though at times intoxicating, can lead only to despotism. Modern political philosophy is implicated in these questionable outcomes and in the good things modern republicanism and modern technology have wrought. Some wit once asserted that no good deed goes unpunished. Put slightly differently, eventually every good brings its correlate and unintended disadvantages trailing behind. At that point we must continually readjust, for we will never transcend the ultimate limi­ tations of human existence. That is why history will never end, because we will never totally actualize the good, and we are beings who long for the good and have a vision of it, if only through a glass darkly. What I will present as Cicero’s return to Plato and his “phenomenological” mode of doing political philosophy can be helpful in getting us back in touch with the fundamental issues we must recall before we can make informed choices about our future. Once again, we do not approach Cicero, or any other thinker of the first rank, with the hope of specific concrete recipes for adoption. We study the greatest thinkers the way artists study their greatest predecessors, as a prelude to painting their own distinctive canvas. I hope to show that Cicero offered a distinctive transformation of what earlier philosophers offered rather than a mere watered-down, textbook restatement in Latin that culminated in a thoroughgoing Academic skepticism, as is the general consensus at present. Cicero consciously attempted to provide a transformative lens for viewing his philosophical predecessors — especially Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. And Cicero consciously tried to soften the moral stance bequeathed to him by predecessors, including Plato, Aristotle, and Stoicism. Cicero reacted against the moral teaching of his predecessors with

10  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

its remaining pagan stress on pugnacious, self-centered, self-assertive “magnanimity.” In the process Cicero opened spaces that were occupied eventually by a nascent Christianity, which was forced to engage in efforts at moderating the magnanimous pugnacity of the German tribes within which it resided after the fall of Rome. Christianity itself would have been a far different phenomenon than it became if not for Cicero, who in a certain irony, became the first Christian philosopher. In fact, it can be argued that Cicero remained the preeminent philosopher of Christianity until Aquinas — and not just through his influence on early Christian thinkers such as Ambrose and Augustine. But Cicero was more than just a prism between pagan antiquity and the Christian Middle Ages. He was already opening spaces for a greater respect for commerce and labor than we see in the Greeks and for the creation of a distinctive republican soul better suited to philosophical statesmanship and public deliberation than war and imperial conquest. These things we will encounter in detail below. By his mode of questioning, Cicero can show us what is always possible. When political deliberation is detached from serious philosophical grounding, the result is the victory of hyperbole and noise and the consequent loss of the very ability to civilly deliberate together because we have lost touch with the underlying fundamental issues that never go away. This process of occlusion is further exacerbated by blind faith in “progress.” If progress is inevitable, recovering philosophical understanding and moral excellence are unnecessary; they are irrelevant to the good life. And there is nothing of real import to deliberate except the administrative means to an inevitable end. We are given an excuse to cease to deliberate upon the end, overcoming thereby the need for the civil deliberation that is perhaps the central trait any republic needs. And a shared public space for that deliberation is equally essential. We must rethink the prerequisites for that kind of shared, and philosophically serious, public deliberation to exist. By way of introduction I will offer some brief reflections in chapter 1 on the history of republicanism, a history that, after Rome, is almost entirely carried in the tradition of political philosophy until late into the modern era. I will follow that with some brief reflections in chapter 2 on the nature of political philosophy. In the central chapters of the book I

Introduction 11

will work out the contours of Cicero’s philosophical understanding. For the sake of brevity and clarity of presentation, I will do something risky, and rather than deal with his works text by text, which is ultimately required for a full understanding of his mode of writing, I will break his teaching down into constituent parts: philosophy (chapter 4); cosmology and natural philosophy (chapter 5); natural theology (chapter 6); ethics (chapter 7); oratory (chapter 8); and politics (chapter 9). I do this even though what Cicero aims at is a teaching of philosophy that, at its peak, is an integrated, architectonic, unified political philosophy, one weaving these parts into a consistent whole. In this vein, leading into concluding remarks on the future of republicanism in my conclusion, I will offer some explicit comparisons between Cicero and Nietzsche (chapter 10). I make this seemingly iconoclastic comparison because like Cicero, Nietzsche tried to return philosophy to its architectonic status and tried to return to an integrated view in the face of the divestments, especially of modern philosophy, that spun off all manner of allegedly independent and autonomous “sciences” and forms of “scholarship.” But Nietzsche divorced these reflections from republican outcomes. I will argue that Cicero’s understanding of the need to repeatedly “restore” philosophy to its unity and thereby its rightful architectonic place of leadership is more profound than Nietzsche’s — which in the end remains modern, all too modern. Of the two thinkers, Cicero offers the only understanding consistent with a republican future. And yet in a surprising number of ways Cicero and Nietzsche are walking a not altogether dissimilar path. One of the softest voices with the most reserve of almost any great author and the loudest and at times most shrill of authors share more than a few similar insights, except for the ultimate and necessary political and moral insights that seem to have escaped Nietz­ sche as he looked at life from 30,000 feet above the ground, where one can no longer experience the sinew and ligature of everyday existence.

One

Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism Ancient Republicanism and the Origins of Political Philosophy The story of republicanism is old and venerable, but it has very few concrete chapters until well into the modern era. Yet the term “republic” has achieved such cachet in the contemporary world that even clearly despotic regimes, such as the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the present People’s Republic of China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, want to co-opt the term. This fact leaves us with questions: What is a genuine republic? How is it distinctive? How is it maintained? There are underlying, fundamental premises that determine all genuine republics. But there is also a significant distinction between ancient and modern republics that cannot be ignored. We must at least briefly consider how ancient and modern republics compare to understand what is necessary for republicanism to prosper in the future. The word for republic comes from the Latin res publica (literally, “public thing/affair/matter”), which for present purposes I will translate 13

14  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

as “public space.” The term is closely related to the term res populi, which can be translated as “owned by the people.” As a first definition, a republic has a public space owned by the citizens, a space they share and from which they cannot be removed. Before the Romans and their distinctive understanding of political life, with which we will deal in more detail in chapter 3, there is a question of whether there was such a thing as a republic. Yet everyone begins the story of republicanism with the ancient Greeks. The first notes of the republican symphony are sounded in the Greek city-states, especially Sparta and Athens, the two great competitors in the thirty-year Peloponnesian War. But it was before that internecine conflagration, during the Greek confrontation with the Persian Empire, that our republican story begins. The Greek city-states of that time were small, usually with, at most, ten thousand citizens. After the rustic age of kingship there emerged what we now sometimes call “participatory democracies,” but it would be fairer to call them participatory aristocracies. Everyone who was a citizen had a potential voice in public affairs. Every political outcome had to be publicly negotiated. Especially in the early experience of these city-states, there were no standing political offices or written constitutions. Everything was up for grabs on the basis of fluctuating majorities. There were no rights or defenses against those majorities. To refuse, or to fail for whatever reason, to engage in public life resulted in being cast aside and ignored, thereby suffering whatever outrageous fortune one’s fellows might impose. To decline one’s public responsibilities and to be a private person was to be idiotes, an idiot of a certain sort. To be a citizen required constant participation in the shared public space and its assemblies. But the prerequisite for that participation was that one first be a warrior, for these were communities that were constantly threatened by other Greek city-states, and especially the larger political entities that surrounded them, such as the Persian Empire, which repeatedly tried to conquer the Greeks. On the basis of size, wealth, and strength, the repeated confrontations between the Greeks and the Persians were mismatches. Yet the Greeks eventually won. The penalty for losing was the destruction of one’s city and its buildings, death of the men, and, at best, slavery for the women and children. Being a noncombatant was not an option. What the Greeks valued more than anything else was their freedom. But by freedom they meant their freedom to give themselves their own

Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism  15

laws and not be subject to the despotically imposed laws of others. Freedom so understood required that one be both martially tough and civic-­ minded. The Greeks had no conception of freedom whereby individuals had rights they could assert against the state or their fellow citizens. Freedom was not something to be exercised in private or in individual pursuits. Freedom could only be exercised in the public arena. The opposite of being free men was to be ruled by a king (basileus), a tyrant (tyrannos), or a despot (despotes). No matter how decent those forms of rule might be in practice, such rule was seen by the republican Greeks as slavery. It was in this fashion that the Greeks defined what was distinctive about their Greekness. Especially in opposition to the Persians to their east, the Greeks were free men. They were free men and citizens, not subjects. Here is the first manifestation of the distinction between East and West that determines the mind of Western civilization. The East was the realm of large despotisms where only one man was free. The West was the realm of citizens, freedom, and participation. The world was divided in half, Greeks (free men) and barbarians (everyone else on the planet, who were seen as slaves or subjects). The opposite of free was slave. For its maintenance, freedom so understood required cooperative public efforts and participation with others in a shared public space. But free citizens had to be warriors. One had to ensure one’s freedom from others. The Greeks pursued political freedom as an end in itself. The state was not a means to the pursuit of individual wealth or private comfort. This was true even when the victors claimed the spoils, which largely went to public expenditures. The greatest good was to be a free citizen and gain the opportunity to distinguish oneself from others by deeds and speeches in the public arena. That was the basis of Greek individuality. Some wealth was necessary to provide the leisure for war and politics. It was not an end in itself. Hence the Greeks looked down on commerce and labor and other “illiberal” activities that destroyed the leisure for participation. Greek citi­ zens were not wealthy by today’s standards, or even by the standards of the later Roman Republic. They were absolutely impoverished in comparison to the opulence of the Persian court. The Greeks associated opulent living with slavery; this was especially true of the Spartans. Only at a later date did superfluous wealth enter the Greek world, especially at Athens, which became an imperial empire and enslaved many of the other Greek city-states on the mainland and colonized the

16  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

islands in the Aegean Sea, forcing most to pay tribute. Even then most of the wealth generated went to public buildings (e.g., the great architecture, such as the Parthenon we still venerate), and institutions like the theater were publicly supported (recall Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes), as were the Olympic Games. It is an open question whether this increased opulence led to the loss of Greek freedom. That is certainly what happened to the Roman Republic: first opulence, then despotism. After conquest of Greece first by the Macedonians and then by the Romans, this Greek public world of participation dissolved. Both Macedon and Rome lowered the status of the political for the Greeks to local administration of mundane things having to do with self-preservation and the preservation of the species, that is, economics. The great world of political freedom and public participation was lost as a concrete reality only to become an ideal to be strived for throughout Western history. In the classical Greek world the two activities that were honored were war and political participation. Thus labor and commerce were not honored because they offered no leisure to pursue martial and political excellence. Because women could not participate in war, they could not participate in politics. Thus a distinction was made between the polis, “city, political life,” and the oikos, “household.” The polis was the arena of men; the oikos was the arena of women. Initially the oikos included primarily the function of reproduction and child-rearing alone, but as time passed the administration of the economic things moved into the arena of the oikos and hence into the purview of women.1 Our word “economics” comes from combining the Greek words oikos and nomos (law). Economics is the law of the household, which provides the economic necessities for the polis. They were not political beings, but women were not slaves either. The leisure needed for political participation was supported primarily on the basis of real slavery. At its peak, the Athenian polis probably had 20,000 male citizens. Added to that, by a factor of roughly three or four, were free women and children, and then another 400,000 slaves and “metics,” or resident aliens needed for commerce and trade. Freedom and inequality were seen as perfectly consistent in the Greek understanding. The idea of the universal equality of human beings as individuals entered the West from a different direction — the Christian belief that we are all the equal creatures of a universal Creator/God.

Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism  17

Because of the sheer necessity posed by external threat, the Greek polis strove for unity and solidarity. The necessary unity needed for survival required a common religion, common opinions, common tastes, and even enforced common dress and patterns of consumption. Ostentatious public displays of wealth were forbidden and opposed by sumptuary laws. A Greek wandering about with the equivalent of a Rolex could be banished from the polis, thereby losing any chance for political freedom. One differentiated oneself from others not by conspicuous displays of consumption, but by great and memorable deeds and speeches. The Greeks were great lovers of public speaking and rhetoric. Before the arrival of philosophy, the teachers of oratory and rhetoric (Sophists, or “wise men”) were admired and respected because of the central political importance of what they taught. At a later date the same veneration became true by extension for poets and playwrights and eventually philosophers. This was a civilization of public speech in a way we can now hardly imagine. Such a civilization was the prerequisite for the birth of philosophy. And thus Aristotle could codify the Greek understanding when he defined man as both the “political animal” (zoon politikon) and the “animal with speech” (logos). But these were not initially two separate things. They became separate things for Aristotle and thereafter. With Aristotle we get the doctrinal separation of theory and practice, politics and philosophy. This was a fateful move.2 The true and pure logos increasingly became separated from the public space of the polis. Politics for the prephilosophic Greeks was primarily speech and public decision-making about war, justice, and the rites of public religion, and not the interest-group politics we now know, which is primarily based on competing economic interests. In fact, the Greeks abhorred the notion of what we call interest groups, or what James Madison would call “factions.” Politics for them was categorically not the competition of different interests, as in economic interests. Contrary to Marx, politics so understood could not be reduced to a mere epiphenomenon of economics. This is why the Greeks always saw commerce as corrupting; it always created competing interests, instead of the needed solidarity. If the marketplace was allowed into the public space, it would always bring with it the corrupting influence of competing interests, destroying the necessary solidarity needed for war and public deliberation. To put it mildly, Greek republics were homogeneous.

18  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

This helps explain the Greek, and until very recently the overall republican, preference for farming over commerce — not to mention that farmers cannot remove their assets from the nation. Farming does not foster anywhere near as many factions as does commerce. And it does not produce superfluous wealth, luxury, and opulence that can destroy partici­ patory equality. With the Greeks emerged a picture that retained vitality right down to the so called Anti-Federalists during the time of the American Founding. A permutation of this vision is given manifestation in the thinking and writing of Thomas Jefferson, despite the also evident Lockean language of the Declaration of Independence. In that understanding, the best republican citizen is a relatively equal and participating citizen farmer who is part of an armed militia. This understanding is codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution with its “free state” language. The alternative vision of a commercial republic with representation rather than actual participation was the one fostered by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Federalists, who ultimately won the day with their new constitution. Yet to this day, shadows of the older republican understanding remain. Notions of citizenship, participation, patri­ otism, and solidarity never go away. Even a commercial republic will not work without them. The possibility of leisure as the basis of political participation is what the Greeks saw as distinctive about man. And the point of political participation was to pursue honor and recognition and thereby define oneself for oneself. Hence the political was necessarily linked with notions of excellence (arête). It is only excellence that truly calls attention to oneself in a genuine fashion and brings a desired personal honor and the immortal remembrance of one’s deeds. One needed to display courage and fortitude in war. One needed to display eloquence and intellect in public discussion. And at all costs one had to display honor, for victories without it would gain no lasting acclaim. Victories won by deceit and chicanery were no victories at all in this mind-set. Even the “wily” Odysseus had his code of honor, albeit a more intellectual version than that displayed by the frequently pouting and more atavistic Achilles. Therefore one of the primary functions of the state was education in virtue and excellence; the polis then provided a stage for that virtue to be

Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism  19

exercised. Again, all of this presupposed leisure gained through wealth generated outside the polis, which was reduced to merely the prerequisite for that excellence and participation. Wealth was a means, not an end in itself. One of the best ways to retain the necessary republican leisure was to show indifference to wealth and opulence. That is an ever-repeated core aristocratic mentality, if we understand the relation between aristocracy (from aristoi, “the best”) and virtue (arête). It manifests itself across time and across civilizations and shows itself to be an eternal longing of humanity — freedom through indifference to necessity together with personhood developed through manifest and necessarily public displays of excellence with honor. Yet that pursuit of excellence, and eschewing the pursuit of wealth, was very demanding, hierarchical, and only capable of unequal manifestation. And this is something modern thinkers came to rebel against. They saw it as unfair.3 The modern authors also found the warrior pugnacity that flowed over into ongoing bellicosity distasteful and wasteful. These concerns led in the direction of modern political philosophy and modern commercial republics, which tried, and still try, to substitute a new softer, “bourgeois” set of attitudes better adapted to commerce than war. Commerce could thereby be substituted for imperial conquest and slavery as the basis of necessary wealth. But that softening was already under way in the moral teachings of Aristotle and especially Cicero, both of whom tried to substitute the picture of a citizen-gentleman for the prior manifestation of a citizen-warrior. Even in Locke’s discussions of education we still see a manifestation of a republican bourgeois gentilhomme. But that new gentleman was no longer primarily a citizen in the older sense. Participation was increasingly deflected into the far more individualistic pursuit of commerce in an arena outside the political — that arena came to be called civil society. “Civil society” is not identical to a republican “public space,” an equivalence far too many of our contemporary authors are inclined to make. They are perhaps mutually supportive, and even mutually necessary, but they are not identical. Eventually the Greek love of leisure embellished with intellect and the pursuit of distinction found a new object: philosophy. At first, philoso­ phy seemed to lead away from the public space of the polis and into the private — it seemed to occupy the realm of the idiotes. It also appeared to

20  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

undermine religion and solidarity. Hence the Greeks initially viewed philosophy with suspicion and skepticism. But the great political philoso­ phers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, in different ways, turned philosophy toward public political and moral reflection, and this eventually gained for philosophy a purchase in the Greek world. Cicero did the same thing at Rome. The same attempt to win public recognition for genuine philoso­ phy needs to be accomplished again in our time.4 When the independence of the polis was eventually lost, the Hellenistic world withdrew into a greater concern for philosophy and showed less and less concern for political participation. The same retreat from the res publica was occurring at the time of Cicero’s Rome. In our post-Hegelian and post-Nietzschean world, it has become a commonplace to attribute this withdrawal to the rise of Christianity, but it was already long prefigured in the ancient pagan world. Christianity arose in an environment where this withdrawal was already far advanced. I will return to the Roman manifestation of republicanism and so will not pause to do so here other than to say that the Roman Republic, like its Greek predecessors, again emerges out of an antipathy to monarchy and despotism. There was a similar longing for freedom to make one’s own laws. There was a need for solidarity and shared opinions. There was also an antipathy to opulence, preference for agriculture, and attachment to an ethic based on the martial spirit. Participation reemerged as central, albeit eventually filtered through a representative body, the Roman Senate. In time a popular assembly was joined to the aristocratic Senate. Representation replaced the older all-inclusive participatory public assembly. Participation in the direct sense became the preserve of but a few of the citizens. At present I simply note that increasingly the republican tradition came to be carried forward by the tradition of political philosophy — first by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, then by Cicero, it was kept alive during the Christian Middle Ages, which saved the philosophic tradition, and then was saved again in a transformed manifestation by modern political philosophy. Eventually, it was the tradition of political philosophy founded in Greece, and kept alive at Rome by Cicero, kept alive once again by the Church’s saving of the philosophic tradition, and finally modern political philosophy, that became the carrier of the republican legacy, and finally the basis of modern republicanism, which reopened the concrete republican story after more than a millennium of eclipse.

Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism  21

Modern Republicanism: The Turn to Commerce, Individualism, and Private Spaces Modern republicanism has its origins in the history of modern political philosophy as it strives to come to self-consciously transform the world.5 As was true at the origins in Greece and Rome, the tradition of republicanism and the tradition of political philosophy are again linked. From the premoderns we gain a core of republican instincts. In antidespotism and the desire for the political freedom to make one’s own laws, we see a stress on citizen participation, a need for moral and intellectual solidarity, and the importance of virtue and excellence. There were no individual rights that could be asserted against the solidarity of the political whole and no valued arenas of privacy to which one could safely withdraw. From the moderns we add notions of natural nights, individualism, equality (borrowed from scripture and Christian thought, if not the monarchical practice, of the Christian Middle Ages), and transformed notions of representation. The instinct for self-government and opposition to despotism remains central. I will assert now that in the future republicanism will have to construct a new synthesis of these ancient and modern elements. But the elements of antidespotism, participation, striving for human excellence, and self-government must remain central. But modernity itself is very complicated in its origins. It represents the coming together of a variety of different forces: philosophical, religious, political, scientific, and ethical. This complicates our story. I will shortly focus on the more straightforwardly modern republican element of the moral “lowering of the sights.” But first, we need to consider a few broader observations.6 After the fall of Rome, the new monarchy and despotism that became dominant in Europe brought with it a new martial paganism. But that new paganism was far less informed by poetry, the theater, and philosophy, and hence was far less informed by elevated notions of excellence. The new European paganism was far more barbaric, bloodthirsty, and hedonistic than its Greek or Roman republican predecessors. The taming of this new barbaric warlike age fell to Christianity. By the end of the Middle Ages, that taming had gained success, and simultaneously the philosophic tradition, against all odds, had been preserved. Even our dedicated contemporary secularists and atheists must

22  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

acknowledge this debt to Christianity. This is especially true of modern egalitarians, because the principle of equality entered the West through Christianity. Again, it is worth emphasizing that only through the auspices of Christianity did the philosophic tradition survive.7 For all those who have fallen far too easily under the sway of Nietzsche’s shrill hyperbole against Christianity, these debts must be remembered. But several paradoxical things had occurred between the fall of Rome and the origins of modernity. First there came about an increasing interpenetration of throne and altar, a merging of the Church and the newly consolidating sovereign monarchical states. This ultimately destroyed the secular supremacy of ancient republicanism and of that found in prior European paganism. Second, through Thomas Aquinas there was an increasing interpenetration of Christianity and Aristotelian philosophy8 — this represented a significant philosophical transformation of Christianity. It also led to the intensification of “Scholasticism.” And then by way of reaction, it led to the Protestant Reformation, which among other things opposed the intrusion of Aristotle into Christianity.9 A conscious attempt arose to oppose these results of the loss of secular supremacy and the philosophical transformation of Christianity. The longing for the retrieval of secular supremacy and a philosophical/theological reformation came to be interwoven with the desire to recover republicanism. All of these converging vectors inform the origins of the new republicanism. To complicate matters further, a new science arose that could actively conquer and master nature rather than passively contemplate it. And a longing for a comparable new political science arose that could be equally active in reestablishing the secular supremacy of the ancient world. And finally a new Reformation vision of Christianity arose that attempted to free itself from the influence of Aristotle and what it saw as the elitist, and unrepublican, hegemony of priests. From all of these elements was formed a dawning modernity that was an attempt both to go back in recovery (“renaissance”) and to go forward into a brave new world. In its origins, modernity saw itself consciously as existing between past and future.10 Ancient republics were small, homogeneous, and particularistic, illiberal, pugnacious, imperialistic, almost constantly at war, with minimal popular sovereignty in the broader sense, built on slavery, rarely had the rule of law in any significant sense, were intemperately prone to prosecutions of fellow citizens and ostracism or death penalties, had no civil

Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism  23

liberties, no privacy, fostered vanity but also demanded sumptuary laws, were rife with envy and resentment given full public access to the political stage, with overweening pride legitimized and ruling the day. One could go on. From this spectacle any serious reader should be appropriately weaned from any easygoing polis envy. Modern republicanism desired a return to the secular political supremacy enjoyed by the ancients, but it also attempted to soften and transform the pugnacity of prior ancient republics and create far larger regimes more immune from the constant threat of invasion and war. That ultimately required that the participatory element of republicanism be to some degree deflected into representation, a concept already bequeathed by the Roman Republic. Enter Machiavelli. Machiavelli wanted to found a radically new republic, this time without the need for civil theology (or natural theology), religion, or even poetry as a support for solidarity. Machiavelli, the great open spokesman for duplicity and pugnacity, led the moderns toward building a more commodious and pacific world, and that led modernity increasingly toward a redirection of life away from war and toward commerce. Contrary to some presentations of his corpus, the opening moves of commercial republicanism are already to be seen in Machiavelli.11 This is especially true of the opening moral moves. But we cannot forget the place of the new modern science and the modern technology that have always been seen as linked with the new republicanism. This too is an important part of the story of modern republicanism. As Francis Bacon openly shows, and Descartes more indirectly, modern republicanism was seen as the regime best suited to the growth of modern science and technology. On that level, and also on the economic, modern republicanism was increasingly seen as a means and no longer as an end in itself. Not surprisingly, given the origins, we have arrived at a point where many assume that technical solutions to the problems endemic to the human condition, whether technological, pharmaceutical, therapeutic, or bureaucratic, can replace republicanism and its needed public space and at times messy citizen participation. That is an irony lurking at the very core of modern republicanism from the beginning. Within modern republicanism are the seeds for the eventual destruction of republicanism. What was envisioned by most proto-modern authors was an eventual withering away of the political. Republicanism on the other hand has

24  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

always required self-government in some form and hence political partici­ pation in some fashion and also a public stage for one’s deeds. The abolition of the political that lurks especially in the scientific and technological aspect of the modern project has antirepublican implications. If it is perceived that the human situation can be dealt with technically rather than politically, it can be thought that there is no reason to put up with the annoyance of participation, competition, love of honor, the public pursuit of excellence, political freedom, and self-government. The political will be seen as a messy irrelevancy that gets in the way of higher goods, such as tranquility and the abolition of anxiety and, more generally, comfortable self-preservation as the central components of the highest human good.12 But leaving aside modern science and technology for a moment, what was always intended by the new modern political science and its new republicanism was a softening of the imperial pugnacity of the ancient pagan republican vision and the pugnacity that eventually grew up in monarchical Europe with its own version of bloodletting. The attempt to transcend this pugnacity led to a modern either/or of war and pugnacity versus commerce and civility. With this increasingly came an ancients versus moderns either/or choice.13 One thing is clear: modern republicanism was from the beginning, and in all of its variations, built on the famous moral “lowering of the sights.” To avoid the moral severity of both ancient republics and the Christian Middle Ages, modern republicanism tried to build on the low but firm basis that we share with animals, or the still low but nonetheless distinctively human consciousness of fear of death (Hobbes), or when that still bracing approach was softened, the predictable life of pursuing comfort and pleasure insulated from conscious fear of death.14 There is no doubt that modernity was partially launched as a rebellion against what it saw as clerical supremacy and a dominant philosophi­ cal Scholasticism. But the same rebellion occurred within Christianity itself, and it led to the weaving together of Reformation Christianity and modern republicanism in ways that cannot be dismissed.15 Here is where Cicero is exceptionally important because he was both a republican and the philosophical light in that pivotal period of early Christianity between the irrationalist Christianity of Tertullian and the rationalist Christianity of Augustine.16

Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism  25

Let us assume that much of modern political philosophy aimed at an eventual withering away if not elimination of religion. And let us also assume that at least the scientific and technological parts of modernity aimed at the withering away of the political. At least Machiavelli still built on distinctly political phenomena, the “ambition” of the few to be “new princes,” the fear of the many, and perhaps an element of patri­ otism. But as modernity evolved, the Machiavellian “ambition” that remained as a vague republican facsimile of the pagan pursuit of immortal fame through public excellence was directed toward various forms of increasingly nonpolitical vanity and watered-down nonpublic versions of “recognition” in fairly short order. And in some variants, commerce itself was depicted as an attempt to redirect the pursuit of recognition into entirely nonpolitical economic activity. The general shared premise of proto-modernity was that there was no need to deliver men from the tyranny of their subrational drives and passions. There was also no need to create an internal harmony of those passions and drives. This lined up well with the redirection of life into commercial activity and the pursuit of wealth as an end in itself. It became legitimate in fact to heighten some of the passions for the sake of increasing market activity.17 Hence the pursuit of the passions had to be freed from moral opprobrium. Even the obvious disturbances of the soul that proceed from the cacophony of the passions were themselves seen as useful. The need for leisure, the pursuit of excellence, and the internal self-control traditionally needed for republican participation in self-­ government withdrew from the republican equation. The austere virtues of either the ancient pagans or the Christians were to be driven out as almost vices. It was hoped that in the place of the virtues of the austere premoderns would eventuate a more easygoing, self-preoccupied, and “humane” individual. The new virtue was “humanity”; cruelty became the greatest vice. That view of “humanity” was, however, at odds with the still remaining cruel lust for mastery of the new science, which remained a form of pagan ambition if not the will to power to dominate all of being. Within modernity, this technological lust for mastery in fact eventually became the most powerful remaining acceptable form of ambition. But it was apolitical and amoral. The eventual unrepublican convergence of a transformed easygoing humanity and ambitious technological mastery was always lurking in

26  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

modernity. The danger was always that political science would eventually circle back to co-opt its own version of the domination lurking in the new natural science — for example, in bureaucratic domination and various forms of despotism masquerading as “democratic.” Either way, the implications were nonrepublican. Modern technological science has always been the potential enemy of republicanism lurking within.18 The modern moral lowering of the sights plays into that technological danger. In the modern view, reason ceased to be a unique form of erotic passion for knowledge and longing for immortality, as it was for the Greeks, or for salvation and a return to the Godhead, as with the Platonically informed Christians. Reason became merely the scout for the other drives, the lower, bodily passions we share with the animals. Reason was in the service of the body, and it was the body that formed the basis for the new individualism, that which one could not share with others because they could not share their bodies, which had their own needs. Hence the pursuit of individualism could be divorced from excellent deeds and a public space to display them. One could retreat entirely into a private world to be an individual. All sense of hierarchy among human activities and aspirations was lost. There was even an attack on the notion that there was a hierarchy among the senses (sight was no higher than taste or touch — for Hobbes sight was a form of touch), a hierarchy among the needs (love of the truth versus love of food), or a hierarchy among the longings (immortal fame or salvation was no higher than the objects of hunger or lust). From all of this would come at first a cautious but eventually an increasingly unlimited hedonism. That commitment to hedonism, it was hoped, would foster a further weakening of both martial and religious severity and austerity. Men would become lukewarm in their religious and political attachments, or in some versions drop them altogether. They would become too hedonistic to fight for either country or personal honor and glory or to care about their personal salvation. This would open the door to a cascading pursuit of commerce in the service of a hedonism, which would still further weaken political and religious attachments. Tranquility and comfort were the highest goods. Again, unfortunately, these goods can be achieved despotically, technologically, and even pharmaceutically.19 At that point there would be no need for republicanism and its demanding public space. The freedom for self-government, to say nothing of personal self-government, would no longer be needed.

Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism  27

In the modern vision, we would become gentle, amiable, and cosmopolitan rather than committed, particularistic, pugnacious, pious, virtuous, patriotic, and so on. With docile, hedonistic “subjects” and expanding commerce providing the needed wealth, there would be no limits on the technological domination of nature. Again, this new mastery and despotism was always part of the modern story. In that version of the story, modern republicanism was just a transitional means to the full development of technological mastery. Granted, the proto-modern optimism about the omnipotence of technology has, thankfully, begun to wane because of its attendant dangers. But if Heidegger, among others, is correct, it has gained too much momentum simply to be stopped. The new danger is that individuals made gentle and hedonistic by modern commercial republicanism will no longer give up their technological pleasures to reassume the demanding requirements of a more political, ethical, and spiritual existence — they will inevitably become what Nietzsche called “last men.” But as we will develop in our discussion of Cicero, without the political, and a distinct public space for its manifestation, there can be no republicanism in any serious sense. One can trace the modern juggernaut of commercial republicanism, faith in science and technology, lukewarm and declining religious attachment, and transformation of citizens into humane subjects to a certain reading of the American Founding.20 But in the American experience there always remained expectations of Christian virtue, especially humility (a humility modern technology lacks), and an ancient public-­spiritedness together with gentlemanly canons of honor. It is just that these virtues were not directly fostered. Those virtues had to enter from “without.” What is least fostered fades most quickly. In that regard, modern republicanism has been all too successful in eliminating the external supports that it needs to prosper. There is still another part of the story. Modern political philosophy is neither as simple nor as linear as some depict it. The same can be said for the entire Western tradition. Modern political philosophy represents an ongoing discussion, dialogue, and dialectic with internecine squabbles and open rebellions from beginning to end. For example, Rousseau tried at modernity’s midpoint to reinsert classical republican elements. He remained a modern, but was totally dissatisfied with commercial republicanism and the public, technological disseminations of modern science.

28  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

Rousseau attempted to invent a different, while still modern, republicanism (more closed, smaller, particularist, and homogeneous, as with the “General Will”21) from that of the various competing forms of commercial republicanism of everyone from Locke to Montesquieu, Smith, Hume, and Hamilton. This is but one element of a deep-seated self-dissatisfaction that drives modern thought. This ongoing internal modern self-dissatisfaction leads to distinctive moments within modernity itself. But in the end —  Rousseau and perhaps Nietzsche to the contrary — there seems to be a powerful convergence on the pursuit of an apolitical outcome.22 And with that turn to the apolitical comes the increasingly open specter of a never-­ before-seen global, bureaucratic, atheistic, technological despotism. This must become the new bête noire of republicanism. Despite the dangers lurking in the modern philosophical project, we must not forget the great yield of modern republicanism. The pugnacity of ancient republicanism has been softened. The economic and educational ground for what can potentially be expanded citizenship has been significant and parallels the abolition of slavery as a legitimate basis for generating necessary wealth. Modern technology and commerce have at least potentially increased the possible education and leisure for larger numbers to participate in self-government. The dignity and rights of individuals against evanescent and tyrannical majorities has been established, and elites have been at least theoretically delegitimized. And equality of opportunity beyond spurious claims of merit based on birth and mere tradition has taken hold. The only issue is this: Can the best of modern republicanism be maintained into the future, or are we destined to a new age of elitism and despotism, this time fueled by global technology and bureaucracy, and by various forms of fundamentalism and irrationalism, perhaps in the postscriptural religious form longed for by Nietzsche and Heidegger? On the Road to Ironic Republicanism This leaves us to remark briefly on a contemporary body of literature that presents itself as republican. In the afterword to the 2003 edition of his Machiavellian Moment (1975), J. G. A. Pocock confides that his “research

Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism  29

strategy” was to “empty our minds of Locke and his ‘importance.’ ”23 Pocock then attempts to construct a republican “tradition” in the remaining space where there is no Locke. Locke, and modern commercial republicanism more generally, simply disappears. Also gone in Pocock is the place for religion. Ancient republics relied on civil religion, Ciceronian republicanism longed for a support in a rational religion (natural theology), and modern republicanism was intimately wound around the Protestant Reformation in ways that Pocock, and the rest of the “ironic republican” literature, ignores or dismisses. The association with Reformation Christianity is especially prominent in the American republican tradition. With the ironic republicans we are a long way from the sentiments of the American republican George Washington in his Farewell Address: Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. . . . Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.24 Pocock was joined in the effort to find a republicanism that was really neither ancient nor modern by any traditional understandings by Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit.25 What this triumvirate attempts to do is set up an opposition between their alleged republican tradition and modern commercial republicanism without in any serious sense returning to any elements of classical republicanism and its love of virtue and immortality or to openness to Christianity, or to modern love of rights and individualism. In the process, what remains in their republicanism is neither the hatred of monarchy and despotism nor the desire to avoid the rule of a few self-selecting elites, but instead an anachronistic veneration of a “country” party, that is, a nonbaronial aristocracy.26 To support their argument, each invents a “tradition.” These authors move across time and place and consider various texts, both ancient and

30  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

modern, taking at most small shards and trying to synthesize them. The gaze of these ironic republicans is very selective. Once pasted together their longed for elements are then designated as a “tradition.” But it is a tradition that has little in common with any actual philosophical tradition or the traditions of any particular regime, especially the American regime. The appeal to “tradition” rests on self-conscious choices made by what can only be a modern, self-legislating theoretical self — which from the beginning has been the enemy of all tradition. The scissors-and-paste efforts of these ironic republicans represent the operation of a modern Cartesian self-legislating Ego, and with Pettit it eventuates in an altogether modern bureaucratic state with global, cosmopolitan longings. Where Pocock sees in Aristotle and Machiavelli the antecedents to his “civic humanism,” which is the republican gateway to England and America, Skinner says the following: I have sought to emphasise the remarkable extent to which the vocabulary of Renaissance moral and political thought was derived from Roman stoic sources. . . . I do not think it has been fully appreciated how pervasively the political theorists of Renaissance Italy, and of early modern Europe in general, were also influenced by stoic values and beliefs. Nor do I think it has been fully recognized how far an understanding of this fact tends, amongst other things, to alter our picture of Machiavelli’s relationship with his predecessors, and in consequence our sense of his aims and intentions as a political theorist.27 Skinner gives more republican importance to Rome, its practice, and its authors. As to actual Romans, Skinner discusses Cicero in passing here and there but usually in the same breath as the decidedly Stoic Cato. Further, it is never clear just what Skinner means by “Stoicism.” But no matter how he understands Stoicism, if Skinner is insinuating that Cicero was a Stoic, he is clearly wrong. Be that as it may for the moment, Skinner seems to give pride of place in his republican tradition, especially as it operates in England, to the Roman historian Sallust (rather than Cicero) and, to a lesser extent, especially as it operates among the Florentines, to Livy. Skinner’s alleged Stoic link with Renaissance republicanism partly explains why his republican tradition is designated “neo-Roman.”

Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism  31

In one respect, Pettit’s Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government represents an extension of the Cambridge School’s version of ironic republicanism. In another respect, he strikes off in a unique direction. At most, he co-opts a few elements of the prior Cambridge narrative. Instead of the nostalgic longings of Pocock and Skinner for what can only be a small, aristocratic, inegalitarian, secular, largely agrarian, homogeneous, noncommercial, civic-minded, nonurban, militia-enriched, antireligion, and aristocratically participatory republicanism, we get the victory of what can only be a large, urban, demilitarized, bureaucratic, administrative, “postnationalist” state undoubtedly ruled by “new class” intellectuals who promise to give their subjects a life where they have no perception of domination lurking anywhere. But the bête noire remains the same: Locke, natural rights, and modern commercial republicanism. The primary end of political life is now posited by Pettit as a distinctive kind of freedom, and it is not the freedom to makes one’s own laws or to assert rights against majorities or the modern state. Nor is it a freedom that preferences participation, as with actual ancient republics or virtù or personality development as stressed by Pocock; other ends ignored are virtue in any traditional sense, salvation of the soul, the pursuit of wealth, knowledge, glory or immortal fame, individual autonomy in a Kantian sense, and so on. In short, missing seem to be the ends that actual human beings have historically pursued. Freedom is now conceptualized in the abstract, nonphenomenological sense as “nondomination.”28 Pettit’s view of freedom is defined initially as what it is not. It is absolutely not the Lockean, liberal notion of freedom now categorized as mere “noninterference.”29 It is also not freedom understood as “autonomy” in the Kantian sense. On this level, Pettit is ruling out the Kantian and Continental understanding of freedom as leading to a form of “metaphysical freedom” as the perfection of our fundamental humanity where we find freedom in willing (universal) rules for ourselves and thereby become autonomous individuals.30 Pettit does make the counterintuitive empirical claim that a state ordered to produce primarily nondomination will also facilitate Kantian, metaphysical autonomy, but not as its primary end. Freedom as nondomination, as the highest end of action, takes precedence over autonomy, wealth, personal responsibility, and independence, virtue in the classical or Christian senses, the salvation of the soul, personal glory, national glory,

32  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

personality development, civic virtù, the longing to be left alone in noninterfered privacy, and every other conceivable concrete or theoretical end. Pettit openly announces that his is a “consequentialist” position. The implication of Pettit’s consequentialism is that the state positively must engage actively to produce the intended consequence of eliminating perceived domination.31 The state must in fact act in advance of an actual grievance being lodged or perceived. The fact that no domination is actually being exercised in the present or predictable in the near future, or any future moment, is irrelevant. The issue is whether it is possible that such domination could be felt at some moment. The real problem is a psychological problem. So every possible future manifestation of any form of perception of domination must be cleared away in advance so that there is no possibility of anyone ever feeling its existence. The standard here is possible perception by someone at some time. And it is clear that the contemporary modern bureaucratic state is never the principal dominating actor to be feared; no, rather, to be feared are nonstate actors against whom the state must proceed preemptively for the sake of the anxiety-free existence of everyone, freed at last from any possible thought of domination. The highest good is to lead a tranquil, anxiety-­ free existence. The state that Pettit is discussing is designated as not only a republic but as an (allegedly) democratic republic. But Pettit will not accept that the basis of democracy is found in consent or the participatory equality of Pocock and Skinner, or in “populism,” which is summarily dismissed. In Pettit’s argument, the place of consent is taken instead by possible “contestability” after the fact. Not only is the “positive” freedom of participation, which is a part of past republicanism, something Pettit will not accept, or the “negative” freedom of modern liberal republicanism — which is something that is “ominous” — but populism in any form must be strangled before the fact. It is asserted that populism will always lead to domination. Hence privacy, consent, and participation must have their wings radically clipped lest the public be inclined to populist, demo­ cratic flights of dominating fancy. Only somewhere outside populism and the noninterference view of defending natural rights is there allegedly freedom as nondomination. These commitments, we are told, and the “language of freedom” as nondomination shape a long tradition. 32 It is alleged to be an “older”

Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism  33

republican tradition than that of which Locke is the exemplar. For Pettit this tradition supposedly consists of Cicero, Machiavelli, Harrington, and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America, England, and France and their respective revolutions. Notable by its addition is the entirely antitraditionalist, idea-driven French Revolution, which aimed at a radical break with everything ancien, that is, any actual, concrete traditions. Pettit specifically appeals to Pocock and Skinner to ground his alleged republican tradition. But both Pocock and Skinner show that it is the freedom of citizens to make their own particularistic laws that is the primary concern for their republicans — or, to a lesser extent as time passes, freedom from the Church. Unlike Skinner and Pocock, Pettit’s longed-for state is not by any means supposed to be heavy on any participation (“participation is not a bedrock value”). And although Pettit’s state will be large, it will have a minimal foreign policy and probably only the most minimal armed forces. For Pettit, freedom does not demand much in the way of defense against other states, as past republics did. This is due to a series of cosmopolitan, postnationalist assumptions that he works in along the way. Pettit’s state is conceptualized as a trustee. The state must be trusted to dispense freedom as nondomination and create for individuals what is called a “nonarbitrary” life. Almost nothing is held back as an inviolable private realm for individuals free from any interference by this trustee state. Nor can acts of participation or consent by citizens be allowed to negate the actions on their behalf by their trustees, who take the place of Pocock’s and Skinner’s traditional aristocratic “few.” Pettit gives us government for the people — but not of or by the people. All of the great yields of modern republicanism are jettisoned without any attempt to retrieve the moral excellence, political participation, and antipathy to despotism that characterized classical republicanism.33 Eventually, having based his argument on the existence of an alleged tradition, Pettit explicitly reveals that the historical and traditionalist parts of the argument are mere window dressing: “The historical aspect of the book is secondary. If historians of ideas find [Pettite’s tradition] misleading, then they should regard the more substantive historical suggestions as simplifications that are justified only by the colour that they give to my philosophical claims.”34 We must constantly keep in mind that the “philosophical” claims are never specifically grounded other than on an appeal to a tradition, which is eventually cast aside. Pettit is at least straightforward — his “axioms

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need not represent a unique base of justification, as in a foundationalist scheme, but they do claim to be a good starting-point for organizing institutions.”35 In different places, Pettit announces that he is a “postfoundationalist,” a quasi-“traditionalist,” and a “consequentialist.” But he appears unwilling to accept what really follows from his postfoundationalism. What follows is that there are no foundations for our arguments. If there is no basis or foundation for our arguments in tradition, nature, history, or God, then everything rests on the groundless will. This is the self-grounding Cartesian will that finds its reductio ad absurdum in Nietzsche’s doctrine of the groundless “will to power.” For example, if there is no support for our arguments in unchanging human nature, as a true postfoundationalist must accept, it is hard to see how one presumes to make predictions regarding how one’s acts will play out in future consequences. One cannot be a consequentialist and postfoundationalist simultaneously. And if there are no discoverable foundations for our arguments, the most consistent move is to accept the trial and error of actual traditions. But Pettit’s argument is precisely intended as the basis for attacking actual traditions, like the reigning tradition of Lockean republicanism, to say nothing of the classical republican and Christian traditions. Pettit is indicative at most of a very soft and inconsistent postfoundationalism that does not try to go any deeper than that “we” — a small group of like-minded intellectuals? — happen to already like the position in question and cannot philosophically ground it in any actual phenomena or fundamental and unchanging elements of human existence that repeat themselves. But this produces a discourse only for a self-selecting few that is primarily conducted outside anything that deserves to be called a res publica and in a language that is usually foreign to everyday speech, as in the variety of Pettit’s neologisms from “contestability” to “density.” If pushed on why Pettit groundlessly wills his particular summum bonum, there is only one answer: “we” like it, or, using his terms, it is “attractive” and “plausible,” but that can only mean plausible to “us.” There is no attempt to prove that the “we” in question are everyday citizens of a republic that already exists and has its own concrete tradition, a tradition that is under assault in this discourse. At least Pocock and Skinner have some idea of what is implied in the idea of traditionalism.

Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism  35

That an assault on actual traditions is under way is clear. Freedom understood exclusively as nondomination requires “radical changes” in social life.36 What we have operating here is but one of many modern constructivist forms of reason trying to operate in the vacuum caused by the collapse of tradition and also the postfoundationalist collapse of faith in reason, namely, in the age of postmodernism. Except in the artificial homogeneity of a few spaces in the academy, postfoundationalist principles can lead to nothing but a cacophony of voices talking simultaneously, but not to each other.37 Freedom as understood by Pettit is perfectly consistent with both massive statist intrusions into privacy and an enforced Epicurean withdrawal from participation in the res publica for the majority of citizens, who in effect become subjects. No existence pursued entirely outside the res publica of the res populi — an existence that replaces public spaces with private and invisible venues of elitist and bureaucratic control — can by definition be called “republican” except by an act of theft.38 This is nothing but an inconsistent postfoundationalist longing for the radical Enlightenment, rationalist longing for the abolition of the political. We eventually see that what is being offered as the highest good for those who are not the elite trustees, who conduct the state in the name of its subjects, is a form of tranquility of mind that does not have to anxiously attend to its own freedom through active political participation, even as the nature of this nonanxious perception will itself also be determined by the state. It was this tranquility of mind that both Stoicism and Epicureanism aimed at in Cicero’s time as the greatest good.39 Cicero opposed both schools, and especially on this subject. Pettit’s republicanism implies a “conversational” and “deliberative” state.40 But what is left to deliberate about when the highest end is already fixed in advance and in principle removed from discussion? And who is it that is intended to do the deliberating once the state manufactures an antiseptic and nonanxious situation of nondomination where populism is dismissed as evil? Actual “community” and “tradition” come out of free, spontaneous, and unprogrammed interchanges in a free public space. Such interactions are what keep a public space (res publica) open. If deliberation and conversation are truly ends in themselves, they must trump many things, even the tranquility of mind of nondomination. Pettit’s position circles back to incorporate into his republicanism a good old modern and Continental cosmopolitanism of the variety of

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Kant, Hegel, and Marx. To foster his synthesis of elements of modern cosmopolitanism and modern statism, Pettit asserts that the liberal pluralist solution of “reciprocal power” is not the solution to nondomination domestically, and he asserts that the same premise that aims at balance of power politics internationally is to be avoided. Having built up his domestic bureaucratic state to monolithic levels, he tries to emasculate that same state internationally. He wants to support off-loading international affairs onto what could only eventuate in a super United Nations. Hence individual nations are encouraged by Pettit to maintain a limited military for use only as a last resort. We have come a long way from seeing a republicanism of the sort whereby individual states maintain their own freedom to make their own laws, to the exclusion of outsiders, and maintain them through strong, armed, self-reliant citizen militias. We even get the issue of freedom turned against First Amendment freedoms, such as free speech and free association. We get the argument that the news media is too conservatively biased in favor of big business and that the res publica is being eroded by the creeping libertarianism of free speech. The public space is allegedly being “closed down” by both business elites and populist majorities trying to exercise free speech in public.41 For Pettit, the active use of the public space is destroying not only the public good but the public space itself. The solution is to deny access to the res publica by the res populi, and that outcome is then ironically designated republican. Checks and balances are redefined as meaning “complicated government.”42 “Democratic accountability” is divorced from consent or majority rule (populism, as in citizen participation, is bad) and instead shuffled off under the rubric of “contestability.” Popular consent itself is redefined as “owning the public decisions” (i.e., after the fact). “Owning public decisions” becomes the entirety of the issue of accountability — and, like freedom, accountability is psychologized into “can I accept or own an outcome?” By this means there need not be any actual concrete acts of consent; in fact, crucial matters need not be put to the public prior to acting on them at all. The “bargain-based” and pluralist interest-group model of reaching accommodation is replaced by the new understanding where we will get a “debate-based model.” But the term “debate-based” goes through

Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism  37

transformative definitions, which lead from “debate-based model” to “deliberative model” to “dialogical model.”43 We have the disquieting sense that all the terms are being redefined from everyday meanings until what we will come out with will be entirely different than actual everyday expectations. This is what happens when debate is withdrawn from an actual public space owned by the people and puts aside everyday public speech —  and that, I will argue, is central to any actual republican tradition. In a similar vein, we are even told that we should move to a legislative situation where we have mandated seats for different groups. This comes under the rubric “mandated inclusiveness.” But this language sounds like “mandated exclusion” from the res publica. One need only ask the question, who does the mandating? We now have “deliberation” and “conversation” and “contestation” in an environment where Pettit is honest in saying that some “political voices have been gagged.”44 It is explicitly the outcomes that are now defined as republican, not the processes of self-government or protections for the privacy of citizens, who have been transformed into subjects who need have no virtues whatsoever. “Republican forms” rest on the “sorts of outcomes that such [civic activities] must deliver.”45 It is no longer clear why we need the messy unhygienic intrusion of citizens at all. We can completely transcend the political. And what is the popular recourse when sovereignty lies not in electoral accountability or actual participation? Pettit places it in the “right of resistance.”46 But who gets to resist and how? It is doubtful that this is some odd defense of the Second Amendment and its “free state” language. Who, in concrete, actual reality, will be able to resist Pettit’s massive, monolithic, elitist state? From Pettit we should learn why in constructing a future form of republicanism that we must save the great yields of modern republicanism, including its defenses of rights and individualism, while defending against slippage toward amoral and apolitical hedonistic outcomes. Modern human beings must again become moral and political beings capable of self-government, both nationally and personally. In his only reference to human nature, Pettit asserts that men are corruptible but not corrupt, perfectible if not perfect.47 But what counts as unchanging human nature and its unchanging perfection for a postfoundationalist? On the subject of corruption and perfection, Pettit tells us that we in the contemporary world have institutions — Lockean — which

38  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

force men to be knaves. Using Pettit’s terms, with a clever use of “sanctions” (selective taxes and punishments), “filters” (propaganda), and “screens” (screening out the participation of unacceptable understandings and individuals) we can avoid this knavery. We can put politics in the service of the re-creation of man. In the technological age, that is a frightening and intrinsically despotic prospect. For Pettit, even if we cannot quite re-create man and human nature from scratch, we can forcibly de-Lockeanize man, to say nothing of depoliticize him. But none of this implies a return to classical republican education in human excellence as a means to self-government and personal government. We get limitations on modern republican freedom without any return to classical republican excellence and participation. We get the worst of all possible worlds — no excellence and no individual liberty. We get tranquility of mind at the price of being transformed into well-maintained, tranquilized pets. Any real political competition and deliberation by excellent and self-controlled citizens within the res publica would undermine the prefigured outcomes that are alone allowed by Pettit to be called republican. Actual political interactions would assuredly undermine tranquility of mind, as would any true Socratic questioning. Pettit’s “republic,” which he tells us should substantially eschew punishment, would undoubtedly not kill Socrates, but he would be sedated or sent for “counseling” at a republican “retraining” camp. He would certainly be “screened” out of the discussion as assiduously as Locke.

Two

Initial Reflections on Political Philosophy Contemporary Political Theory and Political Philosophy What passes for political philosophy has in our time become largely a synthetic undertaking. We frequently study the tradition to scissors and paste together elements taken from various past authors. This inevitably produces internally inconsistent outcomes. Or we attempt to pick and choose among authors in attempting to crown a winner. Either approach seems to imply that the tradition is at an end and we cannot continue it into the future.1 Beyond synthetic efforts and picking and choosing among past authors, we get the dominance of political “theory,” and that means a fragmented universe of competing ideological theories: liberal, conservative, feminist, libertarian, communitarian, participatory, queer, deconstructionist, multiculturalist, and on and on. Each theory limits itself to drawing out the ramifications of its specific premises. But rarely is there an attempt to discuss the foundations of those premises and the myriad of 39

40  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

suppressed premises that are implied. Most theories now simply assume that we are in a postfoundationalist age and thus that no such more comprehensive reflections are possible. Consequently, each school of thought proceeds to construct a distinctive “narrative.” It is not surprising that it is next to impossible to construct a discussion between the competing narratives, because there is nothing deeper to which they have reference that could form the basis for discussion. I want to differentiate political philosophy from what I see as “constructivist” political theory — which either starts in midair or constructs its own foundations ex nihilo — and from the equally constructivist attempts to proceed to pick and choose from elements drawn from the past tradition of political philosophy. Nietzsche was criticizing this late modern habit of constantly regurgitating and rechewing the cultural and philosophical cud when in Zarathustra he designated the modern city, and hence our contemporary situation, as a “Motley Cow.” This reduction of political philosophy to pastiche, collage, and montage, or a postfoundationalist cacophony of voices that can at best only talk simultaneously, can never generate a serious public discussion, for the discussants are of necessity forced to talk past each other and to engage only with those who agree. Contemporary constructivism and postfoundationalism — and deconstructionism is just a sneaky form of constructivism — are increasingly based on self-grounding narratives or on synthetic scissors-and-paste efforts. We are left with the spectacle of competing theories that rest on nothing other than the groundless, self-legislating will of its author, or the ungrounded will of a like-minded cadre of authors determined to deconstruct whatever has come down to them.2 This spectacle might initially be seen to be democratic by multiplying the number of voices in the discussion, but it can eventuate only in the din of cacophonous speech that publicly leads to the fragmentation of angry participants talking past each other. That in turn will give way to a manifestation of the Nietz­ schean will to power that is undemocratic and unrepublican, that is, to the imposition of a dominant voice to overcome the chaos. If political phi­losophy is to open a republican future, as past political philosophy has opened our republican present, it must have another foundation than this increasingly groundless, constructivist willing.3 In some of the contemporary literature that calls itself republican, in our time even the appeal to tradition quickly merges into constructivism.

Initial Reflections on Political Philosophy  41

But the late modern world is nothing if not a shredder of traditions. The full modern desire to construct the novel on the basis of an allegedly self-transparent, self-legislating ego has had its wings philosophically clipped in the aftermath of such seminal efforts as the Nietzschean and Heideggerian critiques of metaphysics.4 The myth of pure, self-transparent selfhood cannot be reconstructed at this late date. Yet many continue as if nothing has changed. At this point we cannot go back to modern constructivism with a good conscience: Nietzsche and Heidegger bar the door to any simple, naïve retreat. In the aftermath of Nietzsche and Heidegger and their various descendants, modern constructivism and its various permutations of the self-legislating ego cannot proceed as if nothing has changed; we can no longer proceed as if the critique of modern rationalism never occurred. In our time constructivists have, or at least should have if they are philosophically consistent, a bad conscience. Any simple return to a preferred moment of the past tradition is equally impossible. Modernity has been antitradition for six hundred years, and has been very successful at it. My argument will be that there has always been only one place for any philosophical undertaking to stand, namely, on the phenomena that show themselves publicly to all who share a public space. Even the constructivists prove this when they sneak phenomenal elements back into their accounts. We are always forced to return from constructivism, and also any actual, merely closed traditionalism, to “phenomenology” to get in touch with what is a unique present that is always already given. Cicero’s political philosophy will give us a classic example of this phenomenological approach. It is the approach we need to relearn. If we approach Cicero with the present, constructivist understanding of political theory, especially in its most consistent, Nietzschean permutation of the groundless will to will, we will never understand what he was attempting. Nor will we have an opportunity to grasp an alternative to our present situation. If everything dissolves into groundless willing, the tradition of political philosophy is over. And since that tradition of political philosophy has carried the tradition of republicanism since Greek antiquity, the tradition of republicanism is undoubtedly over too. Without a genuine tradition of republicanism, we will be faced with the possibility of a never-before-seen global, technological despotism. That unlimited despotism will almost inevitably turn to the manipulation and domination of man in the same fashion we now manipulate and

42  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

dominate the rest of nature. Modern political philosophy and constructivism grow out of the same instinct as does dominating, modern technology. As environmentalists we have become skeptical of this despotic attitude toward nature; now we must become skeptical of the same despotic attitude toward human nature and human political interaction. If one simply looks around it is hard to miss the juggernaut of global technological and bureaucratic domination that voraciously consumes traditions and seems to replace them with nothing but competing willed narratives in a fast-paced swirl that is accelerating. Mere traditionalism can have no immediate purchase in this accelerating swirl. And constructivist theories merely accelerate the voracious destruction of genuine life-giving public spaces and traditions — “community” if one prefers — which must be allowed to grow from the bottom up where we nurture and appreciate outcomes that come from myriad daily spontaneous interactions. One cannot theoretically construct community but only destroy its possibility. The growing political sense of inefficacy and despair, along with the philosophical sense of closure and being at an end, is widespread in our time. Lurking in these sentiments is an actual “phenomenon”; it is an underlying presentiment in our time of humanity’s old age and man’s loss of control and his potential impending cessation as human.5 There is a sense that we have seen what there is to see; we are without options other than increasing manifestations of manipulative control. Yet the groundless desire for control is at the heart of the problem. The Phenomenological Alternative Let us step back from the groundless willing of contemporary political theory and its competing “narratives.” Let us step back to an actual phenomenon and consider the following situation. We have been left adrift off the east coast of the United States in the middle of the Gulf Stream, which is moving north at 5 knots. By moving north I mean the surface water is moving over the fixed bottom at a speed that translates to about 6.2 miles per hour. It is a cloudy night, no stars are visible, and we cannot see the bottom of the ocean or the shoreline. It is absolutely calm and windless. Under these circumstances, in relation to the bottom of the ocean or the nearby coastline, we are drifting north at 6.2 miles per hour.

Initial Reflections on Political Philosophy  43

But without electronic positioning instruments we would have no sense, unaided by any instruments, that we were moving at all. It would not appear to the eye that we were moving in relation to the surface water, and we would have no fixed point on shore, beneath us, or in the heavens above against which to calculate motion. We would feel no wind on our faces, hear no wind across the rigging or deck of our vessel. Our senses would tell us we are motionless. Consider a slightly different scenario. We are sailing south against the same current into a 12-knot wind. We would be moving briskly through the surface water, hearing our bow wave, feeling the wind and spray on our faces. We would sense that we were moving rapidly when we were in fact more or less standing still in relation to a fixed point underneath us or on shore. These examples offer a precise correlate to our situation as historical beings at any given moment. Without a fixed point, we would have no idea if we were moving through history in some interesting fashion or if our existence was static with only the appearance of motion. More often than not the swirl of surface events around us would make us sense that we were in great and constant motion. At rarer historical moments we might sense historical stasis when in reality great transformative motion was building. As historical beings, to take our bearings intelligently, just as is true for sailors, we need a fixed point. We have to realize that whatever that point is, it is a point that will present itself to thought, not to any of our senses. In some fashion, thought has to abstract from the data of the senses to find its necessary fixed point. One may theoretically deny the existence of such a fixed point, but no one can live and choose intelligently according to that premise, and everyone must make evaluative choices to live, just as the sailor must avoid reefs and rocks near shore. Living life really does take priority over detached theoretical assertions, especially ones that are self-invalidating and nihilistic. And hence the phenomena of life itself must always be our philosophical point of departure. Our needed point that does not move will be “seen” only with the mind’s eye, if at all. We are forced to search for it by the very necessities of life.6 But what is it? We always come to this unavoidable question from a specific present moment, the present moment of our specific situation and time with its demands and needs that we did not choose. We must always choose and do so in an environment we did not choose. To choose

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intelligently, human beings are forced to look toward something that transcends the present. The phenomenon of transcendence presents itself in this fashion. Both our need and our natural erotic longing to grasp it are unavoidable. Phenomena do not need to be constructed. Some phenomena present themselves as a need or a longing, but that is still a phenomenon of human existence that cannot be made to go away. What is needed is a point outside the present moment that is not the product of our groundless, and because groundless also pointless, choosing. We cannot deny that such a point exists and then presume to make all manner of observations that assume the existence of “change,” let alone “progress” or “decay.” Then we are just furtively sneaking our fixed point in the back door when no one is looking. That may at times be ideologically tempting, but it is always intellectually dishonest. Without access, even if only indistinctly, to some fixed point, we must abstain completely from any notion of historical change, any possibility of responsible action or consciously choosing our future. But in that case we will have simultaneously ceased to even interrogate the phenomena of human existence. Modern philosophy, constructivist to the core, in its attempted emancipation from the late medieval Church, talked us into dismissing before the fact any experience of transcendence or of fixed points because such phenomenal longings were “essentialist.” More to the point, we could not construct our point of departure on the basis of a self-grounding Ego if one already existed. But this modern attitude did not lead to a higher and clearer realism; it led to a falsification of human experience and a stance of domination toward all that is. The hatred of essentialism, especially in its Scholastic manifestation, has led to the destruction of phenomenology.7 The longing to grasp a fixed point “outside” or “above” the present moment, to which we gain access by something other than the senses, is a phenomenon of life.8 The eros that longs for transcendence, to grasp something outside the mere present, is a phenomenon of life. The sense of something above or outside has traditionally been categorized as a longing for the eternal and unchangeable. This is what the philosophic tradition has meant by terms such as “nature” or “being.”9 It is the phenomenon of need for and longing to grasp being or nature that is most important for our discussion at present. Is there something fixed outside the flow of present temporal moments that can be grasped by thought and thereby assist us in making judgments about

Initial Reflections on Political Philosophy  45

what is being presented at any given moment by our senses? There are two possible ways of getting in touch with such a fixed point, one by slow, steady, dialectical, “mediated” steps, and the other by some direct leap to “immediate” apprehension. Both permutations have been pursued within the philosophical tradition. Both possibilities have generated various sub-permutations that need not detain us at present. To assert, as so many of our contemporaries do, that there is no such thing as fixed nature or being is inconsistent on the part of anyone who then goes on to assert anything about the movement of time or about better and worse, or about “progressive” versus “reactionary” — that includes anyone who then goes on to have a notion of the good and must act and choose if they are to live.10 The phenomena force us toward the search for such a fixed point; the longing is phenomenologically unavoidable. The phenomena of life itself force us to realize we always presuppose such a point or we would be as unable to act; as human beings we would be at the same disadvantage as a sailor without a fixed point to aid navigation. To posit, as an act of groundless “postfoundationalist” will, the prem­ ise that there is no fixed “presence” to nature or being leaves us to sneak in premises to which we are not theoretically entitled. What eventuates is one self-invalidating assertion after another, which furtively presupposes precisely a fixed point from which to view the alleged motion or non-motion that is human historical existence and how it historically approaches or moves away from what is better or worse, that is, the good. My analogy to sailing makes this clear. A real postfoundationalist would not have the slightest idea where he was or where he was going or where he should be going; he would not know if all was well or if imminent danger lurked. He would not know if history moved or if everything was really static. Real postfoundationalists should just throw up their hands, do nothing, and await the outcome of blind fate.11 A traditional implication drawn by many from the correctly perceived need for a fixed, atemporal point has been that we can get to a fixed point called “nature” or “being” by autonomous theoretical activity, independent of the senses as they access the immediately present world of things that show themselves and the ways in which those phenomena are spoken of in a public space.12 The senses can access only the present, and thereby only perceived or relative motion. We see the present as a form of

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movement only in light of some fixed, “transcendent” (of present temporality) point. Something must stand still, or something must exist outside the present, or we are rendered silent on all manner of issues regarding movement of any qualitative kind. The question is this: Do we access this point through some detached and autonomous form of theoretical “staring” or by something that is much closer to a phenomenological form of reason, the nature of which is yet to be determined? The question is whether the mind in some mediated or dialectical fashion works “up” toward a needed and always presupposed transcendent point in stages or steps starting from phenomena in the present, or whether thought can jump to and grasp this point immediately in some form of pure theoretical “intuition” and pure theoretical “staring.” Philoso­ phy can be conceptualized as either a form of pure, immediate theoretical “leaping/grasping/staring” at some trans-temporal thought “entity,” or as a staged, dialectical movement toward such a point in steady measured steps starting from the phenomena of the present, one of which is transcendence — and never completely leaving those phenomena behind. The philosophical tradition will teach us that both conceptualizations, in all of their permutations, lead to problems, but the longing that calls them into being is unavoidable, as is the need to try to resolve the matter. Phenomenologically, as living and acting beings, we have to get our bearings and we have an erotic longing to do so. We cannot reject the fact of that longing. And to return to my sailing metaphor, no mere ungrounded language game or narrative will ensure that we avoid sinking or going aground. We really must assume, along with Socrates, that only the examined life is a life worth living. The “immediate” move to somehow get in touch with or be one with what might be judged to be eternal and temporally transcendent verities presupposes some faculty of “intuition,” or whatever we want to call it, that can then “contemplate” this motionless, atemporal point in some form of theoretical “staring.” Political philosophy would thereby become some operation by which we deduced practical ramifications from the yield of this atemporal, theoretical “staring.” I am going to reject this understanding of political philosophy. This understanding of political philosophy runs into the problem that the staring referenced here will undoubtedly be alogon, or prelinguistic. One still has to articulate the experience in speech — to oneself in inner dialogue and to others — and that is always by using a tool shared

Initial Reflections on Political Philosophy  47

by a specific res publica. This difficulty is what led both the phenomenological Plato and the phenomenological Cicero to reject the Aristotelean radical split between theoretical and practical reason.13 The practical always takes priority. I am also going to reject the notion that political philosophy is no more than the public, rhetorical defense of some prior theoretical conception of philosophy. I will follow Cicero and Plato and argue that political philosophy is architectonic first philosophy that starts from a “cave” or a “public space” (res publica) and can never leave that point of departure completely behind, and hence never completely emancipates itself from its own tradition or the phenomena of life. Whether those phenomena are natural or conventional or some combination of both is something one cannot determine in advance: in the beginning we can say of nature and convention no more than that they simply “are.”14 Beyond the approach to transcendence captured by the metaphor of theoretical staring, there is another way of searching for a point outside our sensually grasped present that can let us understand whether or not we are in some interesting sense moving through human temporality in a graspable fashion. We can project out of our present toward the past and future. This implies that we have a record of the past, or at least of “our” past, and can “see” that it is different in some essential fashion from our present. This in turn implies that in our phenomenological present we can articulate what is unique and compare that to the phenomena from other times, which are simultaneously similar and dissimilar. It also implies that human beings can take self-conscious cognizance of and responsibility for the future, publicly remember our self-conscious efforts, and compare our expectations with actual outcomes and continually adjust accordingly. The “self ” that engages in this activity is not a contemplative theoretical ego, it is a practically engaged individual. Nor need this capacity reside in each and every member of humanity. We start from the phenomena as shared by some group with a res publica, a group that shares a set of phenomena that show themselves publicly. A political philosophy that begins from interrogating those shared phenomena is phenomenological in my sense. If we have a record of the past — and that primarily means in speech, as even concrete allegedly “scientific” artifacts like bones or skulls have to be conceptualized in speech to have meaning — we can take cognizance of the way that past actions, especially as they are interpreted in speeches by the actors at the

48  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

time, differ from the way we interpret and explain in speech our own deeds in the present. However, contrary to what I think is a misunderstanding of the Platonic metaphor of the cave, we cannot begin by calling the shared phenomenal showings in the res publica the arena of untruth.15 The phenomena that show themselves to us publicly must have some “truth” and simultaneously point beyond themselves toward possibilities of transcendence.16 We can with proper dedication to our craft begin to get an intimation of how our past determined our present and how our present could determine a different future. I suspect this temporal capacity to hold together past and future in a distinctive present ultimately implies access to some manifestation of atemporality in my previous “staring” metaphor. But at present I am more interested in where we make our beginning. The alternatives are (1) we have a faculty that allows us to make an intuitive leap out of the mere present altogether into some autonomous, atemporal theoretical activity, or (2) we must always start with a specific situated phenomenological relation to past, present, and future from within everyday temporality. The latter possibility is both dialectical and phenomenological and is what Cicero recovered from Plato on the far side of Aristotle’s attempt to ground autonomous “theory.” In the process, with Plato and Cicero the metaphor for philosophy becomes “caring”; for Aristotle the metaphor is “staring.”17 Political philosophy as I am presenting it proceeds from a phenomenological opening that does not have to be constructed by an act of ungrounded will standing in midair — or by poetic creators of narratives. This also implies that there are always phenomena that present themselves, that those phenomena must be articulated in speech — in the mode of Socrates — and that we can compare speeches across time to gain access to the question of whether the phenomena remain identical, change somewhat, or change significantly. Otherwise we are adrift on a horizonless sea. Man as an Essentially History-Making Being It is true that there was a past moment in human history that was not “historical” in the sense that there was no real sense of past and future and no real record of the past or expectation of a different future. The idea of the

Initial Reflections on Political Philosophy  49

“end of history” would imply a return to the same prehistorical situation; man would become ahistorical again because he had no desire for or reason to expect a different future. The future would be an endless repetition of the same present moment or at least of the same present set of uniform aspirations. There might be wind in the face giving the impression of change, but there would be no substantive movement, and the clearest-­ eyed among us would see that, and it would be spiritually deadening. In the course of time, we have become historical beings, and that is what is distinctive about human beings and differentiates us from every other sentient species. No ape or monkey will ever be a historical being any more than any other social species, from ants and bees to lions and beavers, will ever experience living in different caves, public spaces, or “worlds.” No one will ever write a book on the history of ants, bees, beavers, or lions, for perfectly good reasons. Nothing in their social existence will ever change — certainly not because of their philosophical efforts at understanding. We humans attempt to understand our existence, we preserve and disseminate those efforts, and those disseminations effect changes in our everyday existence. Henceforth we will remain historical beings, always occupying a present that is suspended between past and future — or we will cease to be human. To remain human, we must in some fashion remain consciously and articulately suspended between past and future. This is the kind of transcendence of the present I will endorse as prior, fundamental, and intrinsically phenomenological, prior to the “theoretical” kind of transcendence outlined above that relies on theoretical staring with its assumed immediacy, faculty of direct “intuition,” and autonomous theoretical staring at atemporal entities.18 Ultimately, I do not think that the staring meta­ phor is useful for explaining either philosophy or human existence. Pure theoretical entities would have to be stared at in an alogon fashion, and even they would have to submit to the dialectical and phenomenological to come into concrete, historical speech. Any direct experience of atemporal entities, any immediacy of grasping, would still have to articulate itself in the temporal world, with everyday speech, in a public space. Even a pure theoretical knowing, if it existed, would have to start from and return to the phenomenological world to be more than a solipsistic experience. And this is even true of something like theoretical physics.19

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The phenomenological approach that we will see in Cicero is what is intrinsic to political philosophy as itself proto-philosophy, which I will argue is far more self-consciously and articulately aware of its nature and roots than any presumed autonomous, contemplative, “staring” qua autonomous theoretical activity. Proceeding from this beginning, I will designate political philosophy as both dialectical and phenomenological in ways still to be developed. Modernity has presented us with another hybrid means of transcendence that it alleges will help us in getting our present bearings in relation to a presumed fixed point. The distinctively modern hybrid permutation of transcendence is designated by the term “history” in the strict sense. Much of classical antiquity saw temporal existence as an ultimately unchanging flux, with a great deal of historical wind on the face but no actual change across the bottom or in relation to the shore. A variant of that understanding in antiquity saw temporal history as cyclical, going through ever-recurring phases of rising and falling civilizations, including even the Stoic notion of the collapse and regrowth of the cosmos itself, which ultimately could never break out of the cycle of rising and falling, and thus in the end there was no real movement. It was Christianity that first offered a “linear” conception of human history. Linear conceptions require two fixed termini. In the Christian case, the termini were the Creation at the beginning and the Second Coming at the end of human history. In a significant fashion, these two points stood outside of human temporal existence. Temporality itself transpired between those two points, but nothing of interest actually changed in fallen human existence, even if we follow Paul in the Letter to the Romans in concluding that we can be saved from our fallen nature by believing in Christ. Human history at its best is seen by Christianity as the ongoing repetition of the possibility of future atemporal redemption for individuals, but not through a collective transformation of the human condition. Modernity co-opted the linear idea and then gave it an “upward” movement of change — that is, progress.20 Modernity was only possible in a Christian environment of linear history. In fact, modernity in almost every manifestation — political, moral, scientific — was only possible in a Christian environment, but this is a story that has been told many times and will not be repeated here.

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Modern “progress” can only be understood as movement toward a fixed point understood as the highest “good.” History as an idea is still phenomenologically determined by the good. But in every present moment one still always has the same problem of my hypothetical individuals adrift on the ocean. One can posit historical motion like progress only by positing end points that are outside the movement, and those points are grasped in thought.21 For example, the beginning point for modern thought is prehistorical or subhuman man in something like the “state of nature.” It was the future end point that the philosophers of history — most notably Hegel and Marx — had to posit philosophically to make it possible to posit distinctive directional movement. That implied a phenomenological understanding of an unchanging human good toward which we have been moving —  self-conscious satisfaction or oneness with our “species being” — even if it has never been completely or perfectly grasped, let alone actualized pending the future termination of history. Despite what anyone might pretend, the possibility of an idea like “history” relies on the possibility that humans can reach a terminus, or end, that is good, beyond which there are no higher goods. And that notion in turn rests on an idea of the good that has to be grasped before the fact, in the present, in some fashion. One posits the telos of history before the fact — but ultimately that always comes from a phenomenological understanding of the good that already exists. This grasping of the good is accomplished before one even attempts to determine what will pass for facts to support historical movement. Without grasping the telos of history in advance, one would have no way of making sense of the actual everyday grist of human existence, which at every moment is adrift on the horizonless sea of present temporality. The end of history as an empirical possibility has to somehow be present in the phenomena as they show themselves in a/any historical present, that is, long before the end. But if that understanding of the good already phenomenologically exists, there is no need for “history” to somehow invent what is already phenomenologically available to thought. History can never do away with the phenomena, and especially the phenomenon of transcendence. If the good already shows itself in the present, why do we need necessary history to grasp what it is or wait for its final actualization to know it? In short, the idea of history never gets us

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away from the necessity of a phenomenological point of departure. But, of course, the notion was always hypothetical and a rhetorical sleight of hand, and this was made explicitly clear by originating authors like Rousseau and Kant. We are always left with starting from the phenomena of the present, standing between our past and future, dialectically interrogating the present as it shows itself in whatever present moment we find ourselves as it emerged from the past that we cannot change: and this is all the more true precisely when we think we can constantly rewrite our past. We always, even in that alleged rewriting, begin from the aspirations and perceptions that get articulated in a present public space. Rarely do those who think they can consciously rewrite the past openly discuss the end of the undertaking.22 This may seem naïve to some to identify that end, but it is philosophically consistent, and it sneaks no premises in the back door to which one is not entitled.23 And it gives priority to the aspirations and perceptions of more than a few; we must give priority to what can be called the everyday citizen perspective. The phenomenological and dialectical approach assumes neither a beginning nor an end to temporal human history. No such thing speaks to us from the phenomena themselves.24 We may be able to proceed dialectically to posit “up” and “down” toward the just, the noble, and the good if they phenomenologically show themselves in the present, but we cannot posit “up” toward an inevitable end to be actualized necessarily in history once and for all. By adopting the dialectical understanding of philosophy, with its necessary phenomenological point of departure, one is forced to reject the idea that political philosophy — philosophy at its most comprehensive — is some subset or branch of pure theoretical philosophy, which in turn is understood as a purely theoretical staring at immediately graspable, atemporal, theoretical entities of one kind or another.25 Quite the contrary, the practical revelation of reality is prior and foundational. Therefore one must simultaneously reject that political philosophy is simply the public or rhetorical face of theoretical philosophy deployed for defensive purposes — for telling lies in public. That would mean that political philosophy merely defends a nonpublic, Epicureanized philosophy understood as a pure theoretical activity that withdraws from the public space. Political philosophy so conceived would have nothing of

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substance to it that was its own; it would dissolve into pure rhetoric and misdirection. In short, political philosophy would be a permutation of constructivism in the service primarily of public misdirection on the part of philosophers who longed to withdraw from public participation and interaction. Following Plato and Cicero, what I am presenting as political phi­ loso­phy makes it an architectonic, proto-philosophy, or first philosophy.26 To see political philosophy as a branch of a prior and autonomous philoso­ phy is to posit philosophy as “theoretical” and hence as either autonomous ontology, cosmology, or, as in the modern variant, epistemology. Phenomenologically one cannot accept that ontology, cosmology, or epistemology can be autonomous starting points. Only if there is such theoretical autonomy could political philosophy be reduced to a branch of philosophy, a branch that primarily does no more than deduce morally and politically applicable conclusions from philosophy’s apodictic, and immediately available, theoretical first prin­ciples.27 For example, in one permutation of this move, political philos­ophy would deduce various things from ontology. Political philosophy must start from the fundamentally phenomenological, shared, practical revelation of reality shared with others in a public space. It is only in such phenomenologically shared space that we can discover our individual selfhood. If that is the necessary point of departure, all purely theoretical undertakings are therefore derivative from some prior practical revelation of reality into which we are always already thrown and alongside and within which we are always already under way in our public and collective doing and making. In other words, things first show themselves precisely as what the Greeks called pragmata,28 not as detached, self-standing entities at which we merely stare. A phenomenologist must go further and reject the epistemological solidity of the theoretical/practical distinction as a primary rather than derivative notion.29 Saying that all thought is always already thrown into a practical revelation of reality with its prior distinctive public space is to say that first philosophy always begins from a specific present “situation,” which always already “shows itself ” in a public fashion and in public speech. This is another way of asserting the priority and primacy of the “phenomena” that show themselves and do not have to be posited or constructed. The phenomena may point to the meta, and I will argue that

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they do. But what “is” immediately available is the present phenomena as articulated and displayed in publicly shared speeches and activities. Their meaning may initially be concealed, but the implications can be unconcealed by public dialectical interrogations. This seems to be Socrates’s primary discovery. In an exceptionally wordy and vaporous fashion, Heidegger returns to a similar notion in his phenomenological, as opposed to the later post-metaphysical, explorations. For Heidegger, all theoretical notions are derivative from prior practical revelations of reality — especially those distinctive revelations of the Greeks from which we can never emancipate ourselves. This makes all thought primarily mediated or dialectical, which means that one never starts from some pure, unsullied theoretical given immediately present to thought, including the existence of a fully transparent self-grounding ego.30 Without an unsullied, immediately present theoretical given at the beginning of thought, there is nothing to be “re-presented” in some allegedly “pure” form of speech. All speech is always public speech that presents itself before the fact in a publicly shared space. Public speech cannot be antiseptically “purified.” It can be dialectically interrogated, and with that, transcendence of the present becomes possible. I will continue to make the point that it was Aristotle who perniciously made it a theoretical given for the West that the locus of truth is statements that eventually strive to become logically antiseptic truths.31 That opened the door to the eventual longing for the autonomy of logic, or linguistic analysis, in one permutation or another, which in some Anglo-American venues eventually dismissed the rest of thought as murky and irrelevant. A phenomenologist must reject the premise that the locus of truth is statements, as, I argue, Plato and Cicero rejected such a notion. The locus of truth is in the phenomena of everyday, shared, social doing and making. What is embedded in the phenomena can be brought out into the open more or less occlusively. Socrates showed that he thought that truth was to be found in the deeds and perceptions of his fellow citizens. This led him in phenomenological fashion to interrogate their views in his novel fashion — his “second sailing,” by which he eschewed direct access to ontological issues, and all forms of causality other than formal causality.32 By his deeds, at least as depicted in the Platonic dialogues, Socrates himself takes those perceptions and speeches as arenas of truth.

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But other of Socrates’s deeds, again as depicted in the Platonic dialogues, seem to come close to transferring truth to the speeches and away from the phenomena. There are places, therefore, where Socrates seems on the way to Aristotle’s transference of truth from phenomena to statements. In this regard, Aristotle represents the full development of a permutation of Socratism in a way Plato does not — in fact, Plato tried to moderate this Socratic move with elements of poiesis and his showing of the centrality of the actions of his politikos, especially in a dialogue like the Statesman in which he removes Socrates as the discussion leader.33 If there is to be a future political philosophy, it will have to position itself beyond both modern logicism and constructivism; it will have to be phenomenological again. As I will argue, as with Plato that phenomenological opening will point toward the need for various forms of “weaving.” Following the phenomenological premises I have briefly sketched, all thought is based ultimately on a foundation that is publicly shared, situated, and in need of dialectical interrogation of what currently shows itself to all in a public space. All of the things that show themselves may not show themselves articulately to everyone all the time; the phenomena may be lurking concealed in the background most of the time. But those phenomena can be dialectically brought to the surface and made articulate. The main point is that even though never totally present, the phenomena do present themselves in a fashion that cannot be dismissed or willed away precisely because they are unavoidably foundational; they are always already there even if inarticulately. Rejecting the primacy of the phenomena will at best only send us on a trip into the nothing, a journey for mystical hermits who do not need speech. At worst, the rejection of the phenomena will land us in the grasp of the groundless Nietzschean will to will and of his “commanders and legislators” who long to rule in an unrepublican fashion, having destroyed the public space where truth can show itself. The Phenomenological World That Shows Itself Let us return to another simple phenomenological example. Phenomenologically, do we not first and foremost grasp the world as a world of discrete things?34 If we ask ourselves the simple question, “What is a thing?,” we will quickly come to see that all things are sensible (aesthesis)

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ensembles somehow held together.35 To begin to see this, hold up any object, let us say, a pencil. Ask an audience what they see — here meaning the sense phenomenon made possible by the eye. The audience will repeatedly say, “I see a pencil.” Keep stressing the word “see.” Eventually someone will catch on and say that they see yellow and red and silver and cylindrical and so on. All one can see are colors and shapes. If we brought the other senses into play to investigate our pencil we would sense the hard of the wood and the soft of the eraser, colors, perhaps redolences, occasionally tastes, and in other arenas, sounds. The senses offer us an ensemble that comes forth and shows itself as a one; in the case of the pencil, a yellow/red, cylindrical/octagonal, hard/soft, smelling of graphite single thing. We grasp the world as a world of things so displayed. It is at this point that Heidegger will object that we do not primarily relate to things in this kind of detached staring, which is a form of theoretical staring. Heidegger would protest that this attitude of staring at detached things that is primary for Socrates and leads to the “what is” questions is itself already derivative. We initially grasp reality as ensembles of things with which we are interested in our doing and making. This is to relate to things as pragmata. The key question, and hence the key phenomenon in need of interrogation, may be why certain things come forward so that we take cognizance of them, while others in the same field or region are not at any given moment present for us at all. Must one not go further back and ask: Why do we focus on some things and ignore others that are in the same field? For that we must concentrate on the prior phenomenon of the horizon of meaning that focuses our attention on certain groups of things. Focusing on individual things ripped out of context is already a theoretically derivative move. Yet at the primary level of common sense, must not one start at the surface as always already given? And that is a surface of an ensemble of individual things that when interrogated in Socratic fashion present themselves as ensembles of qualities, predicates, or attributes? After all, the things that Heidegger presumes to be in some sense prior — like interrogating the “world” (res publica) that makes things show themselves in their being — is, from the perspective of common sense, the derivative theoretical move. Heideggerian phenomena like “worlds” or “regions” are not prior for common sense and hence are not prior phenomenologically. They are in

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fact theoretical categories that though presupposed are not present for anyone in their doing and making. By common sense we here mean “the shared sense of a community that shares a public space and the things that show themselves” therein — and that means substantially show themselves to the senses. Aesthesis is and always remains primary for common sense. In fact, the surface look of things (eide) always remains primary.36 The phenomena first show themselves on the surface through their eidos, or surface “look.” That look determines them as things qua ones that are actually manys. And with only a bit more reflection we see that the ones also sort themselves out into various groups or tribes of things — trees, bushes, plants, dogs, cats, animals, pencils, and so on. Phenomenologically the interesting fact here is “things.” The world of common sense presents itself to us as a world of discrete, individual things. A little reflection will also show that the unity of the qualities, “attributes,” or “predicates” that allow things “to be” things is not made present for us by any one of the senses, but by thought. Yet because of the importance of the surface look of things sight takes precedence. Hence the look (eidos) of a thing also has the quality of a thought (idea), and this is a mysterious association that cannot be made to go away because the senses do not access the unity of the “thingly” nature of the phenomena; that is done by thought. The association in Greek of the very distinct words idea and eidos points to the very mystery at the heart of human understanding. The world presents itself as a multiplicity of things, each and every one of which is a unity of a multiplicity, which then becomes part of a process of sorting out into discrete groups or tribes of things. Reality presents itself “on the surface” as a great plethora of things, but the things sort themselves out into discrete groups or tribes of things. Otherwise we would need a proper noun for every last thing in the world, and this is utterly out of the question phenomenologically given the kind of beings we are who are in need of publicly engaging others in intelli­ gible and efficient speech. We could not live without making sense to each other and doing so efficiently and quickly. We are necessarily social beings who must do (praxis) and make (techne) and speak (logos) to live. Hence we must speak intelligibly, which means speak about phenomena we share with others, and do so in a reasonably efficient fashion. Otherwise, each speech would be endless,

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pointless, and meaningless if all we had was an infinite number of proper names. We must speak but we do not have time for endless chatter that amounts primarily to pointing. The shared phenomenal reality we live in shows that we do in fact get our points across to each other and with time can even come to understand the point of foreign speakers. We have no need, and hence have no real capacity, to speak about phenomena we do not share with others or that we are not trying to share with others. After the fact, we can theoretically argue that the viewing of reality as made up of unities of sensory attributes (qua things) is due to prior innate ideas, transcendent essences that act as causes, mere conventions learned by a tabula rasa and so on — and that has on one level been the history of theoretical philosophy when it attempts to make epistemology autonomous. But these are derivative theoretical discussions that are made possible only because of the prior way in which things always already phenomenologically show themselves publicly. Another element of Heidegger’s problem with pure dialectical Socratism can be added here: we always know what a thing “is” because we know what it is for in our doing and making, which we always do together as social beings. (Once again, phenomenologically every “thing” is, first and foremost, for us a pragmata.) We know what a thing is because we know its use, purpose, or end for us and others. As pragmata, things show themselves as having uses, having ends (teloi); this is part of their being. We do not primarily stare at things; we use them and interact with them. We do not theoretically invent “teleology” after the fact; things initially show themselves teleologically by being useful. The teloi (or, using a totally detached theoretical category, “values”) are not something pasted on to normatively scrubbed things, certainly not pasted on by an autonomous Ego presuming to stand in midair and exercising an act of pure will. The phenomena always have final causes embedded in their very availability for us out in the open. Hence things always already show themselves enmeshed in a nexus of useful and useless, good and bad, just and unjust, holy and profane, beautiful and ugly, and so on. Things show themselves only in light of higher and lower and other qualitative distinctions — this is part of their being. And these distinctions are not the idiosyncratic fantasies of solipsistic individuals. These are not “value” attributes arbitrarily pasted onto some neutral underlying thing. Phenomenologically, there is no

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“naturalist fallacy” that is an invention of derivative, abstract theoretical reason. The very being of things always already shows itself as linked with an end within a res publica. Teleology is not a theoretical conclusion or a mere constructivist invention, and least of all is it a mere pious assertion. It is a phenomenologi­ cal given. One can argue that the basis of this showing is “natural” or “conventional,” but that distinction is also theoretically derivative. First and foremost, phenomenologically things “are” as they always already show themselves in our collective doing, making, and speaking, which is always, already normative. The fact/value problem is simply a derivative theoretical invention, which leads only in the direction of occluding and negating the actual phenomena as they show themselves. If we focus on isolated things or even tribes of things, we are led to the priority of the Socratic “what is” questions, and that sends us off on a distinctive path of philosophical inquiry. If we see that things initially show themselves not as isolated individual things or detachable individual tribes of things with a shared eidos but as things linked in specific regions of concerned behavior, the “what is” questions do not take the primacy they did for Socrates, and all manner of potentially essentialist theoretical conclusions fall away, to be replaced by teleological ones. 37 Ultimately one must find a way phenomenologically to integrate the two lines of inquiry. When we are freed from taking isolated individual things or tribes of things as phenomenologically primary, then we focus instead on discussing what causes ensembles of different things to hold together as phenomena. The answer there is straightforward: a shared public space is determinative. It is what the Greeks called a politeia, and the Romans called it a res publica. In short, we come to see the priority and necessity of the political. In that sense, man is by nature a public or political being, and also a historical being with a past and future. The abolition of shared public spaces would bring the abolition of man. A postpolitical world would be posthistorical and posthuman. But the full meaning of these assertions awaits the interrogation of Cicero’s texts as I proceed in this book. Socrates may have missed the point about phenomena showing up as whole ensembles of things and may have overstressed the philosophical importance of individual things and tribes of things. That sent some of his descendants off dialectically in search of “universals.” But he did not

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miss the importance of the political and of interrogating men’s political and moral perceptions. The only point of interest for us at the moment is that phenomena show themselves publicly and that showing is prior to any theoretical staring at or conjecturing about them from a detached perspective. In the name of Cicero we can assert the priority of the political, or the res publica, and hence the priority of the practical revelation of reality. Political Philosophy as “Weaving” The interrogation of present phenomena will show us that from a dialectical and phenomenological perspective what is always first for thought —  and can never be purified out by any latter efforts that pretend to being autonomous — is our pursuit of the good in our doing and making with others. There is nothing that we do wherein we consciously wish for evil and bad consequences. We may err in our judgments, but all action aims at the good. And as Aristotle made clear, there is always, in every public space, an already constituted hierarchy of goods. For example, some may see honor as the greatest good and desire war at any cost. Some may see comfortable tranquility as the greatest good and desire peace at any cost. The latter may link easily and consistently with hedonism and see pleasure as the highest good. Others may see care for the soul as higher, and some of those may pursue goods available only in the next life. As one ranks the goods, one sees there are the goods associated with thought, the goods that are social and require the opinions of others, like honor and wealth, and the goods associated with the senses. Even the goods of the senses can be ranked, as Aristotle also made clear. In his calculus, those goods not associated with prior pains are higher than those that always imply prior pain.38 Hence what we call the aesthetic pleasures, those of the fine arts associated with the eyes and ears, are higher than the pleasures associated with taste, smell, and touch, which imply prior pain. Some of the most intense pleasures have the shortest duration and are most clearly associated with prior, and future, pain. So some calculus linking relation to pain, intensity, and duration is required. From all of this comes a ranking of goods that includes thought, social goods like honor, the pleasures of music and art, the pleasures of food and wine, and sexual pleasure and the other pleasures of touch.39

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The main point is that all action always aims at the good, and one is always already thrown into a shared public space in which the various goods are always already ranked in some initially inarticulate fashion. Yet we can interrogate this pregiven hierarchy of goods and make it articulate in a public space. We can never simply emancipate ourselves from the hierarchy of goods of our res publica, or from the fact that life itself forces upon each of us a hierarchical ranking if we are to live — and our distinctive, genetic natures have something to do with this. Hence there is a phenomenological priority to the existential questions, “How shall I live?” and “What is the best life?” No one ever avoids answers to these questions. The issue concerns how articulate is our understanding of our hierarchical ranking of goods, and how clear are we about the quality of that ranking and how it links up with the happiness of a life from beginning to end. As we are never born in isolation, the first ethical questions regarding the individual good can never be taken in isolation from the question, “How shall we live together?” Put in more traditional terms, there is a priority in all questioning given to “What is the best life?” and “What is the best regime?” And humans always already have opinions about these issues; they are opinions that may be vague and occluded and contradictory, but they can by interrogation be brought into the light of day. All questioning, even in logic and the natural sciences, presupposes answers to the phenomenologically prior political and moral questions. This phenome­ nological priority cannot be theoretically purged. We are in all questioning determined by the priority of the good. This posits the phenomenological priority of ethics and political science in all thematic questioning and all theoretical undertakings — prior, that is, to even ontology and cosmology or logic and epistemology.40 In a way, this was the basis of Socrates’s response to the pre-Socratics, who took the cosmological or ontological questions as prior.41 Only a being that did not have to act, and act together with others, and do so using speech, could transcend the priority of ethics and political science. No one can act without a conception of the good, more or less articulately and consciously held and shared with others. Here is where Socratic questioning is at its most central and unavoidable, in articulating the underlying notion of the good shared by fellow travelers.42 But one cannot seriously answer the “how shall” questions without reflections upon the nature of man (i.e., the nature of psyche, or anima,

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that which moves or animates man to be a distinctive historical being with speech among so many other nonhistorical beings), hence a logos of the psyche is needed, or psychology. On this level, and in this sense, psychology is the queen of at least the sciences of human nature.43 Likewise, we cannot know the nature of a part, like human nature, without asking how human nature fits into the larger constitution of the whole, which is to say, without questioning regarding cosmology or ontology — and, as I will argue, ontology is the more derivative undertaking of the two and has the most prior theoretical preconceptions. Understanding that psychology precedes cosmology, and that psychology is a study of the psyche, and eventually understanding that psychology is about the psyche thinking about itself, we see that cosmology must include a discussion of the place of mind in the whole that is the natural world. And eventually, and this is the most derivative of the necessary primary phenomenological questions, we get to epistemology, the question “How do you know?” It is only after a period of questioning surrounding the prior four primary questions that thought, after having become self-reflexive, starts to think about itself thinking and the very ground of its own activity. In due course it is the case that thought has to pass through a moment of skepticism about the very possibility of its own activity. Then it reflects upon the nature of good versus bad thinking. My point here is that epistemology is a phenomenologically derivative activity, utterly incapable of autonomy. And this is especially true of logic, which is ultimately, at best, an undertaking subsidiary to epistemology. Beyond these five fundamental questions, all other forms of study or questioning descend derivatively from these five basic forms of questioning that emerge directly from the way the phenomena show themselves given the kinds of historical beings we are. This questioning has to be undertaken as a whole since none of the parts can be made autonomous and all of them presuppose how the phenomena show themselves always already in some public space.44 None of the five fundamental areas of questioning can be abstracted from the whole of questioning to become autonomous — certainly not as autonomous ontology, cosmology, epistemology, and especially not as logic, which is doubly derivative from epistemological questioning. This need for the parts to be fashioned into a whole, even if ethics, political science, and the questions regarding the good have phenomenological

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priority, is what leads to political philosophy understood as the architectonic undertaking qua first philosophy. It is architectonic, phenomenological, and dialectical political philosophy as first philosophy that “weaves” this questioning into a consistent whole and presents it in a persuasive, holistic, public form of speech. When publicly deployed, a political philosophy will have transformative ramifications. Downstream from the deployment of any genuine political philosophy the phenomena will be transformed in some fashion, because understanding and acting is transformed, albeit never completely. As we perceive ourselves and our world differently, we act differently. As we act differently we change the concrete natural/physical and political/ ethical environment for future phenomenological reflections.45 The process is endless but never totally occlusive of what is an underlying phenomenological articulation of things that in many respects does not change.46 As much as dialectical questioning and philosophical weaving opens new spaces, it is always simultaneously occlusive of something else that is bypassed or taken off the table for interrogation. This is what requires ongoing dialectical/phenomenological interrogation. Ongoing unconcealing of what remains inarticulate, and thus concealed, can never end, for the necessary process of reflection becomes part of the process of concealing itself, which occasions future reflection and questioning. And while this language undoubtedly sounds Heideggerian, one can get at this reality far more clearly from the perspective of Socrates, Plato, and Cicero. The truth of architectonic political philosophy is its comprehensiveness, internal consistency, closeness to the phenomena, and ultimately public persuasiveness.47 That means the truth of a political philosophy is its faithfulness in depicting the phenomena for all in a public space. Put still another way, the political philosopher assumes the status of primus inter pares among fellow citizens who engage in discussion in a res publica. Architectonic political philosophy does not long to retreat from the res publica to an Epicurean garden. It is in this sense, at the deepest level, that genuine political philosophy and republicanism are intimately linked. The phenomenological political philosopher is not a lordly “legislator and commander” in some Nietzschean authoritarian fashion. And that is precisely what is implied in contemporary constructivist political theory, which by its actions refuses the stance of equal citizen — and even destroys the distinction between citizen and subject. It is political philosophy as I

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have sketched it that is intrinsically republican in character, starting from and keeping open a public space, while by its very questioning projecting forward future spaces. By comparison, constructivist theory is intrinsically despotic, attempting to impose its will on future generations and closing the possibility of future spaces freely opening themselves, to be kept open by unpredictable future discussions that should not be theoreti­ cally shut down. Political philosophy must use the everyday speech of the world it occupies and respect everyday meanings, and not misuse and distort them. Political philosophy is a form of speech that is neither autonomous, representational logos nor the muthos of pure groundless will and imagination (a possibility that came into being only as the “other” of an allegedly pure, autonomous, representational logos). Political philosophy is an undertaking and a form of speech that is a publicly persuasive muthologein, a term I have taken from the Platonic dialogues.48 Political philosophy as I am using the term is an architectonic, holistic, phenomenological, dialectical undertaking. It is in this sense that Cicero is a quintessential political philosopher who weaves together a whole, publicly and in Latin, for his time. Perhaps Cicero did not possess the poetic genius of Plato — yet he was famed as a lawyer and an orator for his public persuasiveness. Though less poetic, Cicero may thematically grasp the importance of the idea of a “public space” in all of its philosophical importance better than Plato precisely because of his Latin/Roman origins. Cicero gives us an example of what can always be done, including in our time, in weaving a whole of the necessary parts of thought using public speech within a specific historical situation within a specific public space. The need is universal; the actual performance of the need will not be. Great as Cicero and his beloved Plato were, for our own time we will have to rely upon ourselves. But first we need to be clear about what is needed. And for that we turn to an exploration and recovery of the noble thinking of Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Three

Who Was Cicero? All the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero. — John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787), preface

Cicero and Republicanism Cicero was an intellectually precocious youngster. As a young man he studied philosophy and literature and even traveled to Athens for instruction. Especially in his last years he returned to the life of ideas full-time and produced his philosophical corpus. Yet he also lived a life of civic engagement. That is a rare combination. Throughout his life, but especially at the end, Cicero was a caring and concerned philosophic statesman trying to offer hope to future generations. His philosophic works were his legacy to a hoped-for future republic — he knew his own republic was irretrievably lost. Cicero wrote his most straightforwardly philosophical works in seclusion in his last years, hiding and even on the run, never staying anywhere 65

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for long. Those works became standards for the philosophic tradition for almost two millennia. Cicero became the intellectual darling of the early Church, an honored member of the pantheon of Western greats, studied by most schoolchildren in the early American republic — and right down to World War II in many places. But in our time he has become for most a derivative, second-rate thinker and dismissed as, at best, an eloquent orator and stylist. And the cruelest fate of all, Cicero is finally ignored as irrelevant except for the marginal historical notice that cannot be denied by any casual student of history.1 There is almost no comparable example of an author who was once considered so great by so many for so long who has fallen so far.2 What accounts for Cicero’s fall from grace? I will argue that his decline to an almost irrelevant footnote says more about us as early postmoderns than it says about Cicero as a thinker. The exploration that follows is an attempt to show the nature of his mode of writing, the import of his thematic discussions, and the essential issues that his work confronts, and the ways in which those fundamental issues can never be resolved once and for all, and they therefore will always return. Cicero has not been eclipsed as an author because we have progressed so far beyond him, but because we have lost an understanding that he possessed and thus do not see what is great in one of history’s most reserved, dignified, and noble authors. It is our narrowness that denies us access to Cicero. It is we who are diminished by the constricted horizon within which we operate. Unlike Cicero, we are the heirs not just of classical antiquity but of Christianity and also of modern commercial republicanism and modern technology and science.3 None of these influences can be willed away or even just forgotten by changing the subject. But the older historical layers, while still in their own way ruling, have increasingly been forgotten and occluded, and for that reason their influence remains all the stronger. We are ruled all the more surely by those influences that remain concealed. Our liberation is to be found in bringing them back into the light of day. Cicero’s specific situation was that he lived among a people who, during the high days of the Roman Republic, banned philosophers from the city of Rome and were generally even more skeptical of the moral and political ramifications of philosophy than the Aristophanes of the Clouds

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or the Athenians who put Socrates to death. By Cicero’s time the older situation had changed, but skepticism about philosophy remained. After Cicero, that situation was transformed dramatically in the Christian West, and for this his influence was significant.4 Like many of the Roman leisured classes, Cicero knew the works of the classical Greek philosophers and of the postclassical schools of thought, from the Stoics and Epicureans to what were called the New and Old Academies, and also many more school philosophies that had proliferated. In Cicero’s time, in the age of the decay of Hellenism, philosophy was no longer scorned as it was by writers such as Cato the Elder and the earlier Republic, but it was still associated with dilettantish ne’erdo-wells. Part of Cicero’s task was to present philosophy in a Roman context, in a fashion that could be seen as desirable and necessary by everyday Romans and by the everyday citizens who would come after him. To do that he had to co-opt what was already publicly extant and weave it together into a consistent whole, but almost always only after his, at times significant, quiet emendations to the available material. On the basis of the “weaving” that eventuated, Cicero tried to project a possible, novel republican future. In that regard and others, our need is similar. We need to recover a public respect for architectonic philosophy beyond its fragmented senescence and thus open a republican future. Cicero wrote during the moment of the final overthrow of the Roman Republic. At the end of his life those bent on avenging Caesar’s death were in control and incorrectly saw Cicero as one of the actively involved participants behind the deed of Brutus and his co-conspirators.5 That Cicero opposed Caesar goes without saying, and it was unfortunately predictable that Caesar’s supporters would eventually spread their wrath to him. Most of Cicero’s “philosophical” works were written in the last years of his life — several courageously addressed to Brutus — after Cicero was alienated from actual political participation, constantly on the move, and well aware that his days were numbered. Soon he would be run to ground and assassinated. This is the situation in which Cicero wrote as a political philosopher: the declining and decaying days of Hellenism, in philosophically skeptical Rome, when the Roman Republic could not be retrieved and his own days were numbered. Cicero clearly wrote for the future, a future he knew perfectly well he would not occupy except through the dissemination and

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immortality of his works. He knew his published works were untimely; he was a prism between past and future. That is always the status of genu­ ine political philosophy. At the same time, Cicero tried to recover what was best in the past, especially the past of Socratic and Platonic thought correctly understood, but also the Roman past that he tried to present as more rational than the actual reality. Cicero lovingly reinterpreted his patrimony as a path toward the future. Through Cicero we become acutely aware of the extent to which thought can have an effect on the future, if properly deployed, while also binding that future together with the past. This is the relationship to temporality that I am arguing is the necessary temporality of political philosophy at any time: to stand in the present, understand both the formative influences and limits imposed by the past, and then open possible futures from out of a specific situation. This requires a distinctive weaving together of tradition and reason.6 Cicero’s situation helps explain his mode of writing. Obviously he had to be both publicly convincing and circumspect. But his mode of writing is also informed by the very architectonic necessity that political philosophy begin from common perceptions and publicly disseminated speeches and writings. Yet, in his philosophical works Cicero frequently declines to speak in his own name; at times he purposely tries to hide his deepest understandings and says so explicitly. Thus in most of his philosophical works, Cicero has others present the various fundamental alternatives available in his time, or he adopts the mask and persona of one of the different positions he is interrogating. For example, in a work such as De Finibus, Cicero adopts the persona of a Stoic in order to criticize Epicureanism. But he has the Stoic position criticized in turn from a different perspective. In this dialectical fashion the intellectual cosmos of Cicero’s time is brought into the light for public inspection, and Cicero is given the opportunity dialectically to present these competing positions, in everyday Latin speech, for others to inspect. Like any good lawyer, and Cicero was that too, he sets up his textual witnesses in prearranged ways. Cicero shows the advantages and limitations of the various positions extant in his time — and none should be accepted as the last word. In this dialectical fashion, he tries to rise to a higher and more comprehensive position, without trying to construct that position ex nihilo, or to arrive at it directly in some unmediated “inspired” fashion.

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As is true of our time, Cicero’s was a moment of the clash of multiple sectarian school philosophies. It was a clash that threatened to bring down public contempt on philosophy itself. Cicero strove for a unified vision that could be made publicly persuasive and thereby publicly save philosophy as the architectonic science. That in doing so he kept some of his cards close to his chest should not be surprising. Cicero attempts to make philosophy at its most comprehensive a public phenomenon available in everyday public speech. He puts the questioning and dialectical attitude in place, yet eventually he ends up questioning the centrality of dialectic as it had developed as a model for some of the school philosophies of the day.7 He demonstrates the fundamental questions that cannot be made to go away. He shows how every ethical and political position has cosmological presuppositions and how every cosmology (and by extension, every ontology) has moral and political presuppositions and implications. The phenomenological and dialectical quality of Cicero’s philosophi­ cal presentation represents an understanding of the nature of philosophy at its highest, not just as a sign of his derivative understanding, his simple skepticism, or mere eclecticism. Those are the customary dismissive judgments on the thought of Cicero. Very much to the contrary, there is a unique positive teaching, but one has to work to bring it to show itself completely. This is especially true because we have become alienated from the deepest understanding that animated Cicero’s noble form of writing. A philosophy that cannot make itself publicly persuasive can have no enduring, republican effect. In our time, the danger is precisely the private and increasingly technical nature of what passes for higher thought, which talks primarily to a select few, but nonetheless has furtive designs on ruling in a fashion that is in no way republican. For that we can thank not only modern political philosophy in general but primarily Nietzsche’s descendants, who have presumed to be the self-appointed “commanders and legislators” Nietzsche publicly espoused. Cicero opposed all the philosophical positions of his time that led away from the public space, the res publica, especially those that openly advised a withdrawal into private Epicurean gardens — the Roman equivalent, if more dignified, of the contemporary withdrawal into private consumption and isolated idiosyncratic, hedonistic individualism. Cicero opposed this retreat from the public space at the deepest level not only because it drew away the brightest and best from public engagement,

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which it did, but, as we will see, because it alienated philosophy itself from its only true foundations, which is to say, phenomenological foundations. Truth first and foremost presents itself in a public space for all to see, “out in the open.” That public space needs to be kept open. When he is finished, Cicero quietly weaves together ethics, political science, psychology, ontology/cosmology, and epistemology — along with an explicit confrontation with natural theology and even logic. He weaves together these parts of thinking, which might long for autonomy, into a whole that can be presented persuasively in public, using public speech.8 I have and will continue to argue that this is of the very essence of true architectonic political philosophy understood as proto- or first philosophy. It is this understanding that we need to recover from Cicero, as he attempted to recover it from Plato.9 Cicero also presents the outlines of a once and future republic that he knew was no longer possible for contemporary Romans. Cicero’s republic is neither a recapitulation of Roman experience nor a mere ideological apology for the past or his present Rome. Yet Cicero drew on the Roman, and Greek, past to get a running start toward the future. In similar fashion, Cicero can help us to reflect on the genuine prerequisites for a truly postmodern republican future, a future that can save what is best from the tradition of modern republicanism while saving us from its increasingly clear vices. Cicero and His Rome Rome started its history as a small agrarian city-state beleaguered and constantly at war with the city-states around it and, by comparison with the Greek world of the time, was intellectually provincial and backward.10 It was ruled initially by a probably Etruscan monarchy that traced its roots back to the most likely mythical king Romulus. Long after the fact, the Romans traced their founding, depending on the author one consults, to somewhere in the vicinity of the years 753–751 BC. Rome remained a besieged and fairly small monarchy for roughly 240 years until the son of a particularly unscrupulous king, from the ruling family Tarquinius, brought down contempt on the very name of kingship. Thereafter, every effort was made to keep any individual from ever

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again assuming royal powers or even getting to the point of having significant individual influence. That became Rome’s central republican constitutional instinct. At a significant historical remove, after the fall of the Republic, even Octavian (Caesar Augustus) eschewed the name “king” and invented other titles for himself. When the monarchy was overthrown in 510 BC, an aristocratic republic was formed and was ruled by a hereditary senate. The Senate was dominated for more than 200 years by no more than twenty or so main family lines. Over time the dual class structure of plebeians and patricians eventually spawned a third, equites, equestrians or “knights.” This class was initially composed of soldiers who could afford their own horse; it expanded by Cicero’s time to include a rural gentry, businessmen, largescale commercial traders, and others. In the later history of Rome, those born to this class could rise to membership in the Senate by holding vari­ ous elective political positions. At one time this was only true for those who rose to be elected a consul, but in time other magistracies qualified one for membership in the Senate, which was the political center in the Republic until its declining years. Eventually the plebs, who initially were rural small farmers or farmworkers, expanded to include shopkeepers, artisans, small landholders, and landless workers. With urbanization this class came to include the unemployed urban masses, who became the clients of the manipulative aspirations of many unscrupulous aristocratic politicians. At the bottom of the class ladder were always the slaves, who were primarily, at least at first, captives or debtors. This class tended not only to undermine the landless working-class component of the plebs, but some actually were better positioned in Roman society. In principle many would work for the wealthy, and those who were part of the house staff, especially in the cities, usually lived better than the unemployed urban plebs. Freed slaves, and manumission happened with some regularity, could become citizens. Freed slaves usually remained in the employ of their former masters to avoid falling to the bottom of the plebian class. Some tended to be better educated than the plebs and their children had easier access to possible equestrian status. It was not as extensive as in modern societies, but there was class mobility at Rome, both upward and downward. Cicero was from the equestrian class, privileged but still looked down on socially. He was a novus homo, “new man,” one who was always

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held at arm’s length by the old, hereditary patricians of the Senate. He carved out his place through intellect and oratorical skills but was never actually accepted into the club. The real old-school boys were always skeptical and suspicious of him. In roughly 493 BC the plebs withheld their labor and withdrew to the hills surrounding Rome. The patricians were forced to grant them a major political concession in the form of ten tribunes, whom the plebs were allowed to elect to protect their interests. They came to have their own representative body, the Concilium Plebis, “General Assembly,” which was largely dominated by the tribunes. The power of this body was limited because discussion or debate was not allowed; all members could do was vote, after hearing others, including senators, consuls, magistrates, and tribunes, proclaim before them. Most legislation had to be passed by the General Assembly. Under the circumstances, Roman politics required significant skills in oratory to persuade/manipulate the plebs and the General Assembly, but it was also required in the Senate. Over time there evolved other assemblies: a Military Assembly, a Tribal/Clan Assembly, and a Comitia Curiata, or “Ward Assembly.” But they had less authority, although by threat of force the Military Assembly could make itself heard. Force was never far from the surface in the Roman system of checks and balances, such as it was. The Senate as a body, or members individually, could propose legislation, as could the tribunes and the magistrates, and thereby convene meetings of the other assemblies. To vote one had to come to Rome, which as the empire expanded caused problems and disproportionately empowered the increasingly unemployed urban masses, which demanded everything from free corn and services to redistributed land and wealth. The same claims eventually were made in the name of returning members of the legions. The magistracies, roughly comparable to the modern president’s cabi­ net secretaries, evolved over time and their number fluctuated. By Cicero’s time there were twenty quaestors, who dealt with taxing and financial payments and were more or less treasurers, many of whom were sent to the various provinces to oversee affairs; Cicero went as quaestor to Sicily early in his political career.11 There were four aediles who dealt with administering and maintaining temples and public buildings and also the public games, all at their own expense. Individuals sought these financially draining positions to move up the ladder of the cursus honorum,

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“honors race,” of magistracies to get to consul and, as new men, then to the Senate. After a year as consul one was usually given administration of a province, and this is how he recouped his personal finances from the honors race if he was not already wealthy. It was anticipated that one would rule the provinces for his own personal benefit. Toward the top of the hierarchy of magistrates there were eight praetors, or law officers and in some respects judges. Then there were the pontiffs, who dealt with religion, with a pontifex maximus (Caesar held this position) as leader, and censors, who decided who had citizenship, who could vote in what assembly, and who was proper for a seat in the Senate. These censors were usually former consuls, such as proconsuls who as the empire grew took on administrative duties in the provinces. At the top of the executive branch were two consuls, who held office together for a oneyear term. In the rare circumstance of emergency, one person could be voted dictator, with total power for a designated period. Any consul, magistrate, or tribune could not only offer but also veto a piece of legislation. The only recourse was riot, mutiny, the use of urban thugs, or the threat of military force. It is amazing that anything got done and that civil wars did not break out earlier in Rome’s history. Rome, through the years of the Republic, had no standing army,12 no police force, and no regular civil service. Even if legislation was passed, it was difficult to administer and enforce it. New legislation was constantly overturning earlier legislation. To say that the situation was fluid would be a significant understatement. What we have is the picture of a complexity of government that seemed to have as its primary end merely the negation of individual monarchical power rather than decent administration or long-term stability of the laws. But what this eventually led to was chaos. As Rome consolidated the Apennine Peninsula and expanded its empire, this jury-rigged apparatus became incapable of administering a far-flung empire, or even the city of Rome, which alone eventually swelled to well over a million in population. It was not too much formal constitutional executive power in the government, especially the consular heads of the executive branch, but too little that eventually brought down the Republic and required turns to extraconstitutional authority and eventually despotism. The lack of energetic, properly constituted, long-standing executive authority with a regular administrative branch frequently led to the need for extraconstitutional action just to get things done. The almost

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necessary moves to extraconstitutional means led to the actors being constantly at personal risk and hence to the extraordinary picture of cowboy and vigilante politics, complete with assassinations, exile, proscriptions, or confiscation of all property, bribes, riots, competing gangs of street thugs, and other untoward things. Roman politics may have been well suited to the imperial expansion of the early Republic and the creation of wealth through pillage and plunder, as Machiavelli and Montesquieu argued, but it was not well suited to efficient long-term administration. And this lacking stability and administrative insufficiency is something upon which the American Founders focused. This is the world into which Cicero was born in 106 BC. By that time, an initially rural and fundamentally agrarian society had already become a wealthy urban society with a dependent urban lower class that demanded to be taken into account. Urbanization and expansion of the empire accelerated in Cicero’s lifetime. The urban masses needed leadership and the tribunes became their largely unchecked leaders. The office of tribune was usually filled by well-to-do citizens who were not members of the Senate but wished to become members. The tribunes would frequently manipulate the assemblies and the urban masses for their own career purposes. Their efforts at redistributing wealth were not primarily undertaken from idealistic motives. The Senate, increasingly emasculated, eventually limited itself to various attempts to negate the authority of almost everyone in the regime, but it especially targeted the tribunes. This opened the door to a politics of civil war, which was in reality unceasing from about the time of the reforming Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, tribune in 133 BC, until Caesar seized power as dictator in 48 BC. Unfortunately, reform was almost impossible because the Senate was hidebound and its old-school patricians simply blind to the need to change anything, even for their own self-interest. Hence what passed for reform was almost always launched and resolved by the sword, and then repeatedly taken back when the times and circumstances changed. There were three fundamental issues that were never resolved and simply kept getting worse: (1) the issue of land for retired soldiers, (2) citizenship first for the “Allies” from Italy and then the rest of the empire, and (3) the demands for redistribution of wealth by the ever-expanding number of unemployed individuals flocking to the city of Rome. Unscrupulous

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politicians were more than willing to fan the flames of class warfare for their own purposes and personal glory. Cicero was born into a world with a “constitution” without enough power to actually do anything in the way of consistent governing, let alone reform. This government was led by a conservative, to the point of sclerotic and petrified, Senate, with increasing urbanization together with the influx of staggering wealth that exacerbated the decline of traditional moral restraints. It was a smoldering situation. Rome’s prescriptive, ancestrally derived constitution lacked the guiding hand of self-consciously applied reason and was simultaneously impervious to it. Reform became impossible. Eventually, Cicero would philosophically reflect on the necessary relation between reason and tradition. Rome never found its way to the proper balance. It is a balance every republic must construct. Not just baubles but foreign influences poured into the city of Rome, which expanded in a helter-skelter fashion. The tough, virtuous, to some extent Spartan early Roman Republic with its moral homogeneity began to unravel. Many of the “brightest and best” withdrew from public participation into private hedonism. The vacuum was filled by unscrupulous ambition and self-interested manipulative calls for redistribution of wealth. At the same time, the educational gates were broken down, not only to all the school philosophies of the day but also to foreign religions and religious practices, and increasingly showy public displays of consumption together with amusement and entertainment that was not just vulgar but entirely over the top. The urban Roman masses wanted bread and circuses and the hedonistic young of the wealthy classes concurred and obliged. New men, including Cicero, came to the forefront. The old patrician ruling class lost control but did not understand what was happening and would not reform. As executive magistracies expanded, which gave access to the Senate for the new men who held them, the Senate expanded in size and lost its cohesion, and as a result lost its centrality in the constitutional order, which then required greater and greater, and more unified, executive energy. But the constitution was set up precisely to stifle monarchical executive power. The republican sentiment of antimonarchy ran deep, but it unfortunately led eventually to despotism, an ever-recurrent republican danger.

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The stage was set for various ambitious “revolutionaries” who all manipulated the urban masses and had different ends in mind (few of them idealistic), starting with Marius and proceeding through Catiline and Clodius to Caesar and Antony. All of them became open antagonists for Cicero, albeit Caesar, six years his junior, respected Cicero personally more than some of the others. For example, Caesar pardoned Cicero for having followed Pompey. Had Caesar lived, undoubtedly Cicero would have too. Caesar in many ways was a principled revolutionary who believed the encrusted, reactionary Senate could no longer rule the expanding empire, and he was right. Cicero saw the same conservative obstinacy in the Senate but attempted to get to evolutionary reforms through persuasion. Caesar always intended revolutionary reform. The revolutionary variety of reform is never republican in nature, as is shown by everyone from Caesar to Robespierre — and by the resultant outcomes. Cicero was stuck between the revolutionaries and a fossilized reactionary Senate that would change nothing. With reason and speech but no army, Cicero had almost no chance to win, but he tried bravely and mightily throughout his life, and on several occasions almost pulled off the miraculous anyway. Chance occurrences sealed his fate, and he paid the ultimate price in the defense of republican liberty and the rule of law. Cicero was born in the provincial town of Arpinum. At the time of his birth he was one of roughly 400,000 citizens in an empire of more than 2 million and growing. So although not of the highest class, Cicero’s was still a very fortunate patrimony. He was Volscian and not a native Roman. Yet he came to have the commitment to Rome of a passionate immigrant desiring assimilation. His family were local landowners and farmers but also fullers — in effect, the laundry business — not the most socially acceptable of businesses. The family was involved in local politics but not at the national level. They had local clients and a few patrons at Rome who helped with Cicero’s early education. After he went to Rome, Cicero kept his provincial roots and social ties out of the picture as much as possible and rarely spoke of them. The three names of a Roman citizen signified different things. Cicero was Marcus Tullius Cicero. The first name, or praenomen, was the personal name, and first-born sons almost always took the name of their father so that it could be passed down generation to generation. There were in fact incredibly few different first names, which as a result were repeated

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throughout the society. The second name, or nomen, was the family name. Cicero, in one argument, could trace his name to a very ancient family, Tulia. Whether that was true or not remains unclear. The third name, or cognomen, was the personal surname. Cicero meant literally “chickpea,” and when he went to Rome there were suggestions that he change it to something more dignified. He refused, claiming he intended to make the name famous. He succeeded. Occasionally there would be a fourth name, which would celebrate military successes, as in the designation “Africanus” that the famous Scipios gained for winning in Africa against the Carthaginians. Cicero held a few military commands, but his efforts were workmanlike, not so heroic, hence he was stuck at three names. That Cicero was an intellectual child prodigy was recognized by everyone in his early schooling. He was trained in reading, writing, and basic arithmetic and then, as was the custom, in rhetoric and literature. After that initial education he went on to what amounted to finishing school in Rome and studied with various individual mentors, as was the practice for upper-class educations. Although Greek was still seen by some hidebound Romans as undermining morals, nevertheless Cicero was educated in the Greek classics in philosophy, literature, and rhetoric. At sixteen Cicero reached his majority and he, along with his contemporary Pompey, was given a position on the staff of the general Strabo in the so-called War of the Allies. To end this war, in 90 BC, the Senate finally relented and gave citizenship to the “Allies” on the Italian peninsula.13 Thereafter, Cicero laid low, studying during the civil war of 88–82 BC, and then began his legal career in 81 BC during the dictatorship of Sulla, the first in a very long time to assume the title “dictator,” which had gone dormant for generations. It is his legal career that made Cicero famous and opened the door for his political career. Roman jurists were not allowed to take payments, but successful clients usually repaid their counsel with large bequests, and Cicero became wealthy during this period, eventually building a house on the fashionable Palatine Hill and several country homes. After a series of legal successes, and for reasons that remain unclear, Cicero took time off for more than a year around 78 BC and toured Greece and Asia Minor, studying with various philosophers and rhetoricians. In 75 BC Cicero was quaestor and went to administer Sicily. In 69 BC he was elected aedile. Then in 66 BC he was elected praetor. Having

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worked his way up the honors race, Cicero became eligible for election as consul, which occurred in 63 BC at the age of forty-three. This represented the peak of Cicero’s political career, as he took the courageous lead in putting down the revolutionary authoritarian aspirations of the unscrupulous Catiline. Unfortunately, aspirations denied to even the unscrupulous almost always led to campaigns for revenge in Roman politics. Personal revenge was frequently more important than principle in the political squabbles of the day. Cicero’s courageous republican stand against Catiline gained him an army of enemies who hounded him for the rest of his career until his assassination in 43 BC by the agents of Marc Antony. Political chaos continued after Cicero’s death until 31 BC, when Caesar’s adopted son (actually his grandnephew by relation), Octavian, finally defeated Antony. In 27 BC Octavian had himself declared the “Augustus” and ruled the new imperial empire until his death in 14 AD. Augustus’s ascension in 27 BC is frequently given as the end date for the Republic, but it had existed in name only since at least 48 BC, when Caesar was given a ten-year dictatorship by the Senate. From his consulship until his death, Cicero did everything a statesman could do to save the Republic through a policy of trying to balance the interests of the classes together with attempts to appease and divide the members of the First Triumvirate (Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey) and to heal the divisions that arose after Caesar’s assassination. Cicero came very close to succeeding on several occasions. But he was always saddled with the intransigence of the Senate, which was willing to make few concessions to reform; in this regard, his contemporary Cato, who was considered a great defender of the Republic, actually proved to be one of its worst enemies. Hidebound and ineffectual at every turn, Cato finally admitted defeat and committed suicide in 46 BC. There are few periods of ancient history that are better recorded and about which we have more information, and more diverse views, than the period during which the Roman Republic finally collapsed and the Empire came into being. It is an unrivaled window on the human soul in its lowest depths and most soaring heights. The end for the Republic had begun in earnest following the civil war of 88–82 BC when Sulla eventually broke the taboo on troops entering within the walls of Rome. When Sulla prepared to march on Mithridates, king in the area of what is now Turkey, the revolutionary Marius

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moved into Rome and created havoc in the name of the popularis cause. Sulla defeated Mithridates and the Roman troops sent after him by Marius, who had seized power. In 82 BC Sulla reentered Rome and disposed of the interim popularis regime. He ruled as dictator, with proscription lists and a slaughter count that matched that of Marius. As dictator, Sulla tried to restore the traditional power of the Senate, especially against the tribunes and thereby enraged the populares, revolutionary supporters of the urban poor. This was the incubator for the plans for revenge, especially those of Catiline. Cicero, then twenty-four, approved of restoring the traditional constitution, as Sulla did, but he despised the brutal unconstitutional acts that accompanied the restoration. Caesar was eighteen, and the actions of Sulla confirmed him as a revolutionary. Caesar was from an old patrician family that had become poor and lived in the working-class section of Rome. His aunt was married to Marius. During Sulla’s restoration, Caesar was tarred with the brush aimed at Marius, but he escaped Sulla’s cleansing unharmed. Caesar was nothing if he was not very lucky throughout his life. The patrician Senate had been decimated by Marius, and it is into that vacuum that Cicero eventually moved. Both Caesar and Cicero were ill-disposed to the conservative old aristocracy, for both personal and intellectual reasons. But in this regard Caesar had no patience whatsoever. Cicero wanted a return to the rule of law; Caesar wanted a new regime. Cicero lay low, studying philosophy. Caesar began to plan his ascension through a military career. Sulla added members to the Senate from among new men. He limited the powers of the tribunes, taking away their right to propose legislation, and precluded them from holding any other office. Hence a tri­bune­s­hip could no longer be used as a stepping-stone to becoming a consul, and from there entering the Senate. Sulla added age limits for offices and made the office of quaestor an opening to the Senate. Sulla died in 78 BC, and his reforms began to dissolve and be overturned. During this period, one of Sulla’s lieutenants, Crassus, began to unscrupulously buy lands on the cheap, lands that had been proscribed by Sulla, and Crassus became fabulously wealthy. He became the money man for everyone from Caesar and Pompey to Catiline and Clodius, the latter two egged on by Caesar from afar as his proxies in Rome while he pursued military victories. During this period, Pompey was winning battles for Rome and gaining a name, and Crassus was involved in defeating

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the slave revolt led by Spartacus. Pompey and Crassus became co-consuls in 70 BC. Crassus began to subsidize the radical Catiline, who was bent on getting revenge for the death of Marius and reversing the reforms of Sulla. Catiline tried twice to become consul and failed because of Cicero’s opposition. Eventually he attempted to assassinate Cicero, and when he failed, he withdrew to raise an army to take control of Rome. Behind the scenes, supporting Catiline, were always Caesar and Crassus. Cicero assiduously guarded himself throughout this period, and ironically one of his bodyguards was the next popularis leader, Publius Clodius Pulcher. Cicero put down the conspiracy of Catiline in a definitive fashion and was proclaimed pater patriae, “father of his country,” as he left the Senate and Forum for his home. This was by his own admission the high point of his political life. But revenge for the downfall of Catiline was already brewing, and it would lead to Cicero’s proscription and the burning of his homes, bankruptcy, and exile in 58–57 BC. In 58 BC, Clodius, by this time an anti-Cicero proxy of the First Triumvirate, became a tribune, and the next wave of trouble began as he set out to avenge Catiline. Clodius, like Catiline, was a young aristocrat who had run through his fortune. They both had financial debts to settle and their initial entry into politics was for a less than high-minded reason, namely, the resolution of their debts and the desire to resume their profligate lifestyles. Both Catiline and Clodius resented the old patrician order for both retaining its wealth and pillorying them for a lack of traditional morals. They fell in line with the popularis calls for land reform, free corn, and the abolition of debts, all of which Cicero opposed. They were members of Rome’s fashionable, antitraditionalist generation. As Anthony Everitt explains: These young men and women had plenty of money and were socially and sexually liberated. They turned their backs on the severe tradition of public duty. No longer defining themselves exclusively in terms of community — family, gens, patrician or noble status — and rebelling against authority, they lived for the moment. Many of them had been sympathizers with Catilina (although for some reason Clodius had had little to do with the failed revolutionary) and, even if they had no time for politics now, they emerged later as supporters of Caesar during the civil war. Some became his key

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associates during his years of supreme power: able, unscrupulous and with huge debts to settle, they had no objection to aiding and abetting the death throes of the republic, provided that Caesar [or Crassus] paid them generously.14 At this point there is a preposterous prank that looms large in future political events. Clodius was apparently in love with Caesar’s wife. Apparently, to meet up with Mrs. Caesar, Clodius, dressed in drag, broke into a ceremony (Bona Dea), conducted by the Vestal Virgins from which men were by tradition excluded. Not surprisingly he was caught and put on trial, as this was a serious transgression against both public morals and traditional law. But there was a fear among the patricians of arousing the recently disappointed popularis faction of Catiline, which Clodius courted for his self-interested reasons. Clodius used bribes on the jurors and sent gangs of thugs about in the streets to stir up popularis unrest, and he was acquitted. Clodius brazenly blamed his predicament on Cicero and plotted his revenge, which he would get shortly. At about this time, Pompey was returning from the East after another victory over Mithridates. He had a huge army to take care of and wanted to raise the popularis issue of land redistribution. Caesar was simultaneously winning a reputation for victories in Spain and Gaul. The triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus brought in Clodius as a silent partner — somewhat to the chagrin of the more traditional Pompey, whose popularis interest was only on behalf of his men. Clodius was just the kind of rabble-rouser and threat to order needed by Caesar in Rome while his plans matured. Cicero tried to enlist Pompey on his side in a hope to balance the interests of the Senate and the popularis supporters, knowing that Crassus envied and resented Pompey’s greater military reputation. Cato, as usual, was a thorn in Cicero’s side and was at the forefront of making sure no compromise could work. In a bid to make yet more money, Crassus wanted some corn contracts renegotiated. Pompey wanted land redistribution for his troops. Clodius wanted to be a consul. Caesar wanted to temporize until he could take over. Clodius was egged on to organize street gangs that started agitating for free corn for the poor. Pompey waffled. When Caesar finally became consul, everyone got what he wanted. As mentioned, Cicero was indicted

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for “illegally” putting down the conspiracy of Catiline (he had supporters of Catiline executed without trial). Cicero was proscribed, his houses burned, and he went into exile in bankruptcy. But over the next year, affairs at Rome fell apart so badly that the people demanded the return of Cicero. He returned in 57 BC and was afforded what was comparable to the triumph of a returning general. As he proceeded from the south of Italy, the roads were lined with cheering supporters all the way to Rome. It was his second greatest political moment. It too was short lived. With the armies of Caesar and Pompey still in the picture, Cicero tried again to broker a deal that would avoid open bloodshed and return to civil war. But Clodius continued to foster urban riots. And Caesar continued to rule through the First Triumvirate and its minions. Just as Cicero was finally about to separate Pompey from the triumvirate, in 53 BC Crassus died in an ill-conceived military campaign in Parthia that ended in the total annihilation of his legions. And in 52 BC, Clodius died in a random encounter with an old supporter of Sulla. It was now down to Caesar and Pompey, who were about to divide and become enemies, forcing the confrontation Cicero was trying to avoid. With his plans for compromise coming to naught, in 51 BC Cicero pulled back and wrote De Oratore, De Re Publica, and a first draft of De Legibus. In 49 BC, civil war broke out again in earnest — or at least turned into another hotter phase of what had been an ongoing hot civil war since at least 88 BC — which ended only when Caesar defeated the forces of Pompey in the East and Cato in North Africa. It is estimated that during this period, civil war claimed the lives of up to one million, a staggering percentage of the whole of the Roman world at that time. Cicero fled Rome and went into exile again. At this point, the republican part of the story is over and we can move on. Cicero made his peace with Caesar, who pardoned him for backing Pompey. Cicero tried to moderate Roman politics as much as he could during Caesar’s dictatorship. But among Caesar’s “reforms,” he increased the size of the Senate from an earlier 300 to 900, and literally everyone and his brother was admitted, including Picts, Gauls, recently freed slaves, and gladiators. Cicero’s influence was diminished as the status of the Senate as a deliberative body was destroyed. It became a rubber stamp for the dictator.

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In 44 BC Caesar was assassinated. Cicero was not involved in the plot and was not even consulted. Antony, however, eventually got his revenge on Cicero, and many others. Cicero spent the last two years of his life moving about between his country homes, not daring to return to Rome, knowing the inevitable end he would face. It is during this period that he wrote most of the works that have come down to us as his philosophical corpus, to which we will now turn. When he could no longer have an effect on the political stage, Cicero turned his attention to tutoring the future, having failed to moderate his present. His ancestral and prescriptive Roman regime proved to be too impervious to reason. Without the input of reason his republic was doomed, as will be all successor republics lacking the guidance of reason. After the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD, it was almost two millennia until modern Italy was united again. A few small aristocratic republics eventually emerged on the Italian peninsula, but they were so engaged in unavoidable internecine warfare that the republican history after Rome was a checkered one at best until relatively late into the modern era. Large republics like Rome are rare and fragile beings; once lost by their people, they will probably never be regained. That is a sobering lesson for the ages. Cicero’s Mode of Writing We have lost the ability to read an author like Cicero. Very few now write quietly for a select readership in the future while still simultaneously trying to say something publicly to larger audiences. There are a variety of reasons for this, the most prominent being that in our democratic age we will not allow ourselves to make the distinction between the few and the many on any level. Unless every Tom, Dick, and Mary can be presumed to understand a text, it cannot be important or true. From the alleged fact that many readers, including many ill-educated ones lacking in concentration, reach different conclusions in reading a text, we conclude there is no true reading, or that there is no such thing as a text in the first place. In both instances, this is the introduction of a democratic element into life in absolutely the wrong fashion.15 We also exist at a moment when there have been numerous sedimented traditions of reading that have built up on top of Cicero’s texts.

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Those opinions run the gamut from seeing Cicero as an inspirational genius (Augustine) to seeing him as a trifling, second-rate, self-absorbed, and vain failed politician, with recent readings tending almost exclusively toward the latter. As an author, and actor, Cicero has had the time for a process of multiple judgments to come forth, and they have been multiple indeed. Much can be learned from that process. In fact, Cicero had his detractors from the beginning, and they have formed our opinions for millennia. Early on, Plutarch (around 100 AD) concluded that all of Cicero’s writings had as their primary intention merely to create and inflate his own reputation after his failed political career. That opinion has followed Cicero ever since and especially dominates much of German scholarship on Cicero. In that tradition, Kant and Hegel dismissed Cicero as a mere popularizer, a man incapable of scientific philosophy, as they tried to present it. Cicero himself erects a somewhat comparable smoke screen in claiming that in effect his philosophical reflections are primarily for the sake of therapy, a form of consolation for a man forced to withdraw from the public arena. Hence his philosophical efforts are presented as a form of refuge, a way to fill a political void in his life. Philosophy, as Boethius would have it, is primarily a form of consolation. Others dismiss Cicero as a mere conservative defender of an old order, an order that as a new man he was personally only marginally interested in preserving. That reading confuses Cicero with Cato. Some see Cicero as a historian trying no more than to transmit the past traditions of philosophi­ cal discourse, which would have been lost without him. Others see him as a thoroughgoing skeptic, a proponent of one of the then extant versions of the Academy — I will return to this issue in a moment. I am going to suggest that the only way out of this predicament posed by multiple readings — and most of these interpretations ultimately make serious reading of Cicero pointless — is to do something now quite unfashionable, and that is to read the texts naïvely and see first of all what they actually say on the surface. If that surface itself does not direct us elsewhere, Cicero the author is undoubtedly lost to us. For a variety of reasons, we have ceased to take seriously what is straightforward in Cicero’s mode of writing. When one looks with anything resembling an unprejudiced eye, one sees that in his philosophical works he almost never says anything in his own name. He praises Plato for the dialogical nature of writing, and then invents a transformed

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version of that mode of writing. Cicero writes his own unique form of dialogues. The dialogical character of his mode of writing is almost uniformly ignored. One recent work, Mathew Fox’s Cicero’s Philosophy of History,16 rediscovers the centrality of the dialogical mode of writing, but then by adopting various deconstructive premises stops at the very threshold of seeing what really follows. Fox admits sheepishly that he keeps talking the talk of authorial intention but knows better than to walk the walk. He knows in advance that an author cannot have an intention and control how he is interpreted. And so despite presenting thoughtful and insightful dialogical readings of Cicero’s texts, Fox forces himself to conclude that Cicero leaves things at making available a variety of ideas without insisting on how to interpret that variety. Fox praises the dialectic that Cicero presents as merely ongoing and never having a positive yield: to have a positive yield would be “authoritarian.” Fox concludes that Cicero, in good deconstructive fashion, has a “nonauthoritarian” intention. Fox’s Cicero intends to break down commitment to any substantive position. Cicero allegedly not only questions all the dogmatisms of his day, he actually questions all authorial authority, and all authority more generally. He intends to impose nothing on the future, open no novel spaces. Cicero intends to bring about nothing other than openness and fluidity — those qualities being posited as intrinsic to the highest good. Cicero would transform us all into thoroughgoing skeptics on the way to a politics of skepticism, in this instance also known as relativism. And yet even Fox, loaded with unnecessary and self-invalidating assumptions, breaks through to seeing that what Cicero does want is for philosophy to have a greater role in political life in the future than it had at Rome. To that end, Fox’s Cicero even rewrites Roman history to make it seem more philosophic than it was, or at least to draw out philosophic implications after the fact. Put another way, Fox believes that Cicero understood the thesis that a state always needs a self-understanding, and the more coherent that understanding is philosophically, the more coherent the state’s political life will be. I agree with that premise, but not where Fox goes with it. Fox sees Cicero as aiming at a “play of irony” that is conjoined with a “refusal of all syntheses.”17 Fox’s Cicero refuses to impose his personal

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authority for the sake of unleashing an endless dialectic that leads to no ultimate synthesis or positive teaching. Hence Fox turns Cicero into a thoroughgoing skeptic and asserts that he was an “Academic” skeptic, a tradition which Fox asserts works against authority and all dogmas. We thus reach the conclusion that if philosophy is to inform politics, it informs it by making it openly skeptical. We will see clearly that this is far from Cicero’s position. I will argue that in fact Cicero was not a proponent of any permutation of the Academy as it then existed — in various competing permutations. Fox concludes that Cicero saw philosophy as a form of “active resistance” to tyranny.18 And therefore Cicero pointed toward a renovated “skeptical” (read here relativist) republic as a form of “political rejuvenation.” Philosophy is, therefore, always in an “unstable” relation to politics because its task is to constantly deconstruct any “authoritarian” forms of meaning in political communities. Reason (ratio) is always at odds with authority (auctoritas) and thus must always try to trump authority in any form (power, law, tradition) by constantly undermining it. In short, the best regime does not believe in itself and is constantly being forced to (or chooses to) dissolve itself and its beliefs. Fox’s Cicero is an ironic writer because he sees that it is highly unlikely that any philosophic project will work and that no good regime takes itself seriously. With one thing I agree: Fox’s ironic project cannot work at either the philosophical or political level. We will see that ironic politics is simply not Cicero’s position; he sees a far more complicated relation between reason and tradition than the modern essentially deconstructivist stance will allow, and he therefore sees a far different relation between philosophy and politics than does Fox. What Cicero in fact does try to do is bring political life closer to philosophy by transforming it so that it becomes amenable to philosophic statesmanship. And he tries to wean philosophy away from becoming a textbook undertaking with doctrines to memorize, like the school philoso­ phies of his time, especially the Epicureanism that led philosophy away from the res publica altogether. To do that Cicero had to simultaneously show philosophy how it grows out of concrete issues and concrete lived experience but also how politics itself can become more philosophic. And we will see how Cicero tries to link philosophy and rhetoric/oratory and to make political life

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more dependent on publicly deployed philosophic rhetoric than heredity or wealth or generalship or warriors. Cicero has something concrete in mind, even if it is not the imposing of some universal abstract ahistorical ideal on concrete political reality, which is a modern move Cicero rejects before the fact. But Cicero saw that philosophy, if it were to transform more or less pugnacious natural political life, had to learn to speak the language of the public space it shared. Both politics and increasingly abstract and theoretical philosophy had to be reformed and transformed. Cicero sounds this theme repeatedly in the various prefaces he appends to his dialogues. Avant le lettre, Cicero doubted the self-legislating Ego of modernity, the understanding that a pure, detached theory, like that of modern constructivism, either could or should legislate ideals to practice. But he would have rejected even more forcefully the latent constructivism or deconstructionism that presumes to constantly negate, break down, and force a public skepticism and relativism as the good. The latter is Fox’s position, and he is far from alone in defending that position. It leads not to liberty and good politics, but instead to chaos, fragmentation, and nihilism on the way to despotism, as Nietzsche correctly predicted. Cicero tried to show, before the fact, why one should avoid both constructivist and deconstructivist extremes of the application of reason just as much as one should eschew pure blind tradition. That there is no “authority” in Cicero’s texts in the dogmatic mode of the Stoics and Epicureans is true, but that there is no positive teaching at all, and no authorial intention, does not follow. Fox correctly sees the reliance in Cicero’s texts on historical examples — focusing on that fact accounts for the title of Fox’s book. He also sees that Cicero is frequently sanitizing or cleaning up the actual history of Rome, for example, with his depiction of Romulus, or trying to show how there was reason imbedded in Roman tradition. But the reasons for this approach are, as I will try to show, phenomenological. Cicero tries to show the ways in which ideas are embedded in everyday practice, evolve out of that practice, and can be deflected by self-conscious thought without ever leaving the orbit of the phenomenological. Political history, as the arena of the phenomena that show themselves, and philosophy as phenomenological, subtly interpenetrate each other, at least after the rudimentary beginnings of mankind. Practice

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itself points to theory, theory becomes embedded in latter practice, and the dialectic continues. The use of history and anecdote is not a sign of skepticism, or that theory has no authorial intention; it is a sign of the priority of the phenomena in philosophy. Fox, despite his repeated deconstructive nods, still has a representational view of philosophy and a correspondence theory of truth. Hence Fox opposes a view of philosophy as representational with a locus of truth in statements, on the one hand, and history and everyday action as an arena of nontruth, on the other. What he does not see is that politics and rhetoric, along with philosophy, are seen by Cicero as arenas of truth, and philosophy dialectically makes the truth that shows itself in politics and rhetoric more articulate and consciously available, rather than importing truth from some other, pure, autonomous theoretical realm. One still presupposes the representational idea of truth even in rejecting it in the name of skepticism. Philosophy does not theoretically grasp an external and universal ideal of truth that it then imposes in an “authoritarian” fashion on reality. Cicero is not forced to be a skeptic as Fox concludes, because he does not accept the understanding of philosophy and truth that Fox presupposes. These are the issues we will develop in what follows. Fox follows most contemporary interpretations and considers Cicero to be an Academic skeptic. Hence a first word on “Academic” philosophy in Cicero’s time is in order. The Academy in Cicero’s time not only had seen many iterations in the past, but it still had competing permutations in Cicero’s present. The customary assumption is that Cicero is a proponent of the skepticism of the “New Academy,” represented in his time by Philo. I will reject that conclusion. Around a hundred years after Plato’s death, the first so-called New Academy (later described by some as the Middle Academy) had adopted the skepticism of Pyrrho, who had announced the impossibility of gaining any knowledge. Plato and Socrates announced only the impossibility of knowledge of the ultimate One. This incorporation of Pyrrho’s skepticism was apparently codified by such thinkers as Arcesilas and Carneades; the latter is frequently cited as the founder of the Cynics and is said to have used logic to destroy all commitments to natural theology. Cicero certainly does not do the latter. That early iteration of the Academy was still represented in Cicero’s time by one of his teachers, Philo, who went so far as to claim that

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nothing had really changed since Plato and that Plato, like Philo, was a “New” Academy skeptic who thought the senses were the only source of knowledge but that some sensations were more “clear and distinct” than others. Hence something in the way of knowledge was only possible through a kind of early empiricism. One ought to note the irony of making Plato an empiricist. Another of Cicero’s teachers, Antiochus, claimed that the New Academy had in fact lost touch with the teaching of the “Original” Academy. Antiochus launched what he called the “Old” Academy. As we will see, by Cicero’s own accounts Antiochus and this Old Academy ended up synthesizing Plato, Aristotle, the Peripatetics, and the Stoics as teaching the same thing, and even incorporated Cynic and Epicurean elements. Antiochus created a grand synthesis that was anything but Platonic. We need to keep conceptually separate the Original Academy of Plato, the Middle Academy/New Academy, and the Old Academy, which came forth roughly in that order. I am claiming Cicero as a proponent ultimately of the Original Academy. Like Stoicism and Epicureanism, the Old and New Academies had been reduced to textbook-wielding school philosophies in Cicero’s time, complete with doctrines to memorize. Hence they had become alienated from the original Platonism that Cicero tried to recover. Cicero did write a text called Academica in which he undoubtedly tried to deal with these issues, but in the form it has come down to us it is not particularly useful. I would observe that for tactical and rhetorical reasons, Cicero saw no advantage in picking too open a fight with either the New or Old Academies of his time, or for that matter with the Stoics, with whom he could make common cause against the Epicureans. But he quietly shows his disagreements with all of them. Only with Epicureanism is there open and manifest hostility and opposition. Ultimately the skepticism of the New Academy makes it impossible to move from skeptical epistemology to the other four components necessary to be woven into a whole political philosophy, as suggested in chapter 2. And like Epicureanism, skepticism undermines active civic participation. Only Stoicism fostered the concern demanded by Cicero for the res publica, albeit that concern became somewhat too detached and bloodless for Cicero’s liking. Again, Cicero did not simply choose one of the competing sects operating in his time; he was attempting to transcend sectarianism. My

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argument is that he saw political philosophy, as do I, as a unified, holistic, phenomenological undertaking. That he occasionally, dramatically, seems to assert an element of skepticism — either in his own name, wearing a mask, or in the name of someone else — proves nothing other than that Cicero found that assertion to be dramatically, which is to say, rhetorically, useful at a particular point in a particular presentation in a particular text. Those seeming assertions cannot be wrenched out of context any more than the speeches found in Plato’s dialogues or Shakespeare’s plays. No one would immediately conclude that life as “full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing” is Shakespeare’s final word just because a particularly gloomy character announces that doctrine. Nothing could be more helpful to sort out this issue than to be in possession of Cicero’s text Academica. But Cicero produced two versions (Priori and Posteriori) and apparently tried to suppress the first, only to have two of its four books survive. He then produced a second version, with only one of the four books surviving. Book 1 of the “text” we now possess is in fact the first book of four from the second edition known as Academica Posteriori. Book 2 of our present text incorporates the first two books of four from the so-called Academica Priori. The characters and settings are different and likewise so are the conclusions one would draw if one took the remnants of each book as an independent text. Together they do not even come close to making a complete text. In the Academica Priori, we have the skepticism emanating especially from Carneades (and his doctrine of probability), represented by the character Catullus. Then we have the character Hortensius, Cicero’s friendly rival as an attorney, defending what is presented as the dogmatism of the Old Academy synthesis of Antiochus. In the Academica Posteriori, we have the character Varro representing the Old Academy of Antiochus, and then Cicero the dramatic character representing the “New” Academy of Philo. The most one might be able to conclude at this point is that Cicero was intent upon showing, in both versions of his text, that the Academy had gone through various, competing, incompatible iterations. Throughout the remainder of his corpus these various iterations also keep appearing, with Cicero, functioning as a character, seemingly defending some of the iterations in some places, and in other places carrying out powerful attacks against the various Academic positions.

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We will deal with the implications of these confrontations as they arise. At this point I merely wish to alert the reader to the fact that the texts do not support the conclusion that Cicero was an Academic of any stripe other than the original permutation represented by Plato, whom he was attempting to recover and reenthrone as the exemplar of true philosophy. From that I conclude that Cicero was a Platonist, if we understand Plato as a phenomenologist and dialectician, not as an idealist or metaphysician, especially as that latter term is used in post-Heideggerian discourse. As a phenomenologist, Cicero is certainly not a mere skeptic qua relativist. However we interpret what Cicero was attempting, we have to keep in mind throughout that he rarely chose to speak in his own name in any of his texts, even when he is a dramatic character, because whenever he is a character he almost always makes it clear he is wearing the mask of some specific position that is being interrogated, at times defending what is elsewhere in turn attacked. And given the dialogical nature of his texts, Cicero does not let any other characters — for example, his dramatic Crassus, and certainly not his dramatic Catullus — directly speak for him either. What Cicero does is put a series of philosophical arguments and refu­ tations in front of us, and we have to decide what to make of that spectacle he has presented in light of the way he has framed the particular discussion. I am quite confident he gave us the clues to assess what he wanted us to make of that spectacle. The surface of the texts will lead us to their depths.

Four

Cicero on the Nature of Philosophy From the ancient days down to the time of Socrates, . . . philosophy dealt with numbers and movements, with the problem whence all things came, or whither they returned, and zealously inquired into the size of the stars, the spaces that divided them, their courses and all celestial phenomena; Socrates on the other hand was the first to call philosophy down from the heavens and set her in the cities of men and bring her also into their homes and compel her to ask questions about life and morality and things good and evil: and his many-sided method of discussion and the varied nature of its subjects and the greatness of his genius, which has been immortalized in Plato’s literary masterpieces, have produced many warring philosophic sects of which I have chosen particularly to follow that one which I think agreeable to the practice of Socrates, in trying to conceal my own private opinion. O philosophy, thou guide of life, o thou explorer of virtue and expeller of vice! Without thee what could have become not only of me but of the life of man altogether? Thou hast given birth to cities, thou hast called scattered human beings into the bond of social life, thou hast united them first of all in joint habitations, next in wedlock, then in the ties of common literature and speech, thou hast discovered law, thou hast been the teacher of morality and order. — Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.4.10–11; 5.2.5 (emphasis added)1

93

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Cicero’s History of philosophy The first epigraph contains what is probably the most famous philosophi­ cal quote from Cicero regarding how Socrates brought philosophy “down from the heavens.” But very little attention is given to its implication for Cicero’s own philosophic undertaking. Does he simply agree with this So­ cratic move? The second is less well known and far more obscure and para­ doxical. It seems to assert a point that is historically questionable. Surely political communities existed before philosophy and were the prerequisite for philosophy to come into being, not the other way around. What ex­ actly is Cicero signaling about the nature of philosophy other than that the phenomena to which the word has been applied have been trans­ formed over time? Is there an underlying essence of philosophy that tran­ scends the changes? One should not be hasty in answering that question. Both quotes are from the Tusculan Disputations, which, despite the surface impression the majority of the text may give, is Cicero’s most the­ matic reflection on the nature of philosophy and its phenomenological origins and sources. If the text is followed with any care, it becomes clear that Cicero is trying to accomplish two things at once. He signals his at­ tempted return to Socrates and Plato in order to recover something lost in his time, but he also quietly signals his own originality and desire to tran­ scend them. By paying attention to the Tusculans we will be able to tran­ scend the all too familiar understanding that Cicero is an entirely derivative, eclectic, and second-rate philosophical mind. Cicero in fact attempts a simultaneous recovery and transformation of philosophy. In the Tusculans, Cicero gives a historical overview of philosophy from the origins as a way to set in perspective what he is doing that is unique. Cicero depicts two separate historical moments before the arrival of Socrates. First, in the distant past there were “wise men.” Those wise men combined concern for knowledge and virtue with involvement in pub­ lic affairs. They were involved in the founding and running of cities. In this regard, Cicero points to the famous seven wise men as an example of what he has in mind. This was the first motive for the study of philosophy — the concern for ethics and politics. The first questions for these first wise men were “how shall I live?” and “how shall we live together?”2 As we will see, in the Tusculans, Cicero himself will derive philosophy from questions that emerge in everyday life.

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Cicero also points to other proofs of the antiquity of philosophy. He points to Pythagoras from Sicily as having an indirect influence in all of Italy and on all early Romans, that most unphilosophic of peoples. He says this philosophic influence of Pythagoras even explains the anachronistic argument of ancient common opinion that Numa, Rome’s second king after Romulus, was a Pythagorean. Were it true, it would show that the ancients venerated wisdom and its positive relation to ethics and politics. In a similar vein, Cicero also draws rationalist philosophical conclu­ sions from ancient myths. For example, the Atlas myth showed, according to Cicero, that early men reflected upon the ultimate ground, foundation, or cause of all that is as a means to understanding how to live. There was not just a concern for virtue, ethics, and politics, but a theoretical concern that made philosophy, before there was the name, concern itself with cos­ mology. Philosophical eros and longing to understand is old; only the name philosophy is young.3 What Cicero will try to show is that men have always been philo­ sophic from the beginnings of recorded time for specific existential rea­ sons. Cicero’s history of philosophy shows that philosophy began with a focus on ethics and politics and then moved almost immediately to nec­ essary and unavoidable speculations about the first things and how they related to living well. There is a phenomenological basis for philosophy, and it showed itself before the invention of the name, and long before the school philosophies of Cicero’s time. One must repeatedly return to these existential and phenomenological roots to break out of the descent into school philosophies, which, nonetheless, is inevitable. However, Cicero admits that Rome arrived late to philosophy, as it came to be known. Rome came along much later than the Greeks in all intellectual and artistic pursuits. The Greeks developed poetry, music, mathematics, and philosophy long before these things were known at Rome. And, Cicero asserts, poetry always comes first in time intellectu­ ally before philosophy. Rome did not even have poets until five hundred years after its founding. Cicero asserts that down to the death of Marcus Porcius Cato the Censor in 149 BC, Rome still publicly opposed singers and poets, let alone philosophy. Cicero aims to correct and reverse this ancestral fault. But he also aimed to overcome philosophy as the school philosophies of his time practiced it. To do so he had to show how philosophy grows out

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of everyday life, even if he is thematically articulating that it was done earlier in Greece than in Rome. Yet he also wants to convince the Ro­ mans that they have always venerated wisdom. The Romans distinctively developed oratory as something that was truly their own. Philosophy as a thematic undertaking was neglected until just before the time of Cicero. In Cicero’s time, philosophy needed to be publicly exalted among the Romans, and since the Romans loved oratory, a public link between philosophy and oratory was just the way to accomplish that public exaltation.4 Philosophy and Roman oratory had to be merged in Cicero’s specific situation. Cicero says in his own name that this is the task he has set himself. Now that the Senate could no longer be the venue for his public life, his public deeds henceforth would instead be in the service of ad­ vancing philosophy in Latin by linking it with oratory, which he would try to make more philosophic than in the traditional study and curricu­ lum. By making oratory and rhetoric more philosophical, he could make politics more philosophical and less dominated by warriors, the wealthy, a hereditary caste, or blind prescriptive, ancestral tradition. If philosophy was to move from the “small circle” of the few who dabble in it privately at Rome to the “wider circle” Cicero asserts it de­ serves, it needed the charm of eloquent speech.5 And that eloquent speech is always everyday public speech. Cicero asserts that oratory itself arose from addressing the “greatest problems” that are found lurking in everyday life — the same as was true with the origins of philosophy with wise men. The audience to which Cicero seems to assert that philosophy should now appeal is apparently a larger republican citizenry rather than the smaller circle of the intellectual or aristocratic few — many of whom were withdrawing from public participation. The move is not without political ramifications. There is always the fundamental question: Who is the pri­ mary audience for philosophic writings? Who is the primary audience for Cicero? No interpretation of any author is possible until the issue of the primary addressee is raised. And yet if one writes, the audience has to be presumed to include a larger public audience, even if that is not the high­ est addressee. Cicero asserts that his prior/younger dedication to oratory arose from philosophical “springs.” And philosophy in “its finished form” treats the greatest problems with an attractive style, apparently for, by historical

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standards, a large public audience. Oratory and philosophy must be brought together and out into the open of a wider audience than just a few. The Tusculan Disputations is the demonstration of this merger of phi­ losophy and oratory, both in their “finished form,” a merger and perfec­ tion heretofore unseen. Cicero concluded that the Romans would best receive philosophy in traditional oratorical form, and that primarily means the oratory of the law courts and the forum. Hence Cicero asserts that he will not only use what he construes as the Socratic dialectical method of arguing against a position, but, in what amounts to a forensic legal form, Cicero will also argue for various things. What is interesting is that Cicero construes Soc­ rates to be engaged in a form of “negative dialectics.”6 Like the dramatic Socrates of Plato’s dialogues, Cicero frequently uses dialectic to negate the reigning positions of his time. But there must also be a positive ele­ ment. The positive part of the teaching is advanced more quietly, by im­ plication, after a space has been cleared by the negative activity. It is at the beginning of book 5 of Tusculan Disputations where the sketch of the history of philosophy is joined explicitly. We need to fill in the picture up to Cicero’s time. After the beginning with “wise men,” who were political founders and statesmen, there was a second moment as philosophy turned away from political and moral engagement to the almost exclusive study of nature and the heavens, the first things, the constitution of being. This is the moment of Parmenides, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Pythagoras, and, in short, what we now call the pre-Socratics. Philosophy turned away from ethics and politics and focused its at­ tention away from the human things. In its second phase, philosophy turned to consider the causes of all things and to a contemplation of the heavens. Attention was directed toward the nonhuman “without any self-seeking.” “Self-seeking” as a term can be lined up with the traditional exhortation “Know Thyself.” Concern for how knowledge of the first things relates to the activity of the person raising the questions was never enjoined in the second, cosmological phase represented by pre-Socratic philosophy. Philosophy came to “closely scan the nature of things,” like those who carefully watch a spectacle.7 Philosophy went from being moral and political “caring” to being detached “staring.” And it was a staring that was self-forgetting.

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Eventually philosophy became even more abstract than in its initial, cosmological detached watching/staring and dealt with numbers and tried to find numbers and abstract entities behind the phenomena at which it stared. It moved away from ethics and politics to physics/cos­ mology and then to mathematics and even more abstract ontological musings on the One and the Many and like categories abstracted from the “visible” phenomena. Then there is the third, Socratic moment that Cicero highlights in which philosophy was brought back from concern with nature and num­ ber and abstract entities to again focus on a concern with the human things — justice, virtue, our relation to the divine, how we should live. But in this third moment a new issue was added. We also turned toward ourselves and raised the question, “Who are we?” Philosophy now be­ came concerned with the nature of the self that both acts and questions. Philosophy thereby overcame the self-forgetting of the pre-Socratics. From the staring “out” of the second phase, there was a turn “in.” Philoso­ phy became self-conscious and reflexive. That was an advance. Unlike the first phase of philosophy with “wise men” who were statesmen, the new concern for ethics and politics became self-reflexive. But, Cicero asserts, in the process Socrates created the basis for the many “warring philosophical sects” that came to be after his death. To put it mildly, Cicero is no fan of this post-Socratic development. The third moment of philosophy was an advance, but it opened a problem; it led inexorably to a fourth moment of philosophy dominated by squabbling school philosophies, which invented all manner of artificial, nonphe­ nomenological issues that became central. After Alexander’s conquests, the Greek polis and its quasi-democratic public space for speech dissolved and any primary concern for the cen­ trality of the political began to atrophy in an age of dynastic politics. In time the mind was now sent not so much out again toward ethics and politics or out toward a concern with nature as “in” to reflect on an inner world, the self, the soul, in short, psychology. This isolated concern for the thinking subject again led away from the public space, the res publica, toward the multiple squabbling school philosophies abstracted from the public space. Socrates was implicated in the initial moments of this move “in.” Socrates was still focused on and concerned with ethics and politics. But the turn toward self-consciousness opened a venue for the retreat

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from the public and the political. As Cicero depicts it, we can see that this was a retreat that occurred long before the advent of Christianity.8 In the third phase, philosophy became reflexive, but eventually it be­ came self-absorbed. This ran the risk of leading away from the public space as much as the detached staring of the isolated pre-Socratic study of nature/being. It also ran the risk of leading away from the existential phenomena more generally and their articulation in everyday shared pub­ lic speech. In this regard, Cicero desired another reversal, but this time, armed with Socratic self-consciousness, it could be an even more self-­ conscious reversal. Cicero goes on to paint, throughout his works, a detailed picture of what happened after Socrates and Plato. We can call this the fourth mo­ ment of philosophy, which leads up to Cicero’s fifth moment, which in turn, among other things, opens the door to pre-Thomistic philosophic Christianity, which, it can be argued, would not have existed without Cicero.9 Christianity, without a pre-prepared philosophic space to oc­ cupy, would have been an entirely different historical phenomenon than it became. He opened this space, but Cicero was aiming not so much at Christian philosophy as at a philosophically informed republican states­ manship and statesmanlike philosophy. Cicero depicts a fragmentation and decline of philosophy after Plato and Aristotle. First came the rise of a successor Academy led by Speusip­ pus immediately after Plato’s death. Then just after Aristotle’s death came the rise of the Peripatetics. Then came Zeno and the rise of the Stoics, who are depicted primarily as offshoots of the Peripatetics with some transformed cosmological understandings, and a great deal of pettifog­ ging jargon and crabbed logic. Almost simultaneously with the rise of Stoicism came Epicurus and the rise of the Epicureans and their longed-for total withdrawal from the public space into private gardens. Aristotle died in 322 BC. By 300 BC we already had the successor Academy, the Peripatetics, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and other lesser school philosophies, such as the Cynics and Cyrenaics. Each developed their textbooks of doctrines and dogmas to be memorized and repeated. By 250 BC came the rise of yet another Academy, the “New” Acad­ emy, started by Arcesilas and eventually developed by his student Car­ neades. Contrary to the original Platonic Academy, or its initial successor

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Academy’s search for knowledge beyond sense perception, both of which thought the data of the senses was unreliable, the “New” Academy adopted the thoroughgoing skepticism of Pyrrho and anointed sense perception as the basis of all knowledge. A radical transformation had occurred. The Academy continued to evolve down to Cicero’s time; eventually there was a reaction against the New Academy and its skepticism. Philo retained the name of New Academy but tried to argue that nothing had really changed since Plato. But he was attacked by Antiochus, who felt there had been changes since the Original Academy and presumed to go back to the Original Academy, and hence called his school the “Old” Academy. All of these school philosophies became increasingly self-­ absorbed and apolitical.10 In Cicero’s presentation, Antiochus’s position was the least philo­ sophically consistent, because it was nothing more than a confused, con­ tradictory, eclectic synthesis of all the schools since Plato, including the Peripatetics and the Stoics, and even including Epicurean elements. In the eyes of Cicero, this eclectic synthesis was in no way a return to Socra­ tes and Plato, each separately in different places called by Cicero the “fa­ ther” of philosophy. This sets the stage for Cicero’s more genuine return to Socrates and Plato, but as he makes repeatedly clear, Cicero’s return was but a prelude to moving beyond both. Cicero was plotting the fifth moment of philosophy. Because of the fragmentation of philosophy in his time, philosophi­ cal debates were increasingly for a small inner circle dealing with deriva­ tive issues; rarely did philosophy get back to the first things themselves, whether human or cosmological, rarely was philosophy an architectonic undertaking. But Cicero suggests that this combative spectacle of the ri­ valry of schools had one benefit: it made philosophy publicly interesting, especially for a combative people like the Romans, who loved contests as much as the Greeks. This public spectacle of warring sects could, ironically, help overcome the Roman distrust of philosophy as the preserve of the few who have quit the public area and adopted abstract jargon and counterintuitive premises. Like the Greeks, the Romans loved a good agon: forensic oratory, complete with life-and-death consequences, was one of the preferred Roman venues. This opened the door to Cicero’s proposed merger of philosophy and ora­ tory. This merger would be a new form of bringing “philosophy down from the heavens” a second time, but in transformed fashion.

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Philosophy again needed to be directed back to public “caring,” not so much “down” from the heavens and away from natural philosophy as “back” from abstraction, jargon, and withdrawal from the public arena.11 By this means one might again “let the wise man we have imagined also pass to the maintenance of the public weal.”12 Philosophy again needed to be brought down from the abstract at­ mosphere of the school philosophies into the public arena, an arena where especially the Stoics — the dominant school of the time among the ruling classes — were, because of their crabbed and tortured speech, increas­ ingly publicly inept in Cicero’s eyes. Two of the most famous openly Stoic political participants at the time of the fall of the Republic were Cato the Younger and Brutus. It might go slightly too far to conclude from their heroic but pointless defenses of the Republic that abstract theory informs bad practice. Cicero attempts to launch a fifth moment of philosophy beyond the fragmentation of his time. In important ways he wished to go back to Socrates and Plato to recapture fundamental premises and a phenomeno­ logical foundation for philosophy. Yet if one looks with any care, it be­ comes clear that throughout his corpus Cicero parts ways with both. We will develop that story as we proceed. At different points, Cicero is criti­ cal of the Epicureans, the Peripatetics, the Stoics, and other schools, and that includes the extant permutations of the Academy. He is most critical of the Epicureans, for reasons we must clarify. What is unique to Cicero is a second attempt to bring philosophy back to a concern with the everyday things, but, also even more than Socrates, back into the public arena and the public space, which, I will argue, is not to be dismissed as a mere cave. Cicero, a great partisan of consistency, tries to draw out the ramifications of Socratic and Platonic premises he recovers that, I will suggest, he does not think they followed out consistently enough. The Ciceronian Turn: Philosophy, Reflexivity, and Being-toward-Death Each of the five books of the Tusculan Disputations has a preface, each of which is addressed to the morally austere Stoic, and not overly philo­ sophic defender of the Republic, Marcus Brutus. These prefaces concern

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the nature of philosophy. We have now sketched what I think are the most important ramifications of those prefaces, but we will need to extend our picture of philosophy as we proceed. After a preface, each book turns to a semidialogue between a character designated only as “M,” which because of historical observations Cicero makes in the text has parallels with him­ self, Marcus, and another character designated “A.” Despite the parallel of M with Cicero, the author, Cicero has put in place characters that are left nameless, faceless, and indeterminate.13 Put another way, the characters have no names or outer form (eidos). This issue will return. Even if we accept that there is a clear parallel between M and Cicero, by designating himself as M, Cicero nonetheless distances himself even from himself. Only very rarely in his philosophical corpus can one find Cicero simply speaking in his own name and, more to the point, what can clearly be taken as his own voice. Cicero thereby keeps his final views hidden, as he explicitly says he intends. What Cicero does in the Tusculans is to attack the five positions brought forward by A at the beginning of each book. Therefore, with this use of “negative dialectics,” he is not necessarily speaking for or against any position in his own name. Cicero’s own final position has to be gleaned as it emerges from the interstices of the refutations. It is the overall performance in a text, and the ramifications of the issues Cicero strings together in the order he has chosen, that lead quietly toward his own understanding. Cicero uses this indirect rhetorical method to seemingly “prove” certain surface moral premises in each book of the Tusculans by way of refuting the various assertions of A. But the examples fit together to make a larger theoretical point about the nature of philosophy. The bulk of each of the five books of Tusculans is a long speech or dis­ sertation on a particular subject. The dialectical façade seems to cease fairly quickly within each book. That does not mean that the dialectic does not continue within the whole work. Cicero moves back and forth between two modes of speech, which he explicitly designates as dialectic and “eloquence” (oratio). This distinction lines up, to some extent, with the Plato’s distinc­ tion between long and short speeches that alternate in the dialogues. As with Plato’s use of alternating modes of speech, it becomes clear that neither can be used autonomously; they must supplement each other. The understanding that knows how to bind them together lies elsewhere,

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deeper. All the subjects after the prefaces seem to be on primarily moral concerns, yet it is in reflecting on those moral concerns that Cicero rises to his reflections on the nature of philosophy. Everyday concerns are the exis­ tential entrée to philosophy. Cicero is trying to demonstrate that it is neces­ sary to enter philosophy primarily from ethical rather than the cosmological/ ontological concerns, even though the two cannot ultimately be separated.14 For Cicero, the central issue regarding the nature of philosophy is whether political/ethical or cosmological/ontological issues take primacy for “completed” philosophy. Eventually we will see that Cicero thinks that neither ethics nor cosmology can be addressed autonomously, but the issue of primacy remains central, and for Cicero the ethical is always pri­ mary. If one were to respond to Heidegger, this means the question con­ cerning the good takes primacy over the question concerning being — or, in more traditional terms, it takes priority over concerns about the nature of the whole. It also means that one must access being, or the whole, through the good. In general terms, the various prior phases of philosophy had sepa­ rated various competitors (dialectic and eloquence, on the one hand, and ethics and cosmology, on the other) for primacy and chosen one or the other. And the rise of self-conscious reflexivity is depicted as coming rather late with Socrates. My suggestion is that Cicero thought that that alternation between the primacy of ethics/politics and cosmology/ontol­ ogy had to be replaced by a new way of fitting the two together into a whole that could simultaneously integrate what I have designated as “car­ ing” and “staring.”15 By Cicero’s account, philosophy in the past focused on either ethics/ politics or cosmology/ontology. Cicero will combine them into a whole. He will look “away” from the thinking actor toward nature, he will look “within” toward the soul as it thinks, and he will look “around” at others in a shared public space. Cicero tries for architectonic unity beyond the vari­ ous past manifestations of partialness. Only Plato approached this unity. The subject of book 1 would, on the surface, seem to be death, and whether we should fear it. The reflection is set in motion by the assertion of A that death is the greatest evil. On a deeper level the real subject is the nature of the soul. But that too is a bit misleading. The real subject is what should be the main object of concern for philosophy. The answer appears to be that philosophy is knowledge of the soul. Put another way, the

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object of philosophy is thought thinking about itself, the soul thinking about the soul doing what is most distinctive to it: acting (praxis) and thinking. With proper clarity, the thinking soul sees the epistemic need for the res publica for both acting and thinking. When that happens, the thinking soul avoids being locked up within itself in solitude or falling into self-forgetting staring. We pass through death as a subject rather quickly by asking about its nature: “What is death?” This elicits in response a number of past, pub­ licly held opinions that coalesce around death being a separation of the body and the soul and whether they both dissolve upon death or only the body does. This allows Cicero to get rather quickly to the issue of the nature of the soul and if it can exist without the body, and how to concep­ tualize the soul, which is eventually conceptualized as mind. Cicero’s provisional surface conclusion is that given any of the extant definitions of the soul, death is not an evil.16 If they are to be internally consistent, no school philosophy should reject this conclusion. For ex­ ample, either the soul dissolves at death and sensation ceases — meaning we will be aware of no more awaiting evils — or it continues in existence and partakes in some kind of activity less prone to the chance occurrences that affect the body. Either way, death should not be feared.17 Philosophically, death is the ultimate future awaiting everyone. It is death that makes us think about our future. It is what makes us take re­ sponsibility for the future, both our own and that of our nation.18 Death as a phenomenon within life also leads us inevitably to the question of the future of the soul, the issue of personal immortality, and that in turn leads to reflections on the existence of the divine. This string of considerations follows from the phenomena of life itself, one of which is death. Reflecting upon death, as a phenomenon of life, forces us to be philosophic. It also forces us to reflect upon our most essential selfhood. The almost identical argument in Heidegger’s Being and Time is impossible to miss. Life itself leads in this direction. Therefore more than one phenomenologist should be able to discover the same phenomena. The phenomena of life show themselves in an unavoidable fashion. Here is a fundamental phenomeno­ logical issue that transcends place and time. One possible originary question for philosophy is found in being-­ toward-death, which forces philosophy to think about the nature of the soul and leads toward the soul thinking about itself as a primary object of

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reflection. From a phenomenon that is entirely personal, our own death, we are led toward disinterested awe and wonder about the whence and whither of everything, but most especially toward reflecting on the very fact and uniqueness of thinking itself. The phenomena themselves force us in this direction; this is not an imaginative invention, a superstitious animadversion, pious positing, or the invention of an unencumbered self-legislating Ego. Phenomenologi­ cally, reflections on external nature or the cosmos are secondary, if not derivative, from the most personal of reflections on the nature of the soul. Again, contrary to Heidegger, for Cicero we are led not to ongoing anxi­ ety but to an erotic desire to know the truth. And we are led further to wonder about the place of soul understood as mind in the larger whole. Herein Cicero seems to depart from Heidegger to side with Plato. The mood that takes priority and seems to be central to philosophy is wonder (thaumazein), not anxiety (or boredom). Either way, whichever “mood” dominates and is primary — anxiety or wonder — everyday life points beyond itself — and it is not a closed cave — everyday life in its depth and complexity is simply our natural situation. This reflection on the phenomena of life is the origin of the phenomenon of “transcendence.” To continue to pursue the Platonic meta­ phor, transcendence shows itself in the cave; it is just that the cave is not really a cave, after all, if one understands the true epistemic importance of everyday life and its connection to the res publica. We quietly get a first philosophic premise from Cicero, namely, that the primary object of a fully aware philosophy should be the soul (qua mind thinking itself ), and Cicero believes he has recovered this notion from Plato: only soul has knowledge of soul. Matter knows nothing about mind or matter. The principal object of philosophy is the mind thinking. Man’s “nature” is to be found in the fullness of his drives, what he needs, desires, aspires to as part of what is most distinctive in his na­ ture, his ability to think about himself, and to think about himself acting and interacting with others and inquiring about everything outside him­ self, and, most fundamentally, thinking about himself thinking. For Cicero, one must trace out what follows from the phenomenon of thought thinking itself. And one must constantly keep in mind that this is not the mythical, self-legislating Cartesian self we have discovered, but rather this is most assuredly an “encumbered” phenomenal self with

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concrete drives, passions, and aspirations that is articulating itself to itself in a particular time and place, as stretched between birth and death, and articulating itself to itself by using what is always a shared public speech. By another series of consistent moves that Cicero sketches, which we will not pursue further here, we arrive at the conclusion that soul under­ stood as mind thinking itself must be conceptualized as a first principle, or first cause. By another consistent series of moves, the true first cause must itself be deathless. From this string of reflections can be concluded that the individual soul longs for immortality, which means it longs for knowl­ edge of the deathless first cause, which must itself be soul understood as mind but qua efficient cause, also as will. At this point I am not so much interested in sketching the arguments that lead to this conclusion; they are easily found by tracing the moves in book 1 of the Tusculans. I do want to stress that Cicero is showing that all of these questions and issues follow consistently from initial everyday phenomena that show themselves. In this case it is death as a phenomenon that sets these reflections in motion. Thereafter, after giving the phenomena their due, in drawing out what follows from those phenomena, what we see is Cicero asserting prem­ises of consistency and noncontradiction. We start from the phe­ nomena themselves, articulate what is embedded in the way they show themselves, and deduce what follows in a consistent and noncontradic­ tory fashion. That is how phenomenological philosophy makes its begin­ ning and proceeds. Thinking about death leads the soul to think about itself and from there to a longing for immortality, which draws the mind forward toward the ultimate future beyond death. In the process we also are drawn to­ ward reflecting upon the first uncaused cause; the desire to grasp the first cause draws us back to the beginnings. Life itself forces the mind out of the present, both backward and forward. Life itself makes us temporal beings. Cicero develops this brilliantly. He does everything but openly draw all the conclusions for us. He will explicitly draw the same conclu­ sion that we are temporal beings in De Officiis.19 The “staring” of a spectator at the external heavens, or anything else, is from the perspective of perfected phenomenology a derivative activity. And such staring is a poor metaphor for philosophy because it locks us in the present and denies the primarily phenomenological access to past and future that comes from active “caring” about the soul, which in turn leads to caring for ethics and politics. Regarding all of these matters, Cicero

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asserts that Socrates and Plato agree and the “common crowd of philoso­ phers” disagrees.20 This sets up a dichotomy, Socrates, Plato, and Cicero on one side, everyone else on the other. Book 1, we may conclude, is primarily an encounter with Plato in which we find Cicero’s concurrence that philosophy is reflexive and has thought itself as a primary object, and in doing so he has discovered the soul’s full panoply of longings, desires, and aspirations — that is, the soul is erotic. For completed philosophy, we first experience not matter and the external cosmos but thought thinking itself. Hence thought cannot be reduced for us to primarily a materialistic activity, except by some se­ ries of derivative, abstracted moves. Philosophy’s primary and ultimate object — even if there was a history leading up to this discovery — is the soul understood as mind conceived as cause (and hence as will)21 and not external nature qua extension and mass, in other words, not matter and space as quantitatively understood. Once philosophy turns to thinking itself, other questions, issues, and phenomena present themselves. For example, in thinking itself the soul remembers its past thoughts; this remembrance brings the soul in contact with the phenomenon of memory. This allows Cicero the opportunity to give a surface endorsement to a significantly modified, nonmetaphysical version of the Platonic doctrine of remembrance. In another vein, it al­ lows Cicero to give a phenomenological rather than cosmological expla­ nation of that doctrine. This in turn leads the mind to the idea that anything that is born cannot be immortal; therefore, the soul must exist before its present in­ carnation if it is to be immortal. The doctrine of remembrance in turn leads one to speculatively posit the prior existence of the soul before its incarnation. Although Cicero can explain how thought consistently ar­ rives at this conclusion, it is not clear that he finally accepts the utility of this ultimately theological premise, a premise rejected in the Christian doctrine that individual souls are created at the moment they enter a body, at the moment of conception. Indeed, in other contexts, Cicero seems to posit the immortality of individual consciousness and personal soul, which would be undermined by positing the prior existence, and hence repeated rebirth, of the same soul. But Cicero has explained phe­ nomenologically one of the so-called myths in the Platonic dialogues. What Cicero is trying to show is how certain conclusions follow in a more or less consistent fashion from reflection on initial phenomena. But

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more than one thing may consistently follow from the phenomena, and we still need to address the basis upon which a philosopher makes deci­ sions between those equally consistent showings and articulations. Cicero is trying to bring philosophy “back” to the phenomena, back to everyday life, and into the public arena where it must articulate itself to itself in shared public speech. But initially he has posed a potential prob­ lem for himself in turning philosophy toward a primary concern with the soul thinking itself. The self could get caught in a version of solipsism, thinking only itself. The thinking self will have to be turned outward again in some fruitful fashion to avoid solipsism.22 To return to the surface of the text, Cicero is performing the moral task of showing that distress about death is unnecessary. Therefore, the kind of self-preoccupation that obsesses about death can be lessened. This end is something he shares with both the Epicureans and the Stoics. But he arrives at that outcome in a different fashion than either of his oppo­ nents. He is trying to show that death is not the greatest evil because properly understood it represents what the soul longs for, not something it wants to run away from. He has a transformed version of Socrates’s depic­ tion of philosophy as “preparing to die.” He has shown that Socrates’s paradoxical conclusion is a phenomenological conclusion.23 To return to a previous point, by a train of connections we are brought to the thought that pure soul itself must not only be understood as pure mind self-consciously thinking, but must be understood as cause, which leads thought backward toward the first cause, which must, for a variety of reasons, be an uncaused cause. That cause is God understood as mind and, by extension, will. The phenomenon of finite mind thinking itself leads us toward a specific notion of God. This is one of the ways that thought arrives at the idea of God; this is one basis of natural theology. It shows a way in which a philosophical theology can simultaneously corre­ spond with the scriptural teaching and explicate it in a way scripture leaves vague. In this fashion man is led toward and comes into touch with the di­ vine and the conclusion that there is an element of the divine in man. This is not idle mythologizing; it is what follows from the way the phe­ nomena present themselves and how we experience life and what follows when we articulate the phenomenon with some consistency and clarity. This is phenomenology.

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This leads philosophy unavoidably toward natural theology. Philoso­ phy concludes that the poets, who are primarily determined by the senses rather than the mind, and the ancestral views they support, necessarily arrive at polytheism. The senses put us in touch with the many. Fully self-consciously aware reflexive philosophy leads to monotheism. But it also leads to a God who is pure soul/mind yet nonetheless somehow also cause and will. By this path, philosophy discovers the same mystery as scripture does. Having arrived at a monotheistic view of God as One/Mind/Cause/ Will, to be consistent one should not attribute sensations to the gods, as do Homer and the poets, but to a participation in divine thought by us hu­ mans.24 In the process everything is transformed in the relation between man and the divine. The mind is inevitably pulled up toward the divine and back down to a new and ennobled understanding of the human. This follows from how life presents itself. Atheism is a construction that is phe­ nomenologically deficient and life-forgetting. It simultaneously leads to a diminished view of man as human, all too human. From this train of reflections, that God is mind, will, and first cause, Cicero is led to explicitly side with Plato, that the visible cosmos had a beginning, against Aristotle, who concluded it was eternal.25 In the pro­ cess, Cicero sides with scripture, probably not because he had any aware­ ness of the Hebrew Bible but because he thought his way to the same position, as did Plato. As first cause, God is also more than inert mind qua thought thinking only itself, as in Aristotle. Cicero sides with the Plato of the Timaeus and with scripture against Aristotle. It is almost impossible to count the ways in which Cicero prepares the ground for philosophical Christianity. It is no accident that he became the darling of the early Church fathers and indeed was the philosopher of Christianity until Aquinas attempted his synthesis of scripture and Aris­ totle. Can we say as a result that the early Church was, through Cicero, Platonic, and only the post-Thomas Church Aristotelian?26 Cicero concludes that Plato was correct that soul is to be understood as self-conscious mind and that philosophy is primarily mind studying mind. Apparently this conclusion did not wait to be drawn by Hegel. As we will see in chapter 6 on natural theology, what Hegel did was synthe­ size various cosmological/theological positions — especially Stoicism and Platonic Christianity — in the name of the hegemony of concrete

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immanent mind. Cicero stands on the side of pointing toward transcen­ dent mind. Either way, the appropriate first object of study is mind, not external nature. In their own ways, even moderns like Descartes, Kant, and Hegel agree with this in transformed fashion. It is from this basis that Cicero presumes to launch a fifth stage of philosophy yet simultaneously to bring it back again to a concern with the civic and the moral. For that to hap­ pen, both philosophy and the res publica will have to come to contain a greater element of mind. Cicero will have to transform ethics, politics, and philosophy to bring them together. It is at this point that we see Cicero commence what amounts to a criticism of Plato. And the criticisms recur elsewhere, especially in discus­ sions of ethics. The Platonic soul certainly included an element of mind. But it also encompassed what for Cicero are irrational elements: thumos, eros, epithumia, and at times even mania as a gift from the gods. For Plato these are all important driving forces to action, especially thumos and eros. As things that animate human behavior (psyche as anima), the irra­ tional things like eros and thumos are included in Plato’s understanding of soul, even though they seem to be materialistic elements rather than mind in Cicero’s sense. Cicero is more Christian than Plato in his dis­ missal of the dignity of prerational states together with his depiction of soul as closer to pure soul qua mind and will. With this change, we will get a new moral posture. Rather than mind channeling desires, emo­ tions, ecstatic states, pathe of all kinds (consider Plato’s metaphor of the charioteer and two horses), mind must oppose those states and strive to be more of a pure cause comparable if not identical to the first cause. In the process, mind becomes active rather than passively staring at “spectacles.” For Cicero, mind is primarily active morally, politically, and theologically. It was left for the moderns to make mind active in project­ ing and constituting what would pass for our understanding of the natu­ ral world, which ceased to be self-standing. That was occasioned by a different understanding than Cicero’s of how to conquer chance. In short, it was the result of co-opting a notion similar to Cicero’s and putting it in the service of a different conception of the good. It is precisely on this issue that we in the present may have the most to rethink — that is, the relative activity and passivity of mind. We have seen the technological excesses to which the idea of the active mind can lead,

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where mind tries to reconstitute everything from out of itself.27 For the moment I want to make the observation that we have the first of what will be several indications of how Cicero wants to recover Platonic foundations and then part ways. In the process he becomes not only proto-Christian but also proto-modern. But for Cicero, active mind is focused primarily on ethics and politics, not on the technological transformation of nature. It would never have dawned on him that the latter could be a primary means to the good. Plato saw the primary object of thought to be soul. But it was not pure soul purged of things like eros and thumos. Pure mind thinking itself and conceived as having an element of will has its possible downside as an idea. It can lead to the hegemony of the constructivist Ego. Once that free-standing Ego is detached from subservience to mathematics, as it still was in Descartes, it can descend into the Nietzschean fabling of the world in the play of the blind will to power. Like everything else in life, every philosophic move opens the door to the law of unintended conse­ quences. Among other reasons, that is why history will never end. In book 1 we see several elements of Cicero’s agreement with Plato. But in the rest of the Tusculans we will see further divergences from Plato. We get a sense of another of these divergences in the preface to book 2. At his home in Tusculum, Cicero had constructed two gymnasia. One he called the Academy, the other he called the Lyceum. He begins book 2 by asserting that to start the discussion of the day, the discussants went “down to the Academy.”28 This is an obvious reference to the beginning of Plato’s Republic, where Socrates begins by saying, “I went down to the Piraeus.” Cicero is signaling a movement back to Plato, but it is also a movement “down” from the standpoint of Cicero. We have a movement back in recovery conjoined with an attempted movement forward and upward toward the novel future. Mind, Ethics, and Politics: The Internal Domain Made Public For Cicero, we need knowledge of soul so that philosophy can be the “physician of souls.”29 Souls, like bodies, are by nature prone to diseases.

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By way of lampooning the Stoics, Cicero engages in pettifogging etymolo­ gies and distinctions between disease, distress, and disturbance. We can bypass that sideshow. The more significant issue to which we must turn is that the necessary reflexivity of philosophy in its “completed” state must be directed back “outward” to recover a concrete concern with ethics and politics or it could end in a form of solipsism that retreats from the public arena in any number of directions.30 Philosophy has its own natural motions but must constantly be brought back “down” or “out” into the public arena in a fashion compa­ rable to the Platonic necessity to return to the cave.31 This is because the inclination of philosophy is to keep moving away from the public space and the human body, which are the only real points of phenomenological departure. And it must be brought out of its completed reflexivity in a fashion that is not comparable to the staring at a spectacle of a detached observer, as was true for the pre-Socratics. In book 2, the surface issue presented by A to refute is that pain is the greatest evil. We are brought back “out,” as it were, to a concrete issue. It is pain that forces the mind back “out.”32 Pain is a phenomenon that shows itself; it is not our invention. No one can become unencumbered of this phenomenon and live, Descartes included. One can ignore the phe­ nomena, but no one will ever transcend their hegemony. Among other things, no one transcends pain or death. The concrete refutation M offers against A’s premise that pain is the greatest evil is the response that pain is a phenomenon of the soul, not the body.33 This latter premise is demonstrated by pointing out that through training and toil, we can learn to be less moved by pain. Pain can be edu­ cated to a lower level, almost to a level where we pay it no conscious thought. But, Cicero asserts as a maxim, convention/training can never re­ place nature. This means habit and convention can never totally negate bodily nature. But training and habit can affect our relation to pain, which helps support the premise that phenomena lodge primarily in the soul. If pain is a phenomenon of the soul, it can be limited. Then it cannot be the greatest evil. M asserts that as lodged primarily in the soul, pain is more like a belief than something materialistic and hence can be dealt with by knowledge. Virtue is knowledge, but M has admitted there is also an element of habit. However, M sides more with Socrates than Aristotle on the knowledge/habit dichotomy. Virtue is knowledge, not primarily a

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habit or disposition. And yet an element of Aristotle is preserved: habit and training are important to our souls and can assist knowledge. By extension, ethics, in dealing with the passions, has an “internal” basis in self-conscious knowledge, which, as Cicero asserts in a variety of texts, is supported by another internal phenomenon, “conscience.” The novel idea of conscience, more or less absent in the Greeks, supports Ci­ cero’s internal approach to ethics. The needed knowledge for virtue must, if it is to restrain a soul rather than a body, have a basis that is “internal,” that is, in mind.34 Mere “external” reputation is not a “fixed principle”; it depends on things determined by chance. Conscience becomes more important than mere “recognition” and honor as the basis for ethics. Thus one can limit Aristotle’s reliance on the love of honor/recognition of the great-souled man. In the process, Cicero opens another door to a Christian approach to ethics with the proviso that he will simultaneously try to internalize the notion of pride and honor, which is difficult within a purely Christian teaching.35 Moral and political reliance on “external” applications of pleasure and pain to a body to produce habits (as in corporal punishment and plea­ surable reward), or reliance on recognition, depend more on chance than self-conscious “internal” restraints. We cannot primarily depend for changing behavior on the opinions of others, whether enforced by par­ ents, religion,36 society, or the state. Neither fear of pain nor love of repu­ tation can be our primary means of defense against pleasure and pain. Too much escapes our control when we rely on “external” means of con­ trol. Our opinions we can control; they are our own. This is how we con­ quer chance most effectively. We search for an “internal” conquest. External restraints like punishment and reward work primarily on the body. The basis of ethics must be “internal,” self-conscious, based on known principles. We must rule over souls, not our bodies. The true basis of even honor and nobility must be internal, and this differentiates Cice­ ro’s understanding of these phenomena from the love of immortal glory, which requires external opinion.37 Cicero has largely rejected the pagan pursuit of glory and, before the fact, the hegemony of the watered-down Hegelian dialectic of recognition — or its softer twin, the Lockean reliance on bourgeois repu­tation. He has simultaneously rejected the reliance on external

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applications of fear and pain to bodies by dispensations, stretching from the Old Testament — where fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom — to Hobbes, where a quite physical and secular fear is central. Cicero eventu­ ally opens the door to a theology of love (agape). Ethics takes on a far more philosophic and thereby far less conven­ tional posture with Cicero than it did with any of his predecessors, espe­ cially the Aristotle who lowered morality to a habitual status below knowledge and contemplation; in the process it became only a “secondbest” means to happiness. Yet Cicero relies not just on self-consciously grasped and internalized ethical principles. He supplements those moves with a newly conceptual­ ized and newly central faculty about which the Greeks offered only vague facsimiles. We must rely on “conscience,” which is internal but perhaps not fully self-consciously aware. So Cicero says: Make this your aim: consider that largeness of soul and, if I may say so, a certain exaltation of soul to the highest possible pitch, which best shows itself in scorn and contempt for pain, is the one fairest thing in the world and all the fairer should it be independent of popu­lar approval and without trying to win applause nevertheless find joy in itself. Nay more, to my mind all things seem more praise­ worthy that are done without glorification and without publicity, not that this is to be avoided — for all things done well tend to be set in the light of day — but all the same there is no audience for virtue of higher authority than the approval of conscience [conscientia].38 “Honor” must be based on “internal” variables, one of which is con­ science, not primarily on the external restraint of fear or the desire for fame and reputation.39 Conscience is a moral element Cicero is newly em­ phasizing; it probably finds its fullest philosophical flowering in Aquinas, but it is to be seen in St. Paul’s letters. Only by retrospective glances that are distorting does one find something comparable in Plato or Aristotle. For example, it would be a stretch to compare, as some have done, conscientia with Socrates’s daimon, which only says no, or with Socrates’s other alleged dreams, as in the Phaedo. Virtue can be based on self-consciousness and knowledge; virtue can be philosophic and not just reduced to habit and training, even though

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elements of habit and training remain. Along this path, M goes further and points to the “common experience” of “two selves,” where one self dictates orders from “within” to the other self, which is commanded and restrained and is perceived as “outside” the commander. This is the basis of “self-mastery.”40 This is a phenomenon that can be made to show itself, one part of us speaking to another part. One part presents itself as pure mind, the other part is the passions as lodged in the soul, especially pain. Cicero has opened the door to the enhancement and centrality of self-consciousness for more than a few Epicurean philosophers in private detachment. This expansion of self-consciousness did not, for example, await Christianity, or the impasse of “perception” or realization of the “inverted world” problem, as Hegel argues; that space had already been opened long before. Nor did this opening of self-consciousness lead to the mechanical application of abstract rules, “categorical” imperatives, or the domination of the universal. Cicero explicitly avoids adoption of Stoic cosmopolitanism at this point in the argument. In De Officiis, he argues that our particular nature and our universal nature as humans must be integrated. Both must be respected. In his “two fatherlands” doctrine, he will also argue for the need to grasp both universal principles and respect for particular nations. Cicero’s is an enhancement of self-consciousness at that point in history that for Hegel was the age of pagan masters, which he dealt with in the Phenomenology in the section dealing with “Dependent and Inde­ pendent Consciousnesses” or “Lordship and Bondage” — before the de­ velopment of true self-consciousness. What this proves, contrary to Hegel, is that thought can run ahead of its time. Hegel’s premise is that philosophy is its own time comprehended in thought, but it is in fact “untimely” and future-directed, running ahead of concrete social and political manifestations without manufacturing a basis for thought out­ side of the phenomena.41 With the novel philosophical spaces I have already suggested that Cicero has opened, he has prepared the way for his ongoing and central discussions of chance versus necessity, which recur as themes throughout his texts. Cicero is presenting an argument that makes it plausible that virtue, understood as self-conscious knowledge, can conquer chance. If in fact chance rules in the cosmos, we have to dismiss as merely rhetorical, public expediency the largely Stoic, pantheistic, necessity-driven myths

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that Cicero posits in texts such as De Re Publica and De Legibus. The at­ tempt to expand the audience for philosophy and deepen the basis of virtue does not mean that Cicero thinks the expansion and deepening will work for everyone. There will always be public teachings philosophy must commit itself to, and they must be consistent with what is already believed. I will argue that Cicero’s understanding is that chance rules in the cosmos, not pure necessity. In this understanding he parts ways with the Stoics. I would argue that proto-modernity was particularly confused on this subject, desiring to conquer chance while simultaneously depicting the cosmos as ruled entirely by necessity. One sees this in both the new physics of Descartes and Bacon and in the new political science of au­ thors such as Hobbes. Machiavelli was far more consistent, even if his means to the conquest of chance may have ultimately unleashed new ele­ ments of chance itself.42 Book 3 of the Tusculan Disputations opens with another explicit “going down” to the Academy and again a depiction of philosophy as primarily the art of healing the soul. If most human phenomena are moved from a primary locus in the body to the soul, the primary science is not medicine or physics but a logos (ratio) of the psyche (anima), that is, psychology.43 M again offers the injunction that we must learn to “heed ourselves” rather than others to conquer chance.44 Chance rules body; it need not rule the soul. If necessity rules everywhere, nothing can be changed and the soul cannot be conceived as mind qua cause. The premise M refutes on the surface of book 3 is that the wise man is susceptible to distress and is therefore capable of being unhappy. At a deeper level this turns into a dismissal of all pathe as in any way construc­ tive or useful in the economy of self-consciousness. They are all “agita­ tions” (perturbatio) of the soul that lead to “unsoundness of mind” (insanitas), whereas the goal should be “soundness of mind” (sanitas).45 A sound mind is not an internal battleground. This line of argument leads to a dismissal of everything from thumos, which is lowered in status to mere wrath and vengeance, to eros, which is primarily dismissed as mere lust or libido, and from frenzy and ecstatic states of all kinds to mania, which far from being divine is reduced to a form of mere furiosus. When one considers the extirpation of these states at which Cicero aims, we see that in an odd way Plato, who accepts and

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ennobles many of these non-self-conscious phenomena, is ironically closer to authors like Freud and Nietzsche in some ways. Cicero is mov­ ing in the direction of what one might call a reformed ethical Stoicism with higher levels of self-consciousness. That these premises can be di­ verted to the service of an excessively austere moral teaching is also true. In book 3 as elsewhere, M explicitly points out two ways of going about “proving” his point by using two separate “methods.” One is now defined as the “Stoic way” of compendious dialectical trains of arguments strung together,46 the other he calls “roaming at large” (oratio), which is our “ancestral way.” Of the Stoic use of dialectic qua strings of syllogisms, M says somewhat mildly that it is “unduly intricate,” by which he means it is both publicly boring and intellectually tedious, producing outcomes at odds with common perceptions.47 The surface teaching is that the wise man will never experience envy, lust, pity, grief, compassion, mania, eros, thumos, or any “exuberant plea­ sure,” frenzy, or ecstasy. All forms of pathos are manifestations of a dis­ eased (morbus) soul. Yet Cicero is clear, evil is not to be found in what he admits are instinctive natural inclinations. Evil is found in the beliefs we self-consciously hold about these things.48 For example, we allow our­ selves to grieve excessively for a loved one because we believe it is ex­ pected of us by others or that the loved one wants it. But this only brings us distress, which causes an internal battleground and undermines self-­ conscious internal control. The primary emotional distress is allegedly not instinctively determined but determined by opinions, and so the dis­ tress can be solved by adopting better opinions. As the surface argument goes, all forms of distress (perturbatio) are ultimately traceable to inappropriate beliefs rather than to bodily instincts or materialistic emotional foundations. The wise man will not allow any form of distress free rein because he will rid himself of the beliefs that cause the distress. Hence the wise man will never suffer distress. From this line of argument M draws the conclusion that we owe more to our­ selves “internally” than we do “externally” to friends, fellow countrymen, or relations.49 The surface argument is that we must support this new ethical stance, not primarily by habits but by what amounts to a philosophic under­ standing of the “nature of the human things.” We must first grasp what are called the “vicissitudes of life.” This will require that we adopt

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something of the spectator stance previously adopted by the natural phi­ losophers, but then direct it to the human things taken as a whole. This brings about a stance of detachment or transcendence from our thrown and situated circumstances, even as a particular individual and citizen. This ethical detachment and transcendence is the primary basis by which we free ourselves from the control of chance. But it is not a pure, or “thin,” self that eventuates from this detachment; it is the ground of a perfectly “thick,” situated self-controlled self. It is such individuals that are being presented as the best citizens for Cicero’s reformed republic. The spectator attitude and its inherent moment of detachment can be adapted to the public arena to help us understand the vicissitudes of life as they play themselves out everywhere and always. Armed with this under­ standing, Cicero suggests we will not be distressed by the ways chance affects us. The new “internal” code of honor, nobility, and self-control must be wed to dispassionate reflections upon the human condition.50 These reflections become the basis of a philosophically informed ethics in order to supplement any traditional bases. This leads to a new higher form of internal personal freedom consis­ tent with republican liberty. The two have to go hand in hand. Republics should not enflame the passions; they should show their citizens, and especially their leaders, how to master them. Republics rest on virtue so understood. This is not the traditional republican virtue that can be re­ duced primarily to martial virtue and patriotism. This is not the modern republicanism that emancipates the passions, gives them free rein, and even accepts internal psychological warfare as useful. What we are seeing is Cicero constructing the basis for a new citizen-­ gentleman who is far more philosophic than the warrior-gentlemen of Athens and Rome. He was to be a future gentleman more consistent with a new republican future. This more philosophic gentleman compares only partially with the similar attempt by Plato in his Republic, where the rul­ ers must be both successful at war but also be philosophers. A compari­ son of the differences between Plato and Cicero on this would be worthy of an extended study. Whether this new gentleman is capable of being a gentleperson, women included, awaits our reflections in chapter 7 on ethics. The short answer is “probably yes.” Cicero’s view is more consis­ tent with the idea of a gentleperson than with the traditional notion of a warrior-­gentleman.

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An indication of the transformation Cicero is attempting might be captured by comparing the phrase “an officer and a gentleman,” which stresses the prior importance of martial virtue, and the phrase “a scholar and a gentleman,” or the even more complicated notion “Christian gen­ tleman.” Throughout his corpus Cicero stunningly downplays martial virtue. For a notion both similar to and different from what Cicero is at­ tempting, one might compare Locke’s bourgeois gentilhomme, as depicted in Thoughts Concerning Education, and how that manifestation of the gen­ tleman would inform Locke’s distinctive modern republic. I would argue that Cicero’s gentleperson is better equipped to provide the needed sup­ ports for contemporary commercial republics than Locke’s gentilhomme. Reason as Moral Cause: A Modern Opening with a Twist The preface to book 4 of the Tusculan Disputations begins with Cicero, presumably in his own name, asserting that he follows no existing school.51 In one of his dramatic exchanges, Cicero has his character A make a similar assertion about Cicero, that he is “hampered” by no par­ ticular set of school dogmas.52 The first epigraph at the beginning of this chapter, above, stresses the same point, when Cicero asserts that he does not want his true position known. Innovators shy away from making all too clear just how significant their innovations are. Yet they cannot allow their innovations to be com­ pletely overlooked. They always leave their trails of rhetorical bread crumbs. By now we can see that Cicero is not derivative or merely eclec­ tic, but he is in fact an innovator — and he fully understood that. We should not let his quiet and dignified mode of writing — he is the antithe­ sis in this regard of the bombastic Nietzsche — put us off the message. Once again, Cicero’s character M keeps asking the character A if he wants his “proofs” presented using Stoic dialectic or eloquence (oratio). A seems to like both, but he leans toward the dialectic. A is sympathetic to Stoic practices, and thus Cicero’s M frequently opens with them, only to modify and transcend the results. With another interlocutor, Cicero would, and in other texts does, take a different rhetorical tack. This is not eclecticism; it is a sign of the phenomenological and dialectical need to

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begin with a point of departure one does not and cannot choose, in this case to begin with whom one is confronted already. One must begin within the phenomena that always show themselves at some specific place at a specific time with a specific climate of opinion and a specific concrete discussant. On the surface, M seems to adopt a version of the Stoic ethical intu­ ition that sees virtues as pure (and thus not as Aristotelian means be­ tween two extremes) and leading to states of tranquility in the soul. This results in an ethical stance that is decidedly un-Greek. For Cicero, the pathe have greatly limited purchase compared to how the Greeks viewed them. But much of this seeming adoption of Stoic principles is simply a way in which Cicero gains traction for a quiet critique of Plato, who, though unnamed, is depicted as seeing both virtue and philosophy as forms of “fiery longing.”53 Cicero dramatically takes Plato to task for his erotic grounding of philosophy because it is never free from disquietude and anxiety.54 The text on the surface would leave the reader with the view that the idea is to extirpate passion, not merely limit it to some degree or channel it onto useful paths. Cicero appears to be arguing that this is what more consis­ tently follows from focusing on soul understood as mind as the primary object of philosophy, and then needing to project that reflexive move on the part of philosophy back “out” in an ethical and political direction rather than allow that move to drift toward the passive cosmological star­ ing of a pre-Socratic spectator. For Cicero, like Plato and Aristotle, there is no attempt to make pas­ sion and desire evil. Cicero does seem to reject the Aristotelian and Peri­ patetic view that desire supplies the source of all action; for Aristotle, virtuous action is a form of “deliberate desire.” What moral reason does in Aristotle’s view is channel the motive force given by desire. In that re­ gard, Aristotle and Hobbes are in far closer agreement on desire as the only motive force to action. Cicero’s position is moving closer to someone like Kant, who sees pure practical reason as an originary cause. In the Tusculan Disputations, mind qua will is being depicted as ca­ pable of initiating action. Soul is depicted as mind; mind is depicted as will, or self-cause. This is definitely not Aristotle, nor is it Plato. In fact, it opens a door toward modern thought. How this equation of Cicero’s relates to Plato is a long story, but in the end I believe Cicero is correct in seeing Pla­ to’s elevation of the importance of the pathe to causal status. Hence Plato

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like Aristotle would see action as a form of deliberate desire, and that may even be true of Platonic philosophy as a form of divine mania.55 To avoid the issue of desire as a source of action, M explicitly argues that one should eschew even asking the question as to whether instinct, passion, and desire are moral or bad. Attention should be given to limit­ ing the scope and eventually the intensity of desires and passions, because if mind is to rule, order must prevail in the soul. It is passion of any kind that creates disorder and disquiet in the soul. The issue is not about evil, it is about order and the conditions required for becoming a self-cause and to maintain internal self-government. A mind-induced order is pre­ sented as the means to conquering chance. The soul must speak with one voice to become a self-cause and hope to conquer chance. For whatever reason, Cicero rarely addresses Aristotle directly. Even more rarely does he adopt a doctrine that can clearly be traced to Aris­ totle. However, he frequently attacks Aristotle by proxy. For example, the Tusculans dramatically asserts that the doctrine that sees the moral vir­ tues as habits and especially as means between two extremes is “weak and effeminate,” because it admits a part of vice where “conscience” would, if left to its own devices, choose more purely.56 In the Tusculans, a merely practical wisdom (prudentia) as understood by Aristotle (phronesis) ceases to be the primary basis of moral choice, just as habits cease to be the essential basis of the virtues. This is not to say that prudence and habit can be dispensed with; they simply come to have a different and lower moral status. In the place of phronesis we have self-­ conscious will as the origin of action, with will being limited “internally” by such factors as “conscience.”57 This is not a Greek understanding; it is, however, an understanding that is ready-made as a space for adoption by Christian philosophy, and in a different way by the moderns. It focuses on the internal attribute of will understood as efficient cause. Only at a very late moment did Thomas try to reinsert Aristotle and with it the place of prudence into Christian philosophy. Yet even he focused on the place of conscience, an internal phenomenon. The consistency and success of that effort from a Christian perspective can still be debated, especially in light of Aristotle’s belief that the cosmos is eternal and not created. With Cicero’s transformation of his Greek patrimony, the very tenor of virtue begins to change. In De Officiis, eros as something divine, with its frenzied states, is replaced explicitly by un-Greek virtues, such as hu­ mility and modesty. Likewise, even the brave man is no longer presented

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as angry and in the grips of righteously indignant thumos; he is cool and deliberate. We have the difference between Achilles and the traditional depiction of the calm and firmly controlled British gentleman (“stiff upper lip”) and other similar notions of gentility that feature resoluteness and steadfastness, but without angry ferocity or intense machismo. It is a very distinct ethical stance based on philosophical presuppositions. It is not just that the warmer virtues like courage, magnanimity, or even patriotism jettison their passionate element. The passionate and emo­ tional is jettisoned in general. The same stance is applied to emotions like pity. We should not pity others because that emotion agitates us to no good purpose. We can help those who need it in a cool and reserved fash­ ion without pity.58 By the argument that emerges from M’s responses to A, all agitated and passionate states are ruled out of court as at odds with the order in the soul that makes reason as will efficacious. There is no need for mind operating as will to be passionate and accept the blindly uncon­ scious, as with Plato’s bow to various pathe, Aristotle’s “deliberate desire,” and certainly not as with Nietzsche’s will to power.59 And there is no un­ derstanding that it is healthy to unleash the subconscious Id of Freud. At the moment I am not so much recommending this transformed notion of virtue as I am pointing out it exists, along with the implications of its adoption. What I will try to co-opt in conclusion is the need in our time for a recovery of the “internal” restraint required of this understand­ ing of virtue. I intend to argue that some version of this noble basis of individual restraint leading to ordered internal self-government is now a republican necessity. Unique manifestations of internal moral codes of honor and nobility are both needed and possible in our transformed moral, political, and philosophical situation. And this possibility can be drawn out of the phenomena that show themselves in the same fashion that Cicero points out to us. One should for the moment notice how much at odds this trans­ formed ethical stance that emerges in the Tusculans is with the much more pugnacious and fiery Roman model of behavior of Cicero’s day, or even of the earlier Republic of, for example, 350 BC. Cicero is not by any means engaged simply in a justification of his own times or a mere recov­ ery of the past. The capstone to this fact comes when Cicero finishes book 4 with the decidedly postpagan and postclassical notion that anger and vengeance, among all forms of pathe, are less natural than repentance.60

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Repentance becomes a personally imposed duty, if not quite a virtue. This same move returns in De Officiis. To return to the surface of the text, we arrive at the negation of A’s premise that the wise man too falls prey to disorders of the soul. But we now see that all disorders are disorders of soul, mind, and thought; they come from having the wrong opinions. If all disorders are of the soul, they therefore originate in belief and the refusal to see the truth. We see that the wise man who has the correct beliefs will master all disorders born of the pathe. We need not be the tragic pawns of the pathe that come when they wish. This is a manifestation of chance. We must have states of mind that come when we wish. The best state of mind is one of steadfast­ ness and control, one not born of an internal psychic battleground. If we cure wrong beliefs, we can then overcome the tragic nature of existence. Life is not necessarily tragic. Hence we can conquer chance through philosophy and virtue. Mind can conquer chance. This of course is not a repetition of the “optimism” that Nietzsche attributes to Socrates. We cannot change being, but we can change the way we relate to it. Life need not be simply tragic, and the tragic consciousness is not good for morals and politics. We do not attempt to conquer chance through natu­ ral science and technology, or through a political science that eschews virtue by enthroning selected pathe — the classic modern examples being fear, ambition, and greed. Nietzsche, like a good modern, wishes to again unleash various pathe — albeit of a far more spirited and less bourgeois calculating variety than his modern predecessors. Nietzsche understood precisely that the out­ come of his project was tragic and wished openly for a new tragic civiliza­ tion. The picture of reversal and counterreversal in history that Nietzsche makes an explicit theme can be seen as different from the perspective of Cicero, who is presenting a modification of what Nietzsche presents as So­ cratic optimism or the optimism of bourgeois progressivism. When seen correctly, the story is hardly as Nietzsche depicts it. So­ cratic optimism never eventuates in the belief that reason can remake real­ ity — that is the modern view to which Nietzsche still subscribes in his own way. And Cicero has no sense that we will ever emancipate ourselves from the external “vicissitudes of life.” The trick is to make ourselves as self-­ sufficient as possible and as little dependent upon external circumstances as possible — including the recognition longed for by the great-souled man.

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There is no possibility of eradicating chance and accident; there is no ground for extreme optimism. And yet we can conquer chance to some degree. There is a ground for an optimism of modest expectations. On the surface, book 5 offers a refutation of A’s assertion that vir­ tue is not self-sufficient for a happy life. If so, even the wise man when on the rack or overcome by chance occurrences will be unhappy. Book 5 has the longest preface and begins with the reflections on the nature of past philosophy we have already discussed. But for the first time those reflections on philosophy are now explicitly conjoined with reflections on how to confront chance and accident in life. Cicero is clear that chance plays a greater part in human life than necessity — and he will make the same argument about the cosmos in his confrontations with Epicurean and Stoic cosmology. If chance and accident are primary in the cosmos, unpredictability rather than iron inevitability and its total lack of freedom always constitutes the human situation. The difference between chance and necessity dictates how we proceed to deal with the human situation.61 There is of course a third alternative: life could be determined by di­ vine will and thereby determined by a mysterious intervention that can­ not be dealt with in any fashion.62 Happiness in this environment would require primarily human reliance upon divine assistance and/or grace —  which might require preemptive calls for that assistance without know­ ing the basis upon which the divine would choose to assist. Cicero draws attention to this third possibility in discussing “prayers to heaven” in con­ junction with conquering chance.63 Focusing on revelation, divination, and divine intervention provides a possible third way to deal with the human condition, one beyond tech­ nology and technical rationality or self-conscious control of one’s life through virtue. But the third option is not pursued in the Tusculans. Ci­ cero will return to this issue in his treatments of natural theology and divination, which we consider in a later chapter. There we will see how he reinforces the distinction between chance and necessity. The issue is cen­ tral in his ethical, cosmological, and theological reflections. If the world has a conscious divine beginning, would a divine mind create a world ruled by ironclad necessity wherein everything is fated, or introduce a core of chance so that man could be a moral agent — which would imply even God cannot predict everything that will happen? We did not need scripture and millennia of scriptural theology and commentary to

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arrive at these questions — that is, whether God can be omniscient and omnipotent simultaneously. Cicero arrived at those questions on the basis of reason. Book 5 becomes a consideration of the Peripatetic notion that there are three kinds of goods: goods of the body, goods of the soul, and “exter­ nal” goods. It becomes clear that bodily goods and external goods can be attacked by chance most easily. We have limited control over bodily evils such as those associated with sickness, injury, or poor birth, physical looks, and other bodily excellences. The same is true of external goods, such as wealth, reputation, easy access to offices, and so on. On the surface, M maintains that the goods of the soul properly un­ derstood are the only ones that can be rendered in any way immune to chance. Beyond that, M suggests that one cannot consistently make the goods of the body, such as pleasure, the highest good and still discuss nobility, justice, plain living, honor, or wisdom, as the Epicureans do: “Philosophers, therefore, must be judged not by isolated utterances but by uninterrupted consistency” [constantia].64 A materialist, or anyone who believes in necessity, cannot consistently be for virtue and nobility. Constancy becomes not only a moral virtue for Cicero but also a philo­ sophical virtue. Therefore, if one aims at constancy (to say nothing of con­ sistency) one cannot take “external” goods as good at all, as the Peripatetics do, for external goods are entirely dependent upon variables that cannot be controlled and in the face of which one cannot be constant. Both philoso­ phy and virtue require consistency and constancy. M asserts that he took these premises from Plato. But apparently he did not think Plato was himself consistent. He is “a fountain holy and revered,” but he still incor­ porated too many “transports” of pathos. The “man of self-restraint . . . never will he give way to transports of either joy or grief.”65 As part of his response to Plato, M argues that virtue is the good of the soul, which is mind made perfect. Only through virtue so understood can happiness and the good be made secure and lasting: “safe, impreg­ nable, fenced and fortified” from all fear and distress.66 The wise man, to be happy, must make all things depend upon himself.67 Wisdom requires that we render ourselves free from distress and fear, be in control of emo­ tions, and as little dependent on external goods as possible. M observes that external goods can even legally be possessed by unworthy and un­ wise men. We should also not be dependent upon reputation, which is almost always offered by knaves and fools:

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To the soul occupied night and day in [the highest] meditations there comes the knowledge enjoined by the god at Delphi, that the mind should know its own self and feel its union with the divine mind, the source of the fulness of joy unquenchable. For meditation upon the power and nature of the gods of itself kindles the desire of attaining an immortality that resembles theirs, nor does the soul think that it is limited to this short span of life, when it sees that the causes of things are linked one to another in an inevitable chain, and nevertheless their succession from eternity to eternity is governed by reason and intelli­ gence. As the wise man gazes upon this spectacle and looks upward or rather looks round upon all the parts and regions of the universe, with what calmness of soul he turns again to reflect upon what is in man and touches him more nearly! Hence comes his knowledge of virtue.68 The “gazing at the heavens” encouraged here leads, it is asserted, to reflections on eternity, the first cause of everything, the divine, but when properly enjoined, this “contemplation” is for the purpose of human virtue, not idle detached speculation. Robert Browning captured this thought with the lines: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for.”69 M finishes the Tusculan Disputations by admitting that the best com­ munity is the one where the wise are not driven away into exile, but they in fact not only join in civic engagement but lead it. M somewhat ellipti­ cally asserts that Socrates was the quintessential citizen of the cosmos, yet also a citizen of Athens. Throughout his corpus, Cicero seems to as­ sert that it is possible to be a citizen of the cosmos and still committed to what is one’s own. These closing reflections open the door to Cicero’s “two fatherlands” doctrine and his assertion of the existence of a universal natural law in its relation to the necessity of individual positive law. This is a topic to which we will return in chapter 9. In light of the notion of being a citizen of two cities simultaneously, M observes that Socrates, presumably unlike the Epicureans, partici­ pated openly in his particular community and never left it, even when it became threatening to stay. The final word is that wisdom and political engagement had only a tenuous relation in the time of Socrates. Cicero is opening a door to a world where it need not be as tenuous if things are properly rearranged. Philosophy, morality, and politics must all change by way of coming toward each other for that to happen.

Five

Cicero on Cosmology and Natural Philosophy It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics, too, is only an interpretation and exegesis of the world (to suit us, if I may say so!) and not a world-explanation; but . . . it is regarded as more, and for a long time to come must be regarded as more. “Nature’s conformity to law,” of which you physicists talk so proudly . . . is no matter of fact, no “text,” but rather only a naively humanitarian emendation and perversion of meaning, with which you make abundant concessions to the democratic instincts of the modern soul! . . . But as said above, that is interpretation, not text; and somebody might come along who, with opposite intentions and modes of interpretation, could read out of the same “nature,” and with regard to the same phenomena, rather the tyrannically inconsiderate and relentless enforcement of claims of power . . . [and] end by asserting the same about the world as you do, namely that it has a “necessary” and “calculable” course, not because laws obtain in it, but because they are absolutely lacking. — Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 14; 22 (Nietzsche’s emphasis)

127

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The Non-autonomy of Cosmology In treating natural philosophy, which I will henceforth designate as cosmology, as if it were a subject that could be considered separately and autonomously I run the risk of giving just precisely the wrong impression. Cicero rejects the premise that cosmology can be autonomous, which is to say, ethically neutral. On this subject Cicero agrees with Nietzsche. Not only can it not be autonomous, but for Cicero cosmology does not represent first philosophy, from which everything else follows. Cosmology is, as I argued above, but one of the five fundamental areas of thought that must be woven together into a whole. Cicero may not have the same five fundamental areas of thought I have presented, but he accepts the same fundamental understanding that first philosophy is a holistic undertaking qua political philosophy. The fact that cosmology cannot be autonomous and does not take priority for philosophy is why Cicero’s corpus gives it the least extensive and least expansive treatment of the main areas of philosophy, even though in his time it was seen as one of the three main divisions of knowledge: logic, ethics, and natural philosophy. The attempt by the moderns to give at least the public perception of autonomy and moral neutrality to natural science, and especially to cosmology, is actually refuted by the fact that in its essence modern science is technology, not cosmology, or for that matter the more derivative ontology.1 What proto-moderns like Descartes and Bacon really wanted was to make natural philosophy autonomous from theology, but in its own way it still remained dependent upon ethics and politics to the extent there was an embedded, transformed understanding of the good.2 It was believed, without being openly proved, that the human good could best be pursued by a conquest of nature by which man emancipated himself from nature and manipulated and controlled it to his benefit. There is clearly an idea of the good determining this project. And the end was never simple understanding of the cosmological or ontological nature of reality so much as “mastering” and “conquering” nature. Technological domination of nature was always the end of modern science. Cicero no more wanted theology to be primary or autonomous than the moderns did. He correctly saw that to assure the subordination of theology, what was needed was for architectonic political philosophy to

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control both theology and cosmology. For Cicero, if any of the primary individual divisions of thought come close to having a status of prior or primary without simply being autonomous, it would be ethics. Cicero’s ultimate understanding is that all knowledge must be defended as public knowledge in public speech in a public space (res publica) and treated as a whole that cannot be separated into autonomous parts. This is especially true of natural philosophy or cosmology. All knowledge that is more than the private domain of a few, which intends to have no effect on the world, is in principle public knowledge disseminated in public speech, and that is true even of cosmology. With that premise in place, we are saddled with a series of necessary ramifications, to which we will now turn. When we move to the issue of cosmology in the context of Cicero’s corpus, we confront a problem. There is no specific text that is devoted entirely to that subject. The issue is never absent from Cicero’s reflections but never at the forefront either. I am going to let reflections on the text De Finibus take the lead in this section for a variety of reasons. De Finibus is not simply about cosmology — the full title would indicate that its primary subject is ethics3 — but it does offer the most sustained reflections on the cosmological theories of Cicero’s time, other than in his De Natura Deorum, which we will consider in chapter 6. The two strongest and most comprehensive schools of thought in Cicero’s time were Stoicism and Epicureanism, and each was built upon a cosmological teaching. Throughout his philosophical corpus Cicero remains in dialectical confrontation with both Stoicism and Epicureanism, and only to a lesser extent with the various permutations of the Academy, the Peripatetics, and other smaller schools, such as the Cynics. Cicero repeatedly stages what is primarily a confrontation between Epicureanism and Stoicism and thereby between their two competing cosmological positions, neither of which he accepts. Even so, Cicero is at pains to make Epicurean cosmological materialism his chief opponent. Interestingly, he also stresses the extent to which the Stoics are ultimately materialists. Materialism seems to be Cicero’s primary public opponent. He argues that materialism most consistently goes with hedonism and that it opposes what is a central ethical quality, honestum (which I term “moral excellence”), which we will return to thematically in chapter 7 on ethics.

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Neither the Stoics nor the Epicureans are consistent as both try to build in an element of honestum on materialist premises. The Stoics even talk about the centrality of mind, only to give it a materialist underpinning that Cicero sees as inconsistent. At the end of the Tusculan Disputations, which I have argued is Cicero’s most sustained reflection on the nature of philosophy and how it relates to practical existence, Cicero explicitly calls our attention to De Finibus, which was written earlier. He presents the two works as inextricably linked. They each have five books and they each have a unique dialectical nature in which Cicero employs various literary techniques to avoid speaking in his own name. By Cicero’s own instructions it appears we are meant to line up each chapter with the corresponding book in the other work. I will have to abstract from that explicit undertaking at present, and for the sake of brevity I am going to offer primarily my conclusions regarding Cicero’s cosmological teaching.4 In chapter 4, I tried to indicate both the ways in which Cicero was going back to Socrates and Plato to reoccupy ground that had by his time been lost and the ways in which he was plotting a break and a move to something he saw as unique. In this chapter, we will start from Cicero’s break from his contemporaries, the Epicureans and Stoics. What passed for the Academy in his time was of limited interest from the perspective of cosmology because, depending on the permutation of the Academy, it was either totally skeptical or simply eclectic in inconsistently synthesizing past sources, and thus no interesting cosmology was possible. The various school philosophies of Cicero’s time had all accepted the division of knowledge into three fields, interrelated but still separate: logic,5 natural philosophy, and ethics.6 All three primary fields had subdivisions. Natural philosophy had subfields of natural theology, cosmology, biology, botany, and psychology.7 Only at a later date, after the commencement of the Christian era, would ontology thematically emancipate itself from cosmology again, as with the pre-Socratics, and therein lies a signifi­ cant story (Parmenides had also emancipated ontology from cosmology). We have already seen that Cicero tries to emancipate psychology from materialistic accounts and from a foundation in natural philosophy more generally. Psychology had, in the school philosophies of his day, become an adjunct to natural philosophy and not, as it becomes with Cicero,

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a reflection on the animating principle (anima) of what causes man to be what he truly is, a thinking being. That moves psychology into a category of its own rather than subservient to natural philosophy or cosmology.8 If anything, for Cicero, psychology gains a level of phenomenological priority second only to ethics, again without gaining autonomy. In Cicero’s time, ethics had the subfields political science and rhetoric. In a fashion we will see in chapter 8, for Cicero, logic drops in status to where it is placed under and subordinate to rhetoric and oratory. Logic loses its independent status and with that move so do the then traditional parts of logic, namely, dialectic and syllogism.9 For Cicero, ethics was based on the primary fundamental question, “What is the best life?,” subtly reconceptualized as “What is the highest aim of action?” This subtle switch, which from a phenomenological perspective is significant, is signaled in the full title of De Finibus.10 Cicero is thereby stressing the importance of an element of final causality added to material causality and the formal causality that dominated with Socrates. He will take the Epicureans to task for failing to have a doctrine of efficient causality. For Cicero, ethics had to recognize that it needed a doctrine of human nature (psychology), which in turn required a doctrine of the place of human nature in the larger natural whole or cosmos. We move in that fashion from ethics to psychology to cosmology. This means that ethics could never be divorced from cosmology any more than it could be divorced from psychology, and vice versa. Ethics still took priority for Cicero, as it always does, openly or surreptitiously. Fundamental Alternatives: The Limits of Materialism Obviously Cicero occupied a moment before the arrival of the new, hypothetical, constructivist modern natural science and its associated cosmological speculations.11 To be brief, I will merely assert that I am confident I could show that the underlying modern cosmological intuitions repeat finite fundamental possibilities, most, perhaps all, of which were already grasped by Cicero.12 Thus Cicero was not in an irretrievably compromised situation.

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Cicero helps us see at the deepest level the price one pays for making various fundamental cosmological choices, choices that we in the modern world have made in a distinctive fashion. Our world is differently configured because of those choices. Those conscious, philosophical choices have long since been forgotten and need to be returned to the light of day to be reconsidered. Again, for Cicero the two primary competing cosmologies were Epi­ curean and Stoic. He is openly hostile to the Epicurean understanding, but also shows his philosophical distrust of the Stoic position.13 More quietly, Cicero also displays and raises questions about parts of Platonic cosmology, especially as presented in the Timaeus, and he thus critically examines the cosmological teachings of the Original Academy along with various pre-Socratic and poetic cosmologies. Cicero hints at the need for a novel cosmology, but he does not supply it in his own name. Ultimately, one would have to extrapolate Cicero’s positive cosmology by working backward from his conclusions in other areas, especially ethics and politics. And so what we see most clearly is not Cicero’s own unique cosmological position. What we see is that he will not allow the ethical neutrality or autonomy of cosmology, or what became ontology, any more than the philosophical autonomy of the related reflections on natural theology, or logic, or any other independent study. One of the core reasons for this is that unlike Aristotle, Cicero does not accept that the detached “contemplative” life is superior to the public life, even for the philosopher. He is aiming at a more active and engaged philosophy, but at the same time at a more philosophical ethics and politics than emerges from ancestral tradition. He will solve the problem of the tension between philosophy and the city by bringing them together in a unique fashion. This allows him to go a long way toward solving the problem that grows out of any potential necessary tension between philosophy and praxis without a significant public reliance on myth and noble lies to bridge the gap. For Cicero, it appears there are no pure “external” theoretical objects available for contemplation — which can be immediately, rather than mediately or dialectically grasped — other than the human soul and its primary phenomenological preoccupation with the good.14 One must accept the good, and therefore the human soul, as immediately graspable in life itself; otherwise one has absolutely nowhere to start other than in constructivist, theoretical midair.

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In this regard, the setting and action of Cicero’s De Finibus are both significant. The first of its three settings is near one of Cicero’s country homes in Cumae. The second is near another country home in Tusculum to which Cicero asserts he had retired in search of commentaries on Aristotle.15 The third setting changes to Athens many years before. Of the three dialogues presented in the work — that is, dialectical confrontations between different fundamental positions and school philosophies — one is presented in books 1 and 2, one in books 3 and 4, and one in book 5, which, asymmetrical to the first two dialogues, carries both the assertion of a position and its “refutation” in one book. The settings of the dialogues not only change but move back in time, culminating in Athens, when Cicero was much younger than in the beginning dialogues. The temporal movement of the text is from close to Cicero’s last few years to his earlier life. Spatially we move from Rome to Athens, and in Athens from a lecture by Antiochus, founder of the “Old” Academy,” to the environs of the Original Academy. All of this signals Cicero’s attempt to get back to Socratic/Platonic roots. Various spokespersons other than Cicero act as champions for specific school philosophies, such as the Epicurean and Stoic. Then Cicero adopts the mask of still different positions and responds. In the process, we get cosmological (and ethical) renditions of Epicureanism, Stoicism, the cosmological nonpositions of “Old” and “New” Academies, with mentions of the Peripatetics, and allusions to several Cynics. Rather than adopt the position of one of the sects, Cicero is trying to transcend sectarianism and get back to the unity of knowledge that he sees existing in the thought of Plato especially. No such unity of thought existed in Aristotle, who divided knowledge into not only theoretical and practical but into different independent studies. Cicero saw this move as problematic. The first dialogue in book 1 is a presentation of the Epicurean position by Velleius and then a refutation in book 2 by Cicero, the dramatic character, having adopted the mask of being a Stoic. Despite asserting that Epicureanism will be taken up first because it is simplistic and easiest to deal with, the “refutation” in book 2 is twice as long as the “defense” in book 1 and twice as long as the refutation of Stoicism in book 4. Something about Epicureanism is more difficult to confront than Cicero is willing to let on publicly on the surface. Cicero probably would have learned his Epicureanism primarily from his contemporary Lucretius and the latter’s work De Rerum Natura.

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But throughout the presentation of the Epicurean doctrine, it is asserted that there is no significant change, certainly not for the better, from Democritus and his atomist materialism to Epicurus to his later followers, Lucretius among them. Cicero stresses that Epicureanism is built upon an atomic theory that sees the atoms as indivisible dense Ones that are “falling” through an allegedly infinite space, which is depicted as a void. If the purportedly infinite number of atoms in infinite space were to continue to fall in parallel paths, there would never be anything but atoms and void. The theory therefore posits that inexplicably one or several of the atoms “swerved,” and this started the myriad collisions and resultant combinations from which a cosmos eventually congeals. Herein we confront an insoluble problem. If all the atoms are identical, indivisible Ones, why do only a few swerve, and what is the status of the force (efficient cause) that causes them to do so? If they all swerve, one will have chaos and no congealing into a cosmos understood as something that is orderly, if only for a time. If none swerve, we likewise will have no combinations and no cosmos. This monistic account lacks the second, and perhaps multiple, variable(s) necessary for it to be a consistent account — but more than anything else it lacks a necessary account of efficient causality. All of the swerving and combining is posited as happening from blind accident. But if the atoms are truly identical indivisible Ones, they are prone to swerving only if some force is applied from without. Cicero criticizes Epicurus for having no way to account for the efficient cause of initial swerving. He makes it clear that the idea of blind indivisible matter having an internal explanation for movement raises irresolvable issues about whether the atom is truly One rather than divided in such a way that one part operates on another part. Once that issue is confronted, one is led toward the idea of some external efficient cause or force that has to be applied to some atoms only, and Epicurus cannot account for this. Eventually one is led to wonder, since only certain atoms are chosen to be operated upon, if this efficient cause is mind understood as will that is capable of making choices. To compress the argument, Cicero presents things in such a way that it is made to appear that any external efficient cause has to be understood as mind operating as will, or it makes no conceptual sense. Cicero is at pains to point out that in ethics, Epicurus does have an internal, if

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allegedly unconscious and materialist, efficient cause in the instinct for pleasure that allegedly moves all action, and hence all human matter. But inconsistently, Epicurus has no efficient cause in his physics. Epicurus simply cannot consistently explain the first things or how the human things are related to, and integrated into, the principles operating in his larger cosmos. Epicurus cannot explain the whole as a whole. The doctrine of the swerve is a theoretical nightmare. Either some internally generated cause of motion, which probably would also have to be likened to an act of mind or will, operates or a force applied from outside intervenes.16 Either way one has to incorporate a principle foreign to the atomist doctrine. The entire doctrine becomes even more inconsistent when will in humans is later defined by Epicureans as based on the swerve of really small soul atoms, which are alleged to be qualitatively different than body atoms by their mere quantitative size. According to the Epicurean doctrine, it is not just that one cosmos comes into being from the primordial, and presumably ongoing, swerves, but the Epicureans posit that at any given moment there are multiple if not infinite cosmoses. The swerves — past, present, and future — ensure that there will be no fixed order to the natural whole, no being, only becoming. Hence the many cosmoses need not be identical, nor will any of them be lasting. In short, there is really no being to contemplate. And thus mind has no object of its own. But contemplation is the ethical end of the Epicurean understanding of the good life. The whole, formed of many cosmoses, is one of constant coming to be and destruction. There is a constant hurly-burly of atoms, the coming together and destruction of the cosmoses, no cessation of motion, no tranquility anywhere. Yet the tranquility and rest of contemplation is posited as the best life and is the aim of Epicurean ethics. But what is there to contemplate? The human things and the natural things stand opposed and are not integrated in this account. The humans long for tranquility; the cosmos is endless, ceaseless, accidental motion. Therefore the whole constructed of the human and the nonhuman is in fact not a whole; the longed-for human good points toward a kingdom within a kingdom. But that is as much at odds with Epicurean monism as it is with Spinoza’s philosophy. Ethically, the Epicureans see the good as a psychological life of tranquility or rest. But they try to build this desire for ethical rest out of incessant cosmic motion of becoming and destruction. The human things

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and the cosmos are not in any sympathetic alignment with each other, and this is the first thing that is necessary in a unitary account of the whole.17 At the origin of what passes for a whole we find the inexplicable chance swerves of atoms. Yet thereafter most things are explained as operating according to materialistic necessity: necessity is built on the foundation of chance. That poses endless conceptual problems. In the moral and political teaching of Epicureanism, the chance swerves of soul atoms allegedly account for human choice and freedom, which emancipates man from necessity, yet human generation and decay are wrapped up in a web of necessity. Epicurus has not figured out how to integrate chance and necessity in his account.18 Hence Epicurus cannot find a basis for the freedom that is central to his ethics wherein the happy life must be chosen by the individual. Everywhere one turns, Epicurus is utterly inconsistent. The atoms and the void are posited as eternal; neither was created, neither came into being. The various cosmoses are accidental, and thus the product of chance, constantly coming into being and passing away. Since they came into being by accident, nothing supports their continued existence, and therefore each will inevitably come apart — and sooner rather than later. Actually, each cosmos is at any given moment either still coming into being or passing away. No point of rest ever arrives. There are a variety of other difficulties with Epicurean materialistic monism. Between the various cosmoses remains a void. But Cicero questions the doctrine of the void and posits that there can be no such thing as a void.19 He also questions the conceptual clarity of the idea of the totality of the cosmoses being infinite.20 And prefiguring modern physics, Cicero the character simply asserts that there is no such thing as an indivisible atom. He suggests that in matter, divisibility is infinite.21 There is allegedly soul in the Epicurean cosmos, but either an atom is One and seamless and identical to all other atoms or it is not, so the canard about atoms of different sizes being qualitatively different represents another gross inconsistency. Further, there is no principle for the origin of motion. Cicero presents the idea of eternal motion as being inconsistent. Without a consistent principle of the origin of motion — for ex­ ample, soul conceived as mind qua will rather than small matter — the atomistic theory cannot be made to work. These inconsistencies pointed out by Cicero are problems to which all pure materialism will always be

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prone. One is eventually led to the conclusion that there is no way to eliminate efficient causality from an account of the whole and hence no way to eliminate the issue of the first cause. And the first cause of motion must itself be unmoved and uncaused or we have an infinite regress. Death is posited by the Epicureans as the coming apart not just of body atoms but of soul atoms and their dissipation into chaos ready for recombination. The gods are posited as existing but are also composed, like human soul, of very fine and small atoms; they exist in the void in between cosmoses. Inconsistently, unlike human soul, the gods, while having come into being, are posited as eternal. They allegedly have will, but they did not create the universe, oversee its operation, or oversee human actions. They are not providential beings. They have perfect leisure because they do not do anything. Under those circumstances, why they need will is not clear. But it is the swerving of soul atoms that accounts for will, even if gods never use their wills and humans do. Unlike everything else in the cosmos, the gods are posited as at leisure, which means at rest; they do nothing and take no cognizance of us, or the rest of the cosmoses. But they are a model for the human good, which qua tranquility also longs for rest, despite being made of intrinsically restless atoms operating in a restless cosmos. Even though the physics is internally inconsistent — as I would argue is every form of materialism — Epicurean cosmology is also shown to be inconsistently linked to Epicurean ethics and theology. The highest good for man is posited as pleasure, but the greatest and most lasting pleasure is posited as the absence of pain. The greatest good is enduring peace of mind — a form of rest — rather than ongoing sensory titillation, let alone energetic involvement in the civic life of a community. Epicurean cosmology is primarily posited as in the service of overcoming the disquiet caused by superstitious concern about divine retribution and a possibly unpleasant afterlife; it allegedly teaches us to quit worrying about the afterlife while simultaneously emancipating us from the perturbations of civic engagement, the arena of the political, the res publica. Although the Stoics defended the political virtues needed for partici­ pation in a particular political community, they nonetheless pointed “upward” toward citizenship with the entirety of humanity, that is, an abstract, cosmopolitan citizenship. The Cynics were even more radical, yet consistent, in their longing for the cosmopolis, and refused any actual

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particular political participation, more radically undermining the phenomenal particularity of the political, which is the epistemic foundation of philosophy. The Epicureans tried to transcend the political “down” toward the subpolitical in a private withdrawal into friendship and contemplation in a tranquil garden, while the Stoics and, even more radically, the Cynics tried to transcend the political “up” toward the totally unsituated cosmopolis. The political exists somewhere between the private and the cosmopolis. Cicero opposed every permutation of the flight from the res publica, on both ethical and epistemological grounds. This is why his prefaces keep stressing the need to do philosophy in Latin and the need to stay close to a common language, shared perceptions, and shared understandings. This is the phenomenological basis of Cicero’s philosophy. It requires the public space of a political community. Emancipation from the anxieties of civic engagement was important in the Epicurean teaching, but the highest good, peace of mind, required primarily emancipation from concern about the unpredictability of the actions of the gods and concern about the possibility of an enduring and unpleasant afterlife. If the gods were predictable, this concern might have changed. This longing for peace of mind is posited as the greatest good despite the fact that the good life is not in harmony with the larger whole, which, far from being tranquil, is in a constant motion of coming to be and passing away in destruction. The conclusion to which one is forced is that if the good for man is tranquility, one cannot really take his bearings from nature or the whole, but must do so in opposition to it. The Epicureans do not understand that this is the only consistent position. But if opposition to nature is what is required, it must occur not through integration into a monistic nature but through emancipation from it by an act of mind/will. The moderns are more consistent in their turn to a science that dominates nature as a means to emancipation from a threatening nature, rather than aiming for tranquil contemplation as the good — with it being unclear what one is contemplating, especially since nothing stands still. The moderns rest their case on various versions of the autonomy of mind operating as will and efficient cause with the hope ultimately of using technological means to create an orderly transformed cosmos wherein it will be easier to renounce the political. The Epicureans

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withdrew to the contemplation consistent with the stance of spectators who can stare at being — but there is no being in the Epicurean cosmos. One assumes that if contemplation is one’s end, one must account for both being and mind as independent things and believe that one has access to both and that they can somehow be brought into oneness. In this regard, Hobbes follows out the political and moral ramifications of his Epicurean natural philosophy far more consistently than Epi­curus. Hobbes denies the possibility of tranquility of mind and encourages joining the everyday hurly-burly in the pursuit of power and pleasure. Happiness requires the ceaseless pursuit of the means to continue to actualize the pleasant and avoid the painful. Hobbesian life on the treadmill — an endless pursuit that ceases only in death — is what follows consistently from Epicurus’s premises: albeit Hobbes’s account is also insufficient because it cannot account for Hobbes and his project and thereby cannot account for the whole that includes the human things and especially the philosopher. For the Epicureans, the good life required a retreat to a private garden to enjoy a withdrawn life of tranquility and contemplation with friends. But it is not clear what a worthy object for contemplation is for Epicureans. Contemplation directed toward natural philosophy ends up being private contemplation of the blind fate that follows for a short time from the sheer accidental coming to be or passing away that currently exists (which is in fact more of a chaos than something ordered and beautiful), followed by personal dissolution and eventual personal nothingness. It is not clear how contemplating this constellation of things leads to a reassuring peace of mind. For most human beings, eventual nothingness in an accidental and meaningless cosmos is far more disquieting than even damnation conjoined with duration. With the latter, redemption may still somehow be possible in the fullness of time — a far more quieting thought. Consider here the case of Kierkegaard, who looked at equally disquieting facts and concluded the result led consistently to fear and trembling and sickness onto death — and thereby precisely toward the need for faith in God, which the Epicureans tried to purge. Who is more consistent? Who is the better human psychologist? For the Epicureans, man is integrated into the cosmos through his body; all knowledge therefore originates in and is dependent upon sensations. All matter gives off “films” that impinge on the senses and cause sensations. The Epicureans posit this as the basis of all knowledge — a

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form of rudimentary empiricism. 22 Because mind cannot access anything other than sensations, the sensations are all we have and are therefore in principle all true. The Epicureans reach the same conclusion about the passions and instincts, which they also define as true. Hence the Epicureans had no basis for determining falsity or, if one were consistent, for limiting the passions. That they inclined toward the ascetic life of the limitation of pain as the greatest pleasure was altogether arbitrary. The Stoics reached a similar conclusion that the senses are the only source of knowledge, but they inconsistently concluded that some sensations are truer than others. Some sensations are “clear and distinct” and show themselves in that fashion to be self-evidently true. The Academy, both “New” and “Old,” adopted its own version of empiricism and a permutation of the clear and distinct doctrine. In Cicero’s time there had come to be uniformity on this subject. Everyone would have done well to have (re)read Plato’s Theaetetus, which, among other things, points out the inconsistencies that arise from a monistic, materialistic empiricism. By Cicero’s time the philosophic tradition had traveled a long way from the Platonic skepticism regarding the senses and their ability to mislead. But this skepticism of the senses did not lead Plato into pure skepticism, and not because he believed in any textbook notion of the “doctrine of the ideas.”23 The point is the one Cicero is making: true and false rest on something other than the unfiltered data of the senses. In De Finibus, the response/refutation to the Epicurean doctrine is presented by Cicero the character in dramatically adopting the mask of being a Stoic. Cicero the character criticizes the Epicureans for lacking an efficient cause, being inconsistent, being unable to account for man and philosophy as part of the whole, and, finally, for their total disregard of logic.24 He repeatedly asserts that philosophy needs to start from definitions.25 This is where Socrates excelled with his “what is” questions. Socratic dialectic made it clear that one finds the basis of the definitions in everyday perceptions (“latent meanings”) about the various things that show themselves publicly, even if only partially and inarticulately. Dialectic tries to tease the definitions out of the everyday articulation of things.26 It assumes that knowledge already exists in the phenomena. Otherwise, interrogating common opinions about things would be pointless. But that is different than resting truth entirely in sensations. Opinions are not sensations, nor for Cicero do they lodge in the body.

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Following Socrates, Cicero asserts that one needs to “expose latent meanings” lurking always already in the definitions of the operative terms — in the Epicurean case, “end,” “final,” “highest good,” and especially, “pleasure.” It is asserted that this is what Socrates and Plato did and that it is of the essence of dialectic (providing definitions) along with the use of division (diaresis), which frequently followed in the Platonic dialogues.27 The Socratic “what is” questions aimed at eliciting the definition of each class or tribe of things as understood in everyday perceptions and speeches; they aimed at a clear understanding or definition of what each thing essentially “is.” This is how one arrives phenomenologically and dialectically at ontology or a doctrine of the being of the multiple beings. This is also one means of arriving at an account of causality, the formal cause of things “being” what they are. The implication of dialectic is that nothing can be without being a determinate being of a specific kind. But this is reliance exclusively on formal rather than efficient, material, or final causality. It too, like Epicureanism, operates without a doctrine of efficient causality.28 Dialectic does not get us to efficient causality in the sense of the first cause of motion.29 And it does not lead to ontology, cosmology, or theology except by a process of extrapolation. For Cicero, dialectic is the science of determining definitions; only by extension and extrapolation does it give us the “essence” of each thing.30 In that sense it implies a doctrine of being but no more; it cannot provide the kind of answers to the ultimate questions about the whence and wither of existence. For the phenomenologist and dialectician that will always require theology and ontology as a necessary supplement. In short, Socratic dialectic is not the unitary effort Heidegger described as onto-theo-logos. In effect, Socrates left the onto- and theo-logos out of his account. Cicero rarely discusses the theoretical place of poetry. He is clearly less poetic than Plato, but he also lowers its status. Poetry is eventually placed under oratory. He sees poetry as based on “genius.” In De Finibus, of genius Cicero has to say that it is “dangerous.” He asserts that being able to bring poiesis under a scientific method is “safer”: “Science is a safer guide than nature [genius].”31 Science (logos or ratio), not poetry, should be the basis of rational or natural cosmology and theology. So despite his reservations about logic and its adjunct dialectic, both are still higher for Cicero than poetry.32 Cicero never has anything good to say about the

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cosmology, theology, or ethics of the poets. But by failing to discuss poetry, Cicero seems to fail to explain the basis of crafting an architectonic, holistic whole of knowledge. For Cicero, logic, and related fields, ceases to be an independent study, and like poetry is moved under oratory, which is part of rhetoric, which is part of ethics. Yet Cicero can still pillory the Epicureans for having paid inadequate attention to logic and definitions. One cannot have clear discourse without clear initial definitions. And some, at least surface, public, “scientific,” appearance of logos is needed for public persuasiveness. To say, as the Epicureans did, that the greatest pleasure is the absence of pain is to fail to see that pleasure, as understood publicly, is an active perception of present exhilaration rather than a static state of rest and mental tranquility qua absence of pain. Grasping this fact is what follows from having a clear definition. If the essence of pleasure is seen in the proper “kinetic” fashion, the way it is actually understood publicly, it becomes clear that pursuing pleasures requires an active life. Cicero asserts that Epicurus and his followers are also all defective in eloquence (oratio). There are different problems on this score with the Stoics. Cicero argues that Epicurus, and the Epicureans more generally, failed to give definitions of things like pleasure because, though having a physics/cosmology and an ethics, the Epicureans had no component of logic and no psychology to speak of because they were materialist reductionists who had no conception of soul qua mind. They could never weave a whole of knowledge because they ignored too many of the necessary parts and could not account for the basis, which has to be in mind, for weaving the parts together consistently. They certainly could not get to architectonic political philosophy, because they eschewed the political completely.33 Fundamental Alternatives: Mind and Efficient Causality In book 3 Cicero allows his contemporary and fellow diehard republican Marcus Cato to present the Stoic teaching. In book 4 the character Cicero, adopting the mask of the grand synthesis of Antiochus of the Old Academy — a synthesis that makes all serious distinctions go away — 

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“refutes” Cato for not understanding that Stoicism adds nothing new to previous doctrines. Cicero, in the guise of Antiochus, asserts that there is nothing new about Stoicism and that it does not differ from the Original Academy of Plato or the teachings of Aristotle and the Peripatetics; it does, however, obscure the differences between Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. He does, however, have his character Cato vociferously reject that Stoicism is merely a synthetic undertaking, which remains true of the ultimate teaching of the permutation of the Academy the character Cicero has adopted. For the Stoics, mind qua logos, but without will or self-consciousness, is depicted as divine fate and it resides in the entire cosmos. Thus, apparently, total necessity rules in the cosmos. Mind is the efficient cause within the cosmos — an improvement over the teaching of the Epicureans. But mind is not depicted as the initial creator of the cosmos, which is eternal. Mind rules an eternal cosmos by maintaining an unchanging order. According to the unbreakable logos, there is only one cosmos, but it endures cyclical destruction and rebirth. There is mind in both the cosmos and in individuals, but body or matter is eternal and uncaused, as with the Epicureans. Mind too appears to be eternal but is apparently not strong enough to order the whole as tranquil and finished being, rather than as constant becoming qua eternally repeatable growth and destruction. The deity (logos) is the entire cosmos in its coming to be and destruction, and each coming to be is identical, leading to an eternal return of the same as the identical logos repeats itself. Hence mind is posited as ruling in the cosmos, not in the sense of self-conscious rule, but as the inner principle (logos) of necessity. Divine mind is incapable of stepping outside the process it allegedly “rules.” There is no providential deity in this teaching; a providential deity would imply mind, will, and self-­ consciousness, to say nothing of transcendence. Only mind understood as will can break into the chain of iron necessity. For the Stoics, the best we can do is discover the eternal logos and integrate ourselves into it. In reality, how we gain any autonomy from it is the real question. Cicero quietly shows that the Stoics, like the Epicureans, ultimately slid into a form of materialism and a doctrine that all knowledge is dependent upon the senses, rather than requiring mind to be independent as self-consciousness and will. Stoic logos is also, contrary to Aristotle, not understood as mind thinking itself in its pure thinking.

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Mind is actually subordinate to matter for the Stoics on the cosmic level, but they want it to rule as self-conscious will on the human level. Like the Epicureans, they do not have a unified account of the whole. They too sneak in man as a kingdom within a kingdom but with no basis for supporting the distinctively human kingdom. Only as self-consciousness and will could human mind question the data of the senses and the bodily drives, and thereby in some fashion abstract from them and rule them. On the cosmological level the divine would have to be able to do the same by remaining outside the material whole. What is needed is a parallel, on the level of mind, between the human and divine. The Stoics do not provide this parallel. The Stoic god is at best only a material cause — unlike the God of scripture, who is providential, will, and efficient cause, and, at a bare minimum, the ordering principle of initially undifferentiated matter, if not its creator ex nihilo. Despite the shared materialism, Stoic cosmology was entirely different than that of the Epicureans in replacing the hegemony of accident/ chance with necessity/fate. The Stoic position rejected the mindless accidental quality of Epicurean cosmology and the constant hurly-burly of atoms smashing about by a more or less, even if cyclical, ordered cosmos. In Stoic cosmology the universe is guided by mind (god) or logos34 and consequently is precisely what is implied in the Greek term “cosmos,” that is, “beautiful and orderly.” Yet it still undergoes destruction and rebirth. Despite the positing of logos, the Stoic teaching is also dominated by becoming more than being. For the Stoics, mind realizes itself in the cosmological world process, albeit without rising to full, absolute self-consciousness, as with Hegel. One might say Hegel combines Stoic cosmology with scriptural mind and will, while once again ending up with the destruction of transcendence, with the logos entirely immanent in the world. Yet even mind is still reduced by the Stoics, inconsistently, to materialist notions like fire or breath. Since mind/god persists in the cosmos as fire, at the end of each cosmic cycle the cosmos is consumed by fire in order to start its identical process of rebirth all over again. Eventually for the Stoics, the mind/matter distinction dissolves; the divine logos is everything and in everything. This teaching is inherently pantheistic. But the divine thereby is divided into all things, and everything that has parts can come apart and thus is not eternal, which is why the Stoic cosmos suffers repeated dissolution and rebirth, including god.

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At least according to the Stoic position there is a fixed law or order for the cosmos (logos) — at least for long periods of time and then repeated in identical form.35 As such it is asserted that the cosmos is rational and necessary rather than blind and accidental. The Stoics go on and also posit as divine and self-moving the planets and all manner of personal ancestral divinities. The first move at least makes some etymological sense: the Latin word for soul, anima, can be linked to self-animated or self-moving. It need not be self-consciously self-moving.36 As a mere part of the ordered cosmos, man must submit his individual will to divine fate. To attempt to act in opposition to the pulling draft of the divinely ordered logos of the cosmos leads to unfreedom and unhappiness. And thus we arrive at the Stoic maxim that it is necessary to submit to divine fate and “live in accordance with nature.” Happiness requires submission to the larger cosmic ordering principles — how one could not be part of this order remains unclear if everything is determined by divine fate. But ethics and cosmology have been woven together in a somewhat more consistent fashion than with the Epicureans. We are integrated into and can be one with the cosmos through necessity alone. Since necessity operates even in infants, they too can be one with the logos — as can ants and beavers. But for the Stoics the primary instinctive inclination is not for pleasure but for self-preservation. Contrary to Hobbes or Locke, this is cast in an extended fashion as a form of self-love that desires the full perfect functioning of the individual and not merely the Epicurean attraction to pleasure as the avoidance of pain.37 By this means the Stoics try to sneak in an element of final causality.38 In this fashion the Stoics tried to harmonize material and final causality, the beginning in instinctive material causality, and the telos of perfection. Cicero points out the ways in which this synthesis of material and final causality leads to new inconsistencies. Inconsistently, the Stoics try to work man’s sociality out of his desire for perfection and happiness and not as a separately operating instinct that leads toward the family and therewith the preservation of the species, as with Aristotle. Stoic self-love points toward the desire for safety and proper development, with the end of the development prefigured as in Aristotelian teleology but now operating without the intervening need for self-conscious individual social or political action.39 In the Stoic account, as one grows, instinct is allegedly replaced by deliberation, and

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we can become conscious of fate/necessity operating through us and then choose it. The paradox here is that this understanding requires that one come to see even the passions and instincts as phenomena of mind, with mind posited as the principle of matter that operates seamlessly in the entire cosmos. Mind can, somehow, get us in line with an already existing order. Again, how we get out of that order and the grip of fate and necessity is the open question. Mind is left to “choose” something that is entirely the product of necessity. Almost two millennia later, German idealism again tried to square this circle of choice and necessity. To add further paradox, in ethics Stoic virtue could have no element of habit, as with Aristotle; it had to be based on perfect knowledge, as with Socrates, adopted by self-conscious mind. But Stoic mind could only rationally choose to integrate itself into a cosmic order that is all encompassing. Cosmic mind was determined; human mind was supposed to self-consciously choose necessity qua oneness with the cosmic mind, which was not itself self-conscious. Oneness with the divine cosmic logos was also defined by the Stoics as honestum, moral perfection, which could be maintained even in pain, sorrow, and misfortune. Thus the highest good was indifferent to what the Peripatetics called “bodily and external goods.” Therefore it could be said that honestum, not pleasure, was the highest end for both action and thought.40 It was argued that it was mind that grasps and actualizes this highest end, not the senses, another inconsistency if sensation is the basis of all knowledge. Given the latent materialism lurking at the basis of Stoicism, even in the account of divine mind as fire, the positing of a mind as seemingly independent of the senses and body among humans was an inconsistency. And hence so was the conclusion that happiness could be made to depend on mind and complete virtue or honestum alone, indifferent to bodily and external goods. Piecing together the ramification of the accounts and refutations of Epicureanism and Stoicism with what we have seen in the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero appears to see the necessity that mind be depicted as both incorporeal and a form of will, a position elsewhere attributed to Plato. Mind must not merely and inertly think itself, as with Aristotle’s divinity of thought thinking itself, it must also be will and efficient cause.

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Mind must initiate action. Neither Aristotle nor the Stoics give mind an element of will. Finally, there must be some parallel between the most comprehensive mind and human mind. That leads us to Cicero’s discussions of natural theology that we will see in chapter 6. Concluding that honestum alone is good and mind the only means to this good leads the Stoics to all manner of paradoxical and inconsistent positions that Cicero takes to task along with their bizarre, neologistic terminology and their crabbed, counterintuitive logical conclusions. For the Stoics, there were no gradations of virtue, only perfect virtue, which was perfect knowledge, while everything else was vice. Likewise, there were no gradations of happiness, only perfect happiness or wretchedness. For the Stoics, everything customarily termed a good, other than perfect honestum, became merely “preferred.” This was all an extended affront to the way things show themselves to individuals in actual everyday life. The Stoics falsified the phenomena. Cicero’s critique shows that at least the Stoics, unlike the Epicureans, could explain the deeds of great men and why, in the pursuit of honestum, one would engage in civic deeds, even if it implied personal loss and pain. But the civic participation was incidental to the exercise of pure moral excellence, because for the Stoics it is the intention of an act that is most important, not the outcome. One can see more than a little of this in the deeds of the historical Stoic Cato, pure of deed, ineffective in outcome at almost every turn. Cicero’s moral teaching is that honestum and utile (the useful things) are not at odds. The Stoics were not consequentialists. Just like consistent Christians, as they descend from Paul, and just like all consistent Kantians, the Stoics saw moral worth in pure intentionality alone. However, the Stoics, like Kant, inconsistently tried to bridge the gap between intentions and consequences and argue that pure intentions adopted on a cosmopolitan plane could have good consequences. Kant accomplished this merging of deontology and consequentialism by turning to a doctrine of hypothetical history to show how aggregate good intentions would bring progressive and beneficial cosmopolitan consequences. Stoic intentionality also led in a cosmopolitan direction, undermining intense commitment to one’s own political community and one’s own desire for immortality within it. Stoic honestum, actualized by action in accordance with perfect virtue, although undermining a specific res publica, avoids the inconsistent desire

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for the withdrawn privacy and rest aimed at by the Epicureans. Still, a tranquil mind is what the Stoics aimed at as the greatest good, just as the Epicureans did. Unlike the Epicureans, the Stoics presumed they could have civic participation and tranquility of mind because a wise person would be as little moved as possible by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (fate), which in political affairs are unfortunately unpredictable (the chance element for which the Stoics had no explanation). For the Stoics, unlike pleasure, which does not endure in memory and exists only in the present moment, honestum allegedly can endure in memory and bring with it happiness and satisfaction even in the absence of external goods such as wealth and public reputation. Thus the Stoic understanding of honestum could promise both duration and durability, and thus ultimately more happiness and peace of mind than what was promised inconsistently by the Epicureans. Of course, such peace of mind would only be possible for the rare few capable of aligning themselves with fate through perfect knowledge and perfect virtue. Having adopted the mask of Antiochus, Cicero asserts that the Stoics are harder to confront than the Epicureans.41 Unlike the Epicureans, the Stoics pay attention to not only cosmology and ethics but also to the third component of the ancient curriculum, logic. But the Stoics use logic to a fault, and their arguments therefore become crabbed logic-chopping, complete with neologisms and invented technical terms, which alienates them from everyday language and thus the phenomenological basis of philosophy. Cicero openly criticizes this alienation from the language of the res publica. Socratic/Platonic dialectic never lost touch with the priority of every­day speech because it articulated the way things show themselves publicly. Ultimately, for the Stoics, logic almost becomes an autonomous undertaking, a serious error. Equally serious, Stoicism undermines the showing of the res publica with its political cosmopolitanism. At best, the Stoic cosmology that introduced mind, albeit inconsistently, was for Cicero an improvement over mindless Epicurean cosmology.42 Cicero points to Stoic inconsistencies, but parts of their teaching become useful and are co-opted in his political teaching. Cicero the character makes criticisms of Stoic ethics but takes a Peripatetic tack and focuses primarily on their refusal to accept that bodily and external goods — health, wealth, honor, office, and so on — are in fact good and part of overall

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happiness, even if not the greatest good. Cicero the character’s response to Stoic ethics is more limited than his response to the Epicureans. But the Stoics are shown to have at least as many inconsistencies. Hegel Anyone? Are Syntheses Necessary? Book 4 of De Finibus ends with a praise of Plato and Aristotle, which points us back toward fourth-century Athens, as will book 5. The third dialogue, in book 5, is set as a flashback to an earlier time in Athens. Book 5 is the least cosmological and the most epistemological. The discussion takes place among a group that includes Cicero, his brother, Quintus, his younger cousin, Lucius Cicero, an Epicurean named Pomponius, and Piso, a defender of Antiochus. Dramatically, when we first encounter them, the group is leaving a lecture of Antiochus and walking from that venue to the original Academy of Plato, where they sit (cease motion and rest) and engage in discussion (an act of mind) — mind and rest are brought together. For mind to truly operate as something other than a sign of immersion in Stoic fate, something must be at rest, being must break into complete becoming. In book 5 the discussants walk (motion) away from Antiochus’s school to sit (rest) in the vicinity of the Original Academy. Plato’s Academy is associated with rest. The “Old” Academy is associated with motion. The setting as a whole represents a movement away from Antiochus’s iteration of the Academy toward the Original Academy of Plato, indeed a return to be understood as an ascent from the “Old” Academy to the Original Academy. In the process, the skepticism of the New Academy, and the Old, is criticized, if very briefly, from the perspective of the Original Academy. Cicero’s protagonist in book 5 is Piso, a follower of Antiochus’s “Old” Academy synthesis. Piso is given a fairly easy time of it by the character Cicero, who responds from a radically truncated Stoic perspective. Piso follows Aristotle and argues that the contemplative life is the highest and best life. Throughout his corpus, Cicero publicly attacks commitment to the contemplative life of “staring” as undermining active civic participation almost as much as is true in the Epicurean retreat to a garden. I reassert a formula: for Cicero, philosophy is caring, not staring. The same is true for Plato.

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Piso adopts and synthesizes part of the skepticism of the New Academy and approvingly cites the need for the great epistemological nonstarter, “probable reasoning.”43 But Piso limits the application of that principle to cosmology alone. The doctrine of probable reason was especially characteristic of the skepticism of the New Academy; it was less true of the Old Academy synthetic position. Adopting the doctrine of probable reasoning led the members of the New Academy to have no cosmology at all. Hence they also abstracted from the question of the relation of how man was integrated into the larger whole of which he is a part. This rendered it impossible for the New Academy to have any unified account of the whole of knowledge. Piso also shows that he approves of mathematical demonstration, which presumably creates a certainty inconsistent with his skepticism and reliance on probability. This is one of the few places where mathematics is raised as an issue in Cicero’s discussions, even though he frequently speaks approvingly of Pythagoras. Piso goes on to also approve of the empirical studies of Aristotle and Theophrastus in botany and biology. This is the basis of Piso’s synthesis and his defense of the contemplative life. He likes cosmological skepticism, mathematical certainty, and empirical sciences; he believes those elements can be synthesized. It is an easygoing eclecticism. Piso has constructed a synthesis that would not hold together under any kind of serious questioning, but Cicero in response largely gives him a pass. Book 5 contains both the shortest presentation and the shortest refutation. The Academic positions of his day are apparently less interesting than Stoicism or Epicureanism. Piso is in favor of contemplation, of being a staring spectator. But apparently it is the contemplative study of empirical sciences, mathematics, and probability that is put forward as the basis of contemplation and hence of the best life leading to the highest happiness. Piso’s is a dilettantish view of an eclectic liberal arts education. But in the process, he presents the same problem as the Epicureans, the danger of directing life into a retreat toward privacy, in this instance, an alogon staring. Piso admits that this contemplation would be pointless, if not “unmanly,” if all was determined by chance.44 But skepticism and chance seem to go together better than skepticism and necessity. Do contemplation and necessity necessarily go together? Does the cosmic dominance of chance point toward the necessity of an active life even for philosophy?

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Piso agrees with the Epicureans and the Stoics on the importance of tranquility of mind as the highest end and even, sheepishly one presumes, admits that this possibility has cosmological presuppositions.45 Ethically, Piso adopts Stoic honestum, or the pursuit of pure and perfect virtue, as higher than bodily pleasure — getting in his own attack on the Epicureans. He accepts the Stoic doctrine of man’s development from instinct to self-conscious rational “choice” as the appropriate path for a serious life. Adopting and synthesizing Peripatetic premises, Piso says that the wise man desires fully developed knowledge and virtue but also external goods, yet hopes to get these in a way consistent with contemplation as the primary focus of life. Piso wants all things at once, and hence new inconsistencies assert themselves. He is unwilling to make hard choices, and this is the basis of all inconsistency and most unhappiness. Piso does assert a body/mind distinction that seems to differentiate him from the materialism of the Epicureans and the Stoics, but he offers no specific doctrine of mind or specific cosmology to support it. But at least he does not attempt to reduce mind to a unique form of body, which in different ways was done by the Epicureans and Stoics. After declaring that excellence of mind is higher than that of body as part of his assertion of the priority of the life of contemplation, Piso then eclectically, again in the synthetic mode of Antiochus, asserts along with the Peripatetics that the excellences of the body and other external goods are also necessary for happiness. Seeming to undermine his cosmological skepticism, he admits that to understand the whole human being we must also know the nature of the cosmos of which our humanity is a part.46 Hence we are pointed back toward the necessity of cosmology, but no cosmological teaching is offered because of the remaining elements of New Academy skepticism, based on the principle of “probabilistic reasoning.” Piso is then led to the conclusion that, as with the necessary universality implied in cosmological reflections, moral reflections lead us toward the universality and solidarity of mankind as a whole and not toward great deeds enacted for one specific community. Here he adopts the cosmopolitanism of the Stoics. Thereby Piso lowers the status of honor and civic participation as ends in themselves and magnifies the status of a commitment to universal justice and shows that such a commitment can be accomplished on the level of contemplation more than that of action.47 As with

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Stoicism, this cosmopolitan commitment again helps undermine active civic participation in a particular nation at a particular time. In brief, Piso’s synthesis simply will not work; it distorts all of its sources, it picks and chooses without principle, and it produces all manner of inconsistencies. I am reminded of Strauss’s observation about Hegel: “Syntheses effect miracles. . . . Hegel’s synthesis of classical and biblical morality effects the miracle of producing an amazingly lax morality out of two moralities both of which made very strict demands on self-restraint. . . . Hegel’s moral or political teaching is indeed a synthesis: it is a synthesis of Socratic and Machiavellian or Hobbian politics.”48 Cicero’s rejoinder to Piso is very narrowly focused. He wonders how skepticism actually supports Piso’s synthetic position. He points to various contradictions and inconsistencies regarding Piso’s understanding of the relation between sense perception and mind, or reason — Piso’s psychology is inadequate to support his theory of knowledge. He also points to the issue of whether Piso’s wise man, presumably the contemplative wise man, is always and necessarily happy — even when impoverished and on the rack. Taking up various of Piso’s Stoic moral assertions, Cicero points out that, as Piso’s theory accepts, if misfortunes are evil, and evil is bad, virtue alone cannot guarantee happiness and therefore man can never conquer chance and be happy. The wise man on the rack will not be happy. Therefore even the contemplation of the wise man would not guarantee happiness if one ignores external goods, which require active everyday engagement or absolutely extraordinary good luck. Cicero observes that either Piso must deny that misfortune is evil or not say that only the wise man is always happy. Finally, Cicero observes that if happiness and virtue admit of no degrees, and misfortune is an evil, the wise and virtuous man will frequently be unhappy. But Cicero still asserts that the end of life for a wise man is happiness.49 The reader is left to wonder why Cicero lets Piso off so easily. The position Piso represents is the least consistent of three inconsistent positions and it attempts no cosmological teaching at all. Piso appears to show the inadequacy of trying to pick and choose one’s way through elements drawn from other inconsistent positions. This seems to be a criticism of all hermeneutic eclecticism and scissors-and-paste jobs. Eclecticism never works. Syntheses are to be avoided. Architectonic consistency should be the aim.

Six

Cicero on Natural Theology [My] course of study brought me to a work by an author named Cicero, whose writing nearly everyone admires, if not the spirit of it. The title of the book is Hortensius and it recommends the reader to study philosophy. It altered my outlook on life. . . . In Greek the word “philosophy” means “ love of wisdom,” and it was with this love that the Hortensius inflamed me.  — Augustine, Confessions 58, 59 1 Verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach: “Over all things stand the heaven Accident, the heaven Innocence, the heaven Chance, the heaven Prankishness. “By chance” — that is the most ancient nobility of the world, and this I restored to all things: I delivered them from their bondage under Purpose. This freedom and heavenly cheer I have placed over all things like an azure bell when I taught that over them and through them no “eternal will” wills. — Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 278

153

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Opening Future Religious Spaces Cicero, obviously, lived before the Christian era, and indeed before any of the revealed doctrines of monotheism had yet to conquer any extended area. Cicero may or may not have been aware of the Hebrew Bible, but he gives no explicit indication that he knew of it; he does discuss other religious institutions, from Egyptian animal worship to the Persian magi. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that any scriptural elements that appear in Cicero’s corpus were arrived at independently by reason alone. And as the early Church fathers understood, there are more than a few such elements in Cicero. Cicero also lived at the time of the breakdown of pagan polytheism. In this environment, thoughtful individuals had to turn to philosophy to get their bearings; tradition alone was no longer sufficient, despite the fact that Cicero made a philosophical bow to the necessity of tradition. The historical moment Cicero occupied was as ripe as any has ever been for unhindered philosophic reflection on what was once called natural theology. Cicero quietly carved out a unique position and opened a theological space that could be occupied after his death. Philosophical Christianity occupied that space, but he could never have predicted that outcome. This is how one opens spaces without constructing them in an authoritarian fashion. In a way that was probably not publicly available to the Greek thinkers before him, Cicero was (1) openly opposed to superstition and myth (Plato, for example, was in no position to openly attack the place of myth in the same fashion, were he so inclined); (2) opposed to divination in all its forms (indeed, he opposed obscurantism, fanaticism, divination, and superstition); and (3) strongly opposed to atheism. In his reflections on the nature of the divine, Cicero also simultaneously opposed polytheism, pantheism, and anthropomorphism. He found his own path to the vicinity of monotheism and a notion of the divine as transcendent mind and will. In this regard his natural theology is a supplement to his philosophical and cosmological reflections that we have considered in the two previous chapters. And as I argued in chapter 5, one can never transcend the question Quid sit deus? In confronting Cicero’s position, it can therefore be argued that before the fact he became the most influential Christian philosopher until

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Aquinas, and I consciously include in that statement the Augustine who was in so many ways derivative from Cicero.2 The epigraph from Augustine is indicative of one of the ways he acknowledged Cicero’s influence. The Christians occupied spaces opened by the Roman. We live in an age of encroaching atheism, or at least of the post-­ theism longed for by the two greatest assaults on the Christian tradition in our time, by Nietzsche and Heidegger. In their work we see competing notions of the need for or inevitability of a post-Christian religion. Nietz­ sche goes so far as to assert openly that the religious instinct was growing in his age, which he categorized as dominated by the “death of God.” Heidegger longed for a new, postscriptural pantheon of gods in the same open fashion. The question nonetheless remains: Are there future, genuinely Western, and that means Christian, options still available for that most historical of all religions, Christianity? The continuation of Western civilization depends on the answer to that question, for it is a civilization born of a unique tension between reason and revelation and unique longings for republicanism and freedom. Those are the core elements of Western civilization. Cicero argues that atheism is a contradictory and inconsistent philosophical position but it is also morally and politically dangerous. Hence one must reflect upon the divine. But there are also the reasons we have seen that philosophy as Cicero depicts it, and cosmology more generally, point toward theological reflections, especially if one is to supply the unavoidable efficient cause he posits as necessary. It is primarily the nature of the divine that constitutes the central issue for natural theology. For example, is the divine One or Many, is the divine a creator of the cosmos, preserver and maintainer of an already created cosmos, or does the divine limit itself to providentially overseeing individual human actions, supporting virtue and punishing vice? Cicero explores how these elements do or do not go together consistently. The questions of natural theology come to the border of cosmology and overlap — and this is because cosmology can never dispense with the need for an efficient cause — but they are nonetheless different questions. In Cicero’s time theology was considered a subset of natural philosophy and thereby derivative. It would be some time before theology attempted its own autonomy; that autonomy was eventually openly opposed by the fathers of modernity, from Descartes and Machiavelli to Spinoza and

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down to Hegel. Cicero no more intended any autonomy for natural the­ ology than the moderns who attempted to emancipate both philosophy and secular government from theological domination. But Cicero explains the inevitability of both high and low reasons why theological reflections always reassert themselves from out of the phenomena of life itself and from the unavoidable conundrums and antinomies of philosophy itself. What is fascinating in Cicero’s theological discussions is that existential questions such as “Why am I here?” “What does it all mean?” have a limited purchase. These questions certainly do not have the primacy they would have, for example, for someone like Kierkegaard or even Pascal. One wonders, therefore, what set of existential questions are phenomenologically derivative and which are the primary questions. Cicero opens a door to that question. At the very least, Cicero would not base theology on existentialist angst, nor does he follow the Stoics and Epicureans in seeing tranquility of mind as the primary aim of life. For Cicero it is piety that takes the central place in his reflections. Piety is central because man must understand and venerate something that is greater and more important in the whole of being than man himself. Piety is a virtue for Cicero that is an adjunct to the philosophical awe and wonder regarding the mystery at the core of being he discusses. In this sense, for Cicero awe and wonder take priority over brooding about death and the afterlife. Cicero sides with the Greeks against Heideg­ ger or the Epicureans in giving priority to awe and wonder over the centrality of anxiety or preoccupation with its avoidance. We should observe that piety plays a limited role in Greek philosophy, as we can see from Aristotle’s silence on the subject in the Nicomachean Ethics. And it is hard to have a pious relation to a God absorbed in thinking himself. Likewise, one sees nothing comparable to piety in Plato.3 For example, the Myth of Er in Plato’s Republic shows us the need for fear to support earthly justice, but fear and piety are two separate phenomena. For Plato, philosophy alone is based on thaumazein. Cicero also occupied a moment when the doctrine of the separation of church and state had not come into existence. Theology, and religious practices more generally, were concerns of the state, and the Romans had public magistrates to oversee these practices, led by the pontifex maximus. Cotta, one of Cicero’s interlocutors in De Natura Deorum, his primary philosophical treatment of natural theology, was such a pontiff. In

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the Roman experience, as with the Greeks, religion was subordinate to politics, church subordinate to state, but the state was never simply a secu­ lar state in the modern sense.4 As the actions and affairs of the state came increasingly under the questioning and eventual supervision of philosophical reflection, so did theology. More to the point, with Cicero we have the subordination of the­ ology to architectonic proto-philosophy rather than subordinate to the political and its traditions. The hierarchical supervision of political philosophy over politics and theology was more developed in Cicero’s understanding than it was for the Greeks of the time of Plato, but the relationship was still in need of securing, and that is one of the tasks Cicero sets for himself. The Christian era would, in stages, reverse the hierarchical relation between philosophy and politics on the one hand and philosophy and theology on the other. By first making a bow to what is due separately to Caesar and to God, the Catholic Church nonetheless moved throughout the period from the collapse of the Roman Empire to the dawn of modernity to give theology autonomy from philosophy, with an increasing desire for hegemony over the state also.5 A central part of the modern philosophical project attempted to again emancipate philosophy from subordination to theology, just as much as it strove to give autonomy to what became the modern secular state — an autonomy that did not exist in Greece or Rome. On this level, modernity represented at least an attempted partial recovery of the classical experience.6 But Cicero’s example shows that the state should not be autonomous from philosophy. Simultaneously philosophy should have supervision of theology. None of this supervision needed to lead to public atheism. This is especially important to reflect upon within a republican context. Within the modern republican tradition there have emerged two competing approaches to the relationship between religion and the state: roughly speaking the two variants are the American and the French. The American understanding presents a secular state consciously built upon a religious society and intended to be the best means to the protection of religious liberty. There is separation of church and state, but mutual and reciprocal fructification is intended. The French, or more generally, Continental, model points to the use of the secular state to create not only a secular but an openly atheist state and society as its end. The latter approach finds it all too easy to make common cause with entirely

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nonrepublican authors, from Marx to Nietzsche and Heidegger. What is longed for is the eventual withering away of the religious. What we will see from Cicero is the phenomenological reasons why theological questions will never be put to rest and why the attempt to silence unavoidable questioning is inherently antirepublican, especially if it eventuates in either atheism or irrationalist religious commitments. Throughout a significant part of modernity, the effort to separate theology and the secular state yielded at best hostile neutrality, a neutrality reproduced for a time between philosophy and theology. In our time we have arrived at a situation where sophisticates ridicule theology tout court while increasingly reducing philosophy to epistemology and/or logic, or dismissing philosophy as “metaphysical” and at an end. Philosophy reduced in this fashion deserves to rule nothing. With philosophy and theology cleared from the field, the secular state and its proponents hope to reign supreme and without guidance or limits. I would suggest that this is not a good or appropriate republican outcome. An unlimited secular state without piety or any philosophic sense of limits will have a hard time being anything but an authoritarian state. This is especially true of a secular state armed with modern technology. So our reflections on the necessity or inevitability of natural theology have important political consequences. The central issue is not whether the political should be openly hostile to religion, as is increasingly the view of many contemporaries on the European continent who are descendants of the French Revolution, but also increasingly in the United States. And the central issue is certainly not whether religion should try to intrude into the political and reestablish the hegemony it longed for in late medieval fashion. The issue is to have reason supervene over both politics and theology, trying to abolish neither. That outcome may not be imminent, but we can prepare a future space for it to occur. Cicero can help explain why it is necessary. On Antinomies: Chance and Necessity In what follows, I will not repeat discussions of cosmology already considered. I will briefly try to elicit what I think is distinctive in Cicero’s discussion of natural theology and the quiet way he suggests what is possible. Cicero presents his De Natura Deorum as his most philosophical

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work on natural theology, but he also offered more popular presentations. These popular presentations include De Divinatione and De Fato, but the latter has unfortunately not come down to us in complete form. Cicero’s interlocutor in De Divinatione is his brother, Quintus. Cicero’s character Quintus lets us know that he has previously read De Natura Deorum, but his defense of all forms of divination proves he understood very little. De Divinatione is set at Cicero’s villa in Tusculum, in his Lyceum rather than in his Academy. We might speculate that this signals a dramatic move away from Plato on central theological issues. This move away from Plato can be seen in De Natura Deorum. But Cicero never approaches Aristotle’s depiction of the divine as thought thinking itself without acting. What we see very early in De Divinatione is that the underlying theme is the relation between chance and necessity. This issue intrudes into the entire discussion of theology by Cicero.7 If chance rules, divination is impossible; if necessity rules, it is irrelevant. Quintus proves that he is unclear about the relative theological and philosophical implications of the principles of chance and necessity. Quintus believes in and is a supporter of divination. Divination is a foretelling of what is going to happen. As presented, this can only be done if everything is ruled by necessity and is fated, as opposed to a world dominated by a God who engages in unpredictable acts of will.8 But if necessity rules, everything is fated and there is no real point in having divination, because all it can do is lead to moral laxity and political indifference. Hence divination is of value only if chance rules, but if chance rules, then there are no consistent predictable efficient causes and prediction is impossible.9 Either way, divination is pointless. Quintus admits that divination rests on the existence of a link between divine and human souls. But Quintus is convinced that this linkage takes place through frenzy, ecstasy, dreams, and inspiration more than through mind or reason. When immersed in “irrational” states, especially dreams, one is allegedly detached from the body and messages can get through to humans more easily. In response, Cicero, adopting the mask of the responding character, is led to wonder why the divine would wish to speak primarily to and through the least rational and least awake human beings. It seems undignified on the part of the divine. In De Fato, Cicero makes clear that he does not believe in the cosmic rule of ironclad necessity wherein everything is fated. He argues that there is a significant cosmic element of chance. This has theological

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implications. It raises questions about the divine relation to the cosmos, as creator, but especially as day-to-day maintainer of order, either from outside the cosmos or from within as in Stoic fashion. Would the divine create or be implicated in a cosmos that had elements of chance? But if totally necessary order dominates in the cosmos, the place of choice is diminished to nonexistence, and mind and reason can play no role. Man ceases to be a moral being.10 Chance bespeaks randomness and hence some level of disorder. Necessity bespeaks its own form of mindlessness. How effective can the divine be if everything is ruled by necessity? On the other hand, if the divine may will what it wishes, are not humans ruled by irrationality and unpredictability no matter how rational they try to be? Chance seems to be the necessary premise for choice and the efficacy of mind — both human and divine — and also the prerequisite for becoming a moral being. But there is a problem no matter which way we turn in choosing chance or necessity. Perhaps we need a degree of necessity together with a leavening of chance. In short, one needs elements of both chance and necessity. Neither can simply gain hegemony. But this is a serious conundrum. This issue of chance versus necessity is a central part of Cicero’s inspection of both Stoic and Epicurean cosmology and theology. The Epicurean, materialist account of the cosmos seems to rest simultaneously on the invocation of both accident/chance (swerves) and necessity as ruling thereafter — an inconsistency that cannot be overcome. The Stoic account has cosmic mind ruling, but without being self-conscious mind with genuine free choice or will. For the Stoics, man is exhorted to take conscious control of his ethical behavior, which he can do only by integrating himself into the whole, by making a choice for necessity, a seeming oxymoron. These are attempted syntheses of chance and necessity. Cicero makes it clear that neither works. One suspects he would be equally unimpressed with Hegel’s synthesis, which ends with a Stoic version of God in the world, albeit eventually self-conscious, and where all transcendence is negated. Political philosophy itself as architectonic seems to rest on the existence of a necessary element of chance — otherwise all would be fated, and understanding, leading to choice and will, would be unnecessary. But chance simultaneously imposes limits upon the ability of self-conscious mind to predict and control. This is one of the more profound reasons for

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not debunking tradition (trial and error that on some level works), that is, the inherent limitations of reason and its inability to overcome basic antinomies.11 If an element of chance rules, even the divine cannot know everything that will happen. This can of course be explained by the understanding that the divine creates the cosmos but does not in Stoic fashion rule every natural process, from growth and decay to the weather. The divine can then reserve itself for supporting the human things.12 If everything is fated, morality, which rests on the need for choice, is ruled out and life cannot yield to conscious action. The serious self-controlled actor and the hedonistic fool are equals at that point. We arrive at an antinomy that cannot be transcended despite all the attempts by the ancients, and from the Christian theologians to the German idealists and modern physics, including the teaching of the canard of transcending them through the mediating variable of history, which eliminates the efficacy of conscious choice both during history and at its end. Actual history shows that the antinomies recur and any belief to the contrary is mythical. Rational individuals do not believe in myths. Cicero’s text on divination then raises another problem. If we rule out the possibility of divination, does that mean that we are cut off from the divine and the divine cannot communicate with us? Would this be a sign the divine is indifferent to us or in some way deficient? On the other hand, were it the case that the divine communicates primarily to the semi­ conscious, sleepers, or the intoxicated, which is to say, the divine communicates in a fashion that is only marginally clear, would that prove a different deficiency on the part of the divine, a lack of dignity, or the sign of an ironic divinity with a sense of humor? Why would the divine communicate to man in an obscure fashion, which then requires interpretation of everything from auspices to oracles, dreams, augury, reading entrails, and so on?13 The universal experience is that the interpretations that follow such emotivist “evidence” lack all consistency and agreement. They are totally random.14 Why cannot, or will not, the divine be clear, communicating clearly to all in a rational fashion? Or short of that, why will not the divine communicate only to the wise and make it clear to the unwise to quit meddling? All of these considerations seem to lead Cicero to conclude, at least on the surface, that it is far better that we rely on reason supplemented by our internal, natural,

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moral “conscience”15 rather than on divination.16 Cicero dismisses the entire enterprise of divination as “recklessness and luck” and based on a little error, a little superstition, and a good deal of fraud.17 If the divine were truly divine, it would communicate through clear messages, not vague ones that need interpretation. The divine would say, “Do this, don’t do that.”18 And the divine would use common everyday speech, as should poets and philosophers. It is acceptable for the divine to be personally inscrutable, but not obscure in communication.19 We are reminded, of course, of the Ten Commandments that were given clearly and definitely by a mysterious God who wants man to make no images of Him and who will say of himself only that “I am who I am.” Another form of divination, astrology, which tries to have a veneer of science, fails miserably according to Cicero because it misses obvious natu­ral facts, facts that any serious theology or cosmology must incorporate. The planets that allegedly destine the life of everyone are very far away, farther than all other natural and cultural phenomena that determine us more straightforwardly — from genes and local climate to education and regime. Furthermore, Cicero the character observes that individuals on different parts of the earth will be at different distances from the various planets and thereby affected differently, even when born on the same day. Thus not all individuals that are born on the same day would have the same fate or destiny.20 The easy conclusion is that knowledge of natural facts helps trump divination and all forms of superstition, including astrology. Genuine natural science and natural theology are not necessarily at odds if they each understand themselves correctly. Natural phenomena like storms, floods, hurricanes, and droughts, which are much closer to us, will have a greater effect on day-to-day actions than anything astrology can advance, and thus access to these subjects by natural science should be more fruitful than by astrology. Parental genes, and habits learned from parents, will also have differentiating effects, even if cosmic nature operates in some fashion on human beings through the planets.21 Then there is the cultural determination provided by different peoples with different languages, customs, and understandings. According to Cicero, reason must pay more attention to these variables rather than to remote mythical ones if we are to dismiss superstition and live rationally.22 Climate, location, culture, parentage, and other like factors bring to bear “overdetermination” and thereby necessarily introduce an element of

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chance in individual and collective behavior. The simultaneous operation of all of these determining factors shows that chance operates in the cosmos every bit as much as necessity. If chance operates, divination is impossible. Again, if necessity operates, divination is pointless. Contrary to everything from the cult of Dionysus to Platonic mania, Cicero’s texts show that we should not accept the divine status of “frenzy . . . which enables the crazy man to see what the wise man does not see.”23 We should, therefore, dismiss the notion that the divine imparts intelligence and insight to those who have the least intelligence. We certainly do not go to the frenzied when medicine or navigation is our primary concern: “Suppose I wished to read, write, or sing, or to play on the lute, or to solve some problem in geometry, physics, or logic, must I wait for a dream, or must I depend upon the peculiar knowledge which each of these several arts or sciences requires and without which none of them can be utilized or mastered?”24 Cicero chooses knowledge or science over divination, but it does not lead him to choose atheism or to overestimate the capacities of science. Unlike Nietzsche, Cicero enthrones an element of chance but without a descent into irrationality, mania, or frenzy in any form, especially the Dionysian, which Nietzsche again espouses. Cicero does not conclude that chance in the cosmos requires man to accept a reliance on the hegemony of the unconscious in any form. For Cicero, to the extent that it is conquered, chance is conquered by moral virtue (honestum) and a fully conscious, resolute steadfastness that rests on self-conscious reason and “internal” moral controls on personal behavior.25 Cicero’s rational decision for chance, to be conquered by moral will, dismisses the notion of the blind will to power as a cosmic principle operating unconsciously in us. In a way, the will to power returns to a form of unconscious Stoicism. Cicero rejects teachings like this avant la lettre. Cicero makes it clear that, as in cosmology, in theology one must find a way to bridge the gap between the human and the divine, but that bridge has to be something other than divination and an appeal to the irrational. To do so one must foster an understanding of both man and the divine as self-conscious mind understood as will. With this apotheosis of mind comes a Ciceronian turn away from the senses as the basis of knowledge and a return to the Platonic suspicion of the evidence of the senses.

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Repeatedly in his own name, and in the mouths of various characters, Cicero asserts that mind or soul should not be characterized as moved by “external” material forces, which was the understanding of both the Epicureans and Stoics.26 Instead, soul is moved by its own inherent internal self-motion; in other words, thought moves from thought to thought in a self-moving progression. In this fashion, mind or soul, both human and divine, can act as self-cause.27 Even so, the movement of thought is best when supported by the evidence of the five senses, especially when deployed to gain knowledge of the regularities of nature. This is a consistent conjunction of mind and nature because the regularities of nature need not be guided on a day-today basis by the mind of God; there can be, in Stoic fashion, internal, mechanistic causes of motion. But mind stands outside those causes as first cause — both human and divine. The senses without mind, and especially when overpowered by frenzied unconscious forces, are unreliable. According to Cicero’s presentation, we see this when we realize that dreams are presented as traces of waking sensations and thus are more dependent on the senses than conscious thought. Hence, why would the divine, understood as mind, rely primarily on communicating through dreams and other frenzied means? The divine would communicate to human minds. Cicero the character goes so far as to suggest we should not rely on the senses and that sight is the least trustworthy of the senses.28 This attacks the reliance on the senses for knowledge of both the Stoics and the Epicureans. This lowering of the status of the senses is integral to a thoroughgoing, premodern enlightened attack on superstition, which clearly does not go over to the skepticism concerning any possibility of knowledge, as with the Old or New Academies. It simultaneously links the discussion of religion with the need for both self-moving mind and knowledge of nature. But in the process it shows that human reason has its necessary limits. On Reason, Tradition, and Faith Cicero’s thematic treatment of natural theology in De Natura Deorum is staged at the home of Cotta, a proponent of the New Academy and a

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Roman pontiff. This makes him simultaneously a proponent of skepticism and traditional religion. The dialogue is staged roughly in the year 77 or 76 BC. Rather than locate this discussion on his home turf, in one of his own villas, or at his Academy or Lyceum, Cicero makes this discussion transpire at the home of someone intimately associated with traditional Roman religion. This distances Cicero, who is not a participant in the primary discussion itself, from what transpires. Present are Cicero, Cotta, an Epicurean named Velleius, and a Stoic named Balbus. Each presents his respective school’s view. Cotta, the pontiff and proponent of the New Academy, then responds to both. In his own name Cicero ends by saying, “I felt that [the discourse of] Balbus approximated more nearly to a semblance of the truth.”29 In this fashion Cicero distances himself from Cotta and thereby distances himself from Roman traditional religion, Epicureanism, and Academic skepticism. It is always difficult to know precisely where Cicero stands. He never does more than intimate his position; he rarely asserts anything in his own name. This fact becomes thematic at the beginning of his treatment of natural theology. Cicero observes that the discussants need Piso to represent the Old Academy. Further, Balbus the Stoic accuses both Cotta and Cicero of being proponents of the New Academy who believe they can know nothing. Cicero, however, asserts that he is impartial, and not a member of any school philosophy.30 Cicero seems to imply, even though he attributes the stated opinion to others, that the New Academy “robs the world of daylight and floods it with . . . darkness”; it presents a “derelict system . . . that has long been given up.”31 Still, like the stated position of his character Cotta, when the subject is religion, Cicero prefers to refute other positions rather than openly state his own. Hence the reader is left to piece together various intimations, silences, and positions presented by Velleius and Balbus that are not specifically addressed or refuted. Along with the attack on divination, a positive position begins to emerge. De Natura Deorum consists of two dialogical interactions. First, there is the presentation of the Epicurean position by Velleius and a response by the Roman pontiff Cotta, and then a presentation of the Stoic position by Balbus and another response by Cotta. Obviously, something about Cotta is particularly important as he, in effect, has twice the weight of the other two. The Epicurean position and its critique by Cotta occupy book 1.

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Book 2 is devoted to the Stoic position. Book 3 is Cotta’s response to the Stoic position. In effect, the Stoic position seems to require twice the space to state and twice the length for a response as the Epicurean. Cotta explicitly observes that he is skeptical about the adequacy of reason to present positive doctrines, especially in religion. He also says that as a pontiff it is his job to support the ancestral religion of Rome and its beliefs. His Academic skepticism moves him toward being a proponent of tradition and faith.32 Cotta’s stance is that reason cannot always improve upon faith or tradition and hence should at times restrain itself from trying.33 Tradition has the advantage that on some significant level it has worked. Yet philosophically Cotta goes so far as to imply that his skepticism in fact leads him to doubt the existence of the divine, and even moves him toward atheism, as is ultimately true of the Epicurean position he somewhat angrily refutes. What emerges from Cicero’s reflections is that we must understand the nature of the divine to get a clear theory of the human soul, and to properly regulate traditional religion. And an understanding of the divine is necessary if we are to support piety, which Cicero presents as a/the central theological virtue. In regard to the nature of the divine, the most important question seems to be whether it is active or inactive; there is no reason to venerate or show piety for a divinity that is inactive, such as the Epicurean gods or Aristotle’s thought thinking itself. If the divine is active, it must be active with regard to human beings and not just as creator and/or ongoing daily governor of the cosmos. The question increasingly becomes whether the divine can watch over individual humans without watching over such things as the movement of the planets — to say nothing of everyday weather, who wins court cases, and whether pet dogs and cats prosper. Even if the divine is active as mind and will, the message that emerges from the dialogue is that the divine need not be hyperactive in every minute natural event. And it becomes clear that the divine can create the cosmos and then let nature regulate itself, while attending primarily to the human things. The dialogue remains silent on the issue of the creation of the cosmos versus its eternality, other than to make clear that if the cosmos is created it cannot thereafter be eternal. As is true of his reflections on cosmology, Cicero seems most openly skeptical about Epicurean theology. Yet ultimately he seems to circle back

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to occupy some similar ground. Cicero also uses the voice of an Epicurean, Velleius, to make valid criticisms (never confronted or refuted elsewhere) of what could be called Platonic theology where God is presented as a creator qua architect looking to preexistent models that are present outside the divine — but that view is only part of Plato’s teaching as found in the Timaeus and does not extend to discussions in other Platonic dialogues.34 Cicero also seems to make it clear that he sees the Stoic position as laden with superstition, a conclusion he openly asserts in De Divinatione. But he still says it comes closest to a semblance of the truth. And as we will see in our discussion of politics in both De Re Publica and De Legibus, he adopts elements of it for his positive remarks on civil theology. In rejecting the divinity of the planets and the cosmos more generally, Cicero does, however, seem to accept that the order and beauty of the heavens leads to the awe and wonder that grounds one of the high bases for belief in the divine.35 The Stoics relied heavily on the order and beauty of the cosmos as proof of the existence of the divine. Since I have argued that Cicero is in significant respects plotting a course back to the foundations, to the Original Academy of Plato, we need to be careful about precisely what in Plato Cicero might be returning to on the one hand and questioning on the other. He rejects the elements of divine mania found in Plato. He seems to accept the creation of the cosmos and that this means the cosmos will come to an end. In a variety of ways, Cicero seems to dismiss out of hand the Aristotelian notion of God as pure thought thinking only itself, because such a God is as indifferent to man and the cosmos as the Epicurean gods who occupy the void between cosmoses.36 By way of an alternative, Cicero quietly points toward the divine being mind understood as will, active and providential, but unconcerned with the day-to-day workings of nature. In this latter understanding he rejects the Stoics and follows Plato, but in this he also unwittingly follows scripture. Velleius the Epicurean does raise several pertinent issues about divine creation, which the Epicureans do not accept. Must the divine create the matter it forms or does it merely form previously existing inchoate and undifferentiated matter? In forming matter, does the divine look to models outside itself, or are the models and forms within the divine mind itself ? As architect and incorporeal mind, how did the divine get matter to obey its will? And what was the divine doing in all the time before creation?

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Central to the remarks of Velleius are the questions raised as to a creator’s possible motivations for wanting/needing to create. Does not the act of creation imply prior divine lacking or insufficiency? Why did the divine create after ages of slumber or inactivity? What was the divine doing before the creation — thinking only itself in Aristotelean fashion? What deficiency moved the divine eventually to act? What does the divine get out of creation? Why does the divine create the cosmos primarily for fools? These issues emerge from Velleius’s critique of non-Epicurean positions and from Cotta’s criticisms of Velleius. The dialogue form allows Cicero to put these questions on the table without doing so in his own name. Beyond those motivational questions, which get to the issue of divine intentionality, we have the issue of whether we can separate notions of creator, maintainer, and overseer. If the divine is not an overseer of the cosmos, do we owe the divine obedience for the mere fact of existence if there is no personal beneficence and concern on an individual basis? Can the divine be overseer of the natural and/or human worlds without being their creator? And so on. I am suggesting that Cicero intimates that the best combination of positions is to see the divine as the creator of the cosmos but not daily overseer, as an active and beneficent overseer of the human things who leaves much to the choices of individual humans. Such a God would be most worthy of piety as both the cause of being and concerned parent. If we owe nothing to the divine, then we do not owe piety, and if Cicero is correct, without piety social life dissolves: “In all probability the disappearance of piety towards the gods will entail the disappearance of loyalty and social union among men as well, and of justice itself.”37 Apparently, human sociality is not simply natural on the mechanistic level of material causality. Without social union there can be no justice, which seems to rest on knowledge and mind more than on natural necessity. As we will see in the discussion of ethics in chapter 7, contrary to Aristotle, for whom the human virtue of magnanimity is the crown or queen of the virtues, for Cicero “the crown” is justice, and its existence may ultimately hinge on piety and a divine support. In elevating the status of justice, Cicero elevates the importance of the divine far beyond its status in Aristotle. Cicero raises central theological issues, but he never explicitly replaces the questions with rigid dogmas.38 He leaves us in search of a consistent whole; he stresses the issue of consistency. In that regard it seems that

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reason can separate the notions of the divine as creator, maintainer of the cosmos, and overseer of human virtue, but there may be only one consistent combination of these positions. It is in this subtle and undogmatic way that Cicero deploys whatever deserves to be called his teaching. The enlightenment figure, the Epicurean Velleius, uses reason to assault the creation model and the overseer model of the divine, and the notion that the gods have any concern whatsoever for man. He also uses reason to ridicule the traditional theology of the Greek poets who presented a picture of gods lost in anger, lust, war, battles, deceit, hatreds, adultery, mutilation, and imprisonment. But the Roman poets, who were as heavily implicated in traditional Roman religion as the Greek poets were for Greece, had in no way cleansed this picture. Thus Velleius is being made by Cicero to attack Roman ancestral religion also. Without a rational theology as a replacement, this is a nihilistic use of reason, and Cicero’s commitment to rationalism stands in clear contrast. Reason must know its limits. The beauty of Cicero’s approach to questioning is that it is committed to reason but simultaneously sees the limits of reason. If reason is limited, a bow to faith and tradition remains mandatory. Ultimately the relation between reason and faith may be as the pontiff Cotta suggests, namely, one where we require reason to see its limits and make its peace with tradition. But the relation between reason and just any random ancestral tradition is problematic. The issue is whether it is possible to make a transition from merely random and absurd traditional articles of faith to a rational faith. My suggestion is that this is what Cicero is attempting. Rational faith demands of the divine a conception of an individual mind as active will (monotheism) that creates the cosmos and beneficently supports human existence. This is very close to the scriptural account. Velleius cannot be the one to offer a rational faith because he is ultimately a proponent of reason entirely replacing faith in the name of an atheism that neither fears nor venerates the divine and relies on the hedonistic Epicurean understanding of the good as a detached tranquility of the unaided human mind in withdrawn privacy. The Epicureans, whom Cotta criticizes, are radical enlightenment figures; they are the proponents of reason as a solvent for all traditions. As Cotta’s critique will show, the Epicureans are in reality prudent atheists who present a picture of gods who are utterly mythical, anthropomorphic, poetic inventions, useless to any political community.

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In his brief prefatory remarks in De Natura Deorum addressed to the morally austere Brutus, Cicero presents the conclusion that both justice and piety rest on the belief that there is something grander in the cosmos than man. For piety to exist on a society-wide basis, there must be an established religion that requires the existence of the divine to venerate. But the divine must be intrinsically worthy of veneration. Veneration and fear are two different things; the same is true of veneration versus a fundamentally utilitarian hope for favors. A divinity worthy of veneration, as a ground for piety, is a core article that any rational faith must incorporate. Notice we begin not from proofs of divine existence, but from the necessity of piety. Piety needs the divine and the divine needs to be worthy of veneration. It is being suggested that those are the necessary opening articles of a rational faith. And to truly venerate the divine, man must long to be like the divine; man must long to shape himself in the image of the divine. To return to Velleius, his defense of Epicurean theology is primarily based on a critique of all other positions, it is a defense faute de mieux. It is aimed not only at traditional polytheists but also at the Stoics, who presume to be rationalists but are not. For the Stoics, the divine was the logos of all that is. But this means, Velleius argues, that the divine is divided into all things and dismembered. The divine lacks unity. Whatever is made of parts can come apart and is not eternal. To be eternal, the divine must not have parts, it must be One. Hence the divine cannot be in the cosmos. The Stoic divinity is also overly busy because it must oversee every natural operation in the entire cosmos from the minute to the universal. Velleius observes that unlike the pre-Socratic Anaxagoras, who depicted the divine as infinite pure mind, the Stoics at least see that the divine needs a body to be infinite, even if the body is the entire cosmos. On the other hand, Velleius argues, an incorporeal divine cannot be in motion and hence cannot impart motion to anything else. Without a body, the divine would have no sensation, no capacity for imagination, no capacity to reason.39 More to the point, if the divine is incapable of sensation, the divine cannot oversee the lives of men. All of this, of course, points toward an irresolvable mystery of how the divine is constituted and how it acts.40 We begin to see that Velleius tries to defend the Epicurean position primarily by criticizing the theological teachings of every other religion and thinker other than Epicurus. This is a manifestation of an enlighten-

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ment move that is primarily negative and ultimately nihilistic. It is also a version of what Cicero repeatedly attributes to Socrates — “negative di­ alectics.” It is shared especially by the “New” Academy of which Cotta is a representative. In this vein, almost as an aside, Velleius does concede that Socrates, Plato, and Xenophon all argue that it is wrong to inquire into the form of God. He uses this alleged agreement to try to cover Epicurus’s vagueness about his gods. But the injunction of “avoid trying to grasp the form of God” also agrees with the scriptural commandment to make no images of God. The caveat against giving God a specific form means that anything Plato says, or others who agree with him, about God as an architect, is not the ultimate understanding, because seeing God as a creator/ architect may necessarily require having an image of Him as a craftsman. The injunction against divine images would, if one were consistent, ultimately oppose the Epicurean anthropomorphic depiction of the gods, and to a lesser extent the Stoic pantheistic understanding of God in all things. To avoid having an image is to leave the divine to some degree mysterious. But to be an object of veneration and uphold morality and sociality, the divine must get its messages across to man and become the ground of veneration. On the one hand, the divine should be the mystery at the core of being; on the other hand, there must be some clear communication to man. To return to Velleius’s critique of non-Epicurean positions, it emerges that to see the divine as outside the cosmos requires that the divine be conceived negatively as incorporeal, and according to the Epicureans, there is no such thing as an incorporeal substance. They believed that only body can act on body. Incorporeal mind can act on nothing. But if the divine is the architect of the cosmos, the divine must have existed before it and hence necessarily been incorporeal. Therefore, the divine could have created nothing. To conceive of God as in the world as the Stoics do is to see Him as divided and hence capable of dissolution. To see Him as eternal, He must be outside the world and incorporeal. But as incorporeal, how does He create or converse with and influence men? Herein we confront a series of philosophical antinomies that on the level of theology can be left as mysteries. Since sense perceptions are the origin of all thought for the Epicureans, thought can only grasp corporeality; therefore, it is impossible to

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grasp an incorporeal God. And an incorporeal God cannot think Himself since He has no corporeality to think — one must think oneself as something. Can God as pure mind even think Himself ? 41 Velleius’s answer is no. But Cicero, who sees philosophy itself based on mind understood as will, is in a much better position to answer yes. According to Velleius, as incorporeal mind, God can think nothing at all, not even Himself. The Stoics who have God in the world deny Him oneness, and ultimately eternality, and how one thinks oneself as all is mysterious. Anyone who has God outside and before the world cannot explain how or why He would act or what He did before He acted. We arrive again at antinomies. Unless the antinomies can be resolved, in the fashion perhaps of Hegel, they point toward the inevitability of faith; in fact they point to the inevitability of multiple faiths. There is a significant attempt to transcend several of these antinomies in a fashion other than that of Hegel — that is, through Christian theology.42 The doctrine of the Trinity presents the divine as a complex One, both in the world and outside and prior to the world; as transcendent, creative, active mind, and also body; in the world as body qua Christ, and even in the world after the Resurrection, but not as body, but rather as Holy Spirit; as creator of the world ex nihilo as Father 43 and concerned for mankind as Christ.44 The complex One of the Trinity — ­ three persons, one substance — solves philosophical conundrums that no simple conception of the One can confront. On this level alone, Christianity can claim to be a rational religion. It confronts and provides a response to more antinomies than any other religion. And it is also the traditional religion of the republican West. By comparison to the Christian doctrine of “one substance, three persons,” there is the attempt by Hegel to portray mind as will, striving to go from abstraction to concrete form once and for all, thereby obliterating transcendence. Spirit moves from divided, after its initial concretion, to again One and self-conscious of itself as in everything; the end of history seems to eventuate in a self-conscious Stoic logos. But for Hegel, the oneness occurs primarily in all particular finite consciousnesses brought to ultimate unity in a universal homogeneous world state that can hardly be seen as a republic in any serious sense. In fact, it would bring with it the specter of a universal, global, technological, bureaucratic tyranny. Hegel’s is not a republican theological teaching. With the move of Hegel’s Spirit

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from abstract incorporeal Oneness to concrete Oneness, the gap between universal and particular mind is allegedly bridged once and for all and the need for a transcendent divinity overcome. This is Hegel’s grand ontological synthesis on the plane of history. I would suggest that even though he leaves various unavoidable antinomies in place, Cicero comes very close to opening a space for the Christian solution that has God as self-conscious mind and will but also transcendent, leaving man as only an image of God. Cicero is a sensible and enlightened man who finds atheism, polytheism, and pantheism unenlightened. Cicero will not accept easy syntheses that solve all problems and remove the mystery at the core of all being. To cover over and forget the mysteries that do exist is not enlightened. To believe one has removed them is mythical. After his negative opening, Velleius goes on to explain that only Epicurean theology avoids the problems he raises without making the divine overly busy, as is the result in other schools of thought. Where the Platonic God is busy initially crafting the world and the Stoic God is overworked with ordering the entire cosmos from within, the Epicurean gods are happy, inactive, free of occupation, delight in their own wisdom, indifferent to man, and free from toil. As Velleius’s argument goes, divinity implies happiness and leisure, which in turn implies friendship, hence multiplicity. The Epicurean gods have “quasi” bodies and senses, but they are much more spectral bodies than those of humans. The Epicurean gods do nothing but rest in the spaces between the cosmoses, reflecting on themselves and their happiness, and perhaps on each other in some kind of vague comradely friendship. They have no relation to the cosmoses around them; they did not create them, nor do they maintain them. They have no concern for human beings.45 For Velleius, we know the gods exist because everyone has a conception of them, and all conceptions come from the senses, caused by bodily emanations from all matter that strikes the matter of our sense organs. Since the gods take no concern for human things, and we dissolve at death, we have allegedly solved the problem of superstitious fear of death and the anxiety it brings, despite the fact that there are spectral emanations crisscrossing the cosmoses and striking us from every direction unbidden. This might seem to be somewhat disconcerting to some of the more psychologically hygienic.

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We finally are given the pious exhortation from Velleius to emulate the gods, who are inactive, happy, free from concerns, taking delight in their own wisdom and virtue — why divine beings that do not act need virtues any more than hands or eyes is not clear. But those gods are the perfect image of the Epicurean understanding of tranquil, apolitical, superstition-free human happiness. Bringing the Divine to Presence In response, Cotta thrusts us immediately into the issue of atheism. He says that even though he is a pontiff, there are times when even he thinks there are no gods. But he remarks that even milder doubt than his led to the exile of Protagoras, so he will not discuss the matter even in a private setting. But in regard to atheism, Cotta eventually will assert that in reality it is the Epicureans who are prudent atheists and their fatuous theology is merely an attempt to court public opinion. Even the Epicureans do not think atheism is a good public stance. Cotta argues that the Epicurean position is fatuous in its anthropomorphic depiction of the gods — why does a being that does nothing need virtues or, for that matter, hands and legs? And if the gods are corporeal and have bodily parts, they will come apart, the same as humans, and are not eternal. All of this fatuousness ultimately rests on a concession on the part of Epicurus to popular opinion.46 Epicurus wants to avoid the fate of Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and Socrates. Cotta further argues that not only is making the gods like humans derogatory to divine perfection, but that without gods who offer individual beneficence and benevolence all piety and religion is destroyed.47 The real problem with the Epicurean position is this: Why should we pay respect to the gods if we owe them nothing, not even our existence, and they do nothing for us? Why do we care if they are even there? And if the best life is apolitical, we have no reason to care about piety and justice. Cotta also attacks at the fundamental level of physics. He follows a premise that seems to be Cicero’s. There is no such thing as indivisible atoms (as our modern atomic theory increasingly seems to prove by reducing the building blocks of matter to quanta of energy). There is no such thing as a void (as the twenty-first-century principle of “dark matter”

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might prove). Beyond that, if the cosmoses came into existence, so did the gods, and hence at one time they did not exist, and, as composed of quasi atoms, a notion Cotta ridicules, they will pass out of existence and are thus not eternal. Must not the divine be eternal to truly be divine? The very depiction of the Epicurean gods is internally inconsistent. For example, things with bodies are animated (anima) and move, but why and where would the Epicurean gods move: Why do they need virtues or limbs if they do not act? Since for the Epicureans happiness depends on pleasure, the pursuit of which still requires action, how can inactive gods be happy? If, as is true of all bodies, atoms keep coming off the gods and they too are constantly bombarded by them, they are in the same position as mortal humans. And if they came into being, like the cosmoses themselves, the gods must be the product of chance.48 Why should we venerate an object based on pure accident? Must not the divine, if anything, be necessary? Simple empirical facts also disprove the Epicurean doctrine. For example, not all humans are beautiful, so does that mean some gods are ugly? The Egyptians made their gods animals for the utility they offered humans, undermining the point that all humans have a similar picture of the gods. And the Epicurean gods offer no utility. On the other hand, if the divine primarily appeals to thought, what does it matter how the gods appear?49 The reality is that we believe in all sorts of things we cannot see or grasp with the senses; otherwise inlanders would not believe in the sea.50 Cotta points us toward the issue of loving versus fearing the divine. He starts this line of argument by noting the etymological relation between the Latin words for friend (amicus) and love (amor). If the gods are friends, then they love. But what is the basis of this love? Friends need to show each other beneficence, benevolence, kindness, love, affection. Traced to its source, this friendship and love can only be based on natural affection for the good between those who are good. Otherwise, friendship is based on utility and profit, which reduces to a mutual and reciprocal form of barter. True friendship is disinterested. Disinterested love of the good should be the basis of friendship and care between humans, between humans and the divine, and between the gods.51 A God demanding of his children disinterested love and friendship (agape) for others and toward Him was unknown to the pagans. That notion awaited the Christian God.

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Here is a foretelling of the Christian God of love (found in agape rather than the eros, or even philia, we repeatedly confront in characters from Dionysus to Zeus) who replaces the angry God of the Old Testament who relies on fear, to say nothing of the pagan gods who reproduce human passions. This is a God worthy of veneration and reverence. With Cotta’s refutation of Epicureanism, Cicero has quietly opened a space to be occupied after his time; he opened a future. He could not know that it would be precisely the future that occurred. This quiet mode of speech is of the nature of Cicero’s theological teaching, and his overall teaching more generally. Cicero’s teaching occupies the interstices of the text; it explores combinations and relations between ideas; it intimates consistent combinations and thereby opens possible philosophical spaces.52 When Christianity arrived, possible philo­ sophical spaces for it were already prepared. Where are such future spaces now being opened? From small pieces of arguments like those Cotta uses against the Epicureans, large issues come into the open. In the process, Cicero intimates positive elements for a possible future position. This is how political philosophy, in its phenomenological weaving, opens spaces for future occupation. Perhaps such opening is going on while we proceed. But the implication is that one must allow future individuals to live their own way into those spaces rather than impose an outcome in constructivist, authoritarian fashion. Separating Nature and the Divine When we move to a consideration of the Stoic position, we need to notice the quantitative textual weight given to the treatment of the Epicurean and Stoic positions. Book 1 of De Natura Deorum consists of both the elaboration of the Epicurean position by Velleius and Cotta’s response. Balbus then is given the entirety of book 2 to present the Stoic position. Cotta’s refutation covers the entirety of book 3. We have the following equation for the three protagonists. We have half a book given to Velleius and the Epicurean position, one book for Balbus and the Stoic position, one and a half books for Cotta and his two responses. Something about Cotta the character is more weighty than that of Velleius or Balbus: Cotta is the only spokesperson for tradition and faith.

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Balbus begins in what has the look of a systematic fashion. He says he will deal with four issues: (1) the existence of the divine, (2) the nature of the divine, (3) how the world is governed by the divine, and (4) how the divine cares for the fortunes of individual men and nations. The fourth is shortchanged in the actual remarks. Cotta eventually accuses Balbus of despising the authority of tradition.53 He accuses Balbus of trying to establish everything with reason alone and asserts that such an attempt always fails. We are left to consider yet again the dialectical relation between reason, tradition, and faith.54 On the one hand, the Stoics, because of their belief in fate, accept auspices, augury, and all manner of divination. They are superstitious. This part of the teaching appeals to the foolish. On the other hand, the Stoics look to the orderliness of the heavens as a sign of divinity; they pass through science to get to theology. This seems to appeal to the wise. Can these be synthesized in a consistent fashion? Must not every religion appeal to both the foolish and the wise? As to the seeming appeal to the wise, Cotta argues that the orderly and beautiful appearance of the heavens does not prove God’s existence; it proves only the existence of an orderly nature that follows orderly principles. The implication is that nature can operate on its own causal principles without any intrusion of mind. Nature and God can, perhaps should, be separated even if God is the creator of nature. Otherwise the divine gets involved in undignified natural concerns, such as weather fronts, the migratory patterns of ducks, and the labor and class relations of ants, to say nothing of the growth of fungus. Despite inserting the One, the logos, the divine principle, in nature, the Stoics accept that the providential ancestral gods appear to men individually. But Cotta observes that the gods appearing to men does not prove their existence, because reports of visual sightings of the gods are total rumor usually attributed to inconsequential individuals — the gods never seem to reveal themselves to substantial individuals like Marcus Cato. Divine revelations should appear to the best men rather than rest on the hearsay of the foolish.55 Serious revelations must be to the wise. This is the standard for separating true from false revelations.56 Further, that the cosmos is beautiful does not prove that it is also wise or the product of mind or is infused with mind — if the cosmos were wise, it could read a book.57 The regularity of the movements of the stars could be the work of mechanical necessity, not the internal cosmic operation of

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mind. We need to differentiate between the operation of reason by a mind with will and the operation of mechanical nature. Reason and necessity are two different things. Even if the divine creates nature, nature need not be ruled on a day-to-day basis by the divine. An element of necessity could be one of the tools of the divine. A God of mind and self-conscious will might be unpredictable.58 But nature need not simultaneously be unpredictable. A divinity that is primarily mind and will would be consistent with miracles and other intrusions into the natural order, even if nature was divinely created. The operation of the natural order can be accounted for without recourse to mind. In short, mind need not be limited by necessity, as with the Stoics. The divine would be better understood as both mind and transcendent of the cosmos rather than in it, as long as the divine is not indifferent to men, as with the Epicurean gods. God does not have to be nature’s internal ordering principle to be providential in his concern for humans. The Stoics place the divine in the cosmos. There is no transcendence. They understand God as elemental, primarily the element of fire. Fire is the moving or animating (anima) principle of the cosmos. God is soul in all that is — again, this is pantheism. Like the Epicurean gods, the Stoic God is not an external creator. He is an internal provider of order. There is still no explanation of where everything that is came from, no efficient cause. The Stoic God is both the matter and its principle of order and movement. It is hard to see how such a god can be self-conscious and hence providential. To be providential, the divine must exist outside matter and be self-conscious mind qua will. But that raises the specter of such a mind being capable of unpredictable acts and hence being the basis of chance; this is true of both human and divine mind. Nature is the basis of necessity. Mind, both human and divine, would be the basis of chance. The pantheistic Stoic understanding makes the divine too busy, as the Epicureans argue. We do not need the divine to explain tides, the weather, or even the movement of the planets. God need not busy himself with minor things. Nature can deal independently with the minor things. Again, we must differentiate mind and nature. Cotta suggests that in fact God could be mind/will/reason and create the rational soul and the visible universe separately and have them moved by separate principles. Or the divine could create just rational soul and insert it in blind necessity.

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Consider: “Let us grant that it is a mark of arrogance to value oneself more highly than the world; but not merely is it not a mark of arrogance, rather is it a mark of wisdom, to realize that one is a conscious and rational being, and that Orion and Canicula are not. . . . You tell me that Socrates in Xenophon asks the question, if the world contains no rational soul, where did we pick up ours? And I too ask the question, where did we get the faculty of speech, the knowledge of numbers, the art of music?”59 We could have gotten mind and soul directly from God.60 While “nature by its own motions and mutations imparting motion and activity to all things” accounts for the movement of the sun and the moon, the divine interjects reason into the cosmos through rational soul alone.61 The divine must be the cause of mind, reason, and will in the cosmos. But they could exist in the cosmos only in man. Cicero has opened the possibility of a unique form of dualism. The whole could be a complex whole. Mind operates in the cosmos primarily through man rather than through the rest of nature. Man is the unique culminating part of the whole and not just one equal part among many. Put another way, we can have both science and rational religion; religion deals with mind/soul, science deals with matter. Those who deny this possibility are forced to be monists, materialists, and necessitarians of one kind or another. There simply has never been a successful monism any more than there has been a successful materialism. And a universe denied an element of mind and chance cannot be consistently maintained. The inclination to materialistic monism leads both the Epicureans and the Stoics astray.62 Cotta continues to hammer his critique of the Stoic equation of mind as a materialist moving principle. He is particularly brutal in his critique of the Stoic equation of mind as a form of fire, one of the four primary elements. Fire is a poor analogy because fire is not essential to life, especially as it requires fuel. Fire is destructive, and frequently indiscriminately destructive rather than constructive. If God, and indeed all mind, is fire and fire consumes, God is dependent upon something other than Himself, that is, his fuel. Fire is not the best metaphor for soul or mind. Soul is more like air than fire. Things perish of excessive heat and need air and water to live.

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Cotta traces the words for soul and air back etymologically to the same root to make his point. Even fire requires air.63 Even in a materialist account of things like soul and mind one would need a composite of air and fire. On many levels we need cosmic diversity, not monistic simplicity and unity. The critique of the Stoic position is a critique of monism and materialism. We need both mind and nature as separate principles. Mind need not be the creator of matter; it can limit itself to an initial ordering of matter and be a creator of soul understood primarily as individual mind. The Stoic God is without self-consciousness and hence without choice, and, as a result, without virtue or mind. Cotta asserts that a God without virtue is inconceivable and an abomination and not worthy of veneration. This leads to the most troubling question of all: Can God be just given that justice is the social virtue that most demands piety? The divine as One has no community, so why does it need justice? But if God is not just, should we venerate Him? Cotta even questions why the divine would need reason, rather than will alone. We humans need reason to help us plot a path from the obscure to the known, but nothing is obscure to God. Does not the divine know everything in every instant without reason, without seeking? And temperance is of no concern for the divine since forgoing bodily pleasure is not an issue, and as courage relates to endurance of pain, especially the pain of death, this is not an issue for the divine. Therefore God need be neither rational nor in possession of the four virtues that emerge as central in Cicero’s moral teaching.64 At least the divinizing of human virtues by earlier polytheism supported human valor, justice, and virtue. But it leads to inconsistencies. It is far better that we emulate God’s perfections rather than attribute our perfections, and thus our needed virtues, to the divine. Returning to the issue of their combination of pantheism and monotheism, the Stoics went on to add a new form of polytheism. The deification of the stars and planets is irrational popular mythology and utterly derogatory to the divine. The planets may be immortal but not wise or virtuous. Divine honors are paid to men’s virtues, not their immortality. How do we emulate a planet? And if one begins to divinize the parts of nature, there is no stopping: eventually one reaches the point of divinizing rainbows, the sea, seasons, clouds (think Aristophanes). This process is endless.

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On the Prospects for R ational Religion Cicero’s Cotta is simultaneously playing the rationalist debunker of irrational positions yet still argues for the necessity of supporting ancestral custom because he is skeptical that there can be a rational religion. This is because he does not think reason can invent a religion ex nihilo. Cotta is a rationalist, but not a proponent of enlightenment, as are the Epicureans. The two need not be conjoined. Beyond this, a proper religion, in the best of all possible worlds, would support political life and justice, dismiss superstition, and see the needed place of natural science and understand it must talk to the high and the low simultaneously. Finally, there is the question of whether a religion can be the support for both philosophical wonder and punitive restraint. It is a hard task to accomplish all of these things at once. In most circumstances one must rationalize the traditional religion that is already one’s own in the direction of the ideal Cicero quietly sketches. The more rational one’s traditional religion, the more worthy of defense it becomes. But it may never be possible to accomplish all things at once. Cotta also makes it clear that Balbus, and the Stoics more generally, inadequately deal with the issue of the immortality of individual souls. Consequently, they fail to deal with the question of why humans should pay deference to the divine. To be worthy of human devotion, the divine must be worthy of veneration. To be worthy of devotion, the divine must be active, not contemplative, not withdrawing from concern for the human things, not indifferent to the public space humans require or to the hierarchy of traits in the human soul. And the immortality of that which is highest in man should be the concern of the divine, but if the divine is nothing more than a cosmic master of rewards and a general paymaster, we are told that is not dignified. Herein seems to lurk another antinomy. Can one support individual immortality for souls without stooping to a divine paymaster and jailor? Without dissolving into a mere paymaster, the divine must be primarily related to thinking beings rather than to external nature, and must not be a self-absorbed Aristotelian form of thought thinking itself rather than concerned with other rational beings. All of this implies that God and man must find a relationship and hence somehow find each other to achieve a relationship in this world. The only argument Balbus gives for

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the divine having a concern with man is that there is a divine principle in all things and that is why there is reason in us. We primarily participate in the divine by integrating ourselves into the whole, and thereby sublimating our individuality. Cotta engages in a debunking of this position that leads us down a troubling path. If the divine gave us reason, by integrating us into the whole, how is it possible for us to misuse reason? Going further on this path, did the divine not self-consciously know that man would misuse reason, or was the divine blind to this outcome? The implication of Cotta’s criticisms at this point is to introduce the thought that rationality and wickedness go together and hence the existence of reason is not a necessary sign of the existence of divinity or of the divine spark in us.65 Cotta gives examples of many tyrants and historical malefactors and arrives at the conclusion that reason more frequently guides wrong rather than right actions. Hence it is not clear that bestowing reason on man is always for our good.66 We are left with the knotty problem of whether the existence of human reason shows that God cares for us. Yet without associating God with mind and also the divine in us with mind, all the other conundrums we have already considered come flooding back. We seem to arrive at yet another problem. The text seems to leave us with the thought that the divine could be censured if it gives us a tool without knowledge of how to use it wisely. Yet the saving grace that is suggested by the text is in the observation that sometimes good eventuates from ill intentions and occasionally evil eventuates from good intentions. Thus the high can never be disassociated from the low, the wise from the foolish. That may be one of the deepest conundrums of human existence. Nonetheless, to eliminate the high leaves us with the unvarnished victory of the low. Thus we are left with at least two possible conclusions. One would be a version of the traditional homily that “the Lord works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.” The other would be that the correction for the misuse of reason is precisely philosophy, and that philosophy is itself divine or a divine gift. Cotta seems to leave matters at an invocation of the central importance of “conscience” being able to “speak” to us to limit our misuse of reason. As we will see in our discussion of ethics in chapter 7, Cicero also appeals to the idea of an inner voice, “conscience,” that speaks to us. Whose voice is this, the reason of pure mind, the divine in

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the world, or some other permutation? In Christian theology, the source of the voice of conscience is usually attributed to the Holy Spirit. Cotta ends with a series of equally troubling reflections on whether God must be angry to care for human beings and nations: Would only an angry God support justice? Does not justice require retributions: even just retribution presupposes anger. Despite the example of Zeus, fellow gods, and their Roman equivalents, Cotta asserts that the notion of an angry God seems inconceivable and inconsistent with seeing God as mind. And an angry God runs in the face of the implications of Cotta’s prior reflections, which seem to lead toward a God of love. Can God be simultaneously loving and angry, or are we discussing under those circumstances two different divinities? Once again, we are faced with a conundrum and a possible antinomy. Apparently, in natural theology we are left to resolve these antinomies in the most consistent fashion we can. No solution will be perfect. Any serious historical understanding of the phenomena shows that even Christian theology, based on faith and scriptural givens, reproduces the same conundrums. Cotta closes with the observation that he wants Balbus to see how obscure the subject of theology really is. All of Cotta’s questioning should lead us in one direction, namely, that at the core of being remains a mystery. And for Cotta that leads in the direction of respect for tradition. We must also note that dramatically, throughout the discussion of Balbus’s position and the Stoic position more generally, the sun has been slowly setting. Is it setting on Stoicism and pagan religion more generally? Perhaps that is Cicero’s dramatic point. When De Natura Deorum finishes, we are left with not a dogmatic theology but an indication of what should be dismissed as superstitious, indefensible, inconsistent, and downright preposterous, together with an indication of theological combinations that might go together in a consistent fashion. One premise becomes clear: without a self-conscious divinity there can be no providence. Without providence, why do we need divinity? Therefore, God must be self-conscious — and conscious of us. Further, everything in the discussion points to God understood as One, mind, and will, probably as creator of nature but certainly not as minute overseer of natural processes. But God must also somehow come to presence for man to be relevant; in that regard we have a picture of the need for a relation between

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the divine and man through mind, love, and friendship. We have invocations of love, but also queries about the occasional need for anger. We need to attend to both the high and the low within humanity. We should see the divine as self-conscious mind, but we eschew anthropomorphism; we should not have concrete images. We have invocations of unavoidable antinomies, conundrums, and mysteries, but also the need for openness to natural science to aid judgment and keep us from mindless superstition. We could go on, but the point I am making is that it is into this already philosophically opened series of spaces that philosophical Christianity eventually moved and has moved for two millennia. Cicero helps us almost predict the permutations of Christian theology that would eventually occur, and that still move actual, historical Christianity. In the process, Cicero has given us an indication of how to philosophically open future spaces. I continue to suggest throughout that not all of his potential spaces have been occupied. I would now add that some have been exhausted. Despite what looks like a thoroughgoing critique of the both the Epi­curean and Stoic positions, Cicero gives an indication he is willing to reconsider a few elements from both. Cicero seems to return to the Epicurean position that one needs a natural explanation that does not implicate the divine in everyday natural occurrences. And there is still the fact that Cicero ends the discussion by throwing his weight to the Stoic position of Balbus as closer to a semblance of the truth. We should look with awe to the cosmos and its order; we should look for a consistent way to bring the divine into the world without submerging the divine totally in the world. And by giving Cotta more time than either of the other proponents, Cicero may also give his own imprimatur of the central necessity of a balance between faith, tradition, and rational religion, which we can tease from the dramatic deeds of Cotta. But again, though clearly indicating that he thinks pagan polytheism is neither rational nor consistent, Cicero leaves us with nothing resembling a dogmatic theology, nor does he make the attempt to create a religion ex nihilo. Why does not Cicero come out openly for a transcendent God understood as mind and will? When we put all the pieces together, it seems that one needs a rational faith that defends reason and a reasonable, if still mysterious, self-conscious providential God. We will readdress this last

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question when we confront Cicero’s civil theology presented in his De Legibus and De Re Publica, where in fact he does deploy a version of Stoic theology, which is rationally debunked in De Natura Deorum. We can speculate that Cicero pulls back from making a specific statement for what would be a novel, theological monotheism because he realizes the necessary tension between reason and faith and the ticklish personal situation he is in by being thrown into a particular public space and its irrational faith. Yet he gives the signposts to a rational faith. Perhaps we can at least conclude one thing: for Cicero, the ultimate arbiter in theology is philosophy. Reason must supervene over faith without eliminating it. For reasons that will become still clearer as we proceed, this is especially true in a republic. Atheism and republicanism will not work together.

Seven

Cicero on Ethics So that our free will not be eliminated, I judge that it might be true that fortune [chance] is arbiter of half our actions, but also that she leaves the other half, or close to it, for us to govern. And I liken [chance] to one of these violent rivers which, when they become enraged, flood the plains, ruin the trees and the buildings. . . . [Yet] it is not as if men, when times are quiet, could not provide for them with dikes and dams so that when they rise later, either they go by a canal or their impetus is neither so wanton nor so damaging. It happens similarly with [chance]. Thus, you must know that there are two kinds of combat: one with laws, the other with force. The first is proper to man, the second to beasts; but because the first is often not enough, one must have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to know well how to use the beast and the man. . . . Thus, since a prince is compelled of necessity to know well how to use the beast, he should pick the fox and the lion, because the lion does not defend itself from snares and the fox does not defend itself from wolves. So one needs to be a fox to recognize snares and a lion to frighten the wolves.  — Machiavelli, The Prince, 98; 69 While wrong may be done, then, in either of two ways, that is, by force or by fraud, both are bestial: fraud seems to belong to the cunning fox, force to the lion; both are wholly unworthy of man, but fraud is the more contemptible.  — Cicero, De Officiis 1.13.41

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The Conquest of Chance: Beyond the Modern Options The famous lion and fox metaphor of that great modern republican Machiavelli was taken from Cicero. But Machiavelli transformed the conclusion reached by his predecessor. In effect, Cicero represents the response to Machiavelli and the moderns before, and possibly after, the fact. Cicero offers his response to Machiavelli and the moderns on their own terms, that is, he enjoins the issue of the best means to the conquest of chance. Unlike the moderns, who rely on a dominating new natural science and a manipulative new political science, Cicero attempts his conquest with an ethical teaching about human excellence (honestum). For Cicero, man conquers chance by carving out a moral universe for himself built primarily on internal restraints rather than on external manipulations and dominations. The question is whether modern republicanism in the mode of Machiavelli and his modern descendants, and the modern scientific project, actually conquers chance or whether it lets loose new permutations of it. The issue of newly created modern permutations of chance has a prima facie resonance from an environmental standpoint when applied to the technological consequences of the new science of Descartes, Bacon, and others. But the political and moral universe of modernity has also increasingly succumbed to the law of unintended consequences. Cicero offers us a unique guide to the conquest of chance that questions the approach of the moderns. It may offer precisely what is now needed, not as a replacement for but as the savior of the best of the modern project. Cicero confronts these issues throughout his corpus, but especially in his treatise on duties, De Officiis. For Cicero, an ethics based on a specific set of virtues and duties is the best means to the conquest of chance. I am going to suggest that we soon-to-be postmoderns need an inversion of modern ethical values and the modern approach to chance along Ciceronian lines if we are to save what is best in modernity. That inversion will require a public space for its manifestation. That in turn will require a transformed republicanism that relies less on political and technological manipulation and domination and more on citizen participation and personal virtue. Cicero’s ethical position confronts not just the modern approach to chance before the fact but confronts the moral and political approaches

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that existed before Cicero. Aristotle’s pantheon of virtues had already substantially softened the pugnacious, heroic conception of virtue depicted, for example, in Homer. In Aristotle’s works, Achilles, Agamemnon, and similar warriors had already ceased to be the highest exemplars of virtue.1 Courage was lowered by Aristotle to a lesser ethical role — the first virtue he discusses in the Nicomachean Ethics in what appears to be a book of ascending virtues. For Aristotle, the domestic social virtues like wittiness and friendliness end up higher on that ascending ladder than courage. Cicero continues this softening, but there is a further element of transformation. There is even less of Achilles, Alexander, Caesar, and other warriors in Cicero’s account than in the Aristotle who still makes the “great-souled” man central to moral virtue — Aristotle calls megalo­ psychia the “crown” of the virtues. Cicero explicitly says the crown of the virtues is justice. And Cicero reconceptualizes “magnanimity” as part of his general attack on the centrality of martial virtue. Cicero goes still further and begins to introduce virtues that we associate more with Christianity than pagan antiquity. Trollope’s observation that Cicero is the “pagan Christian” seems apt except that there are only limited, strictly pagan elements remaining in his teaching. And his stress on duties, rather than linking the virtues to self-love, as Aristotle explicitly does, is of the utmost importance.2 In his teachings on ethics we will see yet another example of Cicero opening philosophic spaces that were occupied after him. We now need to open future spaces for an inversion of the modern ethical universe increasingly lost in vulgar consequentialism and arid and vaporous deontology. In contemporary academic discussions of ethics, the landscape is dominated by three ethical categories: deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. If we limit ourselves to this vocabulary, Cicero seems to be essentially a proponent of virtue ethics. But he is, in his unique way, every bit as much a consequentialist, but not in the mode of the modern utilitari­ anism that dominates most contemporary discussions of consequentialist approaches. He seems not to be a deontologist who bases ethics on a pure “intentionality” or who speaks of one built in opposition to the natural, which deontological approaches almost always do. But even here, Cicero builds on a few elements of deontological intentionality he shares with the Stoics. Cicero shows us what is clear even in modern ethical theory: the pure theories work only conceptually and are never separate in practice.3

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Cicero starts his principal ethical study, De Officiis, by positing the four virtues of Plato’s Republic — courage, justice, moderation, and wisdom. This is his linkage with the past. He seems to largely overlook Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and its ten moral virtues, five intellectual virtues plus “self-control,” and, finally, theoria, or contemplation. Cicero makes a Platonic opening but finds “penumbral” virtues for each of the four “cardinal” virtues. When he is done, Cicero has a larger pantheon of virtues than Aristotle. In the process, the Aristotelian centrality of the intellectual virtues and contemplation recedes almost completely. The peak of the ethical life does not culminate in contemplation and hence we do not see the Aristotelian diminution of moral virtue to “second best” status.4 Though seemingly siding with Plato in his point of departure, like both Plato and Aristotle, Cicero offers a moral account that focuses on something other than deontological rules — an element of practical wisdom is needed for success. Ethics is an art of living well, not a science. But Cicero stresses that real moral virtue is, following Socrates, a form of knowledge, not, as Aristotle would have it, based on habits that are a mean between two vices. Further, for Cicero, each virtue implies a corresponding duty: virtue is significantly “other-directed.” Aristotle is clear that the basis of moral virtue is self-love, which stands in a more problematic relationship with any concept of duty. Cicero breaks with the Stoics, and by extension the Christians, who base virtue primarily on intentions rather than outcomes. This is why it is wrong to conclude, as more than a few do, that in ethics Cicero offered a form of Stoicism, which was inherently intentionalist.5 Yet intentionalist elements sneak in. Cicero comes closest to being a consequentialist. But he tries to show that moral excellence, correctly understood, and utility, correctly understood, do not need to relate in an either/or fashion. In contemporary academic parlance, Cicero combines virtue ethics and consequentialism while accepting only minimal elements of deontology6 and its intentionality. For Cicero, virtues cannot simply be inertly possessed, they must be used in an active life and therefore their consequences are important. He is a virtue ethicist, but in the confrontation between Socrates and Aristotle on whether moral virtue is a form of knowledge or a trained characteristic/habit, Cicero openly moves toward Socrates. And in his brief discussion of the virtue wisdom, like Plato, Cicero blurs the

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distinction Aristotle makes between theoretical (sophia) and practical (phronesis) wisdom. When speaking of wisdom, Cicero almost always uses the Latin equivalent of phronesis, prudentia. In his political and ethical works, Cicero is determined to disassociate wisdom from contemplative theoria, which implies a retreat from the res publica. He would have us believe that wisdom is active, not contemplative. For Cicero, the same is true of philosophy itself, at least in its public presentation. Cicero’s understanding of the philosopher comes very close to being a manifestation of Plato’s politikos in the Statesman, not Aristotle’s theoretical and contemplative thinker. But he does allow an exception for contemplative sophia in the name of what he designates “true genius.” Yet this exists far off the ethical and political stage and is not discussed publicly by Cicero, other than to point vaguely to its existence. Cicero’s pantheon of virtues is necessary for his perfected republic offered in his De Re Publica (On the Republic) and De Legibus (On the Laws). Cicero’s republic could only conceivably come into being in the future, after Cicero’s death. His understanding was that a republic could succeed only if supported by high virtues of a distinct kind that helped the individual (rather than the species collectively, as with modern technology or any version of “history”) conquer chance. Put another way, soulcraft is more important than institutional tinkering or technological mastery for the maintenance and stability of a genuine republic. This is a notion that we no longer fully understand.7 When late moderns confront political problems that require serious reflection, thinking almost always turns to institutional tinkering, bureaucratic control, or technological solutions, not to soulcraft. Rarely is political participation seen as an end in itself. Careful reflections on the relation between ethics and politics leads one to the conclusion that Aristotle’s pantheon of virtues in the Nicoma­ chean Ethics remains in tension with his version of a republic, the “polity.” The polity of Aristotle explicitly required “middling virtues,” a lowering of the sights of a kind Cicero was unwilling to accept.8 There is no similar disconnect, à la the Aristotelian, between high virtue and republican government in Cicero. Cicero demands a republic with higher ethical aspirations than Aristotle’s polity, to say nothing of the moderns and their own even more severe version of the “lowering of the sights,” for which we are increasingly paying a no longer maintainable price in the loss of honorable behavior

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and civil discourse. How long can modern man endure the ravenous self-absorbed pursuit of unlimited wealth and power divorced from honor and duty as ends in themselves? Can we really prosper by making the lower elements of life the primary objects of aspiration, especially for the brightest and best of our young?9 In ethics there are really only two ways to proceed, given that actually changing merely untutored natural behavior is what is always at stake. One approach has a primary focus on “internal” restraints on behavior, the other has a primary focus on “external” restraints. Reliance on internal restraints leads in the direction of an ethic of duty and a code of honor. In this approach, behavior is restrained by a person’s internal self-conception and the refusal to engage in behavior that would be painfully at odds with one’s personal self-conception. There is the corresponding aim of bringing harmony to the cacophonous voices of the untutored passions wherein the soul becomes an internal battleground and the passions continually grow in influence. External restraints attempt to suppress certain forms of behavior primarily with the external application of fear — of the law, other mortals, the loss of reputation, or the vengeance of God. Corresponding with this approach is, in the modern world, the application after the fact of various forms of “therapy” to cure the effects of untutored passions and desires gaining control. It is of course possible to use both internal and external approaches simultaneously. The question becomes, which needs to take the lead, and especially to take leadership in a republican context with its necessary public space? Philosophically, either approach can be consistent with a doctrine of rights. But our present conception of rights is largely built on the understanding that we will rely primarily on external restraints on behavior wherein beyond what is explicitly restrained we are allowed to engage in all manner of idiosyncratic actions regardless of the origin of the action, or the quality of the end. With this view of rights, external restraints have to take centrality. A focus on rights as the means to self-perfection and citizen participation requires a doctrine of internal restraints. Even the first approach to rights will not work well if totally disassociated from elements of the higher approach. In many cases the reigning understanding of rights believes it can proceed irrespective of the consideration not only of the origins of actions but also of the outcomes. In this understanding, if one has the right to act,

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nothing else is important. We can call this a deontological understanding of rights — but it need have no self-conscious, intentionalist component. It is deontological because it is a formal and abstract understanding of the place of rights. Ultimately, rights as presented so far in the modern context cannot be separated from the need for external controls on behavior because they presuppose the prior emancipation of action from internal moral restraint — the modern “lowering of the sights” initiated by Machiavelli. That is at the heart of the modern ethical and political approach to life. This notion leaves individuals to be the slaves of passion and the pawns of chance. It also opens the door to despotism, given the need for the application of increasingly extensive and powerful external restraints as societies become larger, wealthier, and more technologically sophisticated.10 We are living in a consumer age that enflames passions, and thus the external restraints will have to be increasingly muscular. It is not surprising that with this combination of moral emancipation, enflamed passions, and reliance on external restraints, we have increasingly large numbers of individuals incarcerated and prone to recidivism. Rights doctrines have increasingly been reduced in our time to the right of individuals to assert any mere solipsistic, idiosyncratic, and unreflective inclinations, regardless of the source of the behavior or the end of the action. Such a conception of rights will undermine the very future possibility of defending rights in a republican context in the world that is coming — it leads toward chaos and eventual despotism of a softer or harder variety. Cicero is alive to this issue. I will argue that he opens the door to an ethics of duty and honor without being inimical to rights rationally conceived, or liberty and equality as they must exist in a republican context. Rights must imply duties, which presuppose virtues and a public space within which to exercise them. A doctrine of legitimate action divorced from reflection on the ends of action becomes blind; the same is true of a doctrine of rights. With this blindness comes the victory of chance. Lurking not far behind comes despotism. Temporality and Ethics Cicero’s De Officiis is presented in the garb of a letter written by Cicero at the very end of his life to his son, Marcus, who was studying in Athens

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with the Peripatetic Cratippus. It is clear that Cicero does not expect to see his son again before his inevitable assassination, and this proved to be correct. His son was notoriously extravagant in expenditures and lifestyle, and from his father’s perspective, largely undisciplined. Despite studying with a Peripatetic, he lived like an Epicurean in the popular sense. Obviously early habituation had failed with Marcus, as had the very example of his father, who was a famously disciplined man. Having apparently failed initially with Marcus, Cicero was left to rely on persuasion and reason to have an effect after the fact, in a future he would not live to see. The same is true for his entire teaching bequeathed to future generations. A time arrives for many serious authors when they conclude they can no longer write for their contemporaries but only for the future. Such is true for all of the great political philosophers. I cannot repeat too often: Hegel is wrong, philosophy is not its own time conceived in thought, because the great political philosophers are “untimely” and projected toward the future, not to their own age and present time articulated in speech. Because of the surface purpose and addressee of De Officiis, Cicero is in a position to speak in his own name, and yet despite its personal nature, he still only speaks directly in his own name in the prefaces to the three books. He asserts that for present purposes a Stoic mask is more useful to him, and he keeps pointing out that he is building on the no longer extant work on duties by the Stoic Panaetius. But Cicero also makes it clear that he attempts to perfect what Panaetius started but did not finish.11 Despite the surface bow to Stoicism, Cicero also asserts that he is not much different than the Peripatetics in that “we” are all followers of Plato and Socrates.12 He leaves out the name of the actual founder of the Peripatetics, Aristotle, with whom, as already mentioned, he seems to be in considerable disagreement. Cicero recommends that Marcus read his earlier books on both philosophy and oratory.13 Here and elsewhere he claims that the two undertakings ultimately converge. If only, he opines, Demosthenes and Isocrates had done philosophy. If only Plato had done forensic oratory. No Greek combined these two. Cicero claims he is the first to do so and thereby is more comprehensive than all of his predecessors. Cicero finishes his prefatory remarks by observing that he utterly rejects the skepticism of Pyrrho, who was in effect at the root of the

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skepticism of the New Academy. The skeptics are utterly incapable of speaking of moral duty,14 which is possible only for the Stoics, Peripatetics, and, what he calls ambiguously, the Academy — by which he means the Original Academy of Plato, of which he is an exemplar.15 It is no accident, or any simple self-preoccupation, that leads Cicero to open his treatise on ethics by asserting that he is a follower of Socrates and Plato but that he surpasses all the Greeks in combining vigorous public rhetoric and calm philosophical discussion. He encourages Marcus to combine the study of philosophy and oratory, and, we assume, encourages all those of his most serious readers henceforth. Cicero is consciously trying to force philosophy out into the res publica, thereby bringing philosophy and public speech together. Cicero also evasively says that although he will significantly follow the Stoics — because virtue must be sought for its own sake — he will draw from others as he sees fit and as suits his “discretion.”16 De Officiis has three parts: book 1 is on moral excellence (honestum),17 book 2 is on utility (utile), and book 3 attempts to argue that there is no intrinsic conflict between the two (honestum and utile). Book 3 also discusses what to do when two or more virtues or two or more utilities conflict with each other and a choice is required. On the surface, Cicero’s teaching is that only those things useful to moral excellence are ultimately expedient if one looks at the matter from the broadest perspective.18 Cicero explicitly raises the issue of whether, in Stoic fashion, honestum is an absolute duty or more like a doctrine of the mean, in Peripatetic fashion. Throughout he keeps referring in a negative way to the doctrine of the “golden mean” and hence appears to have decided in favor of the Stoics. It is also asserted that man alone has a moral sensibility, shame, propriety, and moderation. Beasts share with man the instincts for self-preservation and the preservation of the species, putting them in touch with the present only. But man cares about the past and future, and the good opinion of other humans. Two things follow: (1) beasts are atemporal, humans temporal;19 (2) honestum cannot be based on the instincts of self-preservation or the preservation of the species. There is a higher element to human nature, yet one cannot forget the lower elements shared with the rest of the animal kingdom. In observing that man alone has reason, Cicero goes on to argue that this allows him to link causes and effects, make analogies, and in the

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process grasp the difference between past, present, and future. Man alone is temporal. 20 Through reason man is associated with his fellows in a higher social bond than any based only on self-preservation or the preservation of the species. Humans potentially share a bond that leads to a higher sociality based on speech and with it a greater concern for the past and future than is possible for any beast that lives in the present alone. And man alone searches for the truth, and longs to know the secrets and wonders of the cosmos. Honestum, genuine moral worth, is based on the things humans alone potentially share and not on mere instinct, which man shares with the rest of the animal kingdom. It is through mind and the search for truth that man gains his highest independence and “greatness of soul” (magnitudo animi) by gaining superiority to his lower natural condition by refusing to submit to necessity.21 Man can rise above the “vicissitudes of life” in a variety of ways, but most significantly by first being aware of them. That requires an understanding of past occurrences and an anticipation of their future repetition. Man is temporal and because of that temporality can conquer chance. Since man shares some things with the beasts, he is left to harmonize the two elements of his nature, the instinctive and the rational. Man must know about the nature of the whole to fruitfully pursue the human good. Hence wisdom and honestum are tied together. Building on the Past, Looking to the Future Cicero repeatedly asserts that honestum has four parts: wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. Of the four virtues shared with Plato’s Repub­ lic, Cicero starts with wisdom, which is initially defined vaguely as the “knowledge of truth” (cognitio veri). Later it is asserted that what is meant by “knowledge of truth” is knowledge of things human and divine and their relation together with knowledge of the relations between man and man.22 If the proper study for man is man, to know that we are men we must know we are mortals and not divine and also how we differ from the rest of nature. To conquer chance, reason must know not only its power, but its limits. Of wisdom it is also said that it includes not treating as known those things that are unknown,23 and that wisdom requires that we, by choice,

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avoid any obscure and useless devotion of industry that draws us away from civic engagement.24 No examples are given of the latter, but success in astronomy, mathematics, dialectics, and civil law are given as examples of publicly useful knowledge. Yet even those studies should not, if we are truly wise, draw us away from an active life in accordance with honestum and moral duty. No other penumbral virtues are deduced from wisdom, but honestum as a whole requires a combination of all four virtues. None can be left out, and that includes wisdom. A life without knowledge is not an excellent life. But honestum can only be found in activity, not contemplation, albeit that includes the working of a mind that is never at rest. All life, as devoted to honestum, is a constant motion — it is not the tranquility qua rest aimed at by both the Stoics and Epicureans, or as exemplified by Socrates’s repeated dramatic motionlessness while thinking.25 Even the wise person must act; at the very least that would include teaching others who are not wise. Teaching, we are told, draws one into the public arena and allows one to have an effect even after death. This application of wisdom is endorsed by Cicero, but withdrawn, private, individual contemplation is not. Wisdom is dealt with very briefly, in about one page. Cicero then turns to the second virtue, justice.26 Justice is said to be the “crowning glory” of the virtues, contrary to Aristotle, for whom the “crown” of the virtues was megalopsychia, “greatness of soul” or “magnanimity.”27 Regarding Aristotelian “great souls,” Cicero says that they have the greatest ambition for military and civil authority. He gives the example of Caesar. He has many harsh things to say about his virtue and his the self-­ absorbed, immortality-seeking destruction of the Roman Republic. In Cicero’s presentation, Aristotle’s great-souled person rarely has an ambition for justice. It is precisely because of great-souled men like Caesar that Cicero says that it is a virtue, and a corresponding duty, to actively protect the innocent and weak from injustice. For Cicero, justice is also “closely akin” to another penumbral virtue, charity, which in turn points toward other penumbral virtues, such as kindness and generosity. Cicero is questioning the status of the pagan “great-souled” man. He is attempting to redefine virtue for a citizen gentleman rather than a citizen warrior. From Aristotle’s ethical teaching to that of Cicero, greatness of soul has come down in status — it is no longer a “crown”; it will be recast as a virtue better suited to domestic purposes rather than to war. Also coming down in status would be something like Platonic “spiritedness,” or

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thumos. Classical greatness of soul has not become a vice in Cicero’s teaching, but it is something his once and future republic must protect against. Lincoln understood the same thing. In his “Perpetuation Speech,” Lincoln argued for the need to actively protect against the identically understood “tribe of the eagle and family of the lion.” Cicero opens the door to this transformation of republican thinking. A republic may occasionally need lions and eagles, but more often must protect against them — think in this regard in American experience of historical figures such as Aaron Burr and the generals George Patton and Douglas MacArthur. They are occasionally useful but always potentially troublesome. Qualities useful in times of war are problematic in times of peace. For Lincoln, after a founding has been completed, a different set of qualities is required for a republic to prosper. Cicero had already arrived at the same conclusion on this subject as Lincoln did. It is, however, possible to fashion a high-minded “internal” morality of honor and duty without making pagan megalopsychia and its desire for personal immortal fame the linchpin. In the same vein, associated with Cicero’s penumbral virtue generosity there is the injunction that we must help our family, friends, and fellow citizens, and harm no one. This is a clear response to Polemarchus’s “gentlemanly” definition of justice in Plato’s Republic. Polemarchus’s injunction was “help your friends and harm your enemies.” The bellicose half of the definition has been dropped. Greatness of soul is recast as an ability to rise above and be superior to the “vicissitudes of life.” Greatness of soul is eventually transferred by Cicero to the cardinal virtue of moderation, understood as self-control. Cicero makes it clear that the subject of justice is intimately related to how we treat others who are weaker. The strong have a responsibility to protect the weak. But it also has a bearing on how we conduct war. As part of his direction of attention away from war he offers a just war teaching, wherein imperial wars become unjust. Justice is also a virtue intimately related to private property, its unequal distribution, its use, and one’s duties to those who have less. His general formula regarding justice as it bears on property is twofold: “keep one man from doing harm to another,” and the injunction “common possessions [should be used] for the common interests, private property for [one’s] own.”28 It is necessary to have private things for the sake of honestum — for example, one cannot be generous without means, and generosity is an

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individual virtue, not a societal one. Yet Cicero is clear that private property is not natural. The legitimacy of private property exists by extension from a natural necessity — we need private property for both self-­ preservation and personal, moral development. Consequently, it is just to retain possession of what has “fallen to [one’s] lot.”29 Cicero concedes that a good bit of private property rests on chance. The primary origins of private property, Cicero admits, are either long occupancy or conquest. Cicero sees the importance of labor for city living and civilization, but he does not make it the basis of private property. We will return to the question of property more fully in chapter 9. The moral issue is that precisely because property is not natural it has to be linked with penumbral virtues, such as kindness, generosity, and charity. These virtues all imply positive duties. One may not just refrain from harming others while privately indulging oneself. Those who are by nature weaker and less the favorites of chance must be actively protected from the ambition of the great-souled, and assisted economically, in Cicero’s moral cosmos. We must preempt and actively engage on the behalf of those who require help. What is happening in this ethic is that Cicero is trying to turn man away from a principal preoccupation with war and the pagan virtues central to war toward domestic engagement with fellow citizens. Morally, we turn “inward” for the basis of ethics, and politically we also turn “inward” domestically in our central focus. We need an internal, domestic stage to work out the virtues Cicero is espousing. Virtues such as charity and kindness are not to be confused with Aristotle’s liberality, a virtue one pursues out of self-love and for one’s own sake. Cicero’s virtues are other-directed. Nor are charity and kindness to be confused with Cicero’s other penumbral virtue, generosity, whose objects should be measured primarily by the worthiness or merit of the recipient. Charity is determined by the need of the recipient, and in turn brings forth a duty to perform kindness to those who are not equals, even if they are not equal in moral worth to the giver. Other duties come from closeness of relationships — family, clan, friends, fellow citizens. To each group, whether of merit, need, or mere relationship, we have different duties. In short, justice cannot be reduced mechanically to the application of universal principles to all individuals. Haughtiness and arrogance become vices. Cicero’s is an attack on pagan self-assertion and ultimately on the legitimacy of basing moral virtue on an assertive self-love, as is still the explicit case with Aristotle.

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Again, Cicero will not allow a person to be merely passively just and refrain from injuring others. Justice requires that we preempt and actively keep men from harming each other; we must protect the weak and innocent; we must assist both those in need and those who deserve our help. But this is something that needs to be done by individuals, not by the society collectively. A society cannot be just without the deeds of individual actors. It also becomes clear that we must devote our primary exercises in courage away from a focus on war toward shielding the weak from the arrogance of the strong. From this Cicero concludes that we must defend the private property of fellow citizens, especially the poorer ones, even though, again, for Cicero private property is not established by nature (for example, as opposed to Locke’s labor theory of property), but by such conventional means as long occupancy, conquest, and bargaining, or due process of law.30 Cicero is at pains to argue against using the state to redistribute wealth. It was precisely the despotism that such redistributive efforts unleashed that accelerated the downfall of the Roman Republic and emboldened despotic souls. Those redistributive efforts occurred as an adjunct to the overweening ambition of great-souled men, such as Caesar, who wished to weaken the powerful and manipulate the many for their own glorification. In Cicero’s view, if the state is used for redistribution, it undermines honestum. It also undermines republican government. Charity comes into play because no one should be ignored who shows any trace of temperance, self-control, and justice. But no one has a simple entitlement; it is those who can provide the needed service who have the duty, not the state.31 When Cicero talks about kindness, generosity, and charity, he is talking about freely chosen private actions using personal funds. The failure to engage in such actions should have as its sanction considerable, public, moral opprobrium and also a diminution of one’s personal conception of self-worth. A state cannot be kind and charitable without kind and charitable individuals. Mandated redistribution always lends itself to the despotic designs of ambitious individuals. Cicero is clear in this regard: “Now, there are many — and especially those who are ambitious for eminence and glory — who rob one to enrich another. . . . [This] is so remote from moral duty that nothing can be more completely opposed to duty.”32

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Generosity is a far more complicated virtue for Cicero than kindness or charity, both of which are determined by need. One’s generosity has to take into account the moral worth of the individual, and therefore some intimate knowledge of the individual is required. The limitation on generosity is that we should not exceed our means. Therefore, generosity is determined by our means and not by some set rule that applies equally to all. Generosity should help primarily family and friends, with the caveat that it hurt no one, especially its recipient. It is not generous to undermine a person’s personal honestum by forcing one’s generosity on them for the sake of self-love, vanity, or ambition for personal reputation. Honestum requires active relationships among fellow citizens who have a genuine sense that they are bound together in a common enterprise, and that good, like bad, fortune is significantly driven by chance. In the process we get a mutual and reciprocal civic engagement in a public space that requires face-to-face interaction. Charity, kindness, and generosity rise in importance as penumbral virtues of justice for Cicero precisely because the alleged link between private property and natural merit has declined. Duty is the way to deal with those upon whom chance has not smiled. This again is an indication of how Cicero proceeds to conquer chance through honestum. This lowering of the natural status of private property from the place it would eventually have in an author like Locke nonetheless leads Cicero ironically to a similar understanding that justice most definitely requires a large element of fidelity to contracts. This is because Cicero recognized that one of the conventional means of acquiring property, through due process of law, positively demands the importance of the virtue good faith, which in turn implies at a bare minimum the moral duty of abiding by not only the letter but also the spirit of agreements. Hence we have a duty to avoid “sharp practices.” Arriving at this conclusion about the importance of contracts did not require Cicero to build on the artificial construction of the state of nature used by modern contract theorists. Cicero arrived at an understanding of the important connection between justice and good faith by understanding the centrality of voluntary actions, especially in contracts together with the importance of the rule of law, in any republic. Contrary to moderns from Locke to Smith, Hume, and Montesquieu, Cicero had no problem arriving at the perfectly straightforward

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conclusion that a vice inimical to justice was avarice and that the pursuit of luxury was inimical to one’s own well-being if conquering chance was one’s aim. Cicero saw avarice as a greater social evil than fear of being harmed (Hobbes), lust (Calvin), or even the overweening desire for personal glory at the expense of the public interest (Caesar). Cicero defends private property without having to make convoluted arguments that avarice is not a vice or that the unlimited pursuit of luxury is a public good. Cicero saw avarice for what it was because he saw that all desire for wealth carries with it an insatiable desire for an unlimited amount of wealth, just as is true with the love of glory and power. It was Cicero’s view that, in the long run, republics cannot survive unlimited desires unleashed and unlimited vices legitimized. Cicero even adduces under justice a just war doctrine. And he does this in an environment where the majority of Roman wealth had been secured by imperial conquest and downright pillage and plunder. That kind of theft was still considered a “natural” means to wealth by Aris­ totle.33 For Cicero, war is only just to help us “live in peace unharmed” or to protect our friends and allies. Hence wars for conquest and aggrandizement are in fact unjust, even though Cicero talks about the legitimacy of defending property gained in the past by conquest. Cicero is clearly not justifying Roman practices, but he realizes no justice can be maintained by simply obliterating the past.34 Throughout his teaching, Cicero specifically lowers the legitimacy of the pursuit of ambition and supremacy through pursuits of personal glory and wealth as if these were independent ends of action. But pursuit of “reputation” remains legitimate for him. One should pursue a name for oneself through just deeds, and that implies primarily through internal, domestic, statesmanlike deeds, which will be kind, charitable, generous, and preemptively protective of the weak. All of these deeds require private property, which Cicero defends as necessary, even though he admits its origin is conventional and in some instances unjust. The legitimacy of private property is not judged by the naturalness of its origins or in relation to our animal needs but by the moral value of the ends it allows to be pursued. In one of his more eye-opening presentiments of Christianity, Cicero argues that, following from the delegitimizing of imperial conquest, we

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gain a duty to allow a proper amount of time for repentance by those who have transgressed against us. We even have duties to those who have wronged us. If they repent of their deeds, we should let the matter drop. For Cicero, though repentance is not quite a virtue, it is a duty. Vengeance becomes a vice. This is true in war between states and in actions between individuals. Cicero even observes that wars for supremacy and honor must have less bitterness than defensive wars. Wars for honor must be preceded by formal declarations after an explicit request for satisfaction.35 Defensive wars may not require these niceties, and so preemptive strikes may be just. The pursuit of glory, redefined as the pursuit of reputation, should be redirected into domestic politics. Related to justice in domestic politics are two vices — not just overweening ambition but also indifference. We should not ignore or forget our duties to others through self-absorption.36 Given human nature, we will never be short of possibilities for active engagement. Cicero’s criticism of indifference is a rebuke, before the fact, of the modern retreat into private consumption, even if it hurts no one. We must hurt no one, but more to the point, justice demands that we must actively help others. And sharing our time, wisdom, and counsel are more to be valued than simply sharing our financial resources. Interestingly, Cicero deploys the injunction against indifference explicitly against the philosophers. The philosophic danger being depicted here is not primarily the danger of undermining faith in common opinions, rather, it is that the pursuit of learning in a withdrawn setting intrinsically makes one indifferent to fellow citizens. In that sense, the philosophers frequently tend to be unjust. As Plato would have it, philoso­ phers must be forced to return to the cave. Cicero specifically cites Plato’s observation that by inclination most philosophers will assume civic duties only “under compulsion.”37 Cicero makes it clear that it is possible, however, to satisfy our public duty with publicly disseminated books and works of all kinds and through holding office. Those, like Socrates, who do not write or pursue office are not fully just, but they may be partially just if they engage fellow citizens in a public space. Those who are self-absorbed in the self-interested pursuit of knowledge, even understood as private contemplation, are “traitors to social life.”38 Cicero proved his own commitment to this premise with the sacrifice of his life.

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Hardness, Softness, and Openness: Virt ù and H on est u m As we see in one epigraph at the head of this chapter, in his discussion of justice, Cicero discusses the famous metaphor regarding “lions and foxes.” This will lead to his understanding that courage without justice is ultimately bestial. Far from being a virtue, it then becomes a vice: “Wrong may be done, then, in either of two ways, that is, by force or by fraud, both are bestial; fraud seems to belong to the cunning fox, force to the lion; both are wholly unworthy of man, but fraud is the more contemptible. But of all forms of injustice, none is more flagrant than that of the hypocrite who, at the very moment when he is most false, makes it his business to appear virtuous.”39 Machiavelli in effect advises his Prince to be both a lion and a fox and to appear virtuous rather than really ever being virtuous. Since it is better for Machiavelli’s Prince to have the appearance of virtue rather than the real thing, he advises being a hypocrite. For Machiavelli, lions make war with force and his duplicitous foxes make war with “laws,” a form of prudence that is really just calculating cleverness. The highest virtue (virtù) of Machiavelli’s “New” (as opposed to “Old,” hereditary, “natural”) Prince combines these two traits and exhibits anything but Cicero’s honestum. Machiavelli consciously flipped Cicero’s metaphor and quietly thereby signaled his break with Cicero. Cicero praises calm, open, self-consciously grasped and understood virtue. Machiavelli praises impetuous, duplicitous, and at times even unreflective actions. Machiavelli’s “New” Prince goes beyond the beastly lion only to be a duplicitous fox.40 Machiavelli wants more of the beast than Cicero because he wants a new modern form of imperial expansion in the name of conquering chance, and his new republic is oriented toward that expansion.41 Cicero wants to curb imperial expansion because it is bad for both individuals and republicanism. Far from wanting impetuosity, Cicero transforms courage (fortitudo) into a calm and thoughtful virtue. Courage is recrafted as what we would now call, following the Latin, “fortitude.” Courage is redirected toward a primary focus on domestic existence. Traditionally courage was primarily related to the control of fear of violent death, and this is how Aristotle defines courage. Cicero’s fortitude requires more than conquering the instinctive fear of death; it requires that we consciously face fear and danger

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for the sake of the public good (rather than self-interestedly in the pursuit personal glory), usually in opposing domestic injustice. But it also requires being forearmed to face the fickle “vicissitudes of life.”42 Being a self-absorbed daredevil ceases to be courage for Cicero. Without wisdom and justice, courage is usually just impetuousness, the impetuousness Machiavelli encourages as the best way to conquer chance.43 Fortitude must be linked to the public interest rather than immortal glory — but one can substitute the longing for an immortally good reputation. Cicero wants Washingtons and Lincolns, not Alexanders and Caesars.44 For Cicero it is still legitimate to pursue a good name, but that differs from pursuing pagan immortal personal glory. We need to elaborate upon that difference. Courage alone without the other virtues is not the mark of honestum. It too, like justice, must be linked to kindness and generosity. And for Cicero, it must be linked to that most unpagan of virtues, humility. Herein Cicero has obviously opened another space for Christianity to occupy. Courage understood as fortitude must even show its indifference to wealth and glory and show its victory over their enticements. It is through fortitude that one shows oneself superior to the “vicissitudes of life” and thereby truly conquers chance. Understanding the vicissitudes of life requires an element of wisdom, the ability to grasp the whole and what is necessarily beyond our control and what can be controlled. But this wisdom does not come from or eventuate in impetuosity. The impetuous man is too easy to manipulate, as Machiavelli so clearly manipulates his New Princes to get from the world of old principalities to a world of new republics. With Cicero, the search for glory “devoid of justice” is a vice.45 The desire for personal glory is the only thing that really motivates Machi­ avelli’s New Prince. For Cicero, one must be a “champion of the cause of right” without treachery or cunning. Treachery and cunning always show one’s lack of independence and hence a lack of the mastery of the vicissitudes of life. Likewise he says, “He who depends upon the caprice of the ignorant rabble cannot be numbered among the great.”46 Beyond that, the desire for glory that manipulates the weak is in fact the trap of dependence for everyone. We manifest fortitude by showing indifference to outward circumstance and showing a willingness to engage in arduous and even dangerous deeds in pursuit of a just and rational cause. We conquer chance by

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rendering ourselves free from fear, avarice, anger, the desire for unlimited glory and wealth, but not by withdrawing from our civic duty. Fortitude still requires laborious deeds that make life truly worth living along with indifference to outward circumstances that are a product of chance. As much as he opens spaces for future Christianity to occupy, Cicero’s stress on the mandatory nature of civic duty goes far beyond merely “rendering onto Caesar.” We must engage while showing an ongoing steadfastness that masters fear, pleasure, and the desire for mere fleeting, popular acclaim. A newly crafted form of greatness of soul, or magnanimity, will now be subsumed by Cicero under the cardinal virtue of fortitude. Cicero’s great-souled individuals no longer are moved by self-love, personal ambition for immortal glory, or an excessive lust for power. The proper pursuit of fame is now directed as much as possible toward patriotism and full honestum where self-love and self-interest are made to correspond with the public interest, that is, self-interest rightly understood. We have gone from the self-absorbed Achilles to a statesman who subscribes to the self-immolation implied in the code of “duty, honor, country.”47 In this vein, Cicero goes so far as to praise legislators such as Solon as higher moral phenomena than generals such as Themistocles. As to fortitude, statesmanship (both founding and preserving) is higher than the arts of war. The truly great-souled are to be found among statesmen, civi­ cally engaged philosophers, and those who generously administer their private property for the public good. Cicero’s fortitude should never even show the appearance of anger or arrogance, haughtiness or pride.48 Again we are led to humility as a penumbral virtue to fortitude, as it is to justice. What is needed is a calmness that brings dignity, not anger or thumos. But it is not a calmness that can be purchased by withdrawal from the fray rather than engagement in defending republican liberty. A free people needs displays of courtesy, forbearance, and serenity: “Nothing is more commendable, nothing more becoming in a preeminently great man than courtesy and forbearance. Indeed, in a free people, where all enjoy equal rights before the law, we must school ourselves to affability and what is called ‘mental poise.’ ”49 Selflessness and indifference to outward worldly things, and especially any unseemly ambition for wealth and personal glory, are now the ethical watchwords. Hence fortitude requires a calmness of soul that does

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not, however, withdraw from the city and its needs.50 It culminates not in raging self-love or angry confrontations but in an altogether new vision of the best life. This deflection of courage in the direction of fortitude and humility is a very distinctive ethical maneuver on Cicero’s part.51 This leads into an issue that never goes away: What should be the primary focus of politics — domestic or foreign affairs? Cicero and Machiavelli choose different answers. And for Machiavelli the focus on foreign affairs is the modern approach. It will always be hard to separate a primary concern for foreign affairs from imperial expansion in some form and the overweening ambition that longs for personal glory. Steadfastness and Predictability The fourth of the cardinal virtues is moderation (moderatio). Once again the traditional understandings are transformed. Cicero initially spins off three penumbral virtues — considerateness, propriety/decorum, and self-control. From these three penumbral virtues spring other virtues and new linkages to ones already seen. Central to each of these three subvirtues is steadfastness, an unchanging character that is calm, predictable, and repeatable. What is interesting is that Cicero starts from a distinction that the human soul is made up of reason and appetites. What is obviously missing is the third part of the Platonic soul, spiritedness (thumos).52 For Cicero, unlike Plato, reason can directly control the appetites without the mediation of spiritedness or, for that matter, eros. As to considerateness, it rests on the duty of showing reverence toward all men, not just the brightest and the best, not just the powerful and important, not just fellow citizens, and not just family and friends. We have a duty to all human beings regardless of merit, relation, position, or birth. In this we see both a cosmopolitan and an egalitarian element. A person of honestum never insults anyone accidentally, and especially never insults the weak. Behaving haughtily and with superiority will almost always do just that. Thus we again link back to the virtue of humility in opposition to pagan self-love and self-assertion. We participate in a universal human nature, but we also have individual traits and personalities. We must follow both the universal and the particular aspects of our nature. We cannot sacrifice the particular for the

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universal — the deontological move. There is never any decorum in going against the grain of one’s particular nature.53 Despite participating in the universal, when it comes to honestum, one size does not fit all. We are conditioned by our universal nature, our particular nature, traits determined by our chance circumstances, and those traits assumed by our deliberate choices. Decorum requires that we take them all into account. But we should return to elements based in individual and universal nature whenever we can. Nature (physis) should take precedence over convention (nomos). Decorum, or propriety (the Latin decorum), adds “polish to life.”54 It includes a series of related virtues that culminate in the decidedly unGreek virtue, modesty.55 Cicero asserts that it is proper that we follow nature, but nature brought us into life not merely for play and jest. We should never be dour, and though wittiness remains a virtue for Cicero, it is of a lower status than it was for Aristotle. We must at all costs avoid buffoonery, and that means that decorum requires a significant element of gravitas, which simultaneously eschews all extravagant and ludicrous public displays, whether at play or at leisure. Indeed, we should avoid extravagant displays in speech, dress, housing, consumption, eating, and so on. We may engage in elegant jests at the proper moment, but we should nonetheless lean toward earnestness. Unlike animals, men investigate and meditate upon their experiences and thereby take especial pleasure in the senses of hearing and seeing. This opens the door to the refined appreciation of the higher senses, such as in the “fine arts.” The jests associated with hearing and sight are the highest. Gravitas does not require sensuous mortification; it does require sensuous sophistication. In the same vein, we should have a nice house and clothing, but never make lavish and ostentatious public displays. That would demean us but also would assuredly wound the feelings of many who have less. We should neither be prone to covetousness nor incite it, Hume and Smith to the contrary. Covetousness and avarice and public displays of luxury are vices, and for Cicero, they cannot be turned to republican use, because they enflame the soul. We should not enflame our passions or those of others. Boastfulness is also vice. We should never talk about ourselves. We should be easygoing and nondogmatic in speech to invite the participation

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of all others, especially those who are not our equals. This is an important republican virtue because republics rely upon speech in a public space. We should never publicly engage in frivolous or immodest displays of our skills, or show off our knowledge as an end in itself. All of these things predictably wound others or cause pointless envy and resentment. The last of the three penumbral virtues derived from moderation is self-control. It might seem to be the entirety of moderation. Aristotle did differentiate between self-control (sophrosyne), where a person has weak passions fairly easily brought under control of moral habits, and moral strength,56 where a person has strong passions and consciously masters them. Cicero’s virtue more closely approaches the latter because it demands that we do what is necessary to self-consciously “calm” the appetites and passions. This frees us from their tyranny, but it also more importantly keeps us from showing off the appetites in public and enflaming them in others. This again points toward the virtues of modesty and reverence. This understanding would undoubtedly oppose a rampant, showy consumerism without approaching the issue from the direction of legislation and bureaucratic mandates. For Cicero, self-control always has elements of considerateness, which in turn point back to modesty. Modesty is the duty to respond to nature’s demands privately. They are a neutral fact of nature, not a sign of fallen or depraved nature. To attend to them privately is not immoral; displaying or speaking of them in public is indecent (obscenitas) and can have no outcome other than to make individuals uncomfortable or to enflame their desires — which is always inconsiderate. We have a duty to consider our own behavior with an eye to how it wounds, enflames, discourages, or inspirits others. Again, there is a universal nature of man, but there are also individual and particular natures for each person. To gain the constancy and steadfastness needed for true decorum, self-control, and considerateness, we must follow our own nature more than the universal.57 Therefore, universal statements of ethics, like the categorical imperative, lose purchase in the moral universe of honestum. The diversity of individual characters means honestum generally, despite implying an element of knowledge, will always be an art in need of individual application. It is based not on following rules but on character formation. That is what pushes Cicero into the arena of virtue ethics.

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There is nothing absolutist or doctrinaire about this teaching. Cicero even applies this understanding to acts such as suicide. He says that for someone like Cato, after defeat by Caesar was assured, it might be a duty, but for another it would be a crime.58 Each individual character demands something different if its behavior is to be appropriate, to have that ring of perfection a connoisseur will recognize. Otherwise a human being will always ring false. Individual character will and should be determined by a complicated coming together of the demands of the universal nature we share with all human beings and of our individual nature, together with demands placed upon us by chance, the deliberate choices we make, and the politi­ cal community we occupy — ethics is a complicated balancing act for someone who is more than a bumbling apprentice. To limit chance and enhance the success of our choices, we must be steadfast rather than impetuous, avoid the doctrinaire, and always avoid extremes.59 Even in things like dress we need to attain constancy; the same is true of our movements, neither hurrying nor adopting an affected slow sauntering. Decorum, constancy, poise, and self-control all go together to help conquer chance when adapted to following one’s individual nature. This even goes for public speech, whether formal or conversational. We should always behave agreeably, showing no excessive praise, anger, or indifference. For Cicero, anger, like impetuosity, is almost never consistent with either honestum, or with utility. And yet Cicero continues the same incessant drumbeat that engagement and service are more important than theoretical knowledge, which is always pointless unless “practical results” follow. But for Cicero even scholars advance the blessings of mankind if they teach publicly. Teaching, like writing, is always a civic deed. It is higher than “speculation . . . without speech,” which is “self-centered.”60 The philosopher too has a duty to advance honestum,61 and, as I have been arguing, the philosopher has an epistemic need that corresponds with that duty. Wisdom must be turned toward justice and honestum. Private study alone would still not be enough for happiness; loneliness would still ensue, but also blindness. Cicero would turn all pursuits of knowledge back to the public space, to public speech, to public validation, to the canons of everyday discourse. If there is a conflict among duties, justice always takes first place. That is especially true when we are dealing with courage or wisdom. But justice

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should never be allowed to simply trump temperance and moderation. Some acts are too vile to engage in even to save society. For, unlike in the teachings of Hobbes and Locke, society is not instituted for the needs of daily life.62 Society is instituted for the truly higher human needs. For Cicero, contrary to the Stoics, who only believe in absolute virtues and duties, there are gradations of duty, which are based on the age, the relationship, and the moral and intellectual merit of the person with whom we engage. However, Cicero’s ethic has surprisingly egalitarian elements. The overall picture he is trying to sketch is of a new form of wise, knowledgeable, and engaged citizen, one consistent with his once and future republic and with republicanism more generally and its requirement to take into account stability, liberty, equality, and human excellence simultaneously. Cicero will not purchase republican equality with a currency of vulgarity and soft despotism with its enflaming of the passions. What Cicero is depicting is what I have called an “internal” ethic of honor and duty. And any doctrine of rights would have to be worked out in light of this doctrine of duties. Wealth, Commerce, War, and Duty In book 2 of De Officiis, Cicero turns his attention from honestum to utile, or things that are useful, needful, pleasant, and expedient in life. There are duties associated with the accumulation, use, and disposal of what Aristotle called “external goods.” Included among the external goods are wealth, influence, friendship, office, and reputation. Cicero’s honestum links up with and is explicitly made compatible with private property as part of his discussion of justice. Throughout his corpus there is a turn from a focus on war to a focus on commerce as central to a republic. We still need to elaborate that latter issue. Though that may sound like a modern turn, Cicero does something foreign to most modern defenses of commerce, and he will not divorce his discussion from differentiating between “vulgar” and “liberal,” as in liberated from prejudice and the tyranny of the passions. Hence for Cicero there are both vulgar and liberal means of acquiring and using external goods, including wealth. Among the vulgar professions and occupations spelled out at the end of book 1 is usury, or lending at interest — which undermines charity, generosity, and kindness

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as duties. The act of lending at interest was seen as undermining the proper relationship between fellow members of a community. Usury was also “unnatural” for Aristotle, and unacceptable for medieval Christianity, even if the reasons were slightly different. Anything that fostered unlimited wealth, given the unlimited nature of human desires, was seen by Aristotle as destructive. Also illiberal and vulgar as occupations for Cicero were manual labor, small shop keeping — which makes nothing and merely buys wholesale to immediately turn the product around for retail sale — mechanical occupations more generally (but if they are “artistic,” as for example, sculpture, they are exempted), and those occupations that cater to and heighten sensual pleasures. What these “vulgar” occupations have in common is that they possess no element of intelligence or mind in their operations, and they imply no leisure, which is necessary for civic engagement and the exercise of the virtues.63 On the basis of possessing an element of mind, we in the contemporary world would elevate many professions precisely because we see in them a significant element of intelligence and art. And we have created a world where mechanical occupations, and even manual labor, earn considerable income and eventual leisure, and in many instances are quite artistic, such as carpentry. In our world, mechanical operations frequently imply considerable intelligence, as when computer applications are required, for example, by contemporary lathe operators. So the liberal/vulgar distinction could be rethought in our time precisely on Cicero’s terms without being radically class-based or intrinsically inegalitarian. A republican commitment to equality does not demand that we ignore the ethical distinction between high and low; we make these distinctions in our actions and choices, and without them, none of us could get through a single waking hour of our lives. Among the “liberal” occupations Cicero lists medicine, teaching (albeit not idle, detached, hermit-like speechless contemplation), architecture, large-scale commerce, and agriculture.64 Prominently missing from his list of liberal professions are the occupations associated with the military. Cicero has lowered their status as liberal occupations. Cicero is assuming that his once and future republican citizens will make their livelihoods in ways that exclude conquest and the various forms of theft indistinguishable from collective piracy (which again remained a

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“natural” and thereby just means of generating wealth for Aristotle). Commercial occupations other than banking and small-scale retail opera­ tions are accepted as liberal by Cicero.65 Cicero has gone a long way in the direction of an understanding that can be made acceptable in a modern commercial republic, and a long way beyond the virtues of merely landed, countrified, agrarian societies, and certainly beyond those of warrior castes. Where he parts from the modern view, he should give us reason to rethink. We have created the wealth that can make genuine liberality possible for many, if only we could see that as a high-priority end. It should be the end of any true liberal arts education — including wisdom, self-control, and the capacity for civic participation. Because Cicero links utility with liberality, his form of utilitarianism is not really about how to maximize one’s possession of the useful things like money, property, offices, and power. Nor is it primarily about how to maximize pleasure and minimize pain across the society. In the preface to book 2, after encouraging his son, Marcus, to avoid reckless assertions and to shun dogmatism,66 Cicero asserts that it is a “pernicious doctrine” to separate honestum and utile.67 One should proceed as if only by honestum will we get genuine utility. To see this one must be willing to rank the various external goods. As a result, for Cicero, honor, reputation, admiration, and friendship end up at the top of the ranking of external goods. Cicero’s discussion of utility immediately launches into an assertion that humanity must labor and by its industry make useful both the inani­ mate and animate things in the world that man needs for his existence. Even the possibility of collective war-making presupposes civilizing labor. Labor is the ultimate basis of utile, and we must take this into account in pursuing honestum. Surprisingly, agreeing with Locke, Cicero is asserting that the things of nature are largely without value prior to man’s industry, which is the source of the necessities of life and leads to knowledge about health, navigation, agriculture, imports and exports, and all of the useful things we need to live well, which includes living ethically.68 Labor leads to city life, which is the basis of civilization.69 This is turn leads to laws that are the basis of justice. All of this presupposes cooperation and hence sociality. The basis of everything good is our capacity for cooperation and sociality based on labor, which is itself a social activity — and not consent among fundamentally asocial individuals, as

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Locke would have it. But our sociality has to be advanced by labor and also initially presupposing it. Labor replaces conquest and consent as the real basis of wealth and civilization. Cicero admits that man, though a cooperative animal, is also the greatest enemy of human well-being — far more than natural scarcity. Thus Cicero sides with Aristotle regarding man’s sociality and with Hobbes regarding man as being the greatest problem for man. Human beings have this divided nature. The good is largely dependent upon man’s nature, yet man is also the greatest cause of problems and chance.70 Cicero dignifies human industry and labor far more than any predecessor, in fact, far more than any author until Locke.71 Again, he posits labor as the key to civilization and makes it clear that civilized life requires cities, which must be built by our labor. The coming of cities leads to a more humane spirit. To civilize and to urbanize go together in this view. This is not identical to Marx’s dismissal of the idiocy of all rural life, but it is not the traditional valorization of rural agriculture as the basis of republican virtue either. Civilization turns us away from more barbarous activities toward more industrious and useful ones. It is at this point in his discussion of utility that Cicero asserts that there are three parts to virtue: justice, wisdom, and moderation — courage has been dropped.72 This maneuver corresponds with a similar earlier assertion that the soul has two parts: reason and appetites — thumos had been dropped. In these two instances Cicero drops Platonic andreia and thumos from the civilizing virtues. Steadfast and restrained industrious man is being set up to trump impetu­ ous and angry warrior man. The true origin of civilization is not conquest (or consent); sympathetic “cooperation of our [fellow men]” is the true origin of the state. The origin of the state is coeval with the origin of “sympathy,” which was allowed to develop by labor after the rustic beginnings. This reliance on sympathy is a thought shared by Montesquieu, Smith, Hume, and even that other modern republican, Rousseau, all of whom tried to build a republican foundation in human sympathy for each other — a reintegration of sociality after the premise of natural asociality in Hobbes and Locke. Again, the origin of civilization and the state is not consent, as with Hobbes and Locke, or conquest, as we assume is true with Machiavelli. The origin of civilization is labor and the emergence of the emotion of sympathy and the sociality and cooperation to which it leads.

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Cicero almost simultaneously observes that more men are killed by men than by floods, epidemics, famines, or other natural causes. Men are the cause of chance more than nonhuman nature.73 Even if one conquers external nature, one still will not have thereby truly conquered chance, contrary to Descartes and Bacon and the modern technological project. To conquer chance we need labor, civilization, sympathy, cooperation (justice), and honestum. And to get back to his main point in book 2, Cicero asserts that we even need honestum to advance our true individual utility. This leads us toward considering Cicero’s distinctive political/moral psychology. Cicero claims there are multiple motives for humans to cooperate and concern themselves with the well-being of others: (1) good will and fondness, (2) an esteem where one looks up to another’s genuine moral worth, (3) confidence that another supports one’s interests, (4) fear, (5) hope for favor, and (6) promise of payment (where what should be attained by merit and good will is hoped for by subservience or prayers).74 Cicero is a realist without being a reductionist, like Hobbes, who would rely primarily on numbers (4), (5), and (6) while focusing on fear. Cicero the realist admits that even promises of payment are at times indispensable, and for some fear is required.75 But he tries to argue that most human beings respond more strongly to good will, esteem, and confidence than to the lower motives for action. In an equally realistic assessment that simultaneously recognizes the import of the higher elements of human nature, Cicero observes that there are multiple reasons why people submit to the authority of others: (1) good will, (2) gratitude for generous favors, (3) the eminence of another’s social position and hope for advantage from it, (4) fear of being painfully compelled, (5) hope for gifts, and (6) bribes. Again he concludes that motives like the first three are in fact more durable and effective than the last three.76 Cicero sums up his political/moral psychology under the formula that the best and the most efficient of motives is always love, and the least efficient is fear. Machiavelli, of course, made precisely the opposite argument: fear is more predictable than love, as long as one avoids hatred. Therein we see two distinctively different moral/political psychologies. Cicero observes that fear always leads to hatred: “Fear is but a poor safeguard of lasting power; while affection, on the other hand, may be trusted to keep it safe forever. . . . Those who in a free state deliberately put themselves in a position to be feared are the maddest of the mad.”77

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Cicero’s moral and political psychology is much richer and deeper than that of the proto-moderns, from Machiavelli to Hobbes and Locke, all of whom are reductionists. Later modern republicans, such as Montesquieu, Smith, Hume, and Rousseau, tried to transcend this reductionism and soften the Machiavellian and Hobbesian harshness of modernity with their respective turns to a political and moral psychology based on sympathy. They did not, however, acknowledge, as does Cicero, the importance of the still higher aspects of human psychology. If Cicero is correct, fear is a poor safeguard for properly constituted republican authority or for the promotion of utility more generally — both politically and individually. Cicero asserts that by comparison, genuine affection can keep one safe forever. Granted, Cicero is trying to limit the imperialist and expansionist elements of Rome, and Machiavelli is trying to set loose the expansionist desires of New Princes in a fragmented Europe. Perhaps initial expansion requires something different than maintenance of a just regime. Cicero is clear that fear is the least useful basis for maintaining an already successful free state and that every despot from Marius and Sulla to Caesar proves this. The final decline of the Roman Republic began in earnest with Sulla and his barbaric revenge against Marius. Fear and anger unleashed in a republic are rarely reharnessed. Love lost is rarely recovered. Cicero states unequivocally at this point that “our republic we have lost forever.”78 A descent into a politics of fear, anger, envy, and resentment is never a good sign for a republic. Add in a dose of the unleashing and manipulation of the passions and one has produced a powerful witches’ brew, especially when aided and abetted by modern technology. Fear is the principle of a despotism or tyranny. Love is the maintaining principle for a republic.79 A Genuine Utilitarianism For Cicero the primary question becomes how to win affection, which is essential to true utility: Should we rely on honestum and honest industry, or on fear, bribes, and the forced redistribution of wealth by the state? What approach is most useful? Cicero raises an opening question: Should we primarily aim at maintaining the friendship and affection of the few

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or the many or both? We recall that Machiavelli says that one can never satisfy the few, and so should try for the affection of the many, even if the few put you in office. Cicero seems to think one wins the affection of both the few and the many in the same fashion, by kindness, justice, and admiration conjoined with public displays of complete honestum. If true, honestum and utile do come together on the individual and public levels. Cicero argues that the ultimate basis of civic cooperation is a form of friendship, not coercion and fear, or collective, self-interested greed.80 Cicero says there are three bases of friendship: (1) affection or good will, (2) confidence, and (3) admiration (especially by the people). These are for Cicero the bases of friendship and by extension of civic cooperation.81 Even though a republic needs elements of punitive justice, such justice can never replace friendship. Aristotle makes precisely the same point in the Nicomachean Ethics. Friendship is one of the highest goods and thus the most useful thing for individuals and nations. To fully understand the uniqueness of Cicero’s teaching, it needs to be compared with Aristotle’s three bases of friendship (pleasure, utility, and virtue) against Cicero’s (affection, confidence, and admiration). They are not identical understandings of friendship.82 But Aristotle joins Cicero in arguing that even states must be based on friendship. Cicero asserts that (1) affection and good will are fostered by “kind services,” “affability of manner,” and gentleness of character toward both confidants and the many; (2) confidence is produced by the possession of “practical wisdom combined with a sense of justice.” In fact, Cicero argues, wisdom of any sort without justice will never inspire confidence. But even justice without practical wisdom will not inspire confidence. Mere shrewdness will never foster confidence. Neither will theoretical reason. And (3) genuine admiration is to be had for people who have “extraordinary talents,” but especially those who also prove to be steadfast and not prone to the tyranny of sensual pleasure. Admiration comes for those who show their mastery of two powerful inclinations: unvarnished love of wealth and pleasure. To be admired, one must especially demonstrate superiority to the lure of external goods — particularly money.83 Since these characteristics require honestum, true utility and honestum come together. In fact, they cannot be separated. To gain affection, confidence, and admiration from the many, there are preferred public careers for fostering confidence and inspiring respect: (1) military careers in the defense of the republic; (2) use of “brain work,”

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which is always more reputable than hand work or brute strength; (3) attaching oneself to the wise and renowned (we might recall here Machi­ avelli’s three brain analogy; see The Prince, chap. 22); (4) oratory that stirs thousands of hearts at once; and (5) kindness and generosity.84 As to kindness and generosity, they must be pursued in the proper way. First, individually there is a duty to be kind and generous, more with one’s time than with money. The liberality of one’s time and personal service is most noble. Lavishing money alone frequently leads to envy and contempt and corrupts both parties. Fostering avarice on any level, especially combined with fostering envy, destroys harmony in the state and between friends. So there is never any utility in supporting avarice, and lavish displays usually backfire. Generosity and kindness are individual virtues; they are not virtues that can be fostered primarily by the state. This is especially true when the ambitious despoil some to benefit others. Cicero argues that this only plays to envy and resentment, not to genuine friendship. We have a duty to never allow debts to arise by individuals or by the state in order to allegedly support societal kindness and generosity.85 An extension of this logic is to see that the urge to abolish debts destroys friendship and corrupts everyone. One should protect the poor from misuse by the rich and strong, but one should also protect them from envy and resentment, which are also vices along with avarice. All of the acts that lead up to destroying the republic — expropriation of property, giving free grain or other commodi­ ties, repudiation of debts — only lead to someone like Caesar. It is not liberality to rob one man to enrich another.86 One has a duty to make money by honorable means, to save it, and increase it within limits while helping others do so. Cicero is clear: to protect property is one of the primary purposes of the state. To use it well is a means to both admiration and confidence. Having argued that honestum and utile are not intrinsically at odds with each other, in book 3 of De Officiis, Cicero turns to the question of how to proceed when honestum and utile seem to conflict with each other. This is the book Cicero claims Panaetius the Stoic never wrote — he never fulfilled this necessary task that Cicero will carry out. Cicero openly asserts that it is here that he presents “modifications.”87 Book 3 is extremely subtle and quiet. One must carefully sort through the doctrinal assertions and the historical and literary examples

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Cicero uses. Let us start with the observation that book 3 is where Cicero, the idealist, most clearly tempers his teaching with quiet doses of realism, some of it the realism Machiavelli openly builds upon as his only foundation. The book opens with a repetition of the doctrine that correctly understood, utile and honestum can never conflict. But Cicero now brings forth a caveat: absolute virtue (the standard for the Stoics) is only for the few wise.88 It is not clear if Cicero is simply making this assertion in his own name, but by raising the issue he now makes a bow to a lower “semblance” of virtue that is based primarily on habit and not knowledge, a “mean” or median form of virtue. This semblance of virtue can at times conflict with utile. Of the true form of honestum it is asserted that what is truly good is what is good for the soul, and that the good of the soul is always what is truly expedient. Regardless of one’s external circumstances, one can never outrun internal self-consciousness. One’s internal state of mind always travels with one, and what is most expedient is to have it in order and not as the battleground of cacophonous drives, perceptions, and aspirations. In support of the internal harmony argument, Cicero then proceeds to offer a conditional, if/then argument. If the Stoic premise that we must follow nature is true, then what follows is that nature desires harmony and order. Nothing that lacks harmony is natural. Nothing unnatural and unharmonious can be expedient. The natural penalty for immoral action is a lack of psychic harmony. That psychic harmony is procured by honestum. Without psychic harmony we are led to spiritual demoralization no matter how many external goods we possess.89 The most inexpedient situation is to be cast into a state of internal psychic warfare. One must avoid internal psychological civil war. One must have admiration for oneself and to do so one must act in a fashion that corresponds with one’s self-conception. One must have friendship for oneself, and that relates again to the three bases of friendship. One cannot have a worthy self-conception without honestum. On these terms, honestum and utile necessarily correspond. This teaching is then expanded upon with references to the ring of Gyges90 story in Plato’s Republic and the example of Regulus, the Roman general who voluntarily returned to Carthage and certain torture and death to keep his word of honor. Our question is, how do these examples support the asserted moral premise?

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In book 3, Cicero proceeds to offer a series of empirical/historical examples. The examples are intended to support the premise that there are almost no cases in which one must engage in vice to foster utility. As one example, Romulus did not really have to kill his brother to achieve the end he desired. Killing his brother was not a necessary means to his end of the founding of Rome. Yet there is no blanket premise against the occasional utility of killing. We are told there is nothing morally wrong about the necessary expedient of killing a tyrant and restoring free institutions. That sort of killing has utility. There are then a series of examples of how one’s own interests can almost always be secured without harming others, and this is especially true of dishonest or simply “sharp” business practices, which give one a reputation that precludes others from wishing to have further dealings. If one’s reputation is lost, so is utility. Finally, even being a tyrant is presented as never being expedient. Tyrants are torn by worry, anxiety, fear of plots, bad conscience, and the knowledge they are feared and hated but not admired. All internal peace of mind is lost by tyranny.91 By these kinds of arguments, we are returned to the assertion that utile and hones­ tum are not at odds. Then there is the thought-provoking example of the Roman opponent Pyrrhus. Cicero does not focus on the fact that his was ultimately a “Pyrrhic” victory, but on the story of one of Pyrrhus’s lieutenants who came to the Romans and offered to poison Pyrrhus. This had obvious utility for the Romans because it would spare them many lives. The Romans sent the traitor back to Pyrrhus because his offer offended their sense of honor and their pantheon of noble virtues.92 Cicero observes that one cannot behave duplicitously with an enemy when the principal point of the war is honor and glory. But we are reminded of Cicero’s just war doctrine, which states only wars that guarantee one can live in peace, or defend oneself and one’s allies, are just. Wars for mere glory have become, thereby, questionable. Apparently, as with killing tyrants, there are circumstances where eliminating a Pyrrhus would be acceptable, not be immoral, and not cause internal dissonance for any of the participants. Cicero has asserted earlier that God gives us a conscience.93 Apparently, longing for natural harmony can use multiple supports, albeit equally “internal.” A conscience that balks will destroy our self-respect

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and internal harmony. Internal harmony seems to be the primary line of defense upon which one can assert that utile and honestum are not at odds. But will that line of defense work for everyone? If not, punitive means, relying on fear, are also needed. One can see the existence of the high without ignoring the need for the low. Both are required. The need for internal harmony in the best of individuals is at the basis of Cicero’s defense of the actions of Regulus, who returns to the Carthaginians because he gave his word he would. Here is one instance where personal utility (staying alive) and honestum seem to be at odds. But Cicero says that Regulus would have been unable to live with himself if he destroyed his internal harmony.94 Cicero is clear: it is not fear of God that led Regulus to his highminded actions. The strongest basis for honorable behavior is an internal one. Fear of God is an external defense; love of God and conscience operate internally. For the wise, fear of God is less compelling because Cicero agrees with those who argue that God is never angry or wrathful, at least not with the wise. Nature, human psychology, and the resultant longing for internal harmony are the real basis for bringing together hon­ estum and utile. This is especially true since Cicero, as we see in the Tus­ culan Disputations, rejects that pain is the greatest evil and pleasure is the greatest good — that is, he rejects the basis of modern utilitarianism. On the surface Cicero seemingly relies heavily on the Stoics, but ultimately he significantly revises Stoic doctrine. The Stoics believed that honestum was the only good, while the Peripatetics (believers that virtue is a mean) believed honestum was the highest good but not the only good. For the Peripatetics there was, therefore, less conflict between honestum and utile. The Stoic doctrine can reach the same conclusion only when amended by Cicero’s “internal” moral/political psychology. We reach a conclusion: honor and keeping pledges are always both virtuous and expedient. Pledges given under duress and to those who are faithless and immoral are as binding from the psychological perspective as others. Not to believe so is to invent a loophole in favor of infidelity and dishonor. But none of this, we are told, applies with pirates and the common barbaric foes of the civilized world. Even with a code of honor there is no pedantic, deontological universalism. And hence one wonders if Regulus did not go too far in a doctrinaire direction rather than allowing simple prudence to operate. To realize that would not undermine

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Cicero’s reliance on “internal” checks on behavior and the value of avoiding internal psychic cacophony. Cicero tries to teach how to avoid internal psychological dissonance as a central issue of genuine utility for individuals. In the end that is the basis upon which to confront the possible disjunction between honestum and utile. Fear of external retribution or external consequences is never as great as the pain of internal dissonance in a person of genuine moral worth. Internal demoralization of the soul is the real problem, and its avoidance the true expedient. But the cure may not work with everyone. Idealism can be tempered by realism. We quietly get the impression from Cicero’s examples that on rare occasions there are exemptions from a pure application of honestum. But he will not undermine his main premise by giving us a clear calculus of how to analyze those rare circumstances. That would merely give us an easy way out in almost all instances. The moral person alone will know when the rare occasion has arrived, just as the great musician is the one who knows when a note is slightly off. One does not take one’s bearings by the rare and unusual exception.95 One builds on the vast majority of cases and on the sentiments of the best of men. When one proceeds on that basis, it is on the understanding of internal psychic harmony being the greatest good, a good that cannot be accomplished by some application after the fact of external “punishment” or “therapy.” After harmony has irrevocably been destroyed by indifference to honestum, there are no professional cures; we are left with punitive justice as our fallback position. This all leads to one conclusion: we primarily conquer chance through honestum.

Eight

Cicero on Oratory and the Language Arts Nowadays we are deluged not only with the [rhetorical] notions of the vulgar but also with the opinions of the half-educated, who find it easier to deal with matters that they cannot grasp in their entirety if they split them up and take them piecemeal, and who separate words from thoughts as one might sever body from mind. The two groups of students were separated from one another, by Socrates and then similarly by all the Socratic schools, and the philosophers looked down on eloquence and the orators on wisdom, and never touched anything from the side of the other study. Let us dismiss the [philosophers] in question, without any derogatory comment, as they are excellent fellows and happy in their belief in their own happiness, and only let us warn them to keep to themselves as a holy secret . . . their doctrine that it is not the business of a wise man to take part in politics — for if they convince us and all our best men of the truth of this they themselves will not be able to live the life of leisure that is their ideal. [For us] eloquence is so potent a force that it embraces the origin and operation and developments of all things, all the virtues and duties, all the natural principles governing the morals and minds and life of mankind. — Cicero, De Oratore 3.6.24; 3.19.72; 3.17.64; 3.20.76

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Oratory, Dialectic, Logic, and Truth Cicero’s Rome was a political culture dominated by speech even more than writing. Oratory was a prerequisite for a successful public career, as it had been at Athens. Excellent speaking skills were more important in a way than even military prowess, and in the case of Rome that is a crucial point. Even the general needed to know how to speak before the various bodies and venues of Roman political life to have political success. Without being able to articulate it in this fashion, the Romans saw oratory as an arena of truth, and this is clearly Cicero’s understanding of the relation that should exist between philosophy and public oratory. It is easy to underestimate the importance of this observation. But it also needs to be explained, for it is an understanding that is now foreign to us. Ours is not an age dominated by great public speaking. Oratory has been reduced to dealing with the skills of actors, or is associated with advertising and its sound bites. Far more often than not, attempts at subarticulate conversion trump articulate persuasion. Our public political debates are dominated by such techniques — for example, 30-second TV spots that are sound and sight bites attempting to appeal to the subrational more than the rational. Such efforts are in fact seen by the public, correctly, as an arena of half-truths, if not outright falsity. And we accept that outcome and simply move on, oblivious to the ramifications. The respect that oratory deserves has diminished accordingly because the link with rational activity — truth and philosophy — has been lost. In his discussion of oratory, Cicero shows he is aware that attention to the emotional element in persuasion is important, but far from the primary story. Because we fail to reflect upon the whole, rarely do we encounter grand public speeches that are both moving public spectacles for the eye and ear yet are also capable of surviving philosophical scrutiny, to say nothing of surviving to be studied philosophically by future generations. Some of the speeches of Lincoln come to mind as breaking this rule, but that was more than 150 years ago, certainly before the age of mass communication. Lincoln was one of the last who could be linked directly to a tradition of oratory that went back to Greece and especially Rome. The politi­ cal oratory of our founding era represents an even closer tie. But the link has been broken. It is the breaking of this link and not our parchment

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institutions that constitutes a significant part of our contemporary malaise and the decline in our political life. Cicero was a great orator and also a philosopher. We have already seen that he asserts that oratory as an area of study deals with the same issues as philosophy. And he has made a case for his uniqueness as a thinker in that he has tried to wed oratory and philosophy in a way the Greeks did not — in fact, he accuses the Greeks of separating them. For Cicero, the Greek philosophers — he lays this primarily at the door of Socrates, not Plato — reduced oratory to sophistry in an attempt to define and defend philosophy as a primarily theoretical activity. In the understanding of Cicero, oratory — like philosophy and politics — is an arena of truth and of bringing truth “into the open” in a public arena, a public space, a res publica. To understand the relation between truth and the process of something being brought out into “the open,” we must be weaned from the Aristotelian doctrine, and its various descendants, which says that the only real locus of truth is logical statements. Oratory (specifically public speech) and philosophy (understood as growing out of an interrogation of shared phenomena that show themselves in a public space) converge in a public arena, and this implies the need for a public showing “out in the open.” Truth requires this public openness. That public showing primarily demands oratory, not logic or some other technical or theoretical study. We have also seen that in Cicero’s time logic was presented as one of the three primary branches of knowledge, coequal with ethics and natural science. This is simply not the case for Cicero. In his earliest works — some of which he later renounces, like De Inventione — Cicero moves logic in a variety of different directions, in one instance into a subset of oratory, which in turn moves up to be coequal with ethics and natural science. We will see a similar move in this chapter in our discussion of De Oratore. For Cicero, logic becomes secondary and subservient to the public needs of oratory and philosophy. This is another understanding that is foreign to us, especially in parts of the Anglo-American academy where permutations of logic and other forms of technical analysis have presumed at times to be philosophy itself. Cicero’s understanding represents a different move than Aristotle’s attempted shift to make logic an independent science. In fact, Cicero tries to reverse the division of knowledge into separate studies, which division can be traced back to Aristotle.

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Cicero tries to recover an architectonic unity for knowledge. Oratory, in Cicero’s sense, is at the heart of that unity. One could say that Socrates was the father of logic if one understood that through his influence philosophy was reduced almost completely to dialectic, originating in the “what is” questions.1 And for Socrates, I would argue, dialectic was close to the entirety of philosophy — unlike Plato, Socrates added no element of poiesis, and unlike Plato, he separated philosophy from high-level philosophic statesmanship (politikos).2 This view of Socrates, as reducing philosophy to dialectic, is the one held by Cicero, and it becomes clear, especially in De Oratore, that for Cicero Socrates is a problem in this way. Cicero’s Plato did more than use dialectic to unravel and destroy the phenomena, as Socrates comes close to doing in what Cicero repeatedly calls “negative dialectics.” To the Socratic “what is” questions, Plato added not just diairesis (division) but also synthesis (putting back together), which frequently becomes a straightforward permutation of poiesis.3 The classic Platonic (not Socratic) effort of both taking apart in search of an ultimate foundational element, or definitional point of departure, and putting the foundational elements back together into a whole is thematically found, among other places, in Plato’s Sophist and Statesman. It becomes clear in those dialogues — where Plato forces Socrates to be silent rather than be the discussion leader — that the putting together need not arrive at the same point from which the taking apart commenced. In this there is an element of poiesis. In short, Plato adds elements to the Socratic deployment of dialectic and shows that it cannot be an autonomous undertaking. In a different fashion, Cicero will try to demonstrate why mere dialectic, or mere logic, cannot be autonomous. Unlike Aristotle, Cicero sees logic as a subordinate activity, and dialectic as at most only a part of logic. But Cicero also diverges from Plato. I have already suggested that Cicero diminishes the importance of poetry, especially compared to Plato; that place is taken by oratory, which he specifically says is “next of kin” to poetry.4 But Cicero suggests that poetry proper rests on “genius,” and he prefers to substitute a “science” that can allegedly be applied by more individuals than just rare geniuses. Cicero would have us believe that oratory can be both more scientific and more democratic than genius.5 That democratic and public element must have a place in a republic.

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Piecing together from different sources, both the early and mature works, for Cicero we can see that logic appears to have four parts: (1) definition, answers to the “what is” questions, which provide definitional points of departure; (2) division, what the Greeks called diairesis; (3) the law of noncontradiction and consistency; and (4) deduction of what follows from the definitions, of which syllogism is only a part.6 In De Oratore, through his characters Crassus and Antonius, Cicero makes a bow to the need to employ these logical elements, but only in a loose and “gentlemanly” fashion. In Cicero’s time, rhetoric and oratory were considered subsections of one of the three main studies, ethics. As such they were coequal with political science, which was also a subset of ethics. What was being stressed in that understanding was the ethical foundation of rhetoric, ora­ tory, and political science. Cicero retains this link but is stressing something else. By making oratory and rhetoric coequal with philosophy itself, Cicero enhances their truth status, just as by lowering dialectic and logic more generally to a subset of oratory and rhetoric he makes them subsidi­ ary and removes them from the forefront of knowledge. Their truth status is purposely diminished by Cicero. For Cicero, logic becomes useful in making oratory have a veneer that is “scientific” in its public presentations — the appearance of tech­ nical skill is always impressive even if it adds nothing substantive. Coopting a term from Aristotle, and giving it a unique twist, Cicero makes “topics” (the scientific invention of ideas) coequal with logic but also subservient to oratory (persuasive public eloquence). The discussion of topics (in De Inventione) is the closest Cicero comes to giving any cognitive status to poetry and imagination. For Cicero, oratory and philosophy needed to be presented as mirror images. Rhetoric (written) and oratory (spoken) are arenas of truth, not methods of consciously projected falsity and misdirection. Dialectic, logic, and topics are dependent and subordinate underlings. Cicero saw both rhetoric (written) and oratory (spoken) as coequal with philosophy and needing to have the same integrated account of the whole of knowledge to support them. And this is what we see in the dialogue De Oratore. Cicero tried to show that real oratory is a high form of statesmanship and that it needs the support of philosophy. Put differently, it is philosophy as it turns to its public duties. And he tried to show that philosophy needs to

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remain wedded to the political arena and to be able to defend itself persuasively in public rather than withdrawing to Epicurean gardens or specialized monasteries of one kind or another. I have been making, and will continue to make, a point about the philosophic importance of shared public speech. As prior and foundational, it is an arena of truth. This understanding helps explain why rheto­ ric and oratory used to be taught as of the upmost importance. Truth and eloquence were twins. If philosophy is phenomenologically grounded in public speech and a shared public showing, it must protect and defend its foundation by proper public speaking, which aims at more than winning momentary self-interested victories in courts or political bodies. This understanding, in diluted form, was still held by the American founding generation and shows up in their reflections on the importance of public education and the need for publicly sponsored schools, perhaps even a federal university, as necessary for those who would go into republican political life and statesmanship.7 Cicero remains at the fountainhead of an understanding of rhetoric and oratory as forms of truth. But it is an understanding from which we have become alienated. What has changed is both our understanding of the philosophical status and importance of political life and our understanding of the nature of truth. Political life is increasingly seen as a means to nonpolitical ends and not an end in itself. Truth has been reduced to having its nexus in logical statements, which implies representational thinking and correspondence theories of truth. Truth so understood can be found in total withdrawal from the political arena and from any public space.8 But if the engagement in political discourse and interaction in a publicly shared space is an end in itself, and the public arena is an arena of truth — from whose shared phenomenological showings even philosophy commences its activities — the status of public speech rises in dignity, as does political activity. If republican participation/speaking is an end in itself and not just a means to nonpolitical ends that can be pursued within any number of regimes from monarchy to oligarchy to tyranny,9 then its principal tool must be defended, elevated, and perfected and thus the public stage and space it needs must be opened.10 That tool is philosophically grounded, persuasive public speech. That stage is the res publica. Cicero still operated within this understanding, and it informs why he takes rhetoric and oratory so seriously.

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Even though not “logical” in our sense of the term, for Cicero oratory had to be systematic. Oratory was an undertaking that was more than some kind of natural knack aided by experience — a position advanced by one of his characters, Antonius, in De Oratore. Cicero links this need for rigor with the ability to come to a clear, shared understanding of definitions that ground discussion. This is the task of dialectic; it is the only task of dialectic. Dialectic can never get us to knowledge of the whole; it should not have ontological pretensions. Cicero repeatedly makes clear that in its usual manifestation, especially in its Socratic deployment, dialectic had until his time been primarily “negative.”11 Cicero would have equally derided the attempt to glorify logic as the opening to ontology or truth. For Cicero, dialectic is clearly a means to articulate and bring fully “into the open” (his phrase) the archai from which deductions can be made and a shared discussion possible. For him, the “what is” questions of dialectic are meant to bring to articulate clarity a reality that always already shows itself — and not merely to negatively destroy those phenomena. The prior reality that always already displays itself does so as an ensemble of things that can be grouped into various “tribes” of things. But that prior showing can be brought to speech in a variety of ways. For example, at the margins, the “what is” of a tree and that of a shrub becomes difficult to determine and hence we run into what is indistinct in the phenomena themselves. The same can be said at the margins about small fluffy dogs and large domestic cats. Of course, it is in the margins of the moral and political things that we find the most important issues, and the room for greatest mischief. To reiterate one of the issues we discussed in chapter 2, Cicero asserts of dialectic that it aims at definitions that are the main points of departure for the deductions, which if done consistently lead to an expansion of the “arena of knowledge.”12 Dialectic expands the arena of knowledge; it is not the basis of knowledge. By “definitions,” Cicero means that dialectic aims at eliciting the “what” or “essence” of each group or tribe of things. We collect the many particular instances of things that show themselves into groups and in the process divide the whole into discrete parts, tribes, or forms (eide). The whole comes to sight for humans as an ensemble of discrete parts. Once we fix in speech the essence of the groups of things, we can deduce what follows from those definitions and determine their relations

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with other groups. For whatever reasons, Cicero seems to downplay the place of syllogism in this process of deduction. Most of his examples of syllogistic reasoning are found in his depictions of the Stoic, pettifogging misuse of this tool, which he says is totally incapable of inspiring any emotional attachments. In a different way, the Stoics are criticized for having such rarified and counterintuitive notions, for example, of virtue and happiness, with the result that they insult all common understandings and likewise limit their capacity to be politically efficacious. Cicero criticizes the Epicureans (as opposed to the pettifogging of the Stoics) for having no component of definition in their teaching, no element of dialectic, and hence they get lost in the thicket of fuzzy, also counterintuitive, definitions. This leads them to false conclusions, such as seeing pleasure as the absence of pain. By extension they have no public doctrines of rhetoric and oratory, as they have no interest in public engagement. They conclude that the truth can be pursued in private. Cicero does not accept this premise. The primary reason for keeping the dialectical undertaking close to the phenomena is not merely that dialectic’s primary function is to make rigorous public discussion and persuasion possible, which is true. The deeper hope is that rhetorical rigor can help persuasion to replace more overt conflict in political life to the extent it is conflict based on misunderstanding and confusion. But it is also because politics itself is an arena of truth, and that is why political discussion and participation are so imperative, and why their most important tool, rigorous speech, must be defended. Speech that is nondistorting of the phenomena is equally important philosophically. It cannot be stated often enough. Lurking here is a fundamental truth: the political is more than the arena for the pursuit of utilitarian ends, the mere divvying up of spoils — who gets what, when, where, and how — or a secondary arena for the amelioration of private conflicts. In De Inventione, Cicero asserts a premise that remains at the heart of his understanding: “Wisdom without eloquence does too little for the good of states, but that eloquence without wisdom is generally highly disadvantageous and is never helpful. Therefore if anyone neglects the study of philosophy and moral conduct, which is the highest and most honourable of pursuits, and devotes his whole energy to the practice of

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oratory [divorced from those studies], his civic life is nurtured into something useless to himself and harmful to his country.”13 This is not Cicero blowing pious smoke at his readers and trying to be edifying while knowing perfectly well it is false and nonsense.14 This is not a noble lie. This is a philosophical statement for Cicero. We need to see afresh what is implied in politics as a prior arena of truth, and how truth was transferred to a private apolitical realm, a very derivative maneuver by which the political is then lowered to a mere means to autonomous nonpolitical ends.15 Cicero is impressed that the things he wants to articulate are adequately available in the everyday understanding of the res publica, properly and systematically developed. The positive element of dialectic, logic, rhetoric, oratory — or philosophy more generally — is carried always already in the phenomena.16 Those phenomena simply have to be articulated in public speech and hence brought more specifically into the light without negating them in the manner of “negative dialectics.” Thus the phenomena need not be made present in the sense of created — certainly not ex nihilo by a self-legislating ego — they always already show themselves. But how they show themselves articulately in speech makes all the difference.17 There is no reason to believe that everything becomes clear all at once in the philosophic tradition, or that things that were once known remain remembered. But there is every reason to believe that every major stage of the tradition, at its principal moments of inception and transformation, has woven into a whole the primary intellectual components of ethics, politics, theology, psychology, cosmology, and epistemology. This, perhaps, is where poetry and imagination come into play: weaving.18 What follows for Cicero’s understanding, as he diminishes their status, is that logic in general and dialectic specifically cannot be used as tools to help us work our way “up” to the good, the true, or the articulation of the whole by stages or in small steps. Logic is a not a foundational method that is autonomous or a tool that exists in some autonomous “objective” fashion. Logic always already presupposes an understanding of the good and the true, which comes from outside before logic ever gets under way. None of the primary studies, or their derivatives, can be separated from ethics, especially political science. And none can quit the public space. To believe so is a delusion based on forgetfulness.19

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D e O r at or e : A New Version of Plato’s P ol i t ikos De Oratore represents an attempt on Cicero’s part to give back to rhetoric/ oratory the status he claims it had before Socrates “vanquished” it in the name of dialectic, reducing it to sophistry. At the beginning of book 2, Cicero says that plunging into dialectic in public settings is “tactless” (ineptus).20 Apparently, philosophy, in its reduction to various and separate technical forms of knowledge, should not be displayed in public. But it becomes clear that genuine oratory nonetheless must be fully informed by architectonic philosophy itself. That is the larger issue dealt with by De Oratore: the very nature of architectonic political philosophy, which rests on an understanding of the proper relation between the philosophic instinct and political life. None of the major competitors of the day — Stoics, Epicureans, and Academics — had a proper understanding of this relation between oratory and philosophy. The Epicureans would completely withdraw from public life; the Academics merely argued both sides of all issues without reaching any conclusions — which responsible statesmen cannot allow; and the Stoics insulted everyday understandings — for example, only the fully wise man was virtuous, leaving the majority of citizens locked in vice. De Oratore is a rhetorical tour de force. Its teaching is carried as much in the setting and interaction of the characters as in the speeches of any specific character, including Crassus, who seems dramatically to be the main spokesman.21 The discussion is set in 91 BC, outside Rome at a private villa of one of the characters, Antonius, or Antony for short. Cicero specifi­ cally states that he was not present and only learned secondhand of what transpired. He makes it clear thereby that the actual discussion is his own creation. By other devices he shows that his characters and the actual historical individuals by the same name are not the same. The occasion for the leisure of the discussants is a Roman holiday; otherwise the participants, who are men of affairs, would be engaged in active legal and political life. Leisure is necessary for philosophic discussion, but not the Epicurean form that completely withdraws from the political. Privacy, in this case a private villa, is also the appropriate venue for philosophic discussion, not the res publica strictly speaking, albeit it is repeatedly stated that oratory must be conducted in the language of everyday life.

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The discussions take place over two days, the first day in book 1 and the second day in books 2 and 3, with the infusion of some new characters on the second day.22 With three discussions over two days, De Oratore parallels Plato’s trilogy of the Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, and like that trilogy culminates in a picture of the ideal orator as a high-level philosopher/statesman who is responsible for weaving together the whole, both politically and intellectually. In short, Cicero arrives at a transformed notion of Plato’s politikos. The dialogue is set outdoors, outside Rome, and primarily under a plane tree. There are “recantations” by both of the main discussants, Antony and Crassus. And Socrates and his relation to rhetoric/oratory is a repeated, explicit theme. In all of these aspects, and others, the discussion is clearly intended to parallel Plato’s Phaedrus, which is set outside Athens, in a natural setting, under a plane tree (platanos). The character Antony (in Machiavellian fashion) will openly reject taking one’s bearings from the ideal republic or the ideal orator, but Crassus will argue that in defining the orator one must look to the ideal mani­ festation, an orator in speech, even though such an orator has never yet existed. The resonance of Plato’s Republic is clear. And the Gorgias is likewise specifically cited. The return to Plato is an important part of what is being pursued in De Oratore. But that does not mean that Cicero is not trying to go beyond Plato in some respects. The three books that make up De Oratore are in each instance prefaced by Cicero’s remarks to his brother, Quintus, as if the work as a whole is a privileged letter to a private confidante. Cicero is, by this device, given an opportunity to speak in his own name. Taken together, the three prefaces to the books force us to reflect upon the understanding of philosophy among the Romans and the coming descent into civil war and eventual dissolution of the Roman Republic. At the beginning of book 2, Cicero raises the issue that customary Roman public opinion would have it that Crassus had no tutelage in philosophy and Antony was perceived to be positively hostile to it, even though Cicero’s characters present the opposite. We come to see themati­ cally that Roman opinion rests on a distinctive prejudice against philosophy. The characters Antony and Crassus show that they both adopted an antiphilosophy public face to accommodate Roman disdain for philosophy. Much of the discussion is aimed at overcoming that prejudice.23

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In the preface to book 3, we learn of the fates of most of the characters shortly after the dialogue. Crassus raced back to Rome immediately following the discussion and engaged in a heated debate defending the “hereditary dignities” of the Senate. In that debate he was threatened in his life and property and apparently suffered a stroke and died within the week. Cicero observes that it was a form of divine intervention that saved Crassus from having to endure the spectacle of the civil wars and the death of many honorable friends. Cicero remarks that the days following this discussion were those of the “utterly corrupting” descent into the “national disaster” brought by Marius and then Sulla. Antony, the grandfather of the more famous Mark Antony, was a victim of Marius in 87 BC. Catulus and Caesar (not the famous dictator), who arrive in books 2 and 3, also fell to Marius. Catulus took his own life, and Caesar was decapitated. Cotta was exiled, but was allowed to return by Sulla. Cicero reports that only Sulpicius Rufus — the only character who specifically says that he “despises philosophy” — took part in “robbing of their office” his honorable friends and swung to the side of Marius, only to die later by the sword at the hands of Sulla.24 The discussion is surrounded by the twin themes of Socrates and his diminution of oratory and the Roman descent into civil war, with the influence of Plato more quietly in the background. These themes have in common that they are wrapped around the absence of a proper philosophically informed oratory/statesmanship. In this regard, Socrates, we are told, could have saved himself from death if he had learned the lessons of ideal oratory — he refused even to read a speech prepared for him by Lysis as his defense before the jury — rather than dismissing oratory as no more than sophistry. On the other side, we are led to the issue of whether Rome could have saved its republic with a high-level oratory that appealed to the mind rather than one that primarily enflamed the passions — there is both a high and a low manifestation of oratory.25 On a different plane, De Oratore is also a discussion of who should rule. The possibilities are (1) the general or warrior, (2) the traditional, instinctive, and habitual hereditary aristocrat, (3) the wealthy businessman and his appendage, the lawyer, (4) the many, (5) the leisured and withdrawn philosopher and/or intellectual specialists, or (6) the philosophically grounded orator/statesman.

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In his political works, to which we will turn in the next chapter, heredity is dismissed as an inadequate principle. As all of the participants, both the younger men — Cotta and Sulpicius — and the elders — especially Crassus, Scaevola, Antony, Catulus — are primarily orators, there is no real spokesman for the warrior/statesman in De Oratore.26 Cicero, in his prefaces and through his various characters, has them all gang up to dismiss the withdrawn philosopher and specialist. The many are presented as far too easy to manipulate to be a viable alternative. The businessman does not have adequate leisure. By process of elimination, we are left with the ideal orator. The character Antony observes that there are three primary venues for oratory: (1) the law courts, (2) the political arena (or res publica), and (3) panegyrics, or public praises of individuals or their virtues. Antony is primarily a spokesman for the lawyers in the courts dealing with private cases. Especially the character Crassus is primarily a spokesperson for those practicing in the res publica, dealing with public, political issues. As such he is a spokesperson for statesmen and in that vein in book 1 counsels a strong focus on learning and codifying the public, political, “common law” rather than focusing on the private law dealing primarily with economic issues. But Crassus is also a spokesperson for the fact that the highest statesman must know “all things.” Crassus will eventually argue that philosophy initially brought order to law and the arts from “without” only to eventually withdraw from this task. That led to the decline of statesmanship. 27 He argues that philosophy, oratory, and statesmanship should converge. Antony argues that orator, philosopher, and statesman are three different things.28 In a parallel fashion he argues that there are many arts and knowledges and that those arts and knowledges are separate and independent. For Antony, oratory is an independent and separate art. It draws from the other arts and knowledges but does not combine them or supervene over them. Crassus explicitly argues that oratory is architectonic and all of the other arts and knowledges are subservient to it. Oratory weaves the subordinate undertakings into a whole.29 This is precisely the position presented by Plato’s Eleatic Stranger in the Statesman, which, like De Oratore, is part of a trilogy dealing with philosophy, sophistry (oratory), and statesmanship. The person who

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weaves everything together in Plato’s Statesman is called the politikos, who is clearly the coming together of philosopher, orator, and statesman.30 In book 1, both Antony and Scaevola — who leaves after the first day to be replaced on the second by Catulus and Caesar — argue that Crassus’s ideal orator/philosopher/statesman diminishes the actual lawyer and orator in the law courts and statesmen in the Senate and also the magistrates up to consul. It leaves the everyday participants without glory and reduces them to charlatans and pettifoggers in a fashion similar to what is attributed to Socrates’s diminution of oratory as sophistry. Both Antony and Scaevola, with their more conventional views of oratory, stress that oratory must be adapted to the general understanding of “the crowd” (ad vulgarem popularemque sensum accommodata). As such, oratory is more of a knack based on natural skills (voice, bearing, looks) and much practice and experience that sinks down to the level of habit.31 This division between the high and everyday understandings of oratory is what is manifested in the discussion in book 1. In book 2, Antony is given the lead and starts by recanting his position in book 1 and making it clear that without becoming a specialist or expert in any form of knowledge, the orator must know about all things and the nature or cause of all things. Crassus calls him out on this and observes that he seems to have come around to his “high” argument in book 1. Antony admits that in book 1 he was primarily engaged, in the fashion of the lawyer, in merely refuting Crassus.32 Antony will at another point admit that frequently an everyday orator qua lawyer must even argue what he knows to be false. But in book 2 he admits that Crassus has a point, but he will still not go as far as Crassus toward depicting an ideal orator as both philosopher and statesman. Antony seems to work his way up from ordinary practice and understanding to a realization that the universals are always embedded in everyday practice and hence one must ultimately have articulate public knowledge of them. And in book 2 he seems to admit the need for unitary, architectonic knowledge of all things — albeit not minute, specialized knowledge. Yet Antony wants these things on a “gentlemanly” level. But it is clear to Antony that knowledge is lurking in everyday practice. He has discovered the fact that the “cave” points beyond itself. But the totally detached universals beyond the particulars of everyday practice are things from which the orator should not remove the “veil of . . . ignorance.”33

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Crassus, the Ciceronian character as opposed to the historical individual, seems to be the representative of the position that one must first understand the ideal to be able to measure and understand the everyday and the particular. One understands the low only in light of the high. Crassus’s approach would start at the top and work down; Antony would start at the bottom and work up, trying to understand the high from the perspective of the low.34 But the two approaches converge even if they never precisely meet. Yet the convergence still leaves Antony stressing the lower aspects of oratory, and Crassus stressing the higher aspects. And it leaves Antony emphasizing that the orator as lawyer frequently has to speak on behalf of what he knows is false. Crassus asserts that ideal oratory is in fact a form of truth found in deeds.35 Likewise, the difference of approach and emphasis leaves Antony stressing the need to focus on enflaming the passions. It leaves Crassus focusing on the need to appeal to intellect and only the moderate pleasures. The historical surroundings of the dialogue point us to the understanding that the enflaming of passions is what led to the civil wars and eventually the destruction of the Roman Republic. This divide on the nature of oratory is what leads Crassus in book 3 to give an even more elevated discussion of how the orator must integrate all knowledge and simultaneously deal with the irrational side of human nature in a fashion that moderates and elevates that aspect of human nature. In book 2, Antony admits that even his lower understanding of the orator must always start with clear definitions. This leads inevitably to the “what is” questions and eventually to reflections on the natures or essences of the various categories of things.36 Even Antony grasps that this leads to the heart of “philosophy” as he understands it. For him, philosophy knows the ensemble of natures or essences of all things. For the recanted Antony of book 2, it also includes knowledge of the cause of all things human and divine, the nature of the whole, and the whole theory of right living. In short, philosophy is a form of theoretical knowledge combining dialectic (understood as knowledge of the essences elicited by the “what is” questions), theology, cosmology, and ethics. This rarefied, theoretical view of philosophy is why oratory is at a further remove from philosophy for Antony than for Crassus, for whom it is an architectonic activity (i.e., it is an active rather than theoretical/ contemplative activity) of weaving a whole of the disparate parts of

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knowledge, just as is true for the Eleatic Stranger’s vision of the statesman in Plato’s Statesman. The matter can be put in this fashion: Antony’s conception of philosophy as primarily theoretical knowledge leads him to separate it from oratory, even if he is forced to let it in the back door. Crassus’s phenomenological view of philosophy allows him to bring it together with oratory and statesmanship. The difference in the understandings of the nature of philosophy by the two main characters also accounts for their difference in believing, on the one hand, as does Antony, that the arts and knowledges are segmented and separated, and the position of Crassus that knowledge forms a whole and the whole is crafted by the active orator/statesman/philosopher. Let us suggest the following as a conclusion that flows from the setting of De Oratore and Cicero’s criticism of the Socratics for separating oratory and philosophy: when these three — orator, statesman, and philosopher — are separated, we fall into the problems of killing philosophers like Socrates and having the Roman Republic fall into disintegration and civil war. In short, only if statesmen philosophize and philosophers take the political seriously is there a possible cessation of evils for both philosophy and the city. Crassus defends an ideal that he admits has never yet existed, especially in Rome. It appears that the solution to Rome’s problems is not yet existent. In fact, as an ideal it may never be actualized. It is a solution that at best might be existent in some form only in the future, in a future republic ruled by philosopher/orator/statesmen rather than one ruled by manipulative lawyers and orators, or Roman warrior princes. Yet in book 3, Crassus will try to find examples from the past, some of which clearly stretch credulity, that prove the possibility of his unique synthesis. He tries to present, therefore, his once and future possibility as linked with the past rather than springing ex nihilo from a mere, theoretical ideal.37 In that ideal future, apparently, philosophy should not appear in public in the guise of specialized theoretical knowledge. But neither should it present itself as withdrawn and politically unconcerned. Whatever philoso­ phy does, it must engage in discussions “out in the open” using the everyday speech of the res publica.38 In the future, politics must be informed by philosophy; philosophy must remain wedded to the political. After book 2, the discussants take a pause. Around noon, with the sun at its highest, they go off to various activities, returning later in the

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afternoon to hold the conversations that are recorded in book 3. Throughout book 3 the sun is declining. In the interim, some sleep; Crassus remains motionless in deliberation and contemplation while lying on a couch.39 When they reconvene, Caesar advises that they sit in the shade under a tree. Crassus announces that he was unsatisfied with his presentation yesterday. He recants that discussion and launches into an elaborate discussion of the ideal orator.40 Crassus asserts, in response to Antony’s presentation in book 2, that style and substance can never be separated.41 Further, no class of things, and no form of knowledge, can exist severed from the whole: “A marvelous agreement and harmony underlies all branches of knowledge.”42 This is true of both philosophy and oratory. This is a reassertion of the understanding of Plato regarding the unity of all knowledge, an understanding broken by Aristotle and the school philosophies thereafter. If there is a unity, some study has to be architectonic in maintaining that unity, and that is ideal oratory/statesmanship/philosophy as Crassus is depicting it. We are told that it is only due to a victory of the vulgar and half-educated that we have split up the knowledges and arts.43 We are told that we cannot separate the parts of knowledge any more than we can separate words from thoughts, or the body from the mind. It is especially true of the “language arts” as opposed to the “silent arts” of sculpture and painting. The main language arts are poetry, oratory, and philosophy. The insistent drumbeat returns: in the language arts we must always employ the customary usage of words.44 But we should study how to use words with correctness of style, lucidity, and so that we may give pleasure to the listener. But Crassus tells us that we must aim primarily at giving moderate pleasures, for the things that excite the senses too quickly and overpoweringly have limited lasting power. Hence the overwhelming “pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust,” as for example with things that are too sweet.45 Yet even the philosophic orator must know how to beguile the senses and also the mind. The trick is to use the more elevated senses. The true orator must study and debate “the whole of the contents of the life of mankind.”46 And that study of the whole is philosophy. The “ancients” imparted instruction in all things, including right conduct and the good and also eloquent and persuasive speech. Crassus argues that the orators of present times have ceased to do so. Those who separate all

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subjects create “monsters.” There used to be teachers of both wisdom and oratory — Gorgias, Thrasymachus, and Isocrates are among those cited. But Socrates, rather than Plato, downgraded oratory to sophistry. It is asserted that the Gorgias, in which this attack on oratory occurs, is itself primarily an exercise in oratory rather than genuine, active, architectonic philosophy. Cicero apparently takes this line in order to save Plato. But in Plato, the “victory” comes close to a rhetorical victory for withdrawn theoretical philosophy, unlike the effort conducted in De Oratore. Socrates is accused of separating wise thinking from elegant speaking. This effort is condemned by Crassus as an “absurd and unprofitable and reprehensible severance between the tongue and the brain.”47 Returning to a theme addressed in the Tusculan Disputations, pre-Socratics like Pythagoras, Democritus, and Anaxagoras are said to have pursued tranquility and leisure; they pursued wisdom outside the public space and without a statesmanlike component. Hence they abandoned the civitas. In the present rhetorical argument, both Socrates and the pre-Socratics undermined the prerequisite for good civic life. By contrast, in the Tusculan Disputations Socrates is said to have brought “philosophy down from the heavens” and put it back in the public arena by inquiring about everyday issues. But Socrates performed that task by opening later philosophy to another problem. The severance of philosophy and oratory is said to be at the basis of the separation of philosophy into various school philosophies — and this too is laid explicitly at the door of Socrates.48 Crassus says the resulting “garden philosophers” will not be debarred by the ideal orator/statesman, but they should be encouraged to “keep to themselves.”49 What the ideal orators will not allow is for the garden philosophers to convince the best among the young to withdraw from public engagement. And so, it is asserted, real oratory is not to be reduced to lies and misdirection and other forms of falsity. Consequently, real orators will not allow the Academics, who apparently understand nothing of the place of oratory, to limit philosophy to a teaching that nothing can truly be apprehended with either the senses or the mind.50 On the contrary, Crassus asserts, oratory is grounded in truth and philosophy. It “embraces the origin and operation and development of all things.”51 True wisdom contains under it everything from cosmology to ethics and dialectic, rhetoric, and all other sciences. Catulus breaks in at

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this point and says that he is confused because he does not understand how Crassus got to this conclusion, and he never knew Crassus studied philosophy at all. Crassus reiterates that he is not talking about himself, he is discussing an ideal. But this intrusion seems to convince Crassus that he can only go so far with this ideal argument with most Romans. He begins immediately to blur the distinction between philosopher and nonphilosopher and between his ideal orator and everyday oratory.52 In the remainder of his discussion in book 3, Crassus returns to what could be called more nitty-gritty issues, the technical elements of oratory. We move back from the ideal to the real, while still attempting to elevate the real. Crassus admits that eloquence must please those from “ordinary public life.” And it must bring rigor and something that has the look of being “scientific.” But he still observes that we should now go to those philosophers “who plundered us” and ridiculed and diminished the orator and, while borrowing back from them, overturn them.53 Soon Crassus calls the discussion to a halt. He observes that “yonder sun” is rapidly setting. The sun has been going down on the discussion as book 3 continued, just as it would soon go down on the Roman Republic. Crassus understands, and openly asserts, that the philosophically high will not be grasped by everyone and hence the appeal to emotions and the irrational elements of human nature will always be required.54 But the high should rule the low, by whatever means, rather than the other way around. As the discussion ends, we are aware that the participants will leave their privacy and leisure, return to the public arena, and shortly meet their deaths. We are led to believe by Cicero that the failure of elevated philosophical oratory has severe consequences. As we contemplate the whole, we see that De Oratore is a reflection upon the fundamental relationship between public speaking and writing on the one hand and philosophy and its very nature on the other. Whatever philosophy turns out to be, at Cicero’s hands it has been significantly purged of mere specialized technical treatment and the “negative dialectics” Cicero repeatedly attributes to Socrates, which he says caused the various permutations of school philosophies in his time. It also becomes clear that the orator at his best — and the answer to the question “What is an orator?” concerns the telos or perfection of the thing in question — is to be found in a philosophic statesman and not merely a lawyer or special pleader any more than a leisured, detached

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specialist.55 The true statesman, or orator, is always philosophically informed and that means in possession of an understanding of the whole of knowledge. However, both the philosopher and the statesman have to be armed with the ability to speak publicly because one cannot transcend the difference between the few and the many or between the higher and lower elements of human nature. It also becomes clear in De Oratore that even to defend a leisured and withdrawn philosophic class — which is a manifestation of the philosopher Cicero only hints about — the public manifestation of philosophers must be brought closer to the ideal orator and thereby forced into the arena of public speech. Therein we see Cicero’s distinctive defense of the philosophers before the polis. As with Plato, the philosopher must be forced to return to the cave. And De Oratore helps reinforce the explicit argument we have seen in De Officiis that only animals use war and bloodshed rather than words to gain victories. It is victories won by speech not by arms and internecine bloodletting that are necessary for a republic to prosper.56 The more philo­sophic the public deliberations, the better it is for a republic. But a republic ruled by philosophic statesmanship was only a future possibility in Cicero’s time, yet one worth the investment of hope. As a final thought, on the surface of De Oratore we can sort out the characters not only by their understanding of the nature of oratory but by their competing understandings of philosophy. Philosophy had different public “looks” to different individuals. Crassus is the great defender of oratory at its peak as being both a manifestation of philosophy and statesmanship. But he has a distinctive understanding of philosophy as either architectonic knowledge of all things (where there is a “marvelous agreement and harmony [that] underlies all branches of knowledge”)57 or as coming along historically late and ordering all prior studies, whether they be music, geometry, literature, poetry, oratory, or law.58 In neither instance does philosophy originate anything. Philosophy primarily orders the parts internally and crafts them into a whole. Antony moves around in his rhetorical depictions complete with recantations, but ultimately he has a totally unidealistic view of oratory and sees it as a natural knack that plays to the prejudices of listeners, enflames their emotions rather than being convincing, and all this without needing to possess knowledge in any deep sense. Antony in turn understands

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philosophy theoretically as knowledge of first causes and of the relations between gods and men together with a complete and whole theory of right living. For him, philosophy is a pure, theoretical combination of cosmology/theology and ethics.59 Antony has a view of philosophy shared ironically with the Aristophanes, who ridiculed Socrates, that is, philoso­ phy is knowledge of the heavens and earth. Caesar accepts a similar view of both oratory and philosophy. Sulpicius goes so far as to say he despises philosophy without giving his view of what it is.60 Despite these differences, the various characters all hold that oratory operates in the language of “everyday life.” Cicero hammers home this point repeatedly and in different ways. One should eschew the “holy secrets” of the nonpublic Epicureans.61 Thoughts must be articulated in “daylight.” Ideas must be articulated in “open view” in the setting of everyday custom, “in public scenes.”62 By doing so, by speaking in public, oratory “aids” wisdom; it becomes “truth in deed.”63 In effect, Cicero makes a point that will become thematic with Heidegger, who stresses that truth must come into “unconcealment,” it must “lie in open view.”64 By contrast, in its withdrawn, private, and leisured form, philosophy is depicted in De Oratore as secretive and “hidden,” or, as Heidegger would have it, “concealed.” The speech of the “garden philosophers” is never out in the daylight of the public space of everyday speech. Cicero gives the following advice: “Let us warn [the masters in question] to keep to themselves as a holy secret.”65 We have “open to view” versus “hidden,” “secretive,” and “remote.” We absolutely must recall Heidegger’s treatments of truth qua aletheia as a bringing into the open of unconcealment that which is initially hidden and concealed. This bringing into the open requires the public space (res publica) of shared everyday speech. Contrary to Heidegger, it requires a republic and a philosophy that speaks in everyday speech. It becomes clear that according to Cicero, even Socrates, who discoursed in the Agora, was ironically destructive by not helping to keep things publicly shared out in the open. Long before Nietzsche, Cicero himself announces that there was a “problem of Socrates.” Socrates, by inventing dialectic, and by becoming in his own way the father of logic (and of the multiple school philosophies that eventuated after his death), sent philosophy off in a direction that eventually undermined everyday speech.

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Cicero’s Antony admits that the orator needs knowledge, especially of the emotions, but also other knowledges beyond that. But ultimately Antony does not see this as philosophical wisdom; for him the knowledge needed is based on a form of common sense that need not be comprehensive and architectonic in the way that is implied by Crassus. It requires primarily a linkage of rhetoric with an everyday knowledge of psychology. In this regard, one may say of Antony’s offerings what Hei­ deg­ger said of Aristotle’s rhetoric: “Contrary to the traditional orientation, according to which rhetoric is conceived as the kind of thing we ‘learn in school,’ [Aristotle’s Rhetoric] must be taken as the first systematic hermeneutic of the everydayness of Being with one another. Publicness [the out in the open of the res publica], as the kind of Being which belongs to [everydayness] . . . not only has in general its own way of having a mood, but needs moods and ‘makes’ them for itself. It is into such a mood and out of such a mood that the orator speaks.”66 Cicero already understood this point enough to present not only the idealized speeches of a Crassus but also the everyday speeches of an An­ tony. Cicero pays deference to both the ideal and the real, the high and the low, the grand insight and the everyday. To stress only one side is the real mistake.

Nine

Cicero on Politics Balanced Government In the curriculum of Cicero’s time, political science was a subset of ethics,1 and this is true for Cicero. One important ramification of the link between ethics and politics is that at multiple points, Cicero admits, or quietly shows the attentive reader, that no amount of constitutional or legal tinkering can ever take the necessary place of education and character formation in addressing the problems intrinsic to political life. This is where modern republican thinkers part ways with Cicero, despite all his openings to modern themes. The central importance of character leads Cicero to conclude that a healthy republican regime requires an aristocracy, but by that he means a group of individuals defined by virtue, not simply by birth, wealth, or military prowess, a group that has virtue and a sense of honor that can be an object of emulation for the rest of the citizenry.2 When changes in the manner of living of the most prominent citizens occur, so does the nature of the state. Cicero says that this kind of change is even more important than the change in music that Plato saw as so significant as a determinant of political success.3 Education in consciously taught and argued principles 245

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is undoubtedly necessary, but in political life virtue is best inculcated through examples. We need habits and education; we especially need concrete examples to look to and emulate. No founder, or person bent on reform, should dispense with reflections on how to create this emulation. Any good regime needs to add an element of aristocracy — not based on mere heredity or wealth, but on excellence and virtue.4 The textbook idea Cicero is best known for is his constitutional doctrine of “balanced government.” For him, none of the three fundamentally decent regimes — monarchy, aristocracy, or popular rule — is stable. Each turns too quickly into its bad form — tyranny, oligarchy, and mob rule. Once a good regime decays, as it inevitably will in fairly short order, a vicious cycle necessarily ensues that keeps leading to civil war and alternating episodes of mob rule and tyranny. In Cicero’s political teaching, one always has to work to short-circuit this natural cycle. No historically inevitable “progress” will ever emancipate mankind from its inevitability. Likewise, once one regime replaces another — for example, even if a monarchy is removed by a wise aristocracy or the legitimate and moderate rule of the people — the movement toward the oscillation between mob rule and tyranny is also set in motion, and the vicious cycle is again impossible to break. Unfortunately, Cicero had ample concrete evidence that his theory was true.5 Once this cycle broke out at Rome, there was no possibility for a return of his beloved, primarily prescriptive, republic. The only possibility, small but still worthy of pursuit, was to try to introduce elements of balance that were weak or missing. It is very difficult to eliminate chance from political life; one can only try to immunize a regime from it as much as possible. But there is a natural cycle that cannot be ignored. Reform in the direction of balance is the best that is usually available to a philosophic statesman. Foundings are rare events. Even rarer is the possibility of a self-­ conscious philosophic founding. Undoubtedly Cicero hoped that more possibilities for philosophic foundings would present themselves after his death, and he hoped to inform those future founders. On the occasions when a conscious founding was out of the question, a philosophically informed statesman in Cicero’s cosmos had more limited options, but that statesmanship still represented the best of possibilities. Whether in an actual founding or in attempts at reform, one had to try to immunize a regime from the natural cycle Cicero depicts. The way

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to do that was through creating a “balanced” regime that integrates elements from all three of the pure, good regimes. One needed to introduce the regime elements that were missing in the present situation — whether that be monarchical/executive power, aristocratic, or popular — and attempt to construct a balance. This understanding shows us quite clearly the philosophical principle that informed and explains Cicero’s historical statesmanship, especially after his consulship. But by the time he set to work, Rome had neither the proper constituting institutions nor the necessary citizen virtue to survive. Cicero still tried, but he was doomed to failure. He arrived too late. Cicero agreed with the classical Greek premise that the ideally best regime requires the rule of one wise man or a small group of wise men. And thus he sees the potential virtue of monarchy and aristocracy, which, following Aristotle, he depicts as the rule of virtue, but only in the ideal. For example, it is sheer chance for a regime to get a wise king or a wise aristocracy that does not decay with the generations. A conscious founding should not therefore attempt to instill political wisdom through wise rulers alone, whether one or a few. Therefore the practically best regime leads us in the direction of a republic that must be a balanced regime —  balancing elements of wisdom, constitutionally sound executive leadership, and a class that publicly displays virtue for emulation and an element of popular rule and liberty. Arriving at the same understanding of the legitimacy of monarchy that Aristotle did, Cicero makes it clear that Rome’s period of successful monarchy existed at a time when the citizenry was made up of rustics. Once Tarquinius Superbus was removed as the last Roman king, after the alleged rape of Lucretia by his son, properly constituted executive power became a constitutional problem for Rome. The monarchical element was simply dismissed rather than appropriately balanced into the new regime. Hence the Roman Republic lacked properly constituted executive energy and authority. Rome’s republican hatred of monarchy was so great that after the overthrow of the monarchy, crafting a properly constituted executive was no longer possible for the Romans. At all the moments in the history of the Roman Republic, when energetic executive power became necessary there was the overpowering need to move to extraconstitutional means to secure the leadership needed.

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Rome could never properly “balance” the monarchical principle with its dominant aristocratic principle. And Rome never properly dealt with and balanced the necessary element of popular rule, either. This was especially true as Rome grew beyond being a small, agrarian republic. And so in time, Rome constantly found itself near to or in the midst of class warfare and civil war. Rome was never a balanced regime in Cicero’s sense. Cicero understood that even at its best, monarchy allows no liberty for the people, who are reduced to mere subjects rather than citizens. Hence monarchy can never provide the basis of the necessary combination of res publica (an open public space) and res populi (ownership by the people) that Cicero demands of a true republic. A stable and just regime is always a balanced republic that has both a public space and is the property of the people. But it also needs energetic, constitutionally limited executive authority and high models of virtue to emulate — a monarchical and an aristocratic element. Strictly speaking, there can be no public space where there are merely ruled subjects. One must grant liberty to all citizens for there to be the necessary public interactions to create a public space, and thereby a republic must also grant some degree of equality, on some level, if only legal, and can never do without an element of popular rule.6 One cannot completely equalize wealth and certainly not natural ability, but one can equalize legal rights.7 One sees early on in Cicero’s political teaching that the principle of “balance” is everywhere. One must balance the pure regime principles of the rule of the one, the few, and the many. One must balance wisdom and participation. One must balance the rights and prerogatives of the various classes. One must balance reason and tradition. And as we will see in Cicero’s “two fatherlands” doctrine, one must balance the universal natural law and particular political laws and their ancestral and traditional origins. The need for so many balancing acts points to the need for a balancer. As we have seen in chapter 8, ideally that balancer will be a philosopher/ orator/statesman. Such individuals will be rare. But that rare phenomenon is the model that should inform education — it is the model of a genu­ ine liberal arts education, which clearly becomes essential for a republic. As rare as such an individual will be, it is even rarer that such individuals will get a chance to make a founding from the beginning. Most

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often what is needed is to engage with an already existing res publica and continue to balance into the equation elements that correct the weakest aspects. This will always be a situated act. One size will never fit all. Today’s statesmanship will always point forward to future needs for further statesmanship. It is never possible to freeze into place a perfect balance. At one point in a regime’s history it may be necessary to enhance the aristocratic element of virtue; at another moment it may be necessary to defend the popular element. At one point it may be necessary to defend executive energy; at another point the executive may have expanded to dangerous levels and threaten popular rule. It is impossible to know before the fact what element of the balance will most need the support of philosophical statesmanship. And both the limitation and the glory of this needed statesmanship is that it will depend on eloquent oratory using public speech in a res publica. Certainly, one must work within what is given historically, but this balancing requires a degree of both conscious constituting of institutions and ongoing wise statesmanlike readjustments. For Cicero, good republican politics presupposes philosophy publicly deployed — without that deployment there is no solution to what we can call the universal political problem. The public deployment of philosophy is what is at stake throughout Cicero’s corpus. Given the ongoing balancing that is implied, Cicero’s philosopher should never be unemployed and should be, at a minimum, the teacher of citizens and statesmen: at least that must be a significant part of the philosopher’s public persona. There will never be a final solution to the politi­ cal problem, and thus there can be no end of history or of human history making, and certainly no end of philosophy as Cicero conceptualizes it.8 In any just and stable regime there must be elements of virtue and excellence publicly pursued, displayed, and appreciated. But reason is required to maximize the ideal combination and balance of wisdom, stability, virtue, liberty, and equality, all of which Cicero aims for in his future republic. Cicero’s political teaching was never intended to simply justify Roman experience either in the early Republic or the Republic of his lifetime. To the extent that his character Scipio in De Re Publica talks about the history of Rome as if it took the place of Plato’s ideal city in speech, it is clearly a sanitized and idealized depiction that we are given. It is a model for the future, not an apology for the past.

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Scipio the Younger, Cicero’s protagonist in his De Re Publica,9 argues that what makes a people a people is a shared conception of justice and the good,10 not purely natural things, such as race, language, or shared soil and territory — or even the familial basis in a shared hearth and ancestral rites.11 This is a position clearly laid out in Aristotle’s discussion of citizenship,12 and still manifest in the reasoning of the Declaration of Independence.13 For Scipio, and Cicero, the existence of a people, under the best of circumstances, must be consciously carved out by a founder who in the process forges them into a unity by opening for them the possibility of having a combination of a res publica and a res populi with a distinctive publicly shared and articulated conception of justice and the good.14 But Cicero’s teaching clearly shows that such efforts can never take place ex nihilo; they must be crafted out of a being-together that already exists. Cicero, also following Aristotle, makes clear that every true regime and people needs to be based on the rule of law, not on the rule of individuals, no matter how virtuous. The law becomes the basis of the primary equality among citizens — that is, equality before the law and equality of legal rights. Simple equality is unjust, because inequalities based on nature, effort, and virtue would be unjustly ignored. One can have equality and still have a proper respect for rank and hierarchy. One cannot have a public space and a people without a shared conception of the truth, justice, and the good. Relativism would destroy the possibility of a shared public space. The attempt to constantly deconstruct a people’s understanding of the good will lead to neither justice nor stability. Anarchy leads inevitably to injustice and the eventual oscillation between mob rule and tyranny. There is a crucial difference between de­ construction and statesmanlike rebalancing. Despite Scipio arguing that of the simple regimes, monarchy (rule of the one who is most virtuous) is ideally the best, for Cicero there is no liberty in a monarchy where the people are subjects, and hence there is no public realm, no balance, no ultimate stability. On the other hand, untutored and unlimited liberty almost immediately turns into mob rule, to be replaced quickly by perhaps a transitional oligarchy but certainly by eventual tyranny. That is the message from Cicero’s doctrine of balanced government. Cicero shares the classical Greek view of the majority. It was assumed that the majority would always be poor, more or less propertyless,

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and uneducated. In turn, the majority would always be dependent, easily manipulated, and undisciplined. Thus unlimited liberty for such a majority would turn inevitably into excess, lawlessness, and mob rule. Yet an element of liberty and popular rule was necessary. The other major problem with the majority who are poor and uneducated is that they believe that the only real basis of law is convention and agreement.15 Hence they do not believe there is any higher check on the collective will.16 It was one of the great and noble aims of modern commercial republicanism, and modern technological science, that the circumstances be created where the majority could have property, education, and thereby greater political liberty. Unfortunately, the modern approach bought this good at the expense of no longer publicly tutoring liberty in virtue, ultimately destroying the place of the genuine aristocratic element of a republican balance. I would maintain this was not a necessary either/or choice — or at the very least, it is no longer an either/or choice. The modern aim of providing the means to include more individuals in republican government was noble, but the means were not thought through completely. We have now seen with more than a little clarity the downside of the modern project. A new balance must be constructed. For Cicero, liberty always needed to be tutored by virtue, which in practical terms means it should be kept subservient to a code of honor that renders citizens willing to act in the public space as good models for emulation. Ultimately, emulation of virtuous deeds is the only reliable check to keep liberty from turning into license.17 If Cicero’s understanding is correct, relying on fear, using primarily strong punishments, will by itself be of limited value in providing the restraints on liberty that are needed to avoid instability. Reliance on fear merely makes undisciplined and licentious behavior furtive, thereby forming all manner of bad habits. This in turn inclines, if it does not actively force, individuals to act out their liberty primarily outside the view of the public space. It also creates a situation where the internal human being is at odds with his or her external actions. These various forms of dissonance cannot stand forever and are never helpful to genuine republican government. Cicero keeps coming back to the fact that education must supplement even the best constitution — and this is undoubtedly why education was intended to be one of the primary subjects of one of the last three

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books of the De Legibus, which have been lost. It is the central tutelary function of virtue and the need for some element of consciously deployed reason in politics that makes Cicero an overt proponent of aristocracy, but not unless it is balanced by other elements, both popular and royal.18 Aristocracy as a regime, like monarchy, unjustly limits liberty and equality before the law, so it too must be balanced. If one truly understands the link between the aristocratic principle and virtue, one sees the need to limit the hereditary principle and maximize the chance for the emulation of actual virtue and not just social pretensions backed by no more than elaborate and stilted manners or showy displays of luxury. Cicero’s political teaching clearly attempts to undermine the hereditary principle; in his specific rendition of laws, it was only former officeholders like magistrates and counsels who were to have access to Cicero’s newly constituted Senate presented in book 3 of his De Legibus. There were to be no hereditary members of the Senate. This was an amended and extended version of Sulla’s “reforms” that opened Senate membership, albeit far less than Cicero proposes. And it represented an attack before the fact on Caesar’s packing of the Senate with the mob that had no claims to birth or virtue. Cicero’s suggested rebalancing of the actual Roman constitution disinherited the hereditary, old, patrician class that was so intransigent about reform in Cicero’s time. Cicero’s balanced regime required elements of all three of the good regimes: monarchy, aristocracy, and popular rule. This “balanced” regime is not to be confused with the “mixed” regime of Aristotle. Aristotle’s “polity” explicitly mixes two “bad” regimes, oligarchy and democracy. Aristotle’s polity, by mixing the regimes of the rich and the poor, thereby empowers economic classes, making the mixture in Cicero’s eyes always on the verge of civil war, which is unacceptable. Cicero mixes principles like virtue and popular liberty along with executive energy, the latter of which Aristotle substantially ignores.19 It is not economic classes that are balanced by Cicero but the executive energy possible in monarchy and the wisdom and virtue possible in a genuine, nonhereditary aristocracy. And finally, there is a commitment to the republican liberty of all citizens to have access to the public space.20 Too many of these elements are missing in Aristotle’s discussion of polity, most notably energetic executive authority and a properly “high” rather than “middling” understanding of republican virtue.21

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Given the importance of virtue, the balance Cicero demands will continue only as long as the aristocratic element remains strong and publicly committed to virtue in both word and deed. This commitment requires far more in the way of virtue and wisdom than the “middling virtue” Aristotle demands for his polity. In this regard, Aristotle is closer to the instincts of modern republicanism, and therefore he is not the best antidote for its moral sicknesses. Cicero’s balanced regime aims at a morally higher human being than does Aristotle’s polity. Our present is not the time to be lowering our moral sights. A different balance is now needed. In De Officiis, directly opposing avant le lettre the wisdom of Machiavelli, Cicero argues that love, manifested for example by patriotism, friendship, and longing for personal admiration and esteem, is always more effective in governing than fear. Love, as Cicero sees it, presupposes an element of virtue — we love and admire primarily the virtuous and the good more even than we love what is simply our own. But if the love of the good and the love of one’s own can be combined, it is a powerful conjunction. I would suggest that this political psychology (which also admits the existence of natural sociality among men) is more powerful than the modern political psychology that descends from Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and even the somewhat more expansive teachings of Montesquieu, Hume, and Smith based on “sympathy.” Like Cicero, Machiavelli wanted greater executive energy and authority than Aristotle, but unlike Cicero he was willing to divorce it from a primary public attachment to and balancing of aristocratic elements. One should notice, since Cicero nowhere supports the principle of heredity, that like Machiavelli he too longs for a “new” prince, a new executive. But Cicero’s executive authority is not based primarily on martial power and fear. Our reflections on De Officiis make clear that Cicero wanted an execu­ tive authority that was not primarily militaristic or warrior-based. Herein it is Machiavelli who is the reactionary. Cicero was looking to someone like Washington, Hamilton, Madison, or Lincoln (with a significant element of philosophical statesmanship added) as his exemplar, not to Alexander, Caesar, or modern “new” princes like Napoleon, Stalin, or Hitler.22 Cicero reduces the need for fear in a republic, even limiting it as an element of his civil religion. Fear was certainly an overpowering element of the actual politics of the Roman Republic. Execution, proscription,

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and majority mutiny demanding various reappropriations of property —  the latter usually egged on by the tribunes — were the primary checks and balances in the Roman system. In that regard, we of the media age still have our own tribunes by the thousands — most are self-appointed. The political reliance on fear led the Romans to an ongoing politics of resentment and the desire for revenge added to the greed and personal desire for fame that motivated the primary actors during Cicero’s lifetime. Rome’s constituting principles could not contain this foaming cauldron of passion; there could never have been enough dams and dikes to channel it, as Machiavelli wished. Cicero’s political science aims to limit these disfiguring passions. He relies on far more than the cleverly constructed barriers and conduits of Machiavelli to channel the unleashed passion and self-interest that ruled Roman politics. Machiavelli still wanted Roman passion; he thought he was clever enough to manipulate it through institutional tinkering —  “dams and dikes.” And so he eschewed any aristocratic modification of behavior and avoided all attempts at internal psychological constraints and harmony in the soul. Reason and Tradition On the rhetorical surface, Cicero would have us believe that he has philo­ sophically made a break with the logic of what he repeatedly refers to as his beloved Plato’s teaching in the Republic.23 Plato’s republic, we are told, was not only too small, it was too much of a “shadowy [product] of the imagination.”24 Cicero seems to make Machiavelli’s point about “imagined republics” as opposed to the “effectual truth.” Siding with Machi­ avelli and the moderns, Cicero definitely wants the larger republics sought by the moderns. If we are to find a balance between liberty and equality, they require the breathing room that a larger republic implies. But Cicero still wants a public space dependent upon the centrality of publicly fostering virtue. In his De Re Publica, Cicero claims that, unlike Plato, he will not present an ideal regime. Through his protagonist Scipio, Cicero argues that what he presents instead of a philosophical ideal, a regime in speech, is the historical Roman Republic as if it were the ideal regime. However,

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it becomes clear that the Roman Republic is presented not with historical accuracy, but it is idealized. But as with Plato’s Socrates, we do watch the regime come into being as it is traced from its founding. In the beginning of De Legibus, Cicero points us to the distinction between “history” and “poetry.” He tells us that different principles apply. We are told that the one is based on the principle of truth, the other on pleasure.25 Quintus and Atticus call on Cicero to actually write history, either from the beginnings or about the present. But instead he says he will discuss civil law, but he then launches into a discussion of the foundations of law in either a creator God or nature.26 He blurs the distinction and even tries to proceed as if the two phrases and the two bases are the same. But he presents the matter as if the discovery of this universal law is by reason or philosophy.27 As part of the proem to this discussion of civil law, which seems to posit a rational, natural law that applies to all men, Cicero makes repeated observations, following Socrates in the Phaedrus, that one should not inquire too critically into traditions. Poets understand this because they realize that the same relation to truth is not demanded of them as is required of those writing history.28 The actual opening of the De Legibus refers us to what is presented by Quintus, Cicero’s brother, as the Marian Oak, a legendary tree that is in the vicinity of where the three discussants are walking. But this tree in fact turns out to be from a poem written by Cicero when he was a young man. We then get the assertion that trees planted in the imagination live forever.29 Things live in men’s thoughts longer than in nature.30 By this means we get to Cicero’s “two fatherlands” doctrine, but it should be noted it takes on several meanings. There is the city membership we share with God and the earthly city.31 But there is also the universal city ruled by natural law and the concrete cities ruled largely by ancestral traditions. And the metaphor is even used to point out that Cicero and Quintus belong both to Arpinum (which is ancestrally closest to them, and is the setting of the De Legibus) and to the city of Rome.32 It is with this as background that we should notice that Cicero’s De Legibus moves from a discussion of universal law in books 1 and 2 to a discussion in book 3 of concrete laws that are of ancestral origin. Cicero argues that the concrete laws he prescribes are the laws for the ideal regime of Scipio in De Re Publica. But that ideal regime was a cleansed

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version of Rome. Not surprisingly, therefore, the laws for this “ideal” regime are an emendation of prior Roman laws. Thus even those customs that go back to the clan-related laws of the religion of the hearth are kept, including laws regarding property, its sale, and the splitting up of hearths, all of which had become embedded in Roman civil law. For all the discussion of a rational/divine/natural law, we never jettison tradition. We never force the particular to submit to the tyranny of the universal. The universal fatherland is never intended to replace the particular fatherlands; it can, however, be a guide to reform. To return to Cicero’s De Re Publica, by allegedly presenting the actual Roman Republic and its history as an ideal, Cicero seems to give priority to a particular ancestral tradition over any natural law of reason. But the republic his character Scipio depicts is clearly an idealized picture of actual Rome and its history; it is closer to poetry than history. Aside from that, the balanced regime Cicero ends up praising is neither the republic of Scipio’s time nor that of any particular historical moment from the actual Roman past. What Cicero is doing is engaging in reflections on the necessary relation between reason and tradition in any healthy republic. In the end, he will show the necessity of tradition, but he will side with reason more than a somewhat similar republican proponent of tradition, Edmund Burke.33 Cicero says specifically that what he is doing is projecting a regime for the future.34 He is not simply justifying the present or the past. But the past, and knowledge of it, is important and necessary to projecting a possible future. Even the ideal must grow out of a particular situated foundation. The ideal does not stand alone and in isolation. The mind comes to the ideal dialectically, not directly, and thus it must pass through reflection on a particular tradition. That is what follows from the method explicitly adopted by Cicero. There is a necessary relation between reason and tradition, as there is between philosophy and the situated phenomena that show themselves. The proper temporal relationship of political philosophy, and that of statesmanship, involves the binding together of past, present, and future. In the process one synthesizes reason and tradition. Reason must accept the situated thrownness of its present, recall and preserve essential elements of its past, and project on the basis of that past a possible future that represents an improvement on the present. That is precisely the

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status of Cicero’s political teaching. As political practice evolves, and reason continues to reflect upon it, it will project an evolving ideal — which is unlikely to be in any hard sense an inevitable, progressive ideal. We should keep in mind that throughout his corpus Cicero makes it clear that the operative past for him is both Roman and Greek — so we must realize that he is not attempting to project off of a merely Roman past. He is accepting a larger tradition than Rome’s. In that larger tradition one finds a mode of transcendence of what is more narrowly only one’s own. We today still have the same possibility, and our tradition is far larger and more diverse than Cicero’s. We therefore have more possibilities. Cicero also shows that in his opinion, contrary to Aristotle, political science cannot be dealt with in abstraction from cosmology any more than in abstraction from ethics, psychology, or theology. His De Re Pub­ lica opens with a report that two suns have been seen, which two would need concord and agreement, the same as two consuls.35 Scipio says that he does not approve of celestial or cosmological speculation. But it is immediately observed that knowledge of astronomy, for example of eclipses, has saved several generals who could explain the phenomena to frightened soldiers.36 However, the character Laelius diverts them away from cosmology and calls for Scipio to reflect on the nature of the best regime instead. But the issue of cosmology returns in the reflections in Scipio’s dream that ends De Re Publica. De Legibus begins with reflections on the relation of the divine as creator of nature and man and how they remain related after the creation. And the majority of the concrete laws we confront in book 3 of that text deal with religion. Apparently the city is always, on the phenomenological level, in some fashion a divine city and a religious city. Hence the study of political science cannot be abstracted from cosmology or theology. Cicero’s natural law teaching appears,37 on the surface, to reproduce the same relation between the ideal and real in Plato’s Republic and Laws. But in the process Cicero proves the same point Plato makes quietly in his Republic: every actual regime will only be more or less ideal, more or less just. Plato has his own ways of showing why the ideal republic depicted in the Republic can never concretely come to be.38 All particular regimes will always show some slippage from the universal, but without the universal there is no way to judge concrete regimes. To this must be

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added that the universal comes into sight in the first place by reflections about concrete particulars.39 Even the best possible regime would have to evolve over time. To strive to actualize the universal city completely would only lead to despotism; particular reality never yields voluntarily or completely. The very effort would destroy all liberty, all interactions among equal citizens. A rash move to immediately establish the universal would thereby destroy the very possibility of the existence of public spaces — it would undermine the very possibility of republican government where one must accept spontaneous outcomes that derive from citizen interaction. A fanatical attempt at actualizing the universal always yields an unhealthy relation between the universal and the particular and allows an opening for the unscrupulous and tyrannical to short-circuit participation. Cicero is suggesting, perhaps more than Plato, that the ideal can only present itself to the mind in time through comparison with concrete examples, not in some direct and unmediated, purely theoretical fashion. By reflecting on the evolution of an actual, historically successful regime, we first come to see the contours of the ideal not in some utterly detached theoretical staring but by thinking about how to avoid an actual regime’s limitations. We respect the concrete and the traditional, but not with an eye to some blind genuflection that closes itself off from rational reform. The evolution of an actual regime is what cues the mind to think, to think “up” toward the universal and to think “forward” to what may be possible in the future. This linkage of the ideal to the temporal and to the evolution of a concrete regime — especially if this regime is a primarily unique and successful one — shows the limits of what reason can accomplish. It shows that reason must always stand in its present, projected simultaneously back, forward, and qualitatively “up.” This is the political transcendence of which reason is capable. Obviously it has it limits and points toward modest expectations. Cicero’s Laelius says, and his Scipio agrees, that Cato the Elder, no great lover of philosophy, albeit beloved by Romans, thought that the wisdom of Rome was greater than that of other regimes because it was not the wisdom of a single individual, such as Lycurgus for Sparta, but the collective ancestral wisdom of many Romans over many years.40 Scipio presumes to demonstrate this with his depiction of Roman history. The point seems to be that something like natural growth can both inform and

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supplement reason. In this fashion, Cicero presents for inspection an idea more frequently associated with Burke. But again, Cicero leans more toward reason; Burke leans more toward autonomous prescription.41 At one point Cicero asserts that the conscious fabrication politics needs is derived “from the deepest mysteries of philosophy.”42 That mystery is a form of the “weaving” that is political philosophy. One weaves together all knowledge, as Cicero argues in De Oratore. One also simultaneously weaves together past and future, reason and faith, reason and tradition. And one weaves together equality, liberty, stability, and virtue. One does not stand in midair and will ex nihilo in some mere universalistic fashion.43 Weaving and balancing are of the nature of Cicero’s understanding. They are of the nature of his understanding of both philosophy and statesmanship and why they must come together. Cicero is a rationalist Burke. By this I mean that Cicero’s thought is an indication of the thrown and situated nature of his version of rationalism — nonetheless, I think it is fair to say that he has greater faith in reason than Burke, and less in pure tradition. Reason as dialectical must cull what is already present. Its projecting must be a thrown projecting of possibilities out of a given past. This is a way of saying that reason is epistemologically dependent upon the city; the city is equally dependent if it wishes to perfect itself as much as possible. Through its “weaving” and “balancing,” reason links the past and future rather than projecting ideals ex nihilo in the constructivist fashion of modern political philosophy, which made an opposition of reason and tradition, and also of reason and faith. On these modern terms, reason can win only by unhinging itself completely from tradition and faith — in fact by destroying both — leaving itself standing alone. But at that point, reason stands just precisely nowhere. Reason thereby plunges itself into nihilism. As I have repeatedly argued, Cicero’s approach is indicative of the appropriately temporal nature of holistic, architectonic, political philosophy qua first philosophy. The alternative is to accept modern constructivism or to believe that one can simply link the eternal and the temporal directly in any given present moment, bypassing openness to the past and future, bypassing all dialectical mediation, bypassing history, tradition, and faith. Cicero is neither a constructivist nor a proponent of detached theoretical staring at universals directly grasped and ready for application.

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Just as we saw Cicero attend to the subtle relation between reason and faith in his discussions on natural theology, while accepting the primacy of reason, he does the same in his political teaching in relation to tradition. Despite the bow to the tradition of Rome, it is clear that what Cicero is doing is projecting a once and future republic, the precise concrete venue for which he could not predict, although he had to know it would not be Rome. Cicero is clear that his beloved republic could not be retrieved.44 Rome had its chance and lost its republic. All of this balancing and weaving fits in with the distinction between history and poetry.45 Cicero’s Scipio engages in more than a few elements of poetry in his telling of Rome’s history. As such, Scipio’s account is clearly a combination of logos and mythos. It is not just that this kind of combination is rhetorically helpful from the perspective of public persuasion. Because of its unavoidably situated nature, there is a necessary element of poiesis in all public logos. It cannot be purged by some autonomous logic or epistemology. It is always phenomenologically embedded in all public speech, which always already shares a public space, and that space exists before the fact in all attempts at autonomous logic and epistemology. Thus the philosopher need feel no guilt in combining poiesis and logos. This is not an either/or, as Derrida asserts in his treatments of Plato.46 If in fact Plato is the better poet, it is undoubtedly he who understands the full ramifications of this issue better than Cicero.47 Cicero, however, understands the importance of writing down and preserving in the memory of a nation things that will last longer than they do in nature.48 Writing and national memory are juxtaposed with the ephemeral quality of the things in nature that come into being and pass away: there is at least a sempiternity that goes along with writing in a particular public space. This understanding is why Cicero is perhaps the better republican than Plato. To gain longevity, let alone sempiternity, at the very least something must be presented and preserved in public speech, or it will pass away out of public consciousness. The particular speeches may be forgotten or die out from time to time and need to be brought anew into being in poetic speech in a public space. It is this need that is eternal, and it requires repeatability. In the history of Rome offered in Cicero’s De Re Publica, the character Scipio deals with the status of the founder of Rome and whether he is mythical or nonmythical. Scipio debunks the myth that Romulus was

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born of Mars and that when he died he became a god. Scipio accepts the undoubtedly mythical Romulus as an actual, concrete founder; he accepts his reported deeds as real, and Romulus is elevated to the status of a grand, while nonetheless concrete, historical figure without divine origins.49 Apparently, there is no need to divinize the founders. Similar to what we have already remarked regarding De Legibus, in De Re Publica, as part of the presentation of Romulus, an assertion is made, repeating one made by Socrates in the Phaedrus, that one should not debunk all myths, because reason will be incapable of replacing them with something else that is even remotely as useful.50 But some myths should be debunked. It is not surprising, however, that Cicero has Scipio end his treatment in De Re Publica with a dream/myth — taken loosely from Stoic cosmology — which can be compared with the Myth of Er at the end of Plato’s Republic. Logos and mythos have a complicated relationship that parallels the relationship between reason and tradition; one should not presume to make that relationship go away either.51 The similar complicated relationship exists in the very foundations of political philosophy itself that needs to weave and balance and present itself in a public space where understanding on some level by more than a few is required. This is not an argument against reason and in the name of conscious public lying. It is an epistemological necessity. Cicero’s explicit teaching throughout is that active civic engagement trumps detached, private contemplation as the best life. We have seen that this is for the sake of both philosophy and politics. The argument about the priority of the active life of the statesman52 to that of private contemplation was primarily deployed against the Epicureans. It also works against the skepticism of the New Academy, which would undermine wholehearted civic engagement.53 But that argument seems to be countered by Scipio’s dream. It is the Stoics who make engaged statesmanship a plausible end for life, if not quite an entirely choice-worthy one. In Cicero’s De Legibus, it is the Stoic cosmological underpinnings of the cosmological natural law to which he turns for rhetorical support, and he says explicitly that he hopes the New Academy skeptics will leave that teaching alone, because they can only dissolve commitment to the city if they attack it. It is interesting to see the Stoic teaching, the one that is taken apart in works like De Finibus, reemerge as rhetorically useful in both De Re Publica and De Legibus. This is because of the bow now being made to tradition.

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The “Dream of Scipio” has significant elements of Stoic cosmology. But when Cicero outlines his civil religion in De Legibus, unlike the Stoic God who is incorporated entirely within nature, Cicero argues for a God closer to his natural theology, who is a creator who existed prior to the cosmos, who is also an upholder of the logos of the cosmos, and also a providential God who is aware of every individual, knows not only their deeds but their intentions.54 Unlike the Stoic God, the God of Cicero’s De Legibus has to be transcendent yet somehow in nature as its upholding, ordering principle.55 Scipio’s dream in De Re Publica is attributed to his exhaustion and the fact that its substance is a carryover from the topics discussed before going to bed — that is, it is attributed to naturalistic causes. And it is a dream, not an actual cosmic journey, as with Er in Plato’s Republic. Because it is a dream, there is no death and resurrection as with the Myth of Er, wherein there is resurrection from the dead qua reincarnation, and a doctrine that only the philosopher avoids cosmic chance, for he alone chooses his next life well. There is no reincarnation or resurrection in Scipio’s dream, just eternal contemplation for the individual soul 56 who truly deserves it, that is, a great philosophic statesman. In his dream, Scipio meets up with his dead father and his grandfather, Scipio the Elder. They meet in the center of the heavens. From that central position they can contemplate the eternal beauty and order of the cosmos, a cosmos ruled by an indwelling primary principle that, in Stoic fashion, is the logos of the cosmos, which is beautiful, orderly, and eternal.57 Again, this is at odds with the theology of book 1 of De Legibus where God is posited as closer to pure soul qua mind and will — where mind is presented as the first mover that is itself unmoved. In the dream in De Re Publica, it appears that what one contemplates eternally is the visible cosmos, not God qua mind and will. One contemplates along with other former humans. After inspecting the beauty of the cosmos, Scipio then looks down on the lowly and small earth. Seen from his cosmic height it becomes clear how small earth and earthly deeds are and how ephemeral and insignificant is the small speck that is Rome. As a result, the deeds and honors gained within Rome are shown to be cosmically insignificant. This could lead one to quit active political life, as the Epicureans do, except that it is precisely statesmanlike deeds on earth that get one the reward of contemplation in heaven. The reward, however, is one that presumably a

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detached and contemplative philosopher would want. The philosopher, like the statesman, must eschew contemplation on earth and engage politically to earn the eternal reward of contemplation as the highest good in the afterlife. One engages in the statesmanlike deeds that normally gain one earthly fame and immortality with the new purpose of gaining an eternity of philosophic contemplation after death in the mode of a grand detached spectator of old. In that fashion, philosophy and statesmanship seem to rise triumphant over the pursuit of mere political glory and honor, but not on earth. The implication is that any true statesman must be a philosopher who longs for a nonearthly eternality more than earthly immortality. Every true philosopher must devote himself to the well-­being of his fellow men, but the reward is itself philosophic contemplation, which Cicero throughout his corpus seems to attack as an earthly goal. Cicero’s Scipio is allowed to conclude, in Stoic fashion, that it is virtue itself that is the reward on earth, not personal glory, which is almost always conferred by those who lack virtue. Our greatest personal reward lies after death. As part of the theology of De Legibus, we see in contradistinction that one of the necessary teachings is that the greatest men will be recognized on earth as divine.58 This opens a future space for something like Christian saints, but the referent here is clearly philosophic statesmen who weave and balance, project the future, and then gain fame after their death if they are successful. It is interesting to note that, in his own time, and thereafter, Plato was called “the divine Plato.” If we add the yield from Cicero’s De Re Publica, such individuals also gain eternal contemplation.59 All of this is in stark contrast to the instinct of our time, which is to debunk all greatness and make it seem leaden and pedestrian, and then to apply various permutations of the old saw “No man is a hero to his valet.” It is not just that no man is a hero to his valet; in our time, one is forced to conclude that no one should be a hero to anyone, or, presumably, aspire to be one through great deeds. As was true in Cicero’s time, we need to find a way to encourage and inspirit the brightest and best and bring them into our public space.60 Therein their souls will be fulfilled and the public will gain examples worthy of emulation. The public space in our time is being assaulted from all directions. The attacks come from “below,” by consumerist individualism and on the Internet and in other virtual spaces that are not public — that is, do not

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require us to go out and share a true space actively and with concrete others — and from “above,” by modern nation-states that presume to administer bureaucratically to individual needs, but in the process remove citizens from sharing a public space with finite others face-to-face where they can actively and concretely deal with their lives together within a shared space. The longing for global institutions merely exacerbates this tendency to the bureaucratic destruction of public spaces from above. We need again to understand the locus of both the republican and the human. Cicero, Property, and Modernity? There have been past scholars who have painted Cicero as something of a modern.61 There are reasons for this assumption that we must now consider more explicitly. Cicero does open some spaces that are similar to ones opened by modernity. But modernity ultimately aims at the abolition of the political; Cicero aims at its defense. Modernity conceptualizes the core political issues as capable of being reduced to issues that can be dealt with in nonpolitical terms. The good is depicted as a long and comfortable life where ultimately the central political issues can be confronted and solved by technology, medicine, and/or rational bureaucratic administration. Cicero’s philosophical teaching rejects this reduction of the political to nonpolitical treatment. He also dismisses the reduced modern understanding of the good. It is a much different thing to say the principal issue in life, and for the political, is the understanding and pursuit of the good. Then the political is more than the mere efficient “administration of things” where there is no need for a public space for concrete interaction. Even so, there are reasons for seeing Cicero as moving in a modern direction or opening potentially modern spaces.62 Cicero makes the case that any just regime must take into account the liberty of the populace, a liberty he nonetheless will not allow to be unlimited and that he demands be played out publicly, not privately. And he pays deference to the need for equality, limited significantly to equality before the law. He also sees the political community as a public possession and not the private possession of some few. But his discussions of property, labor, and commerce are what move him most clearly in the modern direction.

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In De Officiis, Cicero makes an argument that a primary function of the political community is the preservation of property.63 He muddies the waters elsewhere by seeming to argue that the origin of the political community is in fact our natural sociality, rather than a weakness, such as the need to generate and preserve our property. But the political centrality of the issue of property will not go away in his teaching, and no other premodern gives it the same primacy. Cicero goes on to make clear that there are various sources of private property, including first occupancy, conquest (a sanitized word for pillage and plunder), barter, trade, and due process of law. Upon its founding, the political community makes all of these conventionally equal and defends them — even if they are not ethically equal — and Cicero sees the ethical issue quite clearly.64 For Cicero, it is not the origin of property that legitimizes it as private property (as with Locke’s labor theory, which makes plundered property illegitimate) but the end for which it is needed, the natural need for self-preservation together with the need for leisure to pursue philoso­ phy, virtue, and politics. We legitimize private property as a necessary means, and it is this understanding that makes it legitimate to give the conventional imprimatur of the political community to property, which originates in various ways. This is a concession to nature, a simultaneous concession to both the low (need) and the high (the perfection of our natural gifts). Cicero is quietly accepting the modern, Machiavellian point that the foundations of even the best political societies have been almost always harsh and based on conquest. Hence the foundations of the high cannot, on a variety of levels, forget the low. The origins of most property, if traced back far enough, implicate harshness, frequently pillage and plunder, deceit, or even, at best, the accident of first occupancy. But it is on those harsh foundations that every grand edifice is erected and every true chance for excellence and justice is built. Trying to ethically purge the origins over which one has no control will only make the pursuit of justice impossible; it will unleash the politics of envy, resentment, and revenge. It is the pursuit of excellence in the present and future that takes priority. The Lockean basis of private property legitimizes property on the basis of its origin alone. It abstracts from the ends that private property helps advance. Beyond obliterating the high, it opens the door to such

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inflammatory discussions as monetary (usually) reparations for peoples historically oppressed to be paid by the descendants of those who did not gain their wealth through the benefits of their own labor, but in fact from the oppression of those other peoples. This line of thinking could go much further than merely giving standing to the descendants of former slaves. Again, it opens the door to the politics of resentment and revenge more generally, which was at the heart of what finally brought down the Roman Republic. We should not be entirely blind to the future consequences of such acts.65 They do not lead to justice; instead they make it impossible. Even without theoretically constructing some halfway house between allegedly rational and conventional property, Cicero argues that limits are needed to the amount of private property one holds in order to avoid the luxury and decadence that destroys virtue. The idea of such limits is foreign to us, but it should not be foreign to the discussion of republicanism. I am not implying the government should enforce limits and engage in redistribution schemes. The limits should grow out of a proper understanding of choice-worthy ends and from the rationally informed preferences of individuals concerned with happiness and virtue in a society that is allowed to use its public space to set loose such tools as shame as one of the softest supports for virtue and liberty. This understanding informs Cicero’s view that there are such things as “wrongful gains,” which are based on deceit and misrepresentation, and even what he calls “sharp practices.”66 Here is another foreign idea for us. The pursuit of property unhinged from a sense of shame and a notion of the limits to the wealth one needs for excellent action and thought has ceased to be supportive of contemporary commercial republicanism. But what all of this argument points to is the need to reintegrate into our balancing an aristocratic element. It does not point toward bureaucratically enforced redistribution, which in the process destroys public spaces. We now live in a world that has increased the wealth of the majority more than was ever possible in the premodern world. We can remain consistent with our tradition of modern commercial republicanism by using reason to rethink the place of private property in a republican context, not by using reason to simply negate private property or by making redistributive justice the end all of justice.67 For Cicero, private property is needed because of our natural need for self-preservation, but the amount we need is primarily limited by a

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ranking of the ends of our actions: How does private property help or impair our pursuit of the good? Private property, emancipated from the idea of ends, eventually becomes unlimited property as an end in itself and leaves us to construct all manner of convoluted arguments for why unlimited property and bizarre levels of luxury produce the public good and private happiness. This will necessarily bring counterarguments for enforced redistribution. The debate on these terms — totally unfettered free markets versus bureaucratic redistribution — has become increasingly dysfunctional. The choice is not between unlimited free markets and some more or less virulent form of socialism, but between commercial republicanism ethically unlimited and commercial republicanism limited by an understanding of rational ends freely chosen by citizens who see the necessary place of virtue in a republic. The limits are to be sought in philosophical and ethical education, and codes of honor, that enforce rational ends and natural limits on the desires, not in redistribution. The bureaucratic ethic of redistribution merely empowers and emboldens new tribunes and unleashes new forms of despotism. Not only have we forgotten the place of virtue in the republican equation, but under the sway of modern constructivism we have become arrogant and overestimate what self-conscious reason can accomplish, and thus we have no understanding of the almost inviolable law of unintended consequences. Cicero would be no socialist — socialism implies reason can accomplish more than it can — even though unlimited greed would leave him saddened and concerned for the well-being of any republic awash in such greed. He would certainly wish to be rid of preposterous myths like the invisible hand. (It is not only in religion that we encounter superstition.) He would be in favor of rethinking and reformulating commercial republicanism itself.68 To return to Cicero’s De Re Publica, his Scipio praises Romulus for founding Rome where he did, inland and not by the sea, because cities raised by the sea become overly and improperly commercial and that leads to a level of idle luxury, which undermines virtue and thereby the republic as a whole. Yet Cicero’s Scipio also makes an argument against pillage and plunder.69 By disparaging pillage and plunder, he has mythically ignored how actual Rome became large, strong, and wealthy. And by simultaneously showing the classical contempt for commerce, Scipio

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would leave Rome incapable of generating the wealth needed to be large and great, or for its citizens to in fact have the leisure needed to be citizens rather than merely subjects.70 In De Officiis, Cicero, seemingly in his own name, is more consistent than his character Scipio in De Re Publica in seeing large-scale commerce as a “liberal” occupation and as a livelihood suitable for a “gentleman” —  again, a position that the Aristotle who made not just usury but commerce “unnatural” did not accept. There is an unavoidable choice: one must choose commerce, slavery, or imperial plunder as the means of generating the necessary wealth for the leisure essential for republican citizenship. The paradox is that commerce can also undermine republican citizenship by leading away from the needed public space. This points to the great balancing act needed in our time. Cicero goes a long way in his own name toward explicitly taming the warlike instinct of the Romans, and trying to turn his republic away from war-based imperial expansion and conquest, in order to focus on domestic concerns. His universal, natural law teaching and his just war teaching both limit the legitimacy of war and both point men toward commerce as the most just means to generate wealth, the same as the moderns teach. To focus the political away from external, imperial expansion and bring it back toward the domestic as the primary arena for the political was Cicero’s project. But for all his stress on commerce, the primary domestic concern clearly should be the inculcation of virtue and wisdom and the love and pursuit of widespread political debate in a public space. Despite the bow to commerce, the political must take priority over the economic. On Executive Power in a Republic Cicero’s understanding of the way in which the ideal always grows out of reflection on the practice of an evolving, successful regime is applicable to our thoughts on the place of executive authority in a republic. I would suggest that it must be an evolving discussion. In this regard, what we learn from the Roman experience and the thought of Cicero is the need for properly constituted executive authority in a balanced regime. But this is an area where Cicero simply did not have enough experience to reach a properly balanced conclusion. He did not have the historical experiences

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of both medieval monarchy and modern republican executives. However, it is Cicero’s method of applying reason to evolving practices that we should follow in making our adaptations and balancings. Rome itself was moved in its thinking about executive power by its antipathy to kings. Cicero never really thinks his way out from under this Roman antipathy; consequently his thinking in De Legibus never gets much beyond dividing executive power and limiting its duration. Rome’s failure to find an appropriate place for executive power made it impossible to effectively balance its hidebound Senate and the popular forces led by the tribunes. What emerged was a witches’ brew of the tribunes manipulating the passions of the unemployed urban masses and then the militarists turning to extraconstitutional means to pursue their own personal glory. A proper republican executive can tame both of these vices. However, when a republican executive becomes almost exclusively a tribune, the republic is probably lost, especially when executive power has expanded exponentially. What passes for the supreme executive in Cicero’s political writings is still divided into two consuls serving simultaneously, each for only one year. He retains an “executive branch” that has multiple magistrates who ultimately remain “beneath” his consuls, but the relationship between these magistrates and the consuls remains ambiguous, and the ability for the consuls to control the magistrates seems limited. Cicero’s “executive branch” does not eventuate in anything like the modern executive’s supremacy over his cabinet appointees. Here is a place where more historical experience was required before reason could strike an appropriate balance. Cicero’s political writings left the center of gravity in a Senate, but its primary limitation was not by the checks of his executive. He relied far more on a veto by his censors. Cicero accepts the centrality of the Senate despite the fact that, to use his metaphor, the Senate needed someone to ride it like one rides an elephant. Cicero’s Senate is still checked by the alleged servants of the people, the tribunes. In short, the aristocratic element is checked by the democratic element and not by a monarchical element. So the major check on Cicero’s primary branch of the Senate would probably still be left to what in Roman practice were the riots and mutinies of the people, the lies and calumnies of the tribunes, and assassinations, such as the one that brought Cicero’s life to an end. The proper understanding of checks and balances, and the proper place of executive

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authority in a republic, is one aspect where evolving practice was still needed to add more to the discussion. More thought needed to be given by Cicero to constituting an execu­ tive that could check his Senate, together with more thought on how that Senate could be constituted by the wise rather than those with hidebound hereditary roots. It is odd that he did not do this, because he shows no commitment anywhere to the hereditary principle. More thought should have been given by Cicero also to the constitution of the plebeian and other assemblies, which voted but did not deliberate, and hence were dominated by the manipulations of the tribunes, yet were also what passed on occasion for the appellate court of the land. As for Cicero’s own principles regarding the relation between reason and tradition, the thinking about the executive that was necessary was probably not possible until after the experience of the medieval monarchy and the constitutional emendations and limitations on prerogative and discretion to which those reflections would lead in the modern era, especially in American practice. If so, this helps substantiate Cicero’s point that even thought about the ideal is activated by reflections on actual evolving historical circumstances. The ideal is not generated out of thought itself. Mind originates nothing in politics. That fact should lead us to realize that thinking about things like checks and balances is ongoing and should be informed by the further, novel historical insights we are always gaining. There is no steady state in politics any more than there is in phenomenal nature itself. But there is no hegemony of simple randomness and chaos in nature either, or in politics. This is the level on which a parallel between politics and nature must be constructed. As the continents shift naturally, so must the political naturally change and evolve. Cicero has given us this political principle, if not its perfect application for all times. There is both change and order. Roman experience should alert us to the need for an active, constitutional executive. Our founders in fact consciously attempted to create such an executive.71 Our founders saw the greatest danger of despotism coming from majority tyranny enacting itself, especially, through the lower house of the legislature. But they enacted a system that focused on avoiding majority tyranny that nonetheless made it difficult to get anything done, one of the great problems that ultimately brought down the Roman Republic. Accountability is important; efficient administration is

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just as important. The two are linked: if the means to actually getting something significant done do not exist, genuine accountability is ultimately impossible.72 I might suggest that our founders underestimated that the greatest check on tyranny was an active, virtuous, properly involved citizenry. That vigor cannot emerge without maintaining a public space and inspiriting and engaging a citizenry in such a way that the inspiriting is seen as one of the greatest of goods. Here again we can learn from Cicero. In our ongoing application of reason to political life, there are always things upon which to reflect, even on the level of institutional tinkering.

Ten

A Brief Reflection on Nietzsche Nietzsche is an unusual author to juxtapose with Cicero. Where Cicero’s mode of writing is one of noble reserve, Nietzsche is shrill and deals pur­ posely in bombast and hyperbole. Where Cicero addresses citizens who share a res publica, Nietzsche is anything but a republican, no matter how hard one tries ideologically to manipulate his teaching. And as one of the few truly great authors of our age, Nietzsche and his antirepublicanism should be disquieting. Unlike Cicero, Nietzsche famously presents philosophy as “willing,” and “commanding” and “legislating.” Given what he means by those terms, his “philosophers of the future” would leave almost no free spaces to be lived into for future nonphilosophers. “Citizens” would be nothing more than the deferred ramifications of prior philosophical willing ex nihilo. Nietzsche’s view of philosophy is perfectly consistent with his straightforward politics of the future, which he says explicitly requires a “new caste that will rule Europe.”1 Nietzsche is the open and avowed enemy of democratic equality and individual liberty because he is determined to reinvent rank and hierar­ chy in what he sees as a nihilistic, relativistic, radically egalitarian demo­ cratic age. To avoid relativism and nihilism he is willing to put up with a 273

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new ruling caste that he admits will at least initially be barbaric.2 Nietzsche cannot see the simple dignity of citizen equality and republican liberty. He sees republican citizenship in the modern world as a form of decay. Cicero presents philosophy as always finding its point of origin in its historical situation, as dialectical and phenomenological. I am arguing that that view of philosophy is intrinsically consistent with republican political outcomes. Nietzsche’s view of philosophy as “commanding and legislating” is antirepublican to the core; it is the most extreme permuta­ tion of modern constructivism. Cicero defends both republican liberty and citizen equality as part of a needed “balance” that includes virtue, human excellence, wisdom, and political stability. But like Cicero, Nietzsche sees real philosophy as comprehensive and architectonic. Like Cicero he will not allow the mere parts of philoso­ phy to be autonomous and claim independent rights of their own. Like Cicero, Nietzsche sees the necessity that philosophy concern itself with poli­tics, but for Nietzsche the concern is to be manipulative, authoritar­ ian, and from a great distance, not from within a shared public space.3 Nietzsche tries to reverse the modern trend toward fragmentation of knowledge, just as Cicero tried in his own time to refashion intellectual unity. Cicero already longed for and tried to create the unity Nietzsche wished to reclaim. Nietzsche publicly defends the architectonic nature of philosophy and the need for it to supervene over everything from modern science to mere “scholarship” and to religion.4 This is the central thought that he shares with Cicero and Plato. In his own way, Nietzsche attempts to overcome the modern disintegration and fragmentation of thought, the longing of the parts to be autonomous, and that means autonomous from architectonic philosophy, which at its peak I have designated as political philosophy. One hopes that things have not disintegrated so far that Nietzsche’s combination of bombastic rhetoric and extreme politics is what is necessary to restore unity. In Nietzsche’s case, the project to restore architectonic philosophy seems to presuppose a rhetorical effort through which one first must get the contemporary audience’s attention through bombast and then deceive and misdirect it. Nietzsche views public rhetoric as lying and falsity, that is, lying to the democratic masses to get them to undermine democracy itself.5 Cicero’s noble and measured rhetoric represents the more likely

A Brief Reflection on Nietzsche  275

means to a solid republican future. Hence one must hope that a restrained and dignified voice can still be heard above the fragmented and cacopho­ nous din of our time that for better or worse considers Nietzsche, whose influence is already publicly disseminated, to be one of the age’s greatest defenders of democratic outcomes. In diluted and distorted forms, Nietz­ sche’s rhetoric already massively affects, infects, and informs our world. For all his determination to reverse the fragmenting effects of mo­ dernity, Nietzsche remains a modern constructivist who thinks he can will outcomes ex nihilo — everything rests on the will to power. Cicero, as a quintessential spokesperson for a dialectical and phenomenological al­ ternative, rejects the possibility of the free-floating constructivist Ego. My argument is that especially in our early postmodern world, modern constructivism is intrinsically authoritarian. Beyond this central difference — the distinction between construc­ tivism and phenomenology — there are other significant, instructive points of divergence between Cicero and Nietzsche. Wherever they di­ verge, I will argue that Cicero has the clearer, deeper, and more sanguine understanding. And by being compatible with possible future republi­ canism, Cicero has far more to teach us than does Nietzsche and his openly authoritarian longings. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche asserts, “I venture to speak out against an unseemly and harmful shift in the respective ranks of science and philosophy.” He goes on to declare: “The scholar’s declaration of in­ dependence, his emancipation from philosophy, is one of the more re­ fined effects of the democratic order — and disorder. . . . ‘Freedom from all masters!’ that is what the instinct of the rabble wants.”6 And he says further: “One always pays dearly and terribly when religions do not want to be a means of education and cultivation in the philosopher’s hand but insist on having their own sovereign way.”7 Nietzsche attributes the failure to see the rank ordering between philosophy and religion, and between philosophy and modern science, to say nothing of between philosophy and mere “scholarship,” as a part of the democratic leveling instinct he so openly opposes. And he sees that leveling spirit as the necessary outcome of modern philosophy. Yet he agrees fully with the attempt of modern philosophy to overcome the he­ gemony of theology over philosophy. This was one of the aims of modern philosophy in launching modern science. But Nietzsche also co-opts and

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radicalizes the modern self-legislating will and tells philosophers to be “commanders and legislators.” Nietzsche is both antimodern and mod­ ern, all too modern. Nietzsche saw his problem as one of overcoming the unnatural in­ version of the status of architectonic philosophy and all other intrinsically subordinate undertakings. By his time, modern science and mere schol­ arship had presumed to dictate laws to philosophy as theology had in a prior age. Unsatisfied with their emancipation from theology, modern science and mere scholarship now attempted to rule philosophy. Accord­ ing to Nietzsche, the modern democratic victory of the “specialist and nook dweller”8 was built on the utility that can be offered by mere plod­ ding patience and the conscious narrowing of vision in scientific and scholarly research. But that narrowing is due to the “wretchedness of most recent philosophy,” which has reduced itself to mere “theory of knowledge.” As a result, philosophy is “in its last throes.” Decayed phi­ losophy had no right to be architectonic and rule anything. In Nietzsche’s eyes, the situation was further complicated by another phenomenon. By his time, public atheism had emerged, but Nietzsche warned that “religiosity” itself was growing powerfully in the aftermath of the shipwreck of modern rationalism.9 Irrational religiosity beckoned in the future. Nietzsche designated the subconscious and irrational religi­ osity of the future with the name Dionysus, the god of intoxication, as opposed to a God of mind and self-conscious reflection and will. Since philosophy could no longer present itself in the public veneer of rational­ ism, it would need to rule through a new irrationalist, postscriptural reli­ gion. In Nietzsche’s view, the “death of God” did not presage the end of religion — quite the contrary. What “we” of the present lack,10 Nietzsche asserts, is the wholeness of someone like Plato, the true philosopher who exists at a height: today “the philosopher grows weary while still learning or allows himself to be detained somewhere to be a ‘specialist’ — so he never attains his proper level, the height for a comprehensive look, for looking around, for look­ ing down.”11 This looking “down” is a characteristic Nietzsche repeatedly argues is indicative of the “noble” attitude.12 Philosophy requires this looking down, the “pathos of distance,” and thus according to Nietzsche it can only exist atop an aristocratic society with a more or less ruthless, at least initially barbaric, aristocratic caste shielding it from the great unwashed, the “rabble.” For Nietzsche, the

A Brief Reflection on Nietzsche  277

concept “rabble” is an ethical rather than economic concept; the rabble lives without a sense of honor and moral hierarchy. The true philosopher understands hierarchy, and understands that he stands at a peak, and re­ spects and supports everything that aspires to the heights. As the basis of architectonic philosophy, Nietzschean politics is in the service of creating a new ruling caste for Europe, which is to provide the actors that can operate in and dominate the age of global “great politics” that he correctly predicted was coming in the twentieth century. But those new aristocrats would be manipulated from afar, and from above, by the new “philosophers of the future.” In Nietzsche’s understanding, these philosophers would cease to be active participants in the public arena. Nietzsche’s philosophers of the future would withdraw to a new Epicurean garden and rule indirectly through new priests and aristocrats. So that they would not have to participate directly in politics, Nietz­ sche’s architectonic future philosophers would make use of religion to shield themselves from “the necessary dirt of all politics.”13 They would “rule” only from a great distance, able to withdraw into solitude, manipu­ lating rather than persuading others, like Brahmin priests, Nietzsche suggests, choosing and manipulating their kings. Indeed, among Nietz­ sche’s four cardinal virtues we find “courage, insight, sympathy, and solitude”14 replacing Cicero’s wisdom, justice, fortitude, and self-control. Nietzsche says that all true philosophers are “hermits.”15 This is in stark contrast with Cicero’s vision of the philosophers as fellow discus­ sants in a publicly shared space, not above and beyond but as engaged participants qua primus inter pares. The Nietzschean longing, and his willful projection in the name of future philosophy, includes a retreat into a new, longed-for Epicurean garden, precisely what Cicero openly and rightly opposed. Nietzsche did not believe that the political was an arena of truth. He intended that the philosophers of the future would pursue the truth in private; their public function was to deploy lies. For Nietzsche, the true architectonic philosopher, the most “compre­ hensive” man, or the true “genius,” primarily begets and gives birth to “values” as an act of pure creative will.16 Such philosophers will be “tempt­ ers and attempters.” The good is willed by the architectonic philosopher out of a self-legislating Cartesian ego. Contrary to Cicero, the good is not seen as already embedded in the phenomena that show themselves. Herein we see the classic confrontation between modern constructivism and phenomenology.

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For Nietzsche, architectonic philosophy, understood as a form of cre­ ation and autonomous willing, always uses the industrious and patient nook dwellers of science and scholarship — “objective men” — as their subordinates or “useful instruments,” just as they will use religions. It is not these lower, mere “complimentary” men in whom “existence is justi­ fied,” let alone citizens and statesmen.17 No, it is the true solitary, Epicu­ rean, willful, Nietzschean philosophers alone who justify existence and originate everything of value. Also subordinate in every respect in Nietzsche’s vision are mere “philosophic laborers” who work out the ramifications of the “values” willed by prior “commanders and legislators.” The explicit examples Nietz­sche gives of such philosophical laborers are Kant and Hegel. They are determined by the past. But in the future Nietzsche longed for his own Kants and Hegels as his minions and subordinates.18 True philosophy is always “untimely,” by which Nietzsche means primarily projected toward a novel future. The future so negates commit­ ment to the past that total forgetting is the only means to the future. For Nietzsche, to get to the novel, willed future moment he desires it is nec­ essary to overcome and destroy the past. In this sentiment Nietzsche is undoubtedly the first deconstructionist. This is why in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in the section “On the Three Metamorphoses,” the future is represented by a child who will bring “innocence and forgetting.” To get to the future, Nietzsche’s architectonic philosophers must plot a way to obliterate and forget the past. In the process, the future becomes the operative temporal moment for the willful constructivist Ego. Between Nietzsche and Cicero the un­ derstanding of the relation to temporality — past, present, and future — is entirely different. Past and future are coequal and copresent for Cicero, as they are incidentally in Heidegger’s discussion of “ecstatic temporality.” Heidegger also rejected Nietzsche’s attempt to obliterate the past and called instead for a necessary dose of Andenken, “remembrance.”19 The longing for the obliteration of the past is an entirely different relation to temporality than that represented by Cicero wherein one must fuse past, present, and future. Nietzsche can only propose the obliteration of the past because he can presuppose, in the manner of the autonomous Cartesian constructivist Ego, an Archimedean point outside of the situ­ ated present from which he can will ex nihilo.20 The phenomenologist Ci­ cero philosophically denies the existence of that autonomous point

A Brief Reflection on Nietzsche  279

outside present phenomena and outside human history. And thus for Ci­ cero philosophy must always begin from its situated present, and recog­ nize and respect a distinctive past it can never jettison. Reason is needed; but it cannot purge tradition. Nietzsche would transcend not just mod­ ern, constructivist, instrumental reason but Western reason in any per­ mutation and obliterate the Western tradition in its entirety. For the Nietzsche of Beyond Good and Evil, it is only the narrow and unphilosophic, if nonetheless “noble,” who are “traditionalists” who vener­ ate the past.21 His contemporary “free spirits” who are the “first born of the twentieth century” and who allegedly will legislate the future have, Nietz­ sche asserts, no taste, culture, or tradition. Those of “us” in the present have the “historical sense,” but no history, tradition, or commitments of our own.22 We are “unlimited.” “Our” knowing is creating and legislating, it is willing as the highest manifestation of the cosmic “will to power.”23 That will must not be limited by anything, especially the past. Hence we must take our “revenge” against the past. But that means that we in the present are determined by the “spirit of revenge.”24 Our present limitlessness is also what Nietzsche calls nihilism, a nihilism built on ressentiment. Nietzschean philosophers revengefully impose their will on others and revengefully reject the past and present that is their own. But this is necessary because this willing is the source of all “value,” it is the ground of the good that has no other ground. But to say that something is a mere “value” is to admit before the fact that it is not intrinsically valuable. There is nothing intrinsically valuable that guides our willing of values. “We” Nietzschean philosophers of the present exercise our will pri­ marily for “our” own kind, our own longed-for privacy, our own Epicu­ rean withdrawal, our life as true philosophers who intend to forsake the res publica of the future. And “we” will values to impress form on the other­ wise formless external world as the highest manifestation of the cosmic will to power operating through us, in semi-Stoic fashion. The blind and irrational will to power takes the place of the rational Stoic logos. But the unconscious will to power of Nietzsche is entirely unpredictable, blind, even “vicious.” What the future Nietzschean philosophers qua “free spirits” will ac­ tually do in their Epicurean withdrawal after imposing their new religion and ruling caste on nonphilosophers is far from clear. At the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as Zarathustra ascends out of his cave, there is a sun to which he speaks. The reference to Plato is unmistakable. The open

280  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

question remains whether in Nietzsche’s understanding (or is it Zarathus­ tra’s alone?) this is the kind of sun like that of the Platonic cave metaphor that can be contemplated in alogon theoretical staring. If not, it is not clear what Nietzsche’s longed-for philosophers do in their Epicurean solitude.25 Interestingly, of the will to power Nietzsche asserts that it must be conceived as a circulus vitiosus deus.26 It is difficult to see this as an object of contemplation. The will to power, which is posited as in everything in the cosmos, is apparently a cosmic principle understood as a blind, viciously circling god who vouches for the eternal return of the same. Again, there is an odd, distorted Stoic element operating in this notion. Herein we have a version of the Stoic understanding of god in all things, but for Nietzsche it is a god that is simultaneously more idiosyncratically willful and blindly irrational than the actual Stoic god — albeit every bit as lacking in self-­ consciousness. And this god is by no means the ground of the good. In Nietzsche’s thought this Stoic element is combined, altogether in­ consistently I would argue, with an Epicurean understanding of philoso­ phers withdrawing into solitude to rule from afar, perhaps much more like actual hermits than Epicurus’s vision, which centered, in classical fashion, around philosophic friendship and discussion. This vision can be seen as a radicalized version of modern, atomistic individualism raised to its peak, as epitomized by Nietzsche’s philosophical hermits. Since this understanding of philosophy grows out of the radically individualized, constructivist Cartesian self, this would not be surprising. Nietzsche offers not just an “aristocratic” element to be balanced within his political teaching but a new aristocracy that is to rule undemo­ cratically and unphilosophically. This is not to be confused with Cicero’s understanding of the need to “balance” in an aristocratic element into any republic. Nor is there any element of a synthesis of orator/philosopher/ statesman. The existence of and need for Nietzsche’s new and far from “wise” aristocracy is based on his view of “breeding,” with its unfortunate Le­ Marckianism.27 Nietzsche says that all aristocracies are initially born out of barbaric acts of instinctive impositions of blind self-interested will. Such barbarians impose their unreflective wills on others, an imposition that creates similar habits for large numbers of individuals who over time become a “people,” not through a shared idea of justice and the good, but through the similar habituated traits that eventually congeal in their

A Brief Reflection on Nietzsche  281

bodies.28 Here lurks the destructive core notion of a new racism wherein habits eventually become nature and the state is in the service of creating human nature. Barbarically imposed habits eventually congeal over time as biologi­ cal traits. Men become what they are forced to do over long periods of time because human nature, following authors such as Rousseau and Marx, is radically malleable and changeable. The reason men need mor­ als is to enforce similar behavior, in a similar direction, over a long period of time because there is no underlying human nature and there are no phenomena that present themselves in a life publicly shared. Given this understanding, for Nietzsche any habits and moral codes are better than none because this is how “races” form and bring with them distinctive “cultures.” Culture takes the place of nature in Nietzsche’s account. Any culture is better than no culture for the undetermined animal. Barbaric aristocrats are needed to impose form on what is intrinsi­ cally formless because the high can only be fashioned upon an irrational basis that is low. This is why blind, barbaric acts of will must be dignified as a manifestation of the will to power operating in all things. Founda­ tional irrationality needs a cosmic basis. And all of this is because of the necessary assumption that nothing has form; there is nothing that always already shows itself; there are no phenomena.29 It is in this fashion that Nietzsche weaves together cosmology/ ontology, politics, ethics, and psychology, and even his new Dionysian theology. Nietzsche’s weaving is based on an extreme form of construc­ tivist epistemology that believes that all knowing and acting is based on an autonomous, self-legislating Ego that wills the ground of everything. Man himself is the first cause precisely because by nature man is a noth­ ing. Hence mankind needs the commanding and legislating philosopher who longs for Epicurean solitude. These are the modern Cartesian constructivist chickens coming home to roost with a vengeance. The alternative is Cicero’s situated phe­ nomenological origin for philosophy and his belief that what constitutes a people is a cognitively shared conception of justice and the good. Cice­ ro’s epistemology assumes that things always already show themselves publicly and no autonomous willing can will that fact away. Form and limits are always already built into the phenomena that show themselves. Herein is the fundamental alternative to modern constructivism, which

282  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

finds its most extreme manifestation in Nietzsche. Here is the means to a first philosophy that is architectonic and simultaneously republican. Cicero longs for an aristocratic element to be “balanced” into his poli­ tics. But for Cicero, the aristocratic element is the needed element of wis­ dom and virtue. But wisdom and virtue need to be balanced with ele­ments of stability, republican liberty, and equality. Republican liberty drops out as a “value” for Nietzsche. Equality qua modern radical egalitarianism —  which Nietzsche cannot differentiate from equality before the law — is the central problem to be opposed for Nietzsche. Cicero is no fan of radi­ cal egalitarianism either. But he can deal with the issue of equality in abstraction from the simple mathematical identity of mob rule, so he does not need to adopt Nietzschean radicalism and attack equality in every conceivable form. Cicero can argue for an element of nobility, but it is the nobility of an ethical person, not an unconscious, instinctive barbarian. Cicero can grasp the element that all human beings share — the universal city with its ideals we can all grasp — but also the need for us to have what is our own as a space that we can share with distinct others. Nietzsche can only construct a “nationalism” of absolute “cultural,” and that simultaneously means “racial,” difference.30 Nietzsche longs for a postscriptural religion to be manipulated by his future solitary Epicurean philosophers. He links this desire with the name of Dionysus, the un-self-conscious god of intoxication. It is not hyperbole to point out that the picture we get is of a religion of intoxica­ tion supervening over a politics of racial and cultural nationalism. And all of this is combined with the rule of barbaric “nobility” allegedly in the name of recovering architectonic philosophy. In pursuit of his vision of the future, Nietzsche would destroy what is for Westerners and Americans not only our ancestral religion but argu­ ably, certainly by comparison with Nietzsche’s alternative, a potentially rational religion. Cicero, by contrast, points toward a project that would attempt no more than the reformation of a potentially rational religion for individuals who can be brought to self-consciously share an idea of the just and the good. Cicero’s architectonic political philosophy points to the open rule of public persuasion in a shared public space, not the manipu­ lative actions of hermits who withdraw into Epicurean privacy, wear masks, speak indirectly and furtively, and justify new postscriptural priests who rule over a barbaric aristocracy.31

A Brief Reflection on Nietzsche  283

Cicero can affirm his past even as he tries to open a novel future, but not a future willed ex nihilo. Nietzsche argued that all past Western thought was ruled by the “spirit of revenge.” Yet he adopted the same spirit of revenge against the past. That the entire West was moved by a spirit of revenge was allegedly because it refused to accept earthly temporality and longed instead for eternity. According to Nietzsche, in the pursuit of an atemporal eternity, all past thought wished to quit temporal existence and get to another world as quickly as possible. Hence all past thought wanted to avenge itself against temporal existence, which it could not affirm. All past thought was a “no-saying.” But how was Nietzsche’s longed-for inno­ cence and forgetting any different? He wanted to avenge himself upon the Western past, “Time and its ‘it was,’ ” to use his formula from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This is not affirming the past just as one would have wished it; it is certainly not a formula for how to get to the future. I would suggest that it is Cicero who transcends this spirit of revenge that Nietzsche claims is intrinsic to the entire Western tradition’s relation to temporality and what Nietzsche asserts is the refusal to accept “time and its ‘it was.’ ” It is Cicero who can teach us to phenomenologically affirm our past and present while still trying to open a future. It is not Nietzsche who transcends the disease he diagnoses. Nietzsche refuses to affirm his past as precisely as he would have wanted it, despite the fact that this is his formu­ lation of what is necessary for the eternal return of the same and emancipa­ tion from the “spirit of gravity” to a “yes-saying” affirmation of life. That affirmation actually requires an affirmation of one’s tradition. It is Cicero who can affirm his past as precisely as he would have wanted it, while still not desiring that the future be any kind of simple repetition, for example, of barbarism — Nietzsche’s “retranslation of man into nature.”32 Instead, Cicero hoped for at most a continued improvement on the past on the basis of evolving experience and ongoing philosophical statesmanship. But he knew that even this best-case scenario was work­ ing against the natural devolution of regimes toward tyranny. And that led him to an idealism of modest expectations. Comparing every respect in which Cicero and Nietzsche long for similar things, including espe­ cially the desire for a return to the architectonic status of philosophy, Cicero is the better “weaver,” the much better “balancer,” the better phi­ losopher, the better political philosopher, by far the better republican.

Conclusion

Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

Political Philosophy and Contemporary Intellectual Fragmentation Will there be any republics one hundred years from now? There are more than a few reasons to be in doubt. Our public spaces are closing, and our genuine philosophical and intellectual openness is closing. The greatest legacies we have, the intellectual openness of the tradition of political philosophy and the self-governing freedom of republican institutions, are in danger. This is not the entire story, but the keeping open of our future will come down to the answers to two or three of the oldest questions being posed anew: How do we really want to live? What kinds of human beings should we aim for as fellow citizens? And what kind of individuals do we want to promote to leadership positions? Put differently, the questions are these: What is a human being? What is an excellent life? Who should rule? At this moment the default contestants for leadership are various technical and intellectual elites. As currently constituted, those self-selecting 285

286  Political Philosophy and the Republican Future

elites will most likely rule in an antirepublican fashion. It is unlikely they will allow citizens to own their public space and produce spontaneous outcomes not manufactured in advance by those elites. The alternative is to foster fully functioning postmodern, republican citizens who have characters formed by “internal” checks and philosophical bearings, something like, but not identical to, what we have seen crafted by Cicero for his once and future republic.1 Postmodern elites or postmodern republican citizens are the only reasonable, currently predictable contestants to participate and lead us into our future.2 I have suggested that political philosophy as practiced by Cicero is architectonic first philosophy that must always start from a unique situated present. That present cannot be made to go away by an ungrounded, self-legislating will. We are always determined by the phenomena that show themselves in the present in a shared public space that has a specific tradition. But we are losing the possibility of having a public space and having a tradition. Such public spaces grow out of the myriad daily interactions between individuals publicly engaged. The liberty for that engagement must be defended and fostered along with a respect for the spontaneous outcomes of those democratic engagements. In our time that means the public space and its citizen interactions must be defended from both constructivist and deconstructivist theory, and from rising postmodern elites. Everything in our time seems to be moving us away from the possibility of creating and maintaining genuinely open public spaces. Ours is the age of increasing globalization, fostered by the powerful confluence of global commerce and modern technology. But public spaces have to be “ours,” they have to exist on a level much smaller than the entire planet. Ours is also the age of an increasing bureaucratization that closes down and replaces public spaces with distant and abstract arenas of decision. Globalization, technological intensification, and bureaucratization all offer the specter of a runaway train that we cannot stop. This juggernaut has an inertial force that dominates our age and is anything but consistent with the true public openness and liberty of genuine republicanism. These forces will not go away, but we can set our sights on long-term goals that will move us away from their potentially despotic specter.3 Any contemporary situation, especially in our late modern world, can gain such momentum that there may appear to be a certain irreversibility

Conclusion 287

operating, but there is always the freedom to break out of the chains of one’s present situation and try to open out the future anew. There is no inevitability, only possibilities that may or may not come to fruition depending on our actions in the present. I have been suggesting that what is required as a prerequisite for opening new future spaces is a new integrative understanding of the whole. However, everything in our fragmented intellectual environment seems to militate against this possibility.4 I have tried to suggest some preliminary rethinking that could allow future human beings to still open anew and live their way into and maintain genuine public spaces where they can live out their humanity. As examples, one could recall at least the following: (1) there is a need for a new, non-mythical, non-autonomous, non-ontological understanding of the status and nature of modern science consistent with its own self-­ understanding at the time of its origins — it is technological not ontologi­ cal; (2) we must recover an understanding of the phenomenological un­avoidability of religion and the potential possibilities of a rational religion; (3) we need some ways to rethink the nature of commercial republicanism and the virtues it requires so that we again see commerce as a means to republicanism, and not the other way around; (4) we should foster the ability to again grasp the limits of reason and hence the unavoidable necessity for traditions while realizing that genuine traditions, like genuine communities, cannot be self-consciously invented by autonomously willing mere myths or narratives; (5) there is a need for a nonconstructivist view of reason; (6) we must come to an understanding that true individualism always requires a linkage with virtue and excellence. Obviously this is not exhaustive of the suggestions that have emerged throughout my presentation. And this summary is painted with broad brush strokes. But what is implied is that the intellectual environment must be changed first to open the possibilities for respect for the actions of the actual citizens that republicanism demands.5 There is nothing but despotism in a future world where everything is constructed in advance, leaving no room for free and spontaneous actions and outcomes. Why is it that in the arena known as environmentalism we understand the need for natural spontaneity, but in the arena of morals and politics we dismiss the notion completely? Why do we have such great respect for the existence of snail darters but not for the ongoing existence of actual participation of personally responsible, free citizens?6

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History-making, fully human beings need to be open to and pursue a future that allows them to see that their free acts really make a difference. Herein I am pointing to the free acts of citizens, not specialists, bureaucrats, theorists, or other elites who by imposing their ungrounded constructivist visions on reality will destroy the spaces for actual, republican, citizen participation in a genuine public space. Such public spaces require genuine traditions that preserve elements from the past while allowing ongoing additions through the public interactions of large numbers of human beings. We must be open to those interactions, for they are the basis of actual traditions and the growth of actual “community.” Human beings are historical beings; to lose that capacity to freely make history — and thereby maintain ongoing traditions and communities — will be to lose our fundamental humanity and simultaneously lose the kind of freedom that is intrinsic to republican government. And we must come to see that true statesmanship is not Nietzschean commanding and legislating, but the public speech of a primus inter pares. With these thoughts in mind, we arrive at the other main issue of this book: genuine political philosophy and republicanism are inextricably tied, both in our distinctive Western past and into our future. I have presented political philosophy as both architectonic and one of our genuinely human, historical activities.7 I have tried to show that Cicero has a similar view. Are we still open to the possibility of making history? I have suggested that that possibility rests on the possibility of an architectonic political philosophy that remembers its past tradition while having a determination to project that tradition into the coming, unprecedented future. I am going to suggest in what follows that we need to fundamentally rethink (1) our philosophical/intellectual environment, (2) our moral environment, and (3) to a far lesser extent, our institutional environment. The most significant transformations are needed in the first two areas, and this is where I will focus, as it seems to me that only marginal institutional transformations are required at present. I will pay almost no attention to everyday policy issues. To believe that policy changes can effect massive changes in essential things is to believe that the tail can wag the dog. We must set for ourselves a long-range trajectory and explain the general direction we should head and why it is good. But we must not impose a specific outcome. Otherwise we succumb to a plan that will be intrinsically dominating and despotic every bit as much as would result

Conclusion 289

from totally dominating and transforming every natural rhythm in the natural environment. We seem to forget in our determination to save external nature that our human nature as political, ethical, and philosophical beings is part of the natural whole. We have to stop the dominating stance of modernity to all parts of the whole simultaneously. From Cicero’s time to ours, the players are different but the situation is eerily similar. Cicero surveyed an intellectual landscape of fragmentation. As he looked at his political situation, it was one of moral and politi­ cal disintegration. The fragmentation was exacerbating the disintegration. If anything, our intellectual environment is even more fragmented than Cicero’s. And in the West, but especially in the United States, our national political space is little more than a feeding trough for interest groups and the battleground of competing intellectual elites who presume to rule without any true republican participation or honest, open public persuasion. It is not hyperbole to describe that political landscape as one of disintegration. The philosophical schools of Cicero’s time had failed the political community, frequently counseling withdrawal into private activities — to fiddle hedonistically while republican Rome burned. The political forms handed down from Rome’s past were inadequate to confront the scale of what was becoming the global politics of its moment of disintegration. The traditional religion was losing, or had lost, its persuasive power, and, unfortunately, as Cicero saw, it was not a rational religion anyway. Cicero saw the task of political philosophy in his time as trying to weave together a new understanding of the whole as a means to opening a newly invigorated public space. At best, he knew that would only transpire in the future. He knew he had arrived too late to save republican Rome. Similar to Cicero’s moment, our present moment shows us a battleground of competing school philosophies: feminist, Marxist, liberal, conservative, socialist, deconstructionist, libertarian, fundamentalist, atheist, “diversity,” communitarian, multiculturalist — the list goes on. Not surprisingly, given this spectacle, in our time philosophy is dismissed, when not publicly ignored.8 Our retreat from the political into various private and even virtual worlds has as its source a new modern version of Epicureanism where we look to live our lives outside the public space in an arena where, unlike the original Epicureans, we no longer rank possible human activities as higher and lower. By default the public space is filled

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by competing bureaucratic, administration, and intellectual elites together with avaricious interest groups and the various and at times bizarre combinations that ensue.9 The political situation of our time is one of rampant interest-group politics and political bait-and-switch campaign tactics conjoined with bureaucratic centralization, which some think can only be met by unrestrained and unlimited free-market capitalism.10 In the process, anything resembling a truly republican public space is being destroyed. Where can one start to gain a purchase on our present, a present of intellectual fragmentation and the disintegration of our public spaces? We must start from the things that show themselves in the present, and the various opinions that articulate that showing. But by that I mean a significant interrogation of the opinions of citizens engaged in their everyday doing and making. Likewise, we in the present must start from how our present is determined by its distinct past, a past that cannot be willed away — and should not be forgotten — and the realistic future possibilities that can be opened. As historical beings, we always stand between past and future. History never ends for truly historical beings who in their essence make history by thinking forward toward opening future spaces. We accomplish that thinking forward by repeatedly returning to the unavoidable questions and attempting to reintegrate the whole of knowledge. But if we close off our past as nothing but benighted, as seems to be the reigning instinct among many in our elite academies, we will simultaneously deny ourselves a future that is freely chosen rather than accidentally determined by a past we have forgotten and by self-chosen elites we did not elect. “Opening future spaces” — this ambiguous phrase that I have been using needs further elaboration, even though throughout I have given indications of what I mean. It must be differentiated from the modern constructivist, fundamentally authoritarian, desire to determine in toto the future for people yet unborn, entirely without their participation. As an example of what I have in mind, we have seen how Cicero’s reflections on natural theology and ethics opened possible spaces that Christianity did in fact come to occupy. He could not predict the arrival of Christianity, but he had prepared spaces that could be explored and exploited, transforming what the phenomenon of Christianity would have otherwise been without those spaces. We cannot predict future transformative

Conclusion 291

events, but we can prepare spaces for those that will come in the future. We must throw forward capital that those who come after us can spend. Cicero similarly opened spaces for a new “noble” person, consistent with republican possibilities, shorn of the warrior and martial elements of past noble codes of ethics. In different, more complicated ways, those spaces were also occupied. For example, the ethic of our founding genera­ tion was far more Ciceronian than the spectacle of pagan military elites at Rome or the noble Athenians competing for immortality primarily through martial activities. Cicero opened spaces for a greater respect for labor and commerce over imperial conquest, and those spaces were also occupied in complicated ways, especially by modern authors. But unlike the moderns, Cicero conceptualized the need for commerce and private property in relation to their ends, not to their origins. That is a space we could help open anew in some transformed manifestation for the future. One cannot predict the future, and one should not in an authoritarian fashion impose one’s will on that future. One can open spaces. That is the best way to occupy our present and simultaneously grant a legacy to those who will come after us. Further, there are always possibilities available in one’s distinctive past that have not been explored, and there are possibilities in the present climate of opinion and concrete existence that lie dormant until opened philosophically, that is, until brought out into the open articulately in speech. This is what Cicero did; it is what we can do. The effort is phenomenological, not constructivist. In our time we especially need to unlearn the self-defeating belief that we can stand somewhere in midair and will away our past, transforming it into a completely benighted spectacle to be dismissed and forgotten in its entirety. This attempt is utterly nihilistic. All it does is to deny us a genuine present in which to operate. It rests on the mythical belief in an Archimedean point outside of human history from which to construct the future world ex nihilo. It is time for the end of that modern myth. Whatever good that myth could accomplish, it has long since been achieved. A fundamental issue that Cicero can help us understand is that reason and tradition do not represent the modern either/or from which we must choose. We need to be weaned from an utterly unrealistic understanding of the nature of human reason, that is, the radical Enlightenment and modern instrumental views of reason. We should begin from the phenomena as they show themselves, as determined by the past, and

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then we can dialectically interrogate those present phenomena as they show themselves now. In the process, we can also grasp the limits of human reason — therein we recover one of the central Socratic/Platonic/ Ciceronian insights without jettisoning reason. And in the process, we come to see the necessity of people being allowed to live their way into the future without authoritarian constructivist constraints, so that present and future human beings can have actual traditions and actual communities that are their own. Human beings must be allowed to be more than the mere deferred ramification of past, constructivist, instrumental manipulation. Environmentalists demand no less for the rest of nature. But nature is not a whole until its last part, mankind, is reintegrated into the picture as the final and most distinctive part of the whole. I repeat, each of the parts of nature deserves its own arena of spontaneity. I have been suggesting that a central way one can start to open the future is to rethink fundamental philosophical presuppositions. The best way to open and inform that possibility is by trying to provide an architectonic, publicly accessible, unitary logos that includes a consistent, persuasive, holistic, public articulation of ethics, political science, psychology, theology, cosmology/ontology, logic, and epistemology. But those who see themselves at the cutting edge of contemporary intellectual life will not allow this to happen. Whether as constructivism or deconstructivism — the softer title being “postfoundationalism” — we encounter the latest forms of dogmatism that have found numerous devices to cut off the very attempt at an architectonic integrative questioning or understanding. That integrative understanding should be the primary aim of a liberal arts education, an education that always liberates us from mere contemporary dogmas. That kind of liberation is republican. There has never been a less dogmatic author than Cicero. He is the perfect example of open-minded inquiry, yet he remains grounded in the phenomena that show themselves, and he eventually arrives at substantive outcomes. In our time, relativist and antifoundationalist principles foster a new dogmatism, a new closing of the mind. Nietzsche had already predicted this outcome: he saw the momentary public victory of relativism in an environment of radical egalitarianism as the “involuntary breeding ground for tyrants.”

Conclusion 293

We should notice that Cicero is not a foundationalist in the sense many contemporary antifoundationalists present as paradigmatic, that is, the straw man they constantly attack. Cicero does not take ontology as foundational. Hence he is not a metaphysician in today’s terminology —  he does not have a doctrine of being as full presence. He does not take any part of knowledge as foundational. The parts of knowledge are never more than a necessary piece of a larger whole that has to be crafted into a whole consistent with the phenomena. Asserting dogmatically in advance that no holistic account is possible undermines the entire discussion before the fact. What is missed by postfoundationalists, who in other respects draw so much from Heidegger, is Heidegger’s teaching that in every ontology there are ethical presuppositions, just as in every ethic there is a presupposed ontology. That points toward the necessity of taking the parts like ontology and ethics as components of a whole. It points not toward relativist postfoundationalism or deconstructivist fragmentation, but toward holistic thinking.11 The contemporary fragmentation of knowledge must be put in the context of the fact that the now dawning postmodern world is already a place where the primary capital has become knowledge and information. It is the elites that have a claim to that capital who are now competing to rule, both against each other and against prior elites whose capital was everything from warrior status and heredity privilege, to ownership of the land, to owning the means of production of the now ending industrial era. Those with the greatest capital are always the greatest danger to liberty. The greatest potential enemies of republicanism are no longer the old landed aristocracy or the Church or the industrial capitalists or some new warrior class. At this point, those hoary anachronisms are straw men. There is little need to aim the majority of one’s cannons (or canons) in that direction. Ours is already the postindustrial age. Information and knowledge are the new capital and this is clear from the extent to which Microsoft, Google, Intel, Facebook, Apple, and so on could, if they were foolish enough, buy up out of spare cash the entire industrial base of the country in enterprises like automobiles, steel, concrete, chemicals, aluminum. This is a simple fact that is clear on the basis of the mere capitalizations of the respective stock’s values of new information companies and old industrial companies.

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Appended to this new capital are new elites, and they share more with academic elites than did older elites. As a result, increasingly the home base of the newly emerging postmodern world is the academy. Like older elites, the emerging postmodern elites fight for their rights and prerogatives, and their generals make this openly clear if one will only listen; they are primarily competing not to find the truth (which many will openly assert does not exist), but to rule. This is most immediately evident in the social sciences and humanities, but it is becoming clear in the allegedly objective sciences such as physics and biology.12 In Cicero’s time, Rome too was losing its res publica. The shared public space that was simultaneously the possession of the people was being replaced by despotism, the abolition of the public, and the political more generally. Simultaneously, Rome’s brightest and best were withdrawing from the public arena; its wealthiest and most privileged were sinking into vulgar private philistine pursuits of pleasure. Much of the philosophy of the time was encouraging this. Cicero wished to return philosophy to the arena of a public space, both for its own good and the good of republicanism. In this vein, in his own time, Plato’s task was to defend philosophy against the city that threatened it; Cicero had the transformed task of philosophically defending the city itself understood as a public space and the property of the people. Cicero’s task and our task are similar. There is no need at present to defend philosophy against the res publica. But there is the need to force philosophy into the public arena to defend republican political spaces against new, aspiring elites. So far those elites have gotten a public pass because as part of their hoped-for ascension they still try to play on the residual public respect for the Western philosophic and scientific pursuit of the truth. Public respect for philosophy will not be saved and maintained without a discourse that can speak in public and to the public. It is then that the holistic thinking of political philosophy will have a chance to come to the fore, and come to the fore in a public space. That implies precisely the coming together of philosophy and oratory advocated by Cicero throughout his corpus. Only then will we be on the way to opening republican spaces that future citizens, rather than subjects, can occupy. That is how we should stand to the future in a non-authoritarian, non-constructivist, non-elitist fashion. Republicanism will always require a fight against elites who want to subvert the freedom of genuinely republican practice.

Conclusion 295

My argument for the centrality of architectonic political philosophy does not come simply from the proponent of one currently eclipsed academic discipline among many. Political philosophy is literally the discipline that spun off all the present disciplines; it did so at specific moments and for specific reasons. We need to be able to reaccess that history of diremptions to understand it. This process of diremptions and fragmentation of knowledge was self-consciously undertaken, and it will only be reversed by self-conscious acts of remembrance that bring out into the open again what has become forgotten.13 We need to aim at offering an integrative model for thought that is in fact the only model for true liberal education, an education that liberates from narrowness and dogma. The aim of education should be to give the mind a grasp of the whole, to liberate thought from the particularities of life and of one’s own time. The past tradition of political philosophy gives the clearest manifestation of the liberating, integrating model of thought. It should be central to every liberal education, as should the encouragement to strive to match, if not surpass, that past integrative excellence. The last thing we need is Nietzsche’s “innocence and forgetting.” One of the great impediments to the integrative understanding I am championing, and to the understanding of temporality I have espoused, is a prevalent dogma about the uniformity of the Western tradition that now reigns. This view finds its ultimate source in the thought of Nietz­ sche and Heidegger.14 And the possibility of overcoming that dogma is to be found ultimately in a serious confrontation with those authors. In line with Nietzsche, but contrary to Heidegger, this alleged uniformity is used by most postfoundationalists at present as a reason to dismiss concern for the entire past tradition. One presumes before the fact that one knows what all past authors share, and what they (supposedly) share is a mistake. It is Heidegger who, while proposing a unity of his own, points to the necessity of ongoing Andenken, or “remembrance.” But even with Heidegger we must engage the dogma that the entire Western tradition was metaphysical in his unique sense. Seeing the origin of that tradition as phenomenological rather than as metaphysical or essentialist is part of the antidote. At present I will leave matters at observing that the Western tradition has been anything but unitary and seamless.15 Not only have the greatest authors been “untimely” critics of their own time, but they have

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been engaged in a critical dialogue with other great authors. As part of that dialogue, one will find that there were multiple divergences even between the writers in antiquity. There is a little-noted divergence between Socrates and Plato. As I have suggested, there is an even greater divergence between Plato and Aristotle than the conventional, textbook account usually notes, one that leads to moving the very locus of truth from phenomena to statements. As I have argued repeatedly in this book, Cicero represents a significant departure from this Aristotelian move. The Christian era itself represents a break with pagan antiquity. And within the Christian era there are significant disagreements. I have argued that at the start Christianity was informed by Cicero’s distinctive version of Platonism. Thomas’s Aristotelianism represents a significant departure from that earlier tradition. The Reformation represents another significant rupture. The origin of modernity represents a significant, self-conscious split from premodernity in both its pagan and Christian forms. And the move from the proto-modern authors to later modernity, with its reliance upon “metaphysical freedom” and turn to “history,” represents a significant caesura. My point is that we need to reenter the history of the tradition with an open mind. We need an education that will give us new eyes freed from the contemporary dogma of uniformity before we can hope to unleash the integrative understanding of knowledge that we need to open the future. Political Philosophy and Constructivist Theory In our era, the first assumption seems to be that when we argue for the value of some intellectual, moral, or political good we are encouraging that it be imposed by the modern bureaucratic state. In our age, that kind of approach can only be despotic. What I am suggesting is that we need to allow free individuals, liberally educated (we hope) in the original sense, to live their way into the future from the bottom up. We need both free and philosophically informed citizens thinking and acting so that we can allow for the coming to be of a genuine public space. The modern state is a distinctive phenomenon. It does not presuppose the thoroughgoing moral and political solidarity of ancient republics, yet in many ways it threatens to impose a more powerful, surreptitious

Conclusion 297

uniformity than that experienced by any of the premodern republics. Nevertheless, the modern state presents itself as a more or less expansive “procedural state” that pretends to be neutral as to ends. But the modern procedural state is anything but morally or philosophically neutral. The myth that the modern state merely provides a framework and arena within which individuals or groups can choose whatever ends they wish must be shown for the canard that it is. There is no such possibility of simple neutrality in any human undertaking. There is always an underlying understanding of the best life — we have simply ceased to reflect on its nature openly and publicly. Any honest observer has to admit that the substantive ends chosen in everyday practice by actual human beings are relatively limited and over long periods of time historically predictable. Given the leveling effects of the modern world, what we get in our time, however, is primarily a spectacle of conformity more than any interesting “diversity.” The real diversity in humanity is of the multiplicity of distinctive types of human beings and the limited essential things to which they devote their lives with actual passion — honor, truth, immortality, family, salvation, fame, wealth, pleasure, comfort, mere extension of life, and very few others.16 We late moderns have created a world where we have truncated that actual diversity, leaving primarily wealth, pleasure, and extended life to dominate as the legitimate ends.17 In its conservative permutation, the modern procedural state longs to be a minimalist entity that defers to the alleged virtues that accrue from leaving most matters to the “market” to sort out. This permutation is adopted by libertarians and free market proponents who see freedom as dependent upon “freedom from” the intrusions of the state, such intrusions being understood as the greatest danger to the good. Yet this tends to end up being in its own right an indirect defense of very limited ends — magnifying the pursuit of wealth as an end in itself and hence magnifying those few ends that money can buy. As one example, for economic libertarians, rarely are republican character formation and political participation seen as primary ends in themselves. The same can be said for immortal fame or the immortality of the soul. Liberals who see an unnecessary economic inequality ensuing from unfettered markets want the state to intrude and redistribute wealth and services in ways that would not, they argue, spontaneously emerge. They

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present this undertaking as neutral with regard to ends. But there is a particular perception of the good that lurks in this understanding, just as there is in the conservative permutation. At a bare minimum, distributive justice is seen as higher than liberty, whether conceived negatively as freedom from intrusion into individual choices or, in very rare circumstances, as having a positive component of participation in making the laws. For liberals, the ultimate end is comfortable self-preservation as the highest good, and that presupposes equal resources. But liberals still inconsistently claim to want a procedural state that is morally neutral to ends. What this primarily ends up supporting is an understanding that the state should abstract from any traditional formative project for character. Excellence is not seen as intrinsic to the good life, or to shared political life. At times the liberal notion goes so far as to use the state to undermine certain forms of character formation —  religious virtues or more traditional understandings of aristocratic virtues — in the society at large. The most radical version of this understanding supposes that relativism is in fact the only legitimate basis of democracy. All ends must be posited as equal. In any actually lived life, that is a frankly absurd position. In either of these cases, with the procedural state we arrive at the “sublimation of the political” or the belief that politics can be replaced either by the invisible hand of the market mechanism or the rational, scientific administration of things from the top down. But to believe that any of this is value-free or neutral with respect to ends shows that there is indifference to what is meant concretely and phenomenologically about the substantive ends historically pursued by actual, concrete individuals. Again, what is primarily being debated is only the means to comfortable self-preservation as not only the highest but the only legitimate end. In the process, other ends are suppressed.18 What is accomplished is that a particular end is imposed quietly without an open debate about the real diversity of ends actual human beings pursue, or any open public debate about the qualitative ranking of ends. That forgetting is of the essence of the modern procedural state. I am arguing that in a republican context, it is the open public debate about ends, about the good, that is truly political, because it is a debate that can never be closed or surreptitiously finessed — that closure is despotic. I would argue that making the debate open and public rather than a matter for suppressed premises and elite manipulation is all to the good.

Conclusion 299

What a republic needs is a public space for that debate. The “market” is not a public space. “Civil society,” though beneficial, is not identical to a genu­ ine public space. Bureaucratic offices are not public spaces. The cloistered academic offices of intellectual elites do not constitute a public space. To believe that the matter of the human good can be reduced to distributional issues dealt with bureaucratically or by unfettered markets is far too narrow to fit phenomenal reality. To believe that freedom can be reduced to the freedom of the marketplace alone is far too superficial, just as the “freedom from domination” of authors like Pettit,19 who alleges to be a republican, is simultaneously superficial and distorting. But so is the belief that bureaucracies are morally neutral.20 Each argument has its favored elite lurking in the background, which, if it won completely, would rule by default, economic and financial elites on the one side and bureaucratic and intellectual elites on the other. Neither wants to have an open, substantive, political, and ethical discussion of questions such as how we should live and who should rule. Neither wants the hegemony of a truly open, republican public space dominated by citizens rather than consumers or subjects who are easy to manipulate.21 We need again to grasp a true understanding of republican freedom. The modern, voluntarist view of freedom proceeds from the assumption that one can originate both one’s actions and one’s ends ex nihilo. This rests on the great modern myth of the autonomy of the self-legislating Ego. It is opposed by those who rightly observe that the self is in fact always “encumbered,” a rather cumbersome and sociological way of saying that one is always determined by having a specific nature and by the time and place of one’s existence and by the world of meanings that are always already there before one even confronts the necessity of choice. First, actual individuals are always determined primarily by the hierarchy of phenomenal ends in the human soul. Second, actual freedom always exists within limits of possibility, and among the constellation of choices of many others. Third, empty and abstract “autonomy” as an end is a myth and chimera. Like the Kantian and more generally liberal notion of autonomy, freedom of choice for the libertarian is almost always conceptualized as the allegedly voluntarist act of individuals operating alone. These individuals are required to choose both their ends and the means to those ends as if they were functioning in a vacuum rather than in a shared public space determined also by their own distinctive permutation of human nature.

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With any of the various myths regarding the nonsituated individual comes the canard that ends are merely chosen or are simply formal things, and are in no way determined by nature, God, tradition (including politi­ cal, religious, and philosophical components), peoples, cultures, regimes. To that notion is appended the belief that the means to these allegedly autonomous ends are also open to pure choice, an act of pure will, by an unencumbered private individual. The actual debate for real individuals involves asking what natural and publicly plausible ends are more worthy of pursuing than others. And those concrete ends come from a finite group of distinctive fundamental ends that do not, as Cicero makes clear, change, and that have been visible to thoughtful human beings from at least the origins of historical humanity. A determination to bracket life itself and one’s specific world before entering the discussion of ends will leave each participant to publicly discuss with no one in particular just exactly nothing concrete and specific. But in the process, individuals do experience the phenomenon that their life is being massively determined by forces they do not control. In actual existence, the ranking of substantive and already given ends is what we do with every choice we make, from trivial to crucial. And our choices always implicate those around us, none of whom we chose as destiny mates any more than they chose us. This is what the term “encumbered” really implies. How can we hope for an interesting public discussion if we must throw out the notion of ranking ends before the fact, as the procedural state demands? The fear that has been inculcated in many in our time is that the minute we let hierarchy enter our public debate — instead of praising some nonexistent, value-free neutrality offered by an allegedly procedural state — we have necessarily thrown ourselves into the lap of exclusivity, coercion, and dogmatism. In the process we eschew the substantive character of the ends we actually pursue as historical human beings and think we are better off not discussing them. In either its liberal or conservative permutations, the procedural state mentality ties our hands as far as political debate is concerned. It is very hard to create and maintain a public space when there is nothing of interest that we are allowed to discuss out in the open with each other. This notion of the procedural state has been criticized by other forms of political theory in recent decades. One such critique came a generation

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ago from a school designated in different ways but which I will call “participatory democracy.”22 The participatory school has, like the procedural state argument, a similar Right/Left split. The Left version frequently reduces politics to participatory membership itself or some kind of sublime pursuit of immortality (Arendt), or the egalitarian outcomes it allegedly supports as its real end (Pateman), or the ways it would avoid the pluralism and adversary interest-group politics of the procedural state (Mansbridge). With it frequently comes a commitment to plebiscitary democracy — and a relative indifference to the majority tyranny that so rightly concerned America’s founders, especially Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. The choice of markets versus bureaucracies is replaced by the choice of participation versus representation supplemented almost necessarily with its adversarial checks and balances. The participatory position wants the hegemony of pure participatory democracy without all of the republican restraints on majority tyranny, checks and balances, separation of powers, and the concern about minority rights versus those of the majority.23 There is occasionally a longing for an element of ancient republican participation and solidarity but without any of the severe moral restraints. The Left participatory approach simultaneously downplays all the necessary moderating virtues of modern republicanism with its stress on individual rights.24 There is also a conservative version of the participatory argument that perhaps retains a bit more contemporary resonance than the Left version, which in the last forty years has been run over by the juggernaut of deconstruction and diversity. Participation, and its presupposed faceto-face sets of “community” relations, is seen by conservatives as the means to spontaneously form character and simultaneously negate the value-free effects of the bureaucratic procedural state. The good anticipated by conservatives from participation is what in some permutations seems to be a belief in a “moral invisible hand.” Gang violence, drug culture, the breakdown of the family, runaway relativism, controversial ethi­ cal issues regarding abortion and assisted suicide, and so forth might be much more readily dealt with if we wrest decision-making back from the morally neutral procedural bureaucratic state to focus on local participation as a singular palliative. There is a whole set of empirical expectations operating here, from an underestimation of the potential dangers of irrational religious

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fundamentalism to a faith in “family values,” which would be more persuasive if it could be articulated in substantive terms other than mere gay bashing. But moral excellence does not emerge miraculously without any conscious effort other than mere participation, any more than do republican liberty, genuine community, or the maintenance of an actual public space. I have been arguing that republicanism requires a significant element of public participation by citizens. But the issue of participation has to be integrated and balanced into the larger republican context and not taken as some magical elixir all on its own — even though more investment of time will be required of most citizens, who will have to realize that any interesting freedom does not come to us totally free of charge. The Right version of the participatory argument tends to merge at times into the communitarian argument, and I am contending that republicanism and its needed, shared public space requires a shared community. The difference between most contemporary communitarians and the participatory proponents seems to be that the communitarians are usually more concerned with psychological issues. Their discussions focus less on human excellence or specific moral virtues and duties than would a republican like Cicero. The communitarians usually are concerned with things like “discontent” and the alienation that comes from an increasingly fragmented and abstract “self,” the necessary descendent of the self-legislating Ego. For communitarians, community, and its “solidarity,” is raised to a high value. But the greatest good is to help individual selves develop a “centered” understanding in a world ruled by distant and invisible forces that make life seem out of control. Stress is put on overcoming the psychological sense of discontent, fragmentation, alienation, and anomie.25 The problem becomes psychological rather than political. Merely having others in the vicinity is seen as somehow therapeutic. But contemporary communitarians do grasp the “situated” or “encumbered” nature of the human soul. Opposed to the communitarian understanding of the unavoidable “situated” and “encumbered” nature of human existence is the deconstructionist longing for a version of global anarchism fostered by ongoing deconstruction of every shared belief and principle. The good is the coming to be of a stateless, classless, areligious, spontaneous, relativist, cosmopolitan society of equal individuals who invent their own “values.”

Conclusion 303

The deconstructionist good is precisely as Marx understood it —  minus metaphysical doctrines such as “inevitable history” and the notion of “species being” derived from Kant. Of course, Marx was a materialist, and hence he was foundationalist and metaphysical, qualities that are the principal theoretical enemies of the deconstructionist. But it is Marx’s end that is desired by deconstructionists, by different means — ongoing self-conscious (a notion that again is metaphysical) deconstruction. And lurking in the background is an almost Lockean premise of radical individualism — leading to anarchistic equality rather than the need for a strong state in which one participates. There is a strange integration of the universal and the particular that occurs in the vast, inchoate literature that can be lumped under headings such as postfoundationalism, postmodernism, or deconstructionism. There is no ultimate universal — that would smack of foundationalism; all particular individuals are unique self-created (ex nihilo) “narratives” unto themselves, and yet we long for a form of anarchist, universal cosmopolitanism, which in most permutations has as its only positive shared feature its postnationalist, anti-Western sentiments. The whole instinct is to deconstruct and dissolve any public space, which is by its very essence shared and particular. No public space should be allowed the audacity to congeal. By comparison, contemporary communitarians come forth with their own reflections on the universal and the particular and seem to prefer the particular now understood as the local.26 The local in this understanding needs to take priority over both isolated liberal individualism and global cosmopolitanism. For communitarians, even though the economy has become global, we must live out our lives in specific local places. The forces that seem to determine us are global, vague, abstract, and beyond our control. Hence we lead fragmented lives. Because of the scale of modern life, the ideals of a national republicanism are impossible; they would be nostalgic and probably repressive ideals anyway. Only in some local unity with others can we find a center for our “selves” beyond the alienating fragmentation that is the present world. But apparently we need to embrace the existence of community consciously, which is to say, theoretically, before it can have the appropriate efficacy in our lives. There is a surface similarity between this theoretical idea of community and the republican notion of a res publica. In the communitarian

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literature, it is in our encumbered communities that discourse necessarily becomes moral and on a scale we can comprehend. We must consciously embrace this encumbrance or it will be stolen from us by the distant and alienating procedural state, or by the even more distant global market and global institutions that are seen to be unalterably necessary. Community so understood is the polar opposite of the global, cosmopolitan anarchism longed for by deconstructionists of one variety or another. If we do not self-consciously embrace communitarian “encumbrance,” we will suffer from a sense of disempowerment, having lost control of our lives, suffering thereby psychological dismemberment. We need rootedness in communities close to us to form our “selves” in interactions with others. Substantive standards for that forming are almost never discussed, as there is frequently a lurking moral postfoundationalism or a unique form of the moral neutrality of the procedural state argument. It is presumed that our encumbrances will be life-giving and moral as if by yet another permutation of the invisible hand. The local becomes good simply by being local.27 Solving psychological fragmentation and its debilitating effects becomes the greatest good. If so, why not turn ourselves over to a first-rate therapist or pharmacist? Although the communitarian discourse frequently links up with the language of republicanism and its political concerns for self-government and political liberty, the primary concern is individual and psychological, not political, or even in any substantive sense ethical — the ethical neutrality of the procedural state usually remains. Consider the following extraordinary conclusion by one of the best known of the communitarians, Michael Sandel: Deciding which of one’s identities is properly engaged — as parent or professional, follower of a faith or partisan of a cause, citizen of one’s country or citizen of the world — is a matter of moral reflection and political deliberation that will vary according to the issue at stake. The best deliberation will attend to the content of the claims, their relative moral weight, and their role in the narratives by which the participants make sense of their lives. Multipli-unencumbered citizens are prone [to the drift] to formless, protean, storyless selves, unable to weave the various strands of their identity into a coherent whole. Political community depends on the narratives by which people make sense of their condition and

Conclusion 305

interpret the common life they share. . . . At a time when the narrative resources of civic life are already strained — as the soundbites, factoids, and disconnected images of our media-saturated culture attest — it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the tales that order our lives. There is a growing danger that, individually and collectively, we will find ourselves slipping into a fragmented, storyless condition. The loss of the capacity for narrative would amount to the ultimate disempowering of the human subject, for without narrative there is no continuity between present and past, and therefore no responsibility, and therefore no possibility of acting together to govern ourselves. Since human beings are storytelling beings, we are bound to rebel against the drift to storylessness.28 In this statement we see that even communitarianism circles back to incorporate elements of the diseases it should be fighting — modern voluntarism and constructivism. By the understanding in the above argument, there is “no there there” in reality until we invent a narrative. We have the assertion of “encumbered” selfhood but no attempt to push this assertion down to any philosophically and phenomenologically interesting roots that involve human beings in having a nature and a tradition, that is, being distinct natural beings who always already exist somewhere with others who share a past. We have the apparently postfoundationalist premise that we “are” only after we make up whatever we are by our narratives, which means ultimately groundless stories or myths. Until then there is neither an “I” nor a “we.” It is a slight overstatement, but in this understanding, to have any existence, individually or as a community, is to stand in midair and tell stories. We have not moved very far from Nietzsche’s “will to will” and his “fabling of the world.” Everything is groundless (“postfoundationalist”) narrative.29 We are still left with the fact that someone must explain the basis upon which “I” and “we” choose among narratives and judge their utility. The only basis for the judgments is nature, tradition, or God, just as it has always been. And it is not autonomous storytelling that will find that basis; it is phenomenological reason. If any concrete individual self or particular community is based on nothing more than stories, that means we remain occupying precisely the same space as the deconstructionists — there is no genuine foundation. Everything is mere traces dependent upon our continued speaking and

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narrating; it is just that the deconstructionists do not share the psychological understanding that we need unity, solidarity, and community, or a centered self-understanding. The decentered is the good. No one will ever feel solidarity with a mere story, or feel psychologi­ cally “centered” on the basis of a myth they know they or someone else made up. Those hopes rest on an unusual understanding of actual human psychology.30 Narratives that are presented as no more than stories do not bind, inspire, ennoble, or give meaning to actual human beings. We are what we are, and that is something to be discovered in concrete deeds, actions, and speeches. What is needed is to open spaces where actual, concrete republican citizens can interact and discover their own natures and abilities, and where their shared being-with is something more than a story. Nietzsche is the one who most clearly and consistently understands what follows from groundless willing, fabling, and narrating — it creates a battle to impose one’s “narrative” on others, not merely to provide “meaning” for oneself, one’s family, or one’s community through collective deeds. Life as fable and narrative leads in a despotic direction, toward the imposition of the strongest fable. The good news is that meaning already exists before the fact if we will give the phenomena of human historical existence the space to operate, and quit theoretically deconstructing those phenomena out of what Nietzsche called the “spirit of revenge” and ressentiment.31 What I am trying to point out is how abstract all of the reigning political theories are and how they all have a more or less substanceless view of the human soul, its desires, longings, and aspirations. There is an ultimate refusal to accept and articulate the actual phenomena of human existence.32 The theoretical world of our time, and the discussions it occasions, almost universally lacks concrete specificity about the good, and it lacks an understanding of the full scope of the real ends that actual, everyday human beings have historically pursued. This phenomenal groundlessness is self-defeating and merely fosters personal, political, and philosophical fragmentation. Human beings cannot make up life out of nothing and then forget they made it up. Contemporary political theories tend to grasp some aspect of the good, but their overall view is partial.33 It is a more phenomenologically rich understanding that must be our point of departure, a richness that I have tried to show is offered by Cicero. As we see in his corpus, we need a

Conclusion 307

more integrative understanding of knowledge to support our reflections. None of the schools of political theory of our time even attempts an integrated articulation of the whole of knowledge and understanding. This is not to say they do not presuppose a cosmology, theology, psychology, epistemology, ethics, and so on. They just do not substantively articulate those elements, and thus they get wrapped in inconsistencies that are frequently not even grasped as issues. In the end, all of these forms of po­ liti­cal theory are forms of constructivism.34 None will allow the actual interactions of republican citizens to determine future outcomes in a nonauthoritarian fashion. None of these theories will allow republicanism the freedom to genuinely exercise substantive political freedom and operate from the bottom up. And none will accept that human beings are more than empty shells waiting to be filled in by a theorist. But the so-called communitarians seem to me to be closer to some essential truths than many of the other contemporary contestants. There is an acceptance of the fact that we are always already encumbered, without realizing that this means we are always already moral, religious, and political selves. 35 But most communitarians inconsistently sneak in a great number of things that do not follow, frequently including even a voluntarist attempt to, in effect, manufacture or “construct” community. This attempt misses the deep phenomenological sense in which there is always already a deep sociality and relatedness in everyday existence if we will resist the authoritarian urge to deconstruct it or the philosophical determination to ignore nature and tradition. What is needed is to see why our everydayness should not be deconstructed and why it does not need to be totally reconstructed even if it needs to be articulated, educated, elevated, and at times reformed. The fragmented spectacle of contemporary political theory is not the integrative, holistic political philosophy we can learn from Cicero, which is a nonconstructivist, unitary, affirmative, first philosophy that can offer spaces for free individuals to live their way into, while discovering rather than inventing themselves. One can only invent oneself in private. In public we all find who we are fairly quickly, if we are not self-deluded. To find themselves, people have to have a space among others to do it. It is not something that transpires in isolation. The opening of spaces for participatory self-discovery will not happen if we are unwilling to let individuals create outcomes by their own deeds based on their own lived experiences. That is what contemporary theory in all its permutations will

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not allow. That constructivist, theory-driven approach is authoritarian and antirepublican. Here is our problem. Contemporary constructivist theory forces us into false dichotomies that will never get us to fundamental issues. For example, we have the dichotomy of allegedly rational atheism versus fundamentalist irrationality — forcing us away from grasping the limits of reason and seeing why the religious questions always phenomenologically return. On the opposite side of this coin, we have mythical views of the nature of modern science as ontological rather than technological competing against every other alternative being presented as abject superstition. We simultaneously have the dichotomy of an unfettered market mechanism versus bureaucratic rationality — both of which are apolitical and destroy commitment to a res publica. We are left with an abstract, groundless, voluntaristic view of freedom that is without limits competing with a materialistic and deterministic understanding of man that points us toward individualistic animal hedonism. Either prong leaves us easy prey to being manipulated and/or administered pets rather than free citizens. We have forms of inequality divorced from any serious understanding of merit, excellence, and virtue, which leads to calls for a form of mandated radical quantitative equality, also divorced from any form of merit, excellence, or virtue. We have contempt for outcomes borne of actual citizen participation, which are dismissed as mere populism opposed to a self-selecting elitism that is openly antagonistic to any true republican practice. We are lost, and we seem incapable of finding our way to the fundamental questions and issues and thereby to the solid and healthy bases of human existence. In this environment we are unprepared to craft any kind of novel relation between the genuine historical materials we have been given in both the ancient and modern permutations of republicanism. And we are unable to draw from the authentic wellsprings of the ancient, Christian, and modern bases of our tradition. Hence we are in no position to craft the kind of balances we need. We are especially disadvantaged in crafting the souls that a postmodern republicanism will need. We need to weave together elements drawn from both ancient and modern republicanism and from past elements of the tradition. But the integrative understanding that will allow us to do this lies beyond the fragmented and competing schools of our time that pay no attention to

Conclusion 309

such integrative understanding. What is required as a first step is the reinvigoration of genuine liberal, liberating, education. That probably requires a reassertion of the priority of actual republican citizenship over the elite ownership of our academies. Soulcraft and the Republican Future Will there be a republic one hundred years from now? Again, the answer is that there is cause for concern if we follow the path on which we are now embarked. Our public spaces are closing, and our genuine philosophical and intellectual openness is closing too. The greatest legacies we have, the intellectual openness of the tradition of political philosophy and the self-governing freedom of republican institutions, are in danger. There have always been two broad approaches to maintaining republics: (1) clever institutional tinkering, which more or less abstracts from soulcraft; or (2) the soulcraft that offers citizens the character that allows them to govern themselves personally and collectively while being the ethical examples to others that every republic needs. It is quite easy to say which approach we moderns have primarily relied upon for a very long time. But future republics cannot exclusively count on clever institutions, punitive laws, and external restraints on behavior and still hope to survive — harsh laws are ultimately the tools of despotisms, as Montesquieu long ago made clear in his response to Hobbes. Cleverly manipulated institutions can only get us so far. Republics cannot survive for long with citizens with hollowed-out souls, diminished character, and no ability for personal self-responsibility and self-control. Our focus must change. Our greatest need now is character formation. In the American context, we must recognize that the primary moral supports in this regard at the time of the Founding have in our time weakened. Those supports were a decaying aristocratic code of honor conjoined with Christian notions of humility and self-discipline, all embellished by a strong work ethic. We must rethink the moral foundations for citizen liberty and the capacity for personal self-control and responsibility that are demanded by republicanism. Many, from both the Right and Left, have become convinced that we can allow virtue to be a private concern, which ultimately is to say, no serious, public concern at all.36 A few have convinced themselves that

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there is no such thing as human excellence, a self-invalidating position according to which no one could actually live a minute of their concrete lives or make a single choice. But the fact is that we always presuppose a hierarchy of virtues in our choosing, doing, and making. The problem is that in our time, turning moral pedagogy over to the modern state will have nothing but authoritarian consequences. What must be done is to get the state out of the business of negating the efforts of those who can help inculcate virtue in upcoming generations of future citizens.37 Our contemporary character deficit will not be met with institutional tinkering no matter how clever, and certainly not by bureaucratic mandates from the top down. Our own founders were good examples of many of the virtues Cicero saw as mandatory for a republic. They were philosophically and historically informed and leaned far more toward the noble ethical code of Cicero than one centered on martial virtue, to say nothing of modern utilitarian calculation. But their founding paid almost no attention to the requirements for reproducing souls with such virtues.38 That ethical individuals like those of the founding generation would, therefore, eventually cease to exist in adequate numbers in prominent public positions was foreordained.39 It is precisely in the public arena, not in private withdrawal, that we need our most comprehensive virtue to display itself. Furthermore, our time offers a more powerful set of venues for withdrawal from the public arena than Cicero’s. And few ages have seen so many public displays of self-congratulatory shamelessness and narcissism. We need to consider how to maximize the number of individuals motivated by what I have called internal checks on behavior. For want of a better term, I will designate that behavior with the traditional term “nobility,” which lines up with the equally traditional term “gentleman”; by and large, I believe both terms can, if properly understood, be used interchangeably with “gentleperson.”40 Here again we can look to Cicero and the ways in which he diminishes the ethical significance of warrior virtues while trying to fashion a republican version of noble virtues. This does not mean that we cannot still look to Locke for institutions and especially for such concepts as rights — when reconceptualized with an eye to ends. The attempt to recover a premodern reliance on elements of ancient and Christian virtue (most modern ethical systems rest on secularized Christian notions) does

Conclusion 311

not mean we jettison the majority of the advantages of modern commercial republicanism.41 Those advantages are already our own. Equally our own are examples of traditional and Christian virtue, if we bring them out into the open and stop trying to deconstruct them.42 My argument, following Cicero, has been that there are only two ways to seriously affect human actions. One is external, through external restraints like fear; one is internal, through internal restraints, based on an inner conception of oneself against which one will not transgress in concrete actions because it would be too internally painful. The latter positively requires a strong element of duty and honor, and the semiexternal means to socially reinforce it, that is, public shame and public reputation. From a moral perspective, I would argue that shame is more important than fear, but perhaps it should be less important than a love of a good reputation. It is the basis of internal moral restraints that has been lost in our late modern world. The paradox is that it is the moral “lowering of the sights” of Machiavellian/Hobbesian/Lockean proto-modernity itself that helped give us our great modern republics, while simultaneously destroying the moral support those republics now most need. Even when the proto-modern reliance on external temporal, secular fear is supplemented by theological fear, the conjunction is still now insufficient.43 Rational religion is necessary; a civic morality of honor and nobility is equally necessary. The good news is that if we will only look, the natural phenomena support such possibilities, as do the sources of the Western tradition.44 I will stipulate that most of our publicly deployed, denominational, scriptural, theological premises are, for the most part, with some exceptions, fairly sanguine, especially in light of the alternatives we have seen on this planet in the past, at present, and likely as alternatives in the future. The postscriptural religious longings we have seen from Nietzsche and Heidegger — to say nothing of the atheistic longings of radical modern European Enlightenment philosophy — are anything but rational or republican in implication. We would do well not to jettison what is both our own and potentially rational. And as I argued using the example of Cicero, religion will always regenerate itself out of the fundamental questions of life itself. But even rational religious principles must be morally supplemented for republican purposes. There is no reason to believe that the psychology that an ethic of honor will require applies any less to women than to men,45 or that it is any

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less effective across “cultural” lines or less effective in a commercial rather than in warrior or agrarian societies. In fact, small-scale agrarian societies are dominated by face-to-face interactions that make external restraints more effective and therefore internal restraints less necessary. The “lonely crowd” aspect of overcrowded, modern environments limits the effects of the softer forms of external restraints that emanate from community, leaving us overly reliant on increasingly harsh external restraints.46 But an internal ethic of duty and honor requires a public commitment to education and, again, a social environment that supports and rewards it.47 We need to support an ethics of nobility and everything it presupposes, not deconstruct it along with its phenomenological foundations in the name of a formless, anarchistic withdrawal from the public arena into an isolated individualism. For close to forty years, our elite academic intellectual institutions have been deconstructing the present phenomena. This destruction of the basis of the ethical support needed by contemporary republicanism has despotism as it only predictable yield. Honesty compels us to admit that it is not among our brightest and best or among our social, political, or educational elites that we expect the most scrupulous attention to ethical behavior deployed in a republican fashion for the public good. We find it among those whom many would condescendingly deem less elite, less sophisticated, and less prosperous. And it is not the external restraints of fear of the law or even divine retribution that one sees operating most powerfully in our more everyday citizens — it is in fact an internal sense of honor. This demonstrates that the phenomena of human existence exist and lead in a predictable direction. We do not have to invent the merit of honor and nobility; we simply have to open ourselves to it. It is part of human nature. It is more valuable to nature as a whole than any endangered species. That things like duty and honor show themselves is demonstrated by the fact that those who have the least sophisticated educations and lesser social standing find their way to these phenomena on their own. Even our urban street gangs have codes of honor, corrupted as they may be. But the phenomena that show themselves always need the support of habit and training and social reinforcement and reward. Even more, virtue requires the support of public deeds by those most visible in the society. And finally, the phenomena require philosophical articulation; the phenomena need to be brought out into the open.

Conclusion 313

We must give the young visions of grander things to pursue than mere wealth, and a public space in which to pursue them. In this regard, our contemporary retreat into what passes for “leisure” has become so far from being noble activity that it is almost always a mindless recreation that is divorced from any understanding of the difference between truly liberal and vulgar activities. Thus it is not surprising that the mere having, and hence pursuit of, wealth becomes an end in itself divorced from how it makes possible the pursuit of intrinsically worthy and satisfying substantive ends. The preva­ lence among the richest of divorce, therapy, counseling, and all manner of expensive New Age cures demonstrates that wealth does not necessarily lead to happiness, often quite the contrary. The pursuit of truly liberal ends presupposes some degree of wealth as a means and an environment of structured liberty that can maintain individual freedom in the face of the modern bureaucratic state.48 Because of the efforts of the modern political philosophers, we late moderns have been largely deflected into commerce as the basis of everyday life, and modern commerce has always been a necessary support for modern republicanism. But in the process, we have lost any conception of the vertical ranking of the ends of action. Here is where Cicero can help reorient our thinking, even if we cannot simply adopt all of his conclusions in our changed situation. As Cicero shows us, gentility, nobility, internal restraints on behavior, codes of honor and duty — and more than one variant is possible as the history of the world shows — can be divorced from a warrior foundation, even if we may continue to need warriors now and into the future. But we can no longer apply a code of “duty, honor, country” only to our warriors. When we observe that “freedom is not free,” we must realize that too applies to more than our warriors, it must apply to citizens who will have to do more for themselves in the future, in a public space, with other citizens, in public view where their actions and characters are judged. My suggestion is that republicans positively need a primary ethical focus inward, instead of outward to external restraints. And liberty must be understood more substantively than as a simple emancipation from external restraints; it must be seen as a positive end to engage in making laws and in controlling and perfecting oneself. We need to look inward to our own awareness of who we are, what we expect of ourselves, and what

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this personal self-conception demands of us individually and collectively. This effort must be kept open in publicly articulated speech and deeds. Not just as individuals but as republicans we must look within to domestic engagement as the primary focus of our political life and not to international engagement. So much of modern political philosophy has left us pursuing the political primarily internationally, which is all that is left for our political concern when our internal public spaces become nonexistent, especially since we have constructed our politics out of a moral lowering of the sights. There is a reason why modern politics, nurtured on the lowering of ethical sights and the externalization of restraints intrinsic to the modern political project, has from the beginning taken international affairs as the focal point for politics. Attention is thereby focused away from the internal concern with excellence that has been abandoned in modern republics. This leads to a hollowing out of the soul that will be the death knell of republicanism. But a new internal focus should be primarily on soulcraft and a conception of justice, where individuals take it upon themselves as a matter of honor to protect the weak by defending their liberty and self-­ sufficiency, not by turning them into well-maintained bureaucratic pets. In short, the internal focus should not be on building large bureaucracies and empowering self-selecting elites but rather on involving citizens in their own affairs and helping fellow citizens directly and in as face-toface a fashion as possible. All of these things require a public space if they are to occur. And we must see acting in that space as an end in itself and as the venue for our discovering ourselves. Actual human beings and citizens are not the great empty zeros of constructivist theory to be molded from scratch or shaped like amorphous putty, nor are they the racist, sexist, and homophobic nightmares of diversity theorists. Actual human beings have complicated longings, aspirations, and desires, many of which are noble and high-minded, especially when tutored and given appropriate examples.49 But human nobility has greater scope for showing itself in face-to-face relationships. The leading of our own souls and the souls of fellow citizens aloft must be seen as one of the great goals of republican statesmanship. But it needs to be approached and accomplished by speech and public persuasion, not authoritarian demands. And that speech must be deployed in a shared public arena, an arena that then gives a space for further deeds and speeches.

Conclusion 315

The solution we need is not to give up modern republicanism for the ancient variety or for a new hegemony of theology or any new form of despotism, bureaucratic or otherwise.50 We in the West have already fought the battle for the emancipation of the political from theological domination; the battle was bloody and should not be refought. But that most certainly does not mean that the modern state should commit itself to active hostility to religion and to fostering some European radical Enlightenment form of public atheism. The issue should be posed as the republican need for rational religion.51 Likewise, though it is a truism, ours is global world. To fail to interact in that global environment will leave any republic to be blindly overrun by forces over which it has no control. Being the pawn of fate is never something to choose. Being a loser in the global political and economic game that is now inevitable through inaction and inattention is not choice-worthy. A merely inward-looking, isolationist regime in such an environment will be the pawn of fate. But a republic that eschews the necessary look inward I am suggesting — both politically and individually — will decay from within. Global commerce is our fate for the foreseeable future, and seen correctly it is a choice-worthy fate given the alternatives. Globalism more generally is also our fate, but that certainly does not mean accepting the despotism of a global state. The limits of both commerce and globalism can be confronted in a republican fashion with distinctive public spaces where our historical and ethical humanity can be played out. The primary republican task at present is not the technical one of figuring out how to redistribute property or how to provide this, that, or the other service. Our principal and principled task is the educational task of explaining to ourselves ultimate substantive ends worthy of pursuit other than mindless accumulation, mere power as an end in itself, and mere emancipation from external restraints as the epitome of liberty. Fortunately, the hierarchy of ends available to human action is presented by the phenomena themselves and need not be invented by some constructivist, self-legislating Ego that reduces everything in life to a “narrative.” All we have to do to make our start is to look to the ends already implicit in our everyday doing and making and bring them more clearly into the light of day and grasp how all action is always already oriented to the good, or, more to the point, to a hierarchy of goods. This point was correctly made long ago by Aristotle on the opening pages of

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his Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. All action aims at the good, and there is always a hierarchy of goods. Cicero is correct, and, by extension, Adam Smith and David Hume are wrong: the pursuit of mindless luxury leads away from the public space needed by republics. But the solution is not state-mandated limitations on individual consumption and liberty, rather it is personal choice based on an understanding of a hierarchy of ends worthy of pursuit — followed by social contempt for those who pursue the vulgar. The respective, proper places of civic action, commerce, private property, and rights have to be rethought with an eye to ends of action, not mere formless intentions. My suggestion is that republicanism and deontology can never be made to go together. The modern West surfed into the present on what is now an ebbing wave. Through most of the modern era we existed within the convergence of emerging capitalism and Protestant Christianity, within a decaying aristocratic ethical backdrop. The rise of commercial republics in the modern West was intertwined therefore with built-in ethical restraints, and those restraints did in fact have significant positive effects. In our time we can see that those restraints have largely unraveled, especially among our elites, both financial and academic, leaving us to rethink the relation between commerce and a new phenomenologically grounded internal ethical code. Without the supplement of the “external” restraint of elements of fear, commerce will certainly not prosper. But without an “internal” form of restraint emanating from a code of duty and honor, republicanism will not prosper.52 Without such an ethic we would leave our descendants defenseless in the future, a future that would inevitably turn to morally inexcusable elitist inequality and eventual despotism over a populace already transformed into inert subjects. No equally fortuitous combination as that of the modern merger of commerce and the Protestant ethic within an environment of a decaying aristocratic code of honor seems to be on the horizon. We must open for ourselves the moral and political spaces we need from out of the phenomena as they present themselves now. We must offer the future spaces that can eventually be occupied. They will not be a simple repetition of the past. We must neither forget the past nor long to simply go back to it. It is our responsibility politically, ethically, and philosophically to bequeath something of value to the future rather than debts, despotism, and lonely crowds of fragmented, isolated subjects bureaucratically manipulated.

notes

Introduction 1. By the time Rome reached a comparable size to that of the United States in the Founding period, it had already effectively ceased to be a republic. 2. Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, 25. 3. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 230; this work cited by aphorism throughout. 4. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. 1, “On the Three Metamorphoses.” 5. I have attempted this unavoidable confrontation with these two impediments to the future in Gregory Smith, Nietzsche, Heidegger and the Transi­ tion to Postmodernity, and in Gregory Smith, Martin Heidegger: Paths Taken, Paths Opened. 6. Leo Strauss once observed that it was Jacob Klein who first saw this possibility opened by the thought of Heidegger. See Klein and Strauss, “A Giving of Accounts,” 1–5. 7. I have argued this point elsewhere. See, especially, my chapter “What Is Political Philosophy: A Phenomenological Approach,” in Smith, Between Eternities: On the Tradition of Political Philosophy, Past, Present and Future, 37–63. 8. Almost everything that informs academic debate among large segments of the academic establishment of our time descends from the works of high European nihilism in Nietzsche and Heidegger. What may have been genius in the two German giants nonetheless grew out of political and moral decay in European civilization, and when their insights are offered in watered-down and partial form in contemporary academic debate, they foster only intellectual and moral fragmentation and chaos in public life. That is part of our present

317

318  Notes to Pages 16 – 21 moral and political predicament. This fact was clearly presented and understood twenty years ago in Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. Since then, the American mind has continued to close, and our public debates have paid a heavy price for that closure. One.  Reflections on the Tradition of Republicanism 1. Aristotle remarks that one of the core problems of the Spartan constitution was that all of the property found its way into the hands of the women, who, unlike the men, were then prone to luxury; see Politics 1269b12–1270b1. 2. We see this in the separation of moral/political virtue from intellectual virtue in, for example, book 6 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. We also see it in the creation of individual areas of study that are removed from the public arena — Aristotle’s corpus is divided to form independent studies from physics and biology to logic and metaphysics to ethics and politics. This is the ground for the coming to be of a pure logos abstracted from the public arena. It is Aristotle who first asserts that the locus of truth is in logical statements. In the modern era, this pure theory increasingly came to dictate to the polis, and to praxis more generally, its laws. This was a reversal of the Greek understanding, the door to which was opened by Aristotle, not Plato. My assertion, contrary to traditional textbook understandings, is that Cicero attempts to return to Plato in this regard and find the locus of truth in the public space. In this regard, Plato follows Socrates. 3. In the West, this sense of unfairness presupposed the notion of equality that has its source in Christianity. Yet throughout the Christian era and up to the origins of modernity, the notion of pursuing human excellence retained such priority that the principle of equality was never entirely emancipated from attachment to unequal excellence. The moderns attempted that emancipation by abstracting from excellence with the famous “lowering of the sights,” to which we will return. 4. When philosophy publicly displays itself as an exercise at odds with the reigning traditions and perceptions of the majority of citizens, it has no right to be accepted and seen as publicly useful. 5. Between the fall of the Roman Republic and the dawn of modern political philosophy there are almost no interesting concrete chapters to the republican story. Monarchy reemerged in the West as the dominant political form. A disproportionate attention is nonetheless given by some to what is seen as a form of republican practice on the Italian peninsula in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. We will consider this issue shortly.

Notes to Pages 21 – 24  319 Leaving aside the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in reality it is not until the English, American, and French revolutions, with the increasing penetration of philosophical ideas and ideals leading the way with each successive revolution, that the concrete republican story reemerges. Hence it is modern political philoso­ phy that primarily leads the way, even if there are other crosscurrents at work. 6. I have dealt with this issue at greater length in part 1 of Smith, Nietz­ sche, Heidegger and the Transition to Postmodernity. 7. Per Leo Strauss: “The most important difference between Christianity on the one hand, and Islam as well as Judaism on the other, [is that] for the Christian, the sacred doctrine is revealed theology; for the Jew and the Muslim, the sacred doctrine is, at least primarily, the legal interpretation of the Divine Law (talmud or fiqh). The sacred doctrine in the latter sense has, to say the least, much less in common with philosophy than the sacred doctrine in the former sense. It is ultimately for this reason that the status of philosophy was, as a matter of principle, much more precarious in Judaism and in Islam than in Christianity; in Christianity philosophy became an integral part of the officially recognized and even required training of the student of the sacred doctrine” (Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 18–19). 8. Through everyone from Cicero, Plotinus, Jerome, and Ambrose down to Augustine and beyond, Christianity before Aquinas was dominated by Platonism. Whether that Platonism would have evoked the same Reformation wrath as that which was substantially aimed at Aquinas’s importation of Aris­ totle remains an open question. Granted, there were other issues at stake, such as the concern for corruption in the Church and the rule of priests. 9. One must keep in mind the intertwining of the new republicanism and Reformation Christianity. This link is clear in the case of the American Founding. The attempt to ignore this intertwining is especially true of arguments like those of Pocock, who tries to write religion out of the republican story. See Pocock, Machiavellian Moment. 10. And this can be seen irrespective of taking a stance on the arguments that modernity primarily represents a secularization of Christianity. 11. See my Machiavelli essay “Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Essence of Modernity,” in Smith, Between Eternities, 65–84. 12. I have in mind here, among other authors, especially the alleged republicanism of Philip Pettit. See Pettit, Republicanism. Pettit’s “republicanism” is based on a view of freedom as “nondomination.” He is clear that one does not have to prove actual domination for the bureaucratic state to intercede and trump individual rights against “noninterference,” which is his rubric for Lockean natu­ ral rights. The basis for state intervention is the possibility of domination of

320  Notes to Page 24 someone at some point. Put differently, it is the possible perception of possible domination that gives the state the right to intervene in personal decision-making. It would appear that the anxiety caused by the possibility of domination is presented as the greatest evil. Tranquility of mind is therefore posited as the greatest good. Pettit psychologizes the issue of republicanism and simultaneously dismisses the centrality of traditional republican participation, which is rejected as mere “populism.” The evil of populism is the rubric under which the republican commitment to self-government and participatory citizenship is dismissed. Both the commitment to the Lockean freedom of rights understood as protected noninterference with individual decisions and the freedom to participate in self-government may require that a significant degree of tension and anxiety be maintained. Avoiding consciousness of possible domination is for Pettit a higher end than consciousness of freedom to make one’s own laws or to pursue personal excellence and recognition, or any other traditional republican end. This manipu­ lation of consciousness can be done by elites and thereby the central republican antipathy to despotism is trumped in what I would call Pettit’s “ironic republicanism.” Pettit prepares citizens to be transformed into subjects and does so in the name of republicanism. That is indeed an ironic republicanism in light of the actual ancient and modern permutations of the republican tradition. We now have a republicanism without ancient commitments to virtue or modern commitments to inviolable rights. The great danger of this approach that psychologizes the issue of freedom is that in our time, modern science and technology can deal with tranquility of mind by everything from behavioral manipulation to pharmaceuticals. That is the kind of domination that is truly frightening, once preserved arenas of nonintervention have been breached. We can only hope that our increasing fear of modern technology turned lose on the natural environment will spill over and save us from technological domination in the political arena. Perhaps the combination of our technological successes and our concern for technological excesses can be the basis for a turn back to the political and the required public spaces demanded by actual republicanism as our future means to the conquest of chance. This issue of morally and politically conquering chance is central to the Cicero we will encounter. 13. That either/or is posed most explicitly and starkly by Montesquieu in the Spirit of the Laws. I will argue that it is an overdrawn distinction and that Cicero shows there is a middle way. By far the best presentation of the distinction between ancient and modern republicanism is to be found in Paul Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern. There simply is no better treatment. My thinking has

Notes to Page 24  321 been informed by this fine work. It represents the antidote to the mere scissorsand-paste eclecticism of what I will call the ironic republicans, from Pocock and Skinner to Pettit. As significant as Rahe’s work is, I would still argue that (1) Rahe’s work underestimates the place of modern science and technology in the modern republican story; (2) it underestimates the place of Christianity and especially the Reformation in modern republicanism; (3) in that vein, Rahe fails to see the importance of Christianity in tempering pagan European pugnacity and how that tempering was part of the lead-up to modern republicanism; (4) Rahe falls prey to the post-Hegelian and post-Nietzschean view of Christianity as responsible for the “subversion of the political,” which I have already argued was long prefigured in the Hellenistic age; he explicitly accepts that Christianity is “Platonism for the masses” (Rahe, Republics, 219); (5) Rahe then fails to fully appreciate the ways in which both modern technology and modern commercial republicanism subvert the political; (6) he puts too great a stress on seeing Christianity as just another manifestation of civil theology and “noble lies” for the great unwashed, failing to differentiate those “medicinal lies” from the possibility of a rational theology like that we will see suggested by Cicero (ibid., 225–27); (7) there is an underestimation of the extent to which it was precisely philosophical Christianity that saved the philosophic tradition in a way it would not have been saved in Islam or Judaism. Rahe in fact explicitly argues that Judaism and Islam were better for philoso­ phy because they did not allegedly substitute a politics of the purity of belief for the correctness of action (herein I refer back to Strauss, who makes the exact opposite point); (8) Rahe constructs a view of Western civilization that is too uniform (Western civilization is now a synthesis of Socratic rationalism, Christianity, modern science, and modern republicanism; none of the parts can be willed away); (9) I believe Rahe constructs a far too uniform view of modernity, missing the dialectic of self-dissatisfaction that drives modern thought. 14. I would keep repeating that even though this moral lowering of the sights is central, the Christian element cannot be eliminated from the story of modern republicanism. Modernity was launched in opposition to the situation that had emerged in the late medieval Christian world. See Gillespie, The Theologi­ cal Origins of Modernity. That moment was a moment in Christianity, a moment eventually dominated by “nominalism.” But it is not the inevitable essence of Christianity, as is seen by the philosophical emergence of the early Church influenced as it was by Cicero, the transformative effects of Aquinas, and the equally transformative effects the modern Protestant Reformation. There are multiple moments within that most historical of all religions, Christianity. And within all the historical moments there always remains the rationalist/irrationalist dialectic

322  Notes to Page 24 and the liturgical/nonliturgical split. I will return to this theme in chapter 6 in my discussion of Cicero and natural theology. 15. Rahe seems to see modern republicanism as intrinsically at odds with Christianity and determined, by stages, to undermine it completely. I do not think this is true, and I do not think it is wise to stress too great a modernity/ Christianity either/or. One cannot retain the political benefits of religion by publicly announcing that Christianity represents no more than a civil theology comparable to that of the pagan Greeks and Romans. Modern republicanism has been at it healthiest when it has been informed from without by both aristocratic codes of honor and Christian ethical principles. Detached from those external supports, modern republicanism decays and undermines itself. 16. In our own time, the rationalist/irrationalist divide plays itself out again between the liturgical churches — Catholic, Anglican, Episcopalian, Northern Lutheran, Methodist — and the various permutations of charismatics and Pentecostals, among others. For some, strong emotions and feelings are associated with divine experiences and a form of revelation. This emotivist premise was precisely the premise of pagan religion, for example, Dionysian religion. In the postpagan reassertion of the irrationalist premise, we have the irrationalist Dionysian premise without the wine and sex. In any permutation, the irrationalist premise makes individuals vulnerable to manipulation. Ultimately that is not good news for a republic or for Christianity. O f Christianity we may also say the following: at times in its accommodations to medieval monarchy the Catholic Church was an opponent of healthy republicanism. Protestant sects at times became more supportive of republicanism — although Luther’s and Calvin’s authoritarian political instincts are clear. Some Protestant sects may now be less than helpful for a healthy republicanism in their various permutations of irrationalism. I wish to point out no more than that there have always been various possibilities within Christianity, with various ramifications, and the equation changes as the situation changes. I would suggest that from the perspective of republicanism, the most interesting choice is not between Christianity and some post-Christian form of atheism (Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten) but between rationalist and irrationalist Christianity. Of course, a rationalist Christianity needs those who have studied and know the history of their religion to educate the remainder of the faithful. That means the necessary supervision of religion by someone who has expertise. We need to quit aiming our cannons (or canons) exclusively at what was antirepublican during past moments of Christianity. On the rationalist side of Christianity, one could say that Cicero was not only a republican but the philosopher of rationalist Christianity until Thomas.

Notes to Pages 25 – 28  323 Cicero pilloried every form of superstition in De Divinatione, and then in De Natura Deorum he set out the parameters for any possible “natural” or rational theology. Cicero shows why religion will always regenerate itself out of any number of phenomenal sources that are part of the human condition. Rational religion can always be more than superstition and foolishness. Cicero shows why religion can grow out of the “low” foundations of fear, ignorance, and superstition, or the “high” understanding of what we can and cannot know, which comes with the awe produced by openness to the mystery at the core of being. 17. Modern republicans like Hume and Adam Smith openly praised the pursuit of luxury, and even excess, as useful. 18. In its essence, modern technology can become a far greater enemy of freedom and republicanism than a rational Christianity. To fail to see the issue is to fail to put the republican future in the widest possible perspective. Put another way, is there a postmodern defense of republicanism as an end in itself and as higher than the technical domination and manipulation of nature (and man)? To remain republican citizens, contemporary humanity must transcend this new form of technological despotism. 19. One should think here of the extraordinary overuse of that most sexist of drugs Ritalin, given primarily to boys. Rather than vigorous activity together with virtue and discipline as the reins for male spiritedness, we attempt to drug the problem out of existence. What is needed is not drugs but a new, updated, gentlemanly canon of honor and a respect for what is distinctive about maleness rather than the revengeful determination to eliminate it. 20. Authors like Rahe see a more or less seamless advance of modernity from Machiavelli to Bacon to Hobbes, James Harrington (quite correctly depicted as a prudent Hobbesian), Locke, Montesquieu, Smith, Hume, Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson. In fact, Rahe points to clear Machiavellian resonances in terms like “let ambition check ambition” and the assertion that one can proceed even though “enlightened statesmen will rarely be at the helm.” But Rahe even goes so far as to suggest that Madison was not so much a follower of Smith and Hume, let alone Locke, but of Voltaire and his overt atheism. See Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern, 596. 21. This attempt to revive solidarity in the modern world has led not to patriotism and public-spiritedness but has provided the basis for justifying totally unrepublican despotism. It should be a cautionary sign that we cannot simply re-create ancient republicanism, especially in the coming postmodern world. 22. Rousseau paradoxically opened the door to Kant and Hegel and then Marx with their competing manifestations of “metaphysical freedom,” universalism, and cosmopolitanism. Dissatisfied republican Rousseau spawned a

324  Notes to Pages 29 – 32 modern outcome he would not have embraced. And although in so many ways he remained modern, all too modern, Nietzsche represents yet another self-­ dissatisfied break within modernity, which, as I have signaled elsewhere, announces modernity’s closure. See Smith, Nietzsche, Heidegger and the Transition to Postmodernity. This brings us to the complicated situation of contemporary republicanism at the end of ever so complicated modernity. 23. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 578. 24. Washington, Farewell Address. 25. See Pocock, Machiavellian Moment; Pettit, Republicanism; Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought; and Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism. 26. For a more complete elaboration of this argument, see Smith, “The Descent into Ironic Republicanism,” in Smith, Between Eternities (2nd ed., forthcoming). 27. Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 1:xiv. 28. I would argue that as a phenomenological matter, at no time in history, and certainly not now, is such a longing the highest end for any actual human being and in no way accounts for the actions and perceptions of anyone in their everyday doing and making, except perhaps for the longings of a few intellectuals. This observation might not immediately discomfit Pettit, for he fairly openly admits that what he is offering is an ideal to judge concrete politics against and an end toward which concrete politics should strive. But this raises all manner of questions about the alleged “traditional” support for this notion that Pettit tries to construct on the surface. It is quite clear that the real support for this position is not a tradition that has existed and still exists, but again the classic constructivism of modern political philosophy that builds on an ideal grounded in nothing other than a self-legislating Ego. This is, of course, just precisely this idealism that the Cambridge, “historical” school eschews. Pettit would like a little of the traditionalist foundations as window dressing, but he is not entitled to those foundations. On this level, philosophically, the traditionalist/constructivist divide is an either/or. 29. And unlike Skinner, Pettit will accept almost no Lockean cross-­ fertilization. I would argue that focusing on the concept “noninterference” is a reductionist distortion of what the Lockean tradition really means by freedom. 30. The universalism of Kantian constructivism, and that of Rawls also, is something Pettit’s version of postfoundationalism wishes to jettison and indeed to be philosophically consistent something he must jettison. But he keeps sneaking elements of universalism and cosmopolitanism in the back door. 31. What follows is that we have an argument for large, bureaucratic modern state interference against Lockean, “negative” or “noninterference” notions of

Notes to Pages 32 – 35  325 freedom. But unlike other such arguments, Pettit’s is allegedly based on freedom and not arguments for distributive justice, as is true with Rawls, who comes armed with overt claims for economic redistribution. But it becomes clear that the implication of the pursuit of nondomination will involve just precisely economic redistribution, albeit approached from a different direction. It will also require movement toward what will eventually be a world state, named by whatever euphemism. To use Pettit’s term, most national sovereignty must be “expatriated.” 32. Pettit, Republicanism, 4. 33. This is a cautionary tale about ignoring the importance of rights in republican theory, and by that I mean rights that individual citizens possess as trump cards to assert against majorities and the state. 34. Pettit, Republicanism, 11. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., 47–48. 37. See my chapter on Derrida in Smith, Between Eternities, 107–44. 38. Pettit’s allegation that freedom as nondomination existed “before” freedom as noninterference has little actual historical support. The narrative in Pettit continues to be that the liberal notion of freedom was a latecomer that drove out an original and intrinsically republican notion perfectly consistent with elite control in a fashion comparable to that exercised in monarchy, the great enemy of republicanism, both ancient and modern. The way the argument moves is to point out ancient inegalitarian elements in republicanism based on virtue and longing for immortal fame and the landed aristocratic elements that emerge in Pocock’s and Skinner’s republicanism and the concern with majority tyranny of Madison and Hamilton. From these observations we jump to the total elimination of “populist” or democratic elements, and in the process completely eliminate a shared public space owned by the people. Despite the empiri­ cal claims of Pettit’s argument for the pre-Lockean notion of republicanism being false, the question is, so what? Are we really making the old-fashioned argument that “the old is the good”? Once that premise is adopted, one should adopt real traditionalism and actually existent traditions without any intrusions by reason — to which real postfoundationalists are not entitled anyway. I am going to suggest later that there is real confusion lurking here about the proper relation between reason and tradition — both are needed, and Cicero provides a clear understanding of the proper integration. 39. We will see that Cicero openly attacks tranquility of mind as the greatest good. For Cicero, republican citizens need to remain anxiously concerned to maintain their own freedom and right to remain a citizen. Anxiety, constant alertness, concern, and involvement are required for the kind of freedom actual

326  Notes to Pages 35 – 39 human beings desire and that is required for real republican freedom in a real republic. For example, if tranquility of mind is the highest good, it can be accomplished at least as efficiently pharmaceutically (or perhaps surgically or genetically) as politically. This leads to disquieting questions: Should Pettit’s unlimited state decide whether or not to adopt the pharmaceutical option? What about the genetic option? Do we have any right to noninterference in either of these areas? In this vein, it is very disquieting that Pettit argues that we should only very rarely resort to criminalization of various activities and radically rethink the use of punishment. In effect he argues that the best alternative is to transform “evil” behavior into one form or another of sickness and then treat it therapeutically —  including, presumably, pharmaceutically, surgically, and genetically (Pettit, Re­ publicanism, 154). What, after all, is the limit on those uses by the state of “curing” either criminality or the perception of domination in its subjects. Pettit claims that in the process freedom understood as nondomination and its enforcement will “make it easier for people to pursue their ends” (ibid., 90–91). But what end that actual human beings have and do desire and choose as good is left other than tranquility of mind, guaranteed economic equality at a fairly middling level, and inert apolitical conformist comfort? If those are the only remaining legitimate ends, Pettit’s vision of the good is nothing more than the life of the well-cared-for pet. Why would it not be fair to conjecture that Pettit longs for Nietzsche’s “last man?” 40. Pettit, Republicanism, 130–31. 41. Ibid., 168. 42. Ibid., 173–74. 43. Ibid., 189. 44. Ibid., 196. 45. Ibid., 197. 46. Ibid., 202. 47. Ibid., 210–11. Two.  Initial Reflections on Political Philosophy 1. No less an authority than Leo Strauss suggests in one place that the tradition of political philosophy may be over: “Almost throughout its whole history political philosophy was universal while politics was particular. . . . In our age on the other hand politics has in fact become universal. . . . Simultaneously political philosophy has disappeared” (Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science

Note to Page 40  327 and Political Philosophy,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 29). He comes close to the same suggestion in Strauss, The City and Man, 1–2. Elsewhere, Strauss admits that new possibilities rest on the mysterious future coming of a great thinker, perhaps in Burma in 2200, he suggests (Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 29–30). But a pressing question remains: Are there no primary phenomena to which we can turn at any given moment to make a start without recurring to choices among past authors or waiting for a genius (Godot?)? 2. The bow to “traditions” of authors like Pocock, Skinner, and Pettit is always a feint because it is clear that what these theories attempt to do is overcome actual traditions with which they disagree. Such theories have their only foundation in yet another permutation of Descartes’s self-legislating Ego (a “metaphysical” concept no true postfoundationalist can accept) or Nietzsche’s unconscious, ungrounded will to will. A further elaboration about what I mean by constructivism is in order here. I take Descartes as indicative. He starts with doubt of all past traditions, all traditional literature, all knowledge and wisdom based in common sense, doubts the data of the senses and all phenomena socially shared with contemporaries. He then posits “clear and distinct” ideas as his foundation. There is a bow in the direction of those ideas coming from the mind of God, but that is clearly just an attempt to stay in the good graces of the Inquisition. What Descartes has done is posit, as in construct, his own foundation from out of his own self-legislating mind understood as a form of will. We see this throughout modern philosophy down to authors such as John Rawls, who posits the “original position,” which has no phenomenological basis whatsoever, and then deduces his conclusions from that constructed foundation. I will argue that this constructivism that began with Descartes leads only one place, namely, to Nietzsche’s groundless willing — once, for example, the mathematical limitations on this constructing on the part of Descartes come to be seen as just one groundless choice among many. Constructivism has only one consistent outcome, groundless willing, in which we arrive at what Nietzsche himself called the “fabling of the world.” One should keep in mind Nietzsche’s prediction that this competition of “fables” or “narratives” would not lead to democratic pluralism but to the despotism of the strongest narrative, eventually imposing itself by old-fashioned means of force. But this threatens a barbarism that is preceded by theoretical nihilism (see Nietzsche, Be­ yond Good and Evil, 257–60). Publicly displaying the premise that nothing is true leads eventually to the most despotic power politics; one may then only hope that this somehow becomes the basis of a new beginning — which is presumably part of what Nietzsche means by “re-translating man back into nature” (ibid., 230).

328  Notes to Pages 40 – 44 3. Again, “deconstructionism” is nothing but the opposite side of the modern constructivist coin. It groundlessly wills to take apart what already exists. That too proceeds only from the groundless will to deconstruct that is based on nothing but the (at least semitransparent) will of the self-appointed actor. This is just a new manifestation of the self-transparent, self-legislating Cartesian Ego, even though that Ego is allegedly part of what is being deconstructed. 4. The lesser participants Wittgenstein, Freud, Derrida, Foucault, and others can be added here. 5. It is going on two hundred years since Hegel announced the end of history. It has been almost sixty years since we have had academic debates about the end of ideology and the end of political philosophy. Since then we have heard about the end of metaphysics and the end of philosophy. We have heard about the posthuman future. The sense of old age and closure has been in the air for some time. Is there a basis for transcending this sentiment of closure and decline and of giving citizens a sense of efficacy within an actual republican future? That is the question at hand. 6. But in some sense it must exist. We do sense the existence of motion. But we cannot even assert that all is becoming without reference, more or less furtive, to something that stands still (being). Becoming implies being and a being that has no relation to motion renders everything in the world around us a form of nothingness. It is an ancient conundrum that will never be transcended: You cannot talk of being without implying becoming, and vice versa. In the same vein, we learn from Plato’s Parmenides that you cannot talk about the one without implying the many, and vice versa. Likewise from Plato’s Sophist we learn you cannot talk about being without implying not-being/nothing and vice versa. These conundrums have not, and never will be, transcended. 7. Ultimately there are two possible modern permutations of phenomenology, those of Hegel and Heidegger. At present I leave open whether they transcend the inherent constructivism of the modern project. For a compelling argument in this regard on behalf of Hegel, see Robert Pippin, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem. 8. Outside and above are two of the phenomenological, rather than essentialist, meanings of the Greek meta, as in “metaphysics.” We will continue to explore the extent to which phenomenology is not intrinsically essentialist or metaphysical as we proceed. 9. Whether someone like Hegel can prove the “internal” existence of such an “objective” point on the basis of an inevitable dialectic of self-consciousness or of concepts themselves, I will presently leave open. Again, see Pippin for an argument in the affirmative.

Notes to Pages 45 – 48  329 10. In this vein, it is common to then go on to assert that there are as many notions of the good as there are individuals or groups. But this is utter empirical nonsense. At most there are a finite few notions of the good, and they are repeated across time. There are very few ends or highest goods for action beyond pleasure, wealth, knowledge, happiness, friendship, honor, fame, comfort, salvation, truth and a few others. 11. Or a serious postfoundationalist would take the stance of Heidegger and opt for “resolute” action engaged in with others blindly with knowledge one was standing over an abyss and had no foundation for their choices other than the intensity of commitment. In the face of there being no ground, it is precisely the strength of commitment and resoluteness of the act that gives it qualitative content, not the end of the action. The real postfoundationalist should be either passively resigned or blindly resolute. 12. As I argue throughout, this idea of autonomous theory descends from Aristotle and not from the phenomenologist Plato or the Platonist Cicero. Almost all of Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics needs to be laid either at Aristotle’s door — and not at the door of Plato — or at the door of the modern transformation of the nature of reason, which I would argue presupposes Aristotle’s theoretical/ practical split. Hence, the Western tradition is not uniform, as Heidegger, and his postfoundationalist epigones, assert. One can also assert that Classical antiquity itself is not uniform. 13. I in no way reject the possibility of noetic insight, poetic genius, ontological grasping, revelation, or whatever such immediate grasping should be called. But the origins of immediate grasping all come forth in solitary experience. Those experiences still have to be brought to speech, and the tool for doing that is a publicly shared phenomenon. Further, one would suspect that there undoubtedly would always be some slippage between noetic experience and public articulation and further slippage in later interpretations of the initial public articulation. And this is why theoretical philosophy will never deal any mortal blow to revelation, poetic inspiration, or noetic insight. For a noetic experience to become public phenomenon, rather than a mere solipsistic experience, one is forced to share the same tool, language, as part of coming forth into the public, and every public articulation will be prone to some concealedness or occlusiveness. I positively accept that noetic insight is part of the human experience. But recognition of this fact does not immediately solve our problems. 14. The distinction itself implies some fixed point. 15. This seems to be the conclusion of Thomas Pangle. Pangle picks up and elaborates many of Strauss’s positions on the nature of political philosophy. There is much overlap, but in the end it is not clear that Pangle’s position is

330  Note to Page 48 identical to Strauss’s. Pangle’s position can be pieced together from several important works; see, especially, Pangle, Ennobling Democracy, and his introduction to Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism. Ennobling Democracy is an important work with which I am in significant agreement. All of Pangle’s works are important; he is one of the few authors of the age from whom one can learn. Like Pangle, I too believe the task in our time is to add to our republicanism the higher elements of life without which republicanism will not continue to prosper. In this vein one should also consider Pangle’s important The Spirit of Modern Republicanism, with which I am likewise in significant agreement. As part of his picture of the nature of political philosophy, one should also see the epilogue, co-written with Nathan Tarcov, to Strauss and Cropsey, History of Po­ litical Philosophy. Pangle explicitly adopts Strauss’s understanding that the “Socratic” position he is defending is phenomenological and dialectical, and therefore it always starts from interrogating the “pretheoretical” and “prescientific.” As identical to the terminology “prescientific,” Pangle uses the phrase “common sense,” and presumably will accept the full implications of the linkage of latter phrase with sensus communis and ultimately res publica. Yet Pangle goes on to classify this phenomenological, prescientific, common sense origin as a “cave” and then classifies it as a realm of falsity. Furthermore, for Pangle, philosophy is to be understood as “liberation” from the “moral bondage” of the phenomenal origins (Ennobling Democracy, 195, 191). One cannot have it both ways. If, borrowing a phrase from Husserl, what Pangle calls the prescientific “life-world” is the basis of all knowledge in philosophy, it is more than an arena of falsity, bondage, and ignorance, given that it is all we have as a foundation. If there is some other basis of knowledge, what is it? For Pangle, it is apparently not autonomous ontology, and we apparently have no faculty of “intuition” that gets us to it in an unmediated and undialectical fashion. I am presuming that Pangle’s phenomenological opening is an epistemic move and not a rhetorical feint created as part of making the philosophers merely look closer to their nonphilosophic cotravelers. If the prescientific is not foundational as asserted, we are returned to the question, “What is philosophy?” and what does it rest on as its basis or point of origin? If philosophy is “liberation,” as Pangle asserts, what is it liberated from and to? Apparently we are liberated from the prescientific to some understanding of a primarily theoretical and contemplative philosophy that stares at some kind of atemporal “entities.” Pangle asserts that dialectic as he understands it always deals with universals, by which he means it starts from the Socratic “what is” questions and is led from the phenomena toward the “what” that determines, and thereby causes, the

Notes to Page 48  331 various groups of things “to be” what they are. However, Pangle seems to go beyond a phenomenological point to also assert an essentialist point that the various groups or tribes of things are the permanent archē understood as the causes of the being of all beings. But dialectically and phenomenologically they have that status only by way of extrapolation — the extrapolated essences do not necessarily exist by themselves as self-standing entities. Pangle seems to approach an essentialist, “two realms” doctrine. In a similar vein, he also gets to the conclusion that there is a “questionableness of all moral assumptions” (Enno­ bling Democracy, 188), along with the conclusion that the life-world is an arena of “moral bondage” and “all laws are false” (ibid., 193). Repeatedly the prescientific world of common sense is denigrated by Pangle as lower than the detached “noble leisure” and hence Epicurean detachment of philosophy that he praises. Only this philosophy of noble leisure has access to a virtue that, Pangle asserts, truly “completes man.” Apparently, the engaged participant in shared life is incomplete, if not a slave and a fool. Epicurean withdrawal raises its head as the means to the best life and the clearest understanding of how to live well. Philosophy becomes some kind of detached, autonomous, theoretical activity. Pangle asserts that leisured Socratic philosophy represents a specific “posture” of “the whole soul in relation to being as whole.” This is a posture that appears to transpire more or less outside the public space of the shared phenomena in a more or less contemplative stance. It is not clear how whatever is discovered in this posture is intended to inform everyday life rather than the life of a few in some “outside” realm. We seem to be left with the conclusion that it is this “outside realm,” outside the cave of the prescientific, where Pangle expects to encounter truth rather than the falsity of the “life-world.” The “life-world” is to be quit as quickly as possible. It seems that ultimately bowing to the prescientific is just an opening rhetorical gambit; to pay any deference to the prescientific life-world when real philosophers are urged to quit it as soon as possible seems contradictory. Pangle leaves the matter ambiguous, but we get the vision of philosophers in a detached contemplation of what Pangle calls everything from “objective truth” to “permanent” epistemic entities of some unexplained sort. But one cannot make the phenomenological move of giving epistemic priority to the public arena of shared perceptions and then imply some kind of autonomous theoretical stance aimed at theoretical entities outside it. And for Pangle, some variant of this outside repeatedly recurs. Linking the two realms becomes problematic. To add another layer, we also hear from Pangle about the foundational importance of great poets and founders — we have an interesting list, including poets such as Moses and Homer, but also great philosophical poets like Plato.

332  Notes to Pages 48 – 49 According to Pangle it is these great imaginative and poetic forces that create and ground the prephilosophic life-world of doing and making, apparently through autonomous acts of imagination. I would suggest that we have now left the arena of phenomenology and moved uncomfortably close to the constructivism of Nietzsche’s “commanders and legislators.” In fact, we get the Nietzschean argument that the “liberation” that is the end of philosophy “uproots and reroots” (Pangle, Ennobling Democracy, 195). What it uproots is the prescientific life-world. To leisured Epicurean withdrawal we now get modern constructivism in some hard-to-explain synthesis. In the end, the phenomenal, prescientific shared showings of justice, nobility, beauty, goodness, and the divine are apparently all “artificial,” “false,” “enslaving.” I would argue that the place of the imagi­native and poetic is not at the level of supplying ex nihilo the otherwise unavailable archē, in the process thereby creating the prescientific phenomena. The place of the poetic comes in articulating the inarticulate givens found in the phenomena of life itself. Life remains foundational. My argument will be that the point of the Platonic metaphor of the cave is that the life-world itself phenomenologically points beyond itself and also already offers intimations of justice, nobility, beauty, the divine. Somehow the prescientific life-world itself points to transcendence, includes transcendence, especially when dialectically interrogated, but it is a transcendence grasped from within the language of a specific res publica. Even more to the point, what the Platonic metaphor asserts is not only the necessity of starting always already in the cave, but the necessity of always going “back” and staying there, even after the intimation of transcendence. To fail to stay in the cave threatens “blindness.” Outside the cave lurks alogon blindness, not contemplative seeing. The primary point I am making is not the customary one that philosophers must return to the “cave” for defense, food, or procreation; instead, the cave is the epistemic ground of all knowing and speaking. That is the position of Plato and Cicero. 16. This seems to me to be the yield of Plato’s Theaetetus. There must be knowledge in what we can call the prescientific revelation of things, or one will never find it anywhere else, especially in interrogating theoretically derivative metaphors. 17. See my essay, Smith, “Staring, Caring and Curing in the Platonic Dialogues,” forthcoming. 18. I say this while assuming that we have some inkling of this other kind of transcendence. 19. See Smith, “Ontology, Technology, Poetry or Mandarin Pastime? Theoretical Physics in the Postmodern Age,” in Between Eternities, 529–57. One starts from phenomena one wants to explain or manipulate, ascends to

Notes to Pages 50 – 52  333 theoretical constructions, and returns to the phenomenal to test them, which is to say, to show one can manipulate the phenomena. The exercise always starts from and returns to the phenomena, and the phenomena always and only show themselves in a public space. This is equally true of the attempt to explain the stars and the cosmic phenomena on the level of the whole, or on the level of the small things that are subatomic. 20. In effect, modernity secularized the Second Coming and tried to put its arrival into human hands. 21. Again, for present purposes I leave aside the Hegelian, and various post-Hegelian, claims that this fixed termini can be generated internally. I don’t think that argument ultimately stands, but clarifying that assertion would lead us into a showing that will have to await another occasion. 22. It is also perfectly straightforward that one cannot “re”write the past without there being an actual past to compare the “re” to. Ours is the age of the rewrite; it will assuredly pass. But it was caused by a distinctive past that determines our present and will for a few more moments. 23. It is hard not to see that ours is a pedestrian and utilitarian age. Even if there are “higher” phenomena, we will have to show how they are embedded in “our” everyday practice and understanding, pedestrian and utilitarian as it may be. We cannot begin building our edifice on the eighty-fifth floor. 24. And even revelation must be articulated in everyday speech, interpreted in everyday speech, and presented in a public space to have any concrete efficacy. 25. A word is required here on Strauss. Unfortunately, a book (or books) would be required to deal with Strauss’s understanding of the nature of political philosophy. Strauss gives a prominent place to what appears to be a phenomenological understanding that is significantly like what is being presented here. He is straightforward that philosophy must begin from interrogating the prescientific and prephilosophic. But there are other indications in Strauss’s corpus that seem to philosophically confuse the issue. He is famous for calling political philosophy the public or defensive face of philosophy. And he is famous for saying that political philosophy is a subset of philosophy that deals with the political things (see Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy,” in Political Philosophy: Six Essays, 4–5). That leaves open the question of what philosophy itself is in Strauss’s understanding. That would require a careful understanding of Strauss’s exceptionally difficult corpus. But to the extent that he is indicating that philosophy is different, and perhaps higher, than political philosophy, Strauss is making a different point than I am here, wherein I am arguing that political philosophy is itself first philosophy.

334  Notes to Page 53 I have dealt with Strauss in a series of essays in Smith, Between Eternities, and I will not further pursue the issue in this text other than to repeat several conclusions: Strauss starts from a phenomenological interrogation of the prescientific, which is a phenomenological beginning in my sense. But he depicts philosophy itself as a theoretical understanding that takes ontology as primary and autonomous: that is, seeking knowledge of the whole. (Yet admittedly in still other places he intimates you can only get to ontology [being] by passing through the political phenomena) He then predominately presents philosophy itself as a detached theoretical activity and in the process comes close to Epicureanizing philosophy along the lines of Strauss’s depiction of Nietzsche in the late essay on Beyond Good and Evil. Thereby political philosophy explicitly becomes either a subset of a contemplative, theoretical philosophy or the famous public defensive face of philosophy. These later moves are not phenomenological. In fact, the defensive argument is constructivist. 26. See Smith, Between Eternities, especially the chapter “What Is Political Philosophy: A Phenomenological Approach,” 37–63, for a full elaboration of this view. 27. Saying that pure philosophy is an erotic striving for ontological knowledge of the whole does not solve any theoretical problems. It merely points to a phenomenon that must be taken as part of the whole of the human phenomena. Even eros needs a place to operate and to start the philosophical undertaking if it is to eventuate in speech rather than solitary silence. The erotic striving itself is by all means an important phenomenon to interrogate. But likewise, so is the end, or ends, of the striving, which alone gives every form of eros its meaning. We can see this if we turn to Diotima’s speech in Plato’s Symposium in the various, hierarchal ends depicted there. 28. This is a premise shared, ironically, by such diverse authors as Heidegger, Marx, and, as I have already mentioned, Strauss, who accepts the necessity of pretheoretical accesses to reality through the pragmata of our doing and making and praises Heidegger for having rediscovered the priority of the pragmata. See Strauss, “An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism,” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 29. 29. Again, this possibility of a pure theoretical autonomy, and eventually by modern extension an autonomous theoretical Ego, is traceable to Aristotle, not Plato. Aristotle opened the door to independent areas of knowledge cut off from the whole: politics could be separated from physics and biology but also from metaphysics. These conclusions are not fundamentally phenomenological no matter how phenomenologically sound Aristotle’s discussions of politics and ethics may be.

Notes to Pages 54 – 56  335 30. The consistent constructivist premise is that there is nothing immediately present for us except our own transparent and self-conscious Ego and what is lodged therein. This constructivist notion can avoid the nihilism of everything being based on the ungrounded poetry of pure will only by positing the universality of innate ideas — or if Hegel can pull off his internal account of the development of all concepts one from another, which is doubtful. Therefore, for constructivists the basic issue eventually comes down to a debate between Kant and Nietzsche. 31. Aristotle’s practical works are unrivaled exercises in phenomenology. But his theoretical works undermine the very primacy of the phenomena his phenomenological works presuppose. Aristotle’s theoretical works posit the existence of directly accessible theoretical entities just as he posits the locus of truth in statements. This tension does not exist in the thought of Plato or the Platonist Cicero. 32. At the beginning of the Metaphysics, Aristotle gives a history of previous philosophy in which he argues that prior philosophers had tried to rely solely on only one or two of the four causes — material, formal, final, and efficient (see 980a–988b23). His point appears to be that an adequate account would have to weave together all four causes. But at the very least he is pointing out that no one had adequately taken into account final causality. He says Socrates relied on formal causality and Plato on formal and material causality. It does seem to me that Plato in fact does has an element of efficient causality in the Timaeus — the issue as regards final causality is less clear. Having taken Aristotle to task for moving the locus of truth into statements, I am going to adopt a permutation of the argument that one must weave together in one’s account as many forms of causality as possible, and one can never ignore efficient causality. Cicero will make this point against the Epicureans. I am going to push the weaving metaphor further and argue that architectonic proto-philosophy must weave a whole out of the parts of discourse — including ethics, politics, psychology, cosmology, and epistemology — even though the practical revelation of reality remains primary. 33. I deal with these issues in my Plato essays in Smith, Between Eternities, but especially in Smith, “Staring, Caring and Curing in the Platonic Dialogues.” In Between Eternities, 2nd ed. (forthcoming). 34. For example, we do not segregate out everything round or soft or green into categories as if those were primary groupings. We segregate out things that are ensembles of sense characteristics. 35. In a moment I will consider Heidegger’s ultimate objection that initially we are not confronted by individual things but by groups of things that hold together in a “region,” which in turn is informed by a “world.”

336  Notes to Pages 57 – 62 36. For the Greeks, and probably for common sense more generally, the eyes take philosophical priority. The famous alternative is the scriptural preferencing of the ears needed to hear the laws and dictates of the unseen God. 37. In other words, final causality comes to take primacy over formal causality. 38. The pleasures of thought are somewhat complicated to rank using this calculus. They may imply the prior pain of ignorance. But the pleasures of thought may also fit with high rankings in intensity and duration. These pleasures seem to imply a certain withdrawal from sociality, but not if we wish to assure ourselves that we are not engaged in some solipsistic fantasy. To the extent that thought requires a public component, it also seeks an element of honor as part of its good. 39. This is not to imply that the elements I have conceptually isolated cannot intermingle. For example, sexuality, as a phenomenon of touch, can clearly be elevated by adding aesthetic elements or elements of thought — or even elements of honor. 40. It remains to be seen what the phenomenological basis of theology turns out to be. I will allow Cicero to offer his view in chapter 6 on natural theology. 41. Then there is the case of Parmenides, who turned the cosmological question into the ontological question. Inquiry into the cosmological nature of the whole was transformed into the far more theoretical interrogation of the nature of being. Phenomenologically, the question regarding the good takes priority over the question regarding being. This is the core of the phenomenological response to Heidegger, who takes the question concerning being as prior. 42. Obviously, given this understanding, the best life and the best regime are the ones open to this kind of phenomenological interrogation. 43. Nietzsche seems to be on a similar path when he asserts that we return to “again” seeing psychology as “the queen of the sciences, for whose service and preparation the other sciences exist. For psychology is now again the path to the fundamental questions” (Beyond Good and Evil, 23). I, however, am asserting that ethics and political science take phenomenological priority. For what I take to be a slightly different view, see Pippin, Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy. 44. And hence whenever we see the fragmentation of knowledge into allegedly autonomous studies and sciences we know that we have an artificial and highly derivative situation where what should be undertaken openly and holistically is being undertaken in a furtive and subterranean fashion. All allegedly autonomous disciplines imply answers to the phenomenologically prior questions central to ethics and politics, which in turn point to cosmology, psychology, and epistemology.

Notes to Pages 63 – 66  337 45. It is on this level that someone like Hegel was on the scent of something fundamental. 46. To this can be added that the natural substratum of human existence in the body, and its passions and longings cannot be completely transformed. Also unlikely to change is that we will never have complete knowledge of the whole, and hence never have a final understanding of our place as questioning, doing, and making beings within that whole. 47. Public persuasiveness requires more than being persuasive to a particular academic school of philosophy. The element of public speaking and persuasiveness remains primary. Cicero makes this point throughout his corpus. 48. It is far too easy to translate this term as “mythology,” when what we mean by that term is close to what the Greeks meant by the term muthos alone. In the process we miss the initial irony of compounding the terms muthos and logos. I argue that the quintessential manifestation of this form of speech is to be found in Plato’s dialogues and that Cicero learned it from Plato and gave manifestation to this understanding for his time in Latin in a transformed dialogical form. This implies a form of the “weaving” of the five fundamental elements of questioning just discussed — ethics, political science, psychology, cosmology, and epistemology. Political philosophy always includes an element of poiesis as part of its attempts at public persuasiveness because of its need for weaving. Somewhere between pure autonomous, representational logos and groundless, mythical storytelling and narrative lies the ground occupied by political philoso­ phy. In this regard, Cicero is a Platonist who rejects Aristotle’s understanding that the only locus of truth is in what amounts to logically purified statements, which leads in the direction of the primacy, perhaps autonomy, of logic. It also leads to the theory/practice distinction of Aristotle that Cicero rejects. See, in this regard, my discussions of Plato and Aristotle in part 3 of Smith, Between Eternities. Plato surpasses Cicero in poetic genius, but Cicero may surpass Plato in his understanding of the place of the epistemic priority of the res publica. These assertions will be worked out throughout in later chapters. Three.  Who Was Cicero? 1. With a few exceptions, which I will note, the philosophically interesting secondary literature on Cicero is, therefore, as one might expect, quite thin. See, in this regard, Wood, Cicero’s Social and Political Thought. This book, which was published in 1988, correctly observes that it was the first comprehensive work in English on Cicero. Wood goes on to assert that Cicero deserves far more attention

338  Notes to Page 66 than he has received in recent years, a sentiment with which I agree. But then Wood proceeds to reduce Cicero, by a quasi-Marxist argument, to being nothing but a mouthpiece for and puppet of old-line agrarian class interests (despite being a new man, an equites, with substantial business and commercial roots). I would like to point out that there are basically two understandings of the nature of philosophy at its peak. One is Hegel’s (and Marx’s) that all philosophy is its own time and spiritual and/or material circumstances apprehended in thought. The diametrically opposed notion is Nietzsche’s, that all philosophy at its peak is “untimely.” That means that it is primarily alienated from its own time and attempting to open a different future. This latter view sees philosophy situated between past and future, while preferencing the future. It sees genuine philosophy operating within what Heidegger would eventually call “ecstatic temporality.” This view of political philosophy, as untimely, but also as proto-­ philosophy, is the one that will be presented in this work. For an exception to the rule in the area of Cicero scholarship, see the fine set of essays on Cicero edited by Nicgorski, Cicero’s Practical Philosophy. 2. Several generations ago, Leo Strauss made a case for recovering the then largely forgotten Xenophon. That recovery was part of Strauss’s project to recover the “prephilosophic” understanding of reality out of which philosophy as phenomenological grows. I have already suggested that Strauss also presents other indications of the nature of philosophy that are at war with this phenomenological approach. Be that as it may, Cicero was an author who was still in touch with that prephilosophic understanding, but also beyond it. Cicero stands at the moment when life was already, as it henceforth always will be, mediated by ideas and a philosophic tradition. Given the expanding literature on Xenophon, Strauss’s recovery would seem to have been a success. But at no time during Xenophon’s lifetime, or in classical antiquity more generally, or in the larger philosophic tradition, was Xenophon considered a truly great philosophic author, as was once the case with Cicero. I say this not to diminish respect for Xenophon, but to increase curiosity about Cicero’s decline of fortunes, along with the hope that his eclipse can also be reversed. 3. Six hundred years into the modern project to conquer chance we now see that we have not so much conquered chance, as was the underlying hope, as unleashed new manifestations of chance, which are potentially more virulent than the natural variety we set out to overcome. Our relationship to chance will have to be rethought. Cicero has already engaged in thinking about how to conquer chance, and he does not choose the modern means. We now need to consider anew the price that is worth paying to conquer chance and whether the best means to that conquest is scientific and technological or ethical and political. For an elaboration of this issue, see Smith, “Joseph Cropsey on the

Notes to Pages 67 – 73  339 Ancients and the Moderns,” especially the discussion of whether one should conceptualize the whole as ruled by necessity or chance. We will return thematically to these issues below. 4. Cicero was substantially responsible for the reason why the rise of the Christian moment within the Roman Empire did not ultimately share the same hostility to philosophy as was shown to Socrates by Athens — even though a recurring tension has always remained between Christianity and philosophy (“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”). We, now, are not so much morally skeptical of philosophy as publicly dismissive of something we see as largely frivo­lous and lacking in utility. The decline of philosophy to its present ideologi­ cal, fragmented, crabbed, and senescent condition is largely responsible for this dismissal. Cicero can help us understand philosophy as the architectonic science and show us a philosophy that is worthy of public respect. 5. Cicero wryly noted that had he been invited to the dinner, there would have been no leftovers — such as Antony. 6. Modern reason has seen its task as destroying tradition in all its forms, to be replaced with a “rational” world born ex nihilo from the foreheads of self-­ selected theorists. 7. For an elaboration of the place of dialectic in Cicero’s teaching, see chapter 8 herein on oratory. 8. The last thinker of any rank to self-consciously attempt this architectonic presentation, albeit hardly in publicly accessible speech, was Hegel. By the time of Heidegger we have moved further from publicly accessible speech to an effort that doesn’t even attempt to deal with elements from ethics, political science, or psychology. We await the next great architectonic thinker. Only by using publicly accessible speech will that thinker advance the cause of republicanism. 9. Notice that I do not say here Socrates and Plato. In my understanding, Socrates was as much a problem for Plato as he was a guiding light. See my chapters on the Platonic dialogues in part 3 of Smith, Between Eternities. In this regard I accept the premise of Joseph Cropsey that Platonism arose as a response to Socratism; see, in this regard, Cropsey, Plato’s World. 10. Throughout this section I am indebted to the fine work of Everitt, Ci­ cero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician. Also very useful is Grant, History of Rome. 11. With the conservative reforms of Sulla, former quaestors became available for membership in the Senate. This privilege was later granted to praetors. 12. As time passed, armies were raised and paid for by their generals, who recouped their accrued expenses and paid the salaries of their soldiers by pillage and plunder. The soldiers were, therefore, loyal to their commander more than to Rome. Traditionally, armies were not allowed within the city walls of Rome,

340  Notes to Page 77 but when they were demobilized they were a problem for Rome because they demanded land to settle and various other financial concessions. Amazingly, no army entered the city of Rome until one led by the conservative Sulla in 82 BC as a backlash against the rioting and looting caused by the popularis revolutionary Marius. 13. Even then, different statuses of citizenship remained in parts of what is now northern and southern Italy. This was also true throughout the rest of the empire. The Romans tended to handle the matter of citizenship on an ad hoc basis. See Grant, History of Rome, in this regard. 14. Everitt, Cicero, 118. 15. We have to confront the fashionable dogmatic assertion that there is no such thing as a text. To this dogmatic allegation is frequently added the assertion that we cannot discover authorial intent because no author, and no reader, is present enough to himself to make such things as intentions and recoveries possible. There is no real presence anywhere in the whole; everything is dominated by absence, or perhaps by small “traces.” Yet there always inconsistently remains the underlying imperative, “Thou shall deconstruct.” To deconstruct texts, and everything in reality in this point of view is a text, and to undermine such notions as intentionality and textuality, is presumed to produce the good. How one knows the good on deconstructive premises is of course a mystery, as is how one rewrites a text when there is no text with which to begin, or how one knows anything has been rewritten except in comparison to an underlying text. 16. Fox’s text is loaded with astute textual insights and useful reflections on the history of Cicero scholarship and the different ways he has been received. Much can be learned from this author. But unfortunately, he is eventually betrayed by making a bow to the fashionable interpretative assertions of the day. His book is an example of how intellect can be betrayed by its teachers. 17. Fox, Cicero’s Philosophy of History, 319–21. 18. Ibid., 34. Four.  Cicero on the Nature of Philosophy 1. As to this curious second quote, can this sentiment about philosophy as founder of cities possibly be true of the time before Cicero, or is he projecting this understanding forward into the future? The latter is my understanding. I argue that this is but one example among many of what I have elsewhere called the necessary temporality of political philosophy that binds together past, present, and future, and therefore necessarily has a projective element. 2. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.1.1–2.

Notes to Pages 95 – 103  341 3. Ibid., 5.3.7–8. 4. We will return to this issue when we look thematically at De Oratore in chapter 8. 5. Tusculan Disputations 1.3.5–6. 6. Ibid., 1.4.8. 7. Ibid., 5.3.9. 8. At another time, one could compare Cicero’s history with the sections on “Consciousness” and “Self-Consciousness” in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. At present I will merely assert that Cicero’s account is more historically and phenomenologically sound than Hegel’s, the actual antecedents of which are frequently hard to determine. More to the point, Cicero gives a different account of the turn to reflexivity and hence self-consciousness. 9. Eventually, within Christian philosophy, Cicero’s Plato, and the Neoplatonism that was central for Augustine, was replaced by Thomas’s Aristotle. This represented a major transformation within Christian philosophy. 10. Proclaiming Cicero an Academic not only misses his repeated statements that he does not want his real position known, but it abstracts from asserting which Academy he allegedly belonged to. 11. The Romans were, especially in comparison to the Greeks, a practical people and given to engineering and practical sciences in a way the Greeks were not, and the Romans were consequently more open to natural philosophy in its useful rather than contemplative applications. As a result, Cicero’s deflection of philosophy again away from external nature as its leading focus could be a less defensive effort than it was for the Athenians who had seen Socrates put to death. Initially, among the Greeks, it was perceived that the study of nature was intrinsically atheistic. For the more practical Romans, the study of nature was seen as potentially useful. The kind of defense of philosophy the Greeks needed was not central for Cicero. But Cicero nonetheless tried to overcome the perception of philosophy as atheistic in his natural theology, while simultaneously fighting superstition. 12. Tusculan Disputations 5.25.72. 13. It has been suggested that A is Atticus, with whom Cicero had an extensive correspondence. But there is no internal support in the text for this conjecture. That M bares some overlap with Cicero the author has very little internal support once we move past the prefaces. 14. In this regard, it is important to keep in mind that within the text itself, the Tusculan Disputations is explicitly lined up by Cicero with the earlier De Finibus, which likewise has five books. One would be well advised to read the two texts, and their separate books, in parallel. We will consider De Finibus thematically in chapter 5.

342  Notes to Pages 103 – 112 15. See Smith, “Staring, Caring and Curing in the Platonic Dialogues,” forthcoming. 16. Tusculan Disputations 1.11.25. 17. This of course is the outcome the Epicureans try to get to by different political, ethical, and cosmological means. 18. Tusculan Disputations 1.15.33–34. 19. Heidegger is wrong; the temporal nature of man’s being was not occluded or forgotten in the origins of the tradition of Western philosophy. We will return to this issue below. 20. Tusculan Disputations 1.23.55. 21. We will develop this Ciceronian equation, soul = cause = mind = will, more fully as we proceed. 22. We recall that for Hegel, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, this turning out of consciousness is accomplished on a rudimentary level by animal desire and the need to negate external objects — for example, in eating. It is likewise turned out by a fearful confrontation with another self. 23. We should note that the fact that the phenomena show themselves does not mean they are always visible publicly before they are philosophically articulated. 24. Tusculan Disputations 1.27.66–67. 25. Ibid., 1.27.69–70. 26. If so, it would help us see how massive this transformation was during the medieval era. The Protestantism of Luther, for example, was a conscious reaction, among other things, against the invasion of Christianity by Aristotle. That aversion to the infection of Christianity by Aristotle was still central for Heidegger. 27. Consider Leo Strauss: “The new natural science differs from the various forms of the older one not only because of its new understanding of nature but also . . . because of its new understanding of science: knowledge is no longer understood as with man, not with the cosmic order; in seeking knowledge fundamentally receptive; the initiative in understanding is man calls nature before the tribunal of his reason; he ‘puts nature to the question’ (Bacon); knowing is a kind of making; human understanding prescribes nature its laws; . . . — all truth and meaning originate in man” (“The Three Waves of Modernity,” in Political Philosophy, 87–88). 28. Tusculan Disputations 2.3.9–10. 29. Ibid., 2.4.10. 30. Consider: “Independence is for the very few. . . . Whoever attempts it even with the best right but without inner constraint proves that he is probably . . .

Notes to Pages 112 – 116  343 daring to the point of recklessness. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiples a thousandfold the dangers which life brings with it, . . . not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes lonely, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience” (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 29). 31. It is not so much that the cave should be overcome as that philosophy must be continually brought back to its natural home, for its own sake. That home includes the body and a particular community. 32. Again, this is Hegel’s view in the Phenomenology, where it is pain and especially hunger that force us “out” of our inner-directed consciousness toward the external world in the stance of negating the other, for example, in eating. It is negating the other that leads to self-consciousness for Hegel. Cicero places the source of self-consciousness or reflexivity in the phenomenon of death, which cannot be outrun or negated. Cicero is much closer to Heidegger than Hegel in this regard. But he agrees with Hegel that a deficiency of some kind forces us out of inert self-absorption. 33. This premise is interestingly supported by the reports of amputees who complain of everything from pain to itching in limbs that have been removed. Obviously the “sensation” is not located in the limb. 34. Tusculan Disputations 2.26.65. 35. This would separate Cicero from the more or less totally deontological Kant. 36. Although we find the divine mind within, in conscience, religion is an “eternal” restraint. 37. In the concluding chapter I will make a suggestion about how to build on the “internal” notion of ethics for our time and our republic. 38. Tusculan Disputations 2.26.64–65 (emphasis added). This idea of conscience would eventually link with the Christian notion of the guidance of the Holy Spirit as one part of the Trinity. 39. By this new conceptualization of honor is meant an internal self-vision that becomes painful to transcend by inappropriate deeds. The support is avoiding an internal battleground in self-consciousness. 40. Tusculan Disputations 2.22.53. 41. Of course, all of this is undermined in the radical post-Hegelian assaults on self-consciousness by authors from Nietzsche to Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Derrida. But in each instance it is primarily the modern self-legislating Ego they are attacking. Cicero is showing that self-consciousness can be conceptualized differently, in a phenomenological rather than constructivist fashion. 42. I am arguing that for Cicero, virtue of a distinct kind conquers chance far better than physics (or its inevitable shadow, modern technology), or a

344  Notes to Pages 116 – 119 medicine that is really an extension of physics as a form of the manipulation of the body. Here is where we might rethink the modern idea of transferring the conquest of chance to the arena of physics, which relies inconsistently on the conceptual hegemony of necessity, or a new political science that heightens and manipulates causes such as fear or avarice. 43. One wonders if Nietzsche was tracking on anything resembling the same trail when he observed repeatedly in Beyond Good and Evil that philosophy should “again” become psychology. For a somewhat different but interesting view, see Pippin, Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy. 44. Again, it is hard not to be reminded of the assertion of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, that he had reenthroned chance: “Verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach: ‘Over all things stand the heaven Accident, the heaven Innocence, the heaven Chance, the heaven Prankishness.’ ‘By Chance’ — that is the most ancient nobility of the world, and this I restored to all things” (Nietz­ sche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 278). 45. Sanitas is the Latin equivalent of the Greek sophrosyne, which literally also means “soundness of mind,” but it is usually translated as “moderation” or “self-control.” 46. Elsewhere Cicero tries to show that in Stoic arguments there are actually tortuous strings of syllogisms, with each conclusion becoming the primary premise of the next syllogism, on and on monotonously to an eventual counterintuitive end. Cicero’s rhetorical skill is to make the reader roll his eyes with his lampooning versions of these maneuvers. 47. Tusculan Disputations 3.10.24–25. 48. On the one hand, there is no doctrine of fallen nature operating here. On the other, one has to admit that this understanding might potentially open the door to utterly illiberal forms of restraint on individual freedom of choice and belief, and ultimately inquisitions of one kind or another, which see managing opinions as of the utmost importance. But this inquisitorial attitude would be rejected by Cicero because the necessary restraint in question has to be “internal” to the individual and not be “externally” imposed by such things as fear of punishment, pain, death, exile, excommunication, or loss of reputation. What is at issue here is an “internal” code of honor and nobility and self-consciously imposed restraints, not external forms of restraint. To reach its perfection, this “ethic” has to be self-consciously chosen, not externally imposed. This is not to say that it would not need some public support by a specific res publica. 49. Tusculan Disputations 3.39.73. 50. Ibid., 3.15.34. 51. Ibid., 4.3.7.

Notes to Pages 119 – 124  345 52. Ibid., 5.28.82. 53. Ibid., 4.19.45. 54. Ibid., 4.33.72. 55. Herein we must repeatedly keep in mind the tripartite soul of the Re­ public, and especially the chariot metaphor in Phaedrus, where it is the horses representing eros and epithumia (desire) that move the mind aloft. Otherwise mind would be motionless and earthbound. In the beginning of the Metaphysics, Aristotle asserts that even though Socrates relied on formal causality, Plato himself relied on formal and material causality. 56. Tusculan Disputations 4.22.38–39. 57. I am not so much advising this move for the future as pointing out how Cicero’s innovations open spaces that were occupied after him. It is the opening of spaces I am trying to show as a real possibility at any given moment. Hegel is simply wrong: philosophy is not its own time comprehended in thought; rather, it is untimely and projected toward opening future spaces. 58. One might notice the ways in which this is a different criticism of the emotion pity than seen in Nietzsche, who turns pity into a backhanded way of lording it over others by those who are essentially defective weaklings. Nietzsche sees it as a vice; Cicero is presenting pity as merely inefficacious for either the pitying or the pitied. 59. That there is a Stoic resemblance in this approach is true, but it is essential to what Cicero is putting on the table for future republican generations. 60. Tusculan Disputations 4.37.79. 61. In our time, by the contradictory means of positing a doctrine of necessity as a means to conquering chance, modern science, and the positivism that underpins technical and bureaucratic rationality, has set loose all manner of never-­before-existent forms of chance that dominate our lives. If reason can oppose chance through virtue rather than through technology and faith in technical sophistication deployed bureaucratically, would it not introduce less in the way of unpredictable chance outcomes? A rarely considered solution is to render oneself as invulnerable to chance as possible by limiting one’s unlimited pursuits. Perhaps what we need is a substitute for the unlimited pursuit of wealth, power, and technical manipulation as the best means to happiness. One would not need to undermine technological successes or market economies, just readjust the thinking of participants. Education rather than technical intrusion would be at the cutting edge of the solution. As far as I can see, it is certainly not a thought dawning on many of our contemporaries. We get public arguments instead that individuals need more property to live well than is really required, which forces one to jump on a treadmill of ongoing anxiety and intranquility, creating a mind

346  Notes to Pages 124 – 126 that is in disorder. By this understanding, to step off that treadmill would undermine the economy and thereby the pursuit of happiness. But those who oppose this logic usually propose the pursuit of a technical and bureaucratic rationality as a solution, and that only introduces new and unpredictable elements of chance. Technical mastery always brings with it the law of unintended consequences. It is breaking out of this kind of dichotomy between markets and bureaucracies that is required. Our present problem is proceeding as if there were only two choices: one, the enlargement of government intrusion into human freedom, or two, an unlimited free-for-all in which we are thrown on the treadmill of the unsatisfying pursuit of satisfaction. It is the horizon of our thinking that is too narrow, not our technical and bureaucratic sophistication, which even if it ever expanded could never conquer the law of unintended consequences, that is, chance. One must render oneself as immune as possible to that law. As an aside, we must publicly learn that the unpredictable is predictable and its attempted transcendence simply increases the grip of chance. 62. Recall here the difference between the totally mysterious divinity of the Old Testament and the divinity that offers the logos of the Divine Word in the New Testament. We see this in the different openings to Genesis and the Gospel according to John. The latter is presumably more predictable, even if the timing of the Second Coming is not. 63. Tusculan Disputations 5.1.2–3. 64. Ibid., 5.10.31. 65. Ibid., 5.12.36. 66. Ibid., 5.13.38–39; 5.14.41. This posture should be compared with Machiavelli’s two competing pieces of advice on forts in chapters 10 and 20 of The Prince. The switch from the one piece of advice to the opposite accompanies Machiavelli’s general advice to be hot, passionate, and intrepid, and go out to meet the enemy rather than withdrawing into a fort if one wants to conquer chance. 67. One hears echoes here of the natural philosophy of Descartes and the moral philosophy of Kant. But Cicero never went beyond his phenomenological roots; he did not cross over to modern constructivism. 68. Tusculan Disputations 5.25.70–71. One cannot help but reflect upon the fact that the contemporary practice of natural science, especially astronomy, cosmology, and theoretical physics, seems increasingly divorced from wonder and awe, as if this was an embarrassment for science. This is probably because most practitioners have lost sight of how little of the first things they really know and how transient their ongoing positing of theories really is; each generation brings new theories.

Notes to Pages 126 – 129  347 I do not think that it is unfair to notice that most of our academic natural scientists are among the poorest examples of liberally educated human beings, yet they so often think they have a higher insight into morals and politics, about which they frequently know nothing except what is floating in the air at the moment. It is worth reflecting upon how Cicero’s argument at this point is affected when the study of natural science leads not to moral awe but rather to narrowness and subsequent arrogance. 69. M’s invocation of a similar thought has its basis in the moral effect the awe of standing before nature inspires. Note that there is no link invoked between such reflections and technological overcoming of nature and thus simultaneously overcoming natural awe. This is a phenomenon from which we have become alienated. Reflection on technology only makes one arrogant, impressed with the impotence of nature and the autonomy and power of man. Five.  Cicero on Cosmology and Natural Philosophy 1. To the extent that technology is what is at stake and not the autonomy of natural science and cosmology as an ontological account of reality, we are always focused back to the question of what good technology assumes to create. Thus we are always led back to the question of the good, that is, toward ethics. Therefore ethics takes priority over natural science in any form. See my essays on physics and biology in Smith, Between Eternities. 2. And as Descartes makes especially clear between the lines in his Dis­ course on Method, a modern commercial republic was seen as the best regime under which to pursue modern, technological science. Bacon makes the same point more openly. 3. The full title is De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum. It presents us with a quandary if we are trying for a literal translation. The translator of the Loeb edition is led into the unhelpful monstrosity “About the Ends of Goods and Evils” precisely by trying to be too literal. The Latin finibus needs to be lined up with the Greek telos, understood as “end” in the sense of perfection or culmination. Then we have to figure out what to do with the bonorum and malorum and the fact that they are plural. We cannot get a sense of what the title implies without inserting a suppressed summum, which in fact frequently occurs throughout the actual text in front of both nouns. We then arrive at a title that in effect should be “On Vari­ ous Views of the Greatest Good and the Greatest Evil.” This is not as compact as the Latin, but at least it conveys the meaning of the title.

348  Notes to Page 130 4. However, I cannot stress too often that a complete understanding of Cicero would have to incorporate a detailed presentation of the dialectical nature of each of his separate textual presentations. Each text is self-contained and ultimately needs to be addressed using the internal clues to interpretation that are offered. In chapter 4, I tried to give some of the rhetorical flavor of the Tusculan Disputations, and in this chapter I will do the same with De Finibus. Unfortunately, a complete treatment of Cicero’s rhetoric is not to my present purposes and will have to be left to another occasion or another author. Especially on the issue of cosmology, I am going to offer my conclusions regarding where I believe Cicero arrives when he is finished. It still remains necessary to work out these intimations in detail. 5. In my five fundamental areas of thought, I did not include logic. I would argue that from a phenomenological perspective, logic is derivative from epistemological questioning. It emerges, at its best, as part of the turn of mature political philosophy to reflexivity, to reflections on itself as a phenomenological/dialectical undertaking that interrogates phenomena that show themselves and speeches about those phenomena that also show themselves publicly for all. As we saw in the Tusculans, eventually thought adds a new phenomenon to the whole, it thinks about itself thinking and how to make this undertaking as systematic and rigorous as possible. At that point, logic appropriately, phenomenologically enters. The danger is that thought can fool itself into believing that this new study is the central study, to the exclusion of all others. Logic then stands in midair and forgets the situated nature of thought. Next logic forgets its primary public ends: consistency, rigor, and persuasion. Logic can get fooled into thinking it is ontology, or at least that it stands in the vacuum where ontology does not exist. 6. In our time, we have obviously divided knowledge into an even larger number of fields that increasingly wall themselves off from each other and proceed as if, mistakenly, they were autonomous. We have even greater fragmentation of knowledge than that confronted by Cicero. We require the same reintegration of thought that Cicero attempted during his age of fragmentation. This is one of the things we most need to learn from Cicero, the reintegration of thought. This is an entirely different undertaking than taking the now autonomous and philosophically derivative areas of thought and trying to synthesize them through “interdisciplinary studies” of one kind or the other. That leads even further away from the primary integration that we need to bring out into the light of day. 7. I have already indicated that the study of the soul, psychology, is what I see as one of the five primary areas of questioning. In what follows it will be important to see the way Cicero has abstracted psychology from natural philosophy and cosmology and made it not a materialist study but a study of the thinking self thinking about its own activity in thinking, praxis and techne. In this regard we

Notes to Pages 131 – 132  349 also need to remain ever cognizant of why Cicero focuses reflexive thought back “out” into the public arena again but without having it simply reoccupying the “spectator” stance toward nature and cosmology of the pre-Socratics. 8. We have something of the same materialist/soul split in contemporary academic psychology between, on the one hand, behavioralist and neuroscience permutations, and, on the other, a mélange of, among others, Freudian, Jungian, and what remains of existentialist permutations. 9. There is in Cicero’s diminishment of dialectic an implied criticism of both Socrates (dialectic is almost the whole of philosophy for him) and Aristotle (syllogism has a much higher status as the locus of truth once truth is lodged in statements). Cicero radically lowers the status of logic to a subordinate position under rhetoric and oratory, two public undertakings that take place in the res publica. All of these divergences from what was then the intellectual status quo have significant ramifications. 10. See note 3, above. 11. For the present I will continue to link cosmology and ontology. Strictly speaking, Cicero does not independently enjoin ontology or an abstract doctrine of being. I think nothing is gained, and much is lost — certainly from the perspective of public speech — when one tries to discuss ontology independently, as Heidegger does, especially in his “late,” overtly “postmetaphysical” works where he engages in some of his worst linguistic experiments and poetic monstrosities. Heidegger’s ontological poetry is poor, at times laughable, precisely because of its having lost all phenomenological roots. Cicero consciously avoids that danger. In this regard, see Smith, Martin Heidegger: Paths Taken, Paths Opened, especially chapters 8 and 9. 12. For an indication of what I have in mind, see the chapters on Plato’s Parmenides and on physics and biology in Smith, Between Eternities. My larger understanding is that there are fundamental alternatives that recur throughout time and that the greatest thinkers had access to those fundamental alternatives since Plato. Put differently, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger discovered only at best new bottles for old wine. The bottles change because the situation of thought changes. It is only our situated foundation for thinking that changes. 13. What is interesting is that in his two political texts, De Re Publica and De Legibus, Cicero seems to be willing to co-opt elements of Stoic cosmology for his civil theology — as opposed to his rational natural theology. We will return to this issue in chapter 9 on politics. 14. The good as I am using it is a phenomenological concept and not to be confused with the One Idea (the Idea of the Good) at the top of the Republic’s “divided line.” The existence of the good is based on phenomena that show themselves in our doing and making. I would argue that Plato’s Idea of the Good, or

350  Notes to Pages 133 – 136 the ultimate One, is discovered not by any direct or immediate “intuition” but by a process of analogy and extrapolation beginning from phenomenological roots. 15. A Stoic protagonist correctly points out that Cicero does not agree with Aristotle, albeit that Stoic says he wishes Cicero had chosen Aristotle over what he perceives to be Cicero’s position. But the matter is pursued no further. Another Stoic also asserts that Cicero is not a Stoic. I would suggest that this is Cicero quietly pointing out his divergence from especially Aristotle, but also from the Stoics. Further, Cicero shows us several direct confrontations with Aristotle himself, yet he also asserts, dramatically, that he went in search of “commentaries” (interpretatione) on Aristotle. 16. The contemporary “big bang” theory has a similar problem. It posits a beginning where we have a totally dense atom with no internal void and infinite void all around it. The question then becomes why this primordial, dense atom exploded. Either we posit an internal force to account for this explosion or we posit the application of some external force. Then the question becomes how to conceptualize especially the external efficient cause. The idea of internal, selfcauses does not work in modern physics any better than it did for Epicurus. As will always be true, an external cause points us in the direction of theology. There have been attempts by authors like Stephen Hawking to argue that black holes (and hence the initial dense whatever) are not in fact totally dense matter as opposed to openings to some other dimension, but those explanations, even when mathematically supported, clearly cross the border into poetry. 17. Hobbes, another atomistic materialist, is more consistent in combining endless cosmic motion, on the one hand, with a picture of the good life as the endless, altogether untranquil, pursuit of the objects of the limitless appetites, one after another. For Hobbes there is motion and nontranquility everywhere. 18. We still have this same conundrum in contemporary physics. We have chance operating in quantum mechanics in the “indeterminacy principle” with its fog of atoms no longer in neat, predictable “shells,” and necessity operating in relativity theory. In response to the element of chance in quantum mechanics, Einstein, the proponent of necessity, was led to the famous observation that “God does not play dice with the universe.” In other words, if necessity operates, there can be no element of chance. But then there also can be no freedom or, since it requires choice, no ethics. Modern physics is still caught on the horns of the chance/necessity conundrum. 19. Perhaps he was already thinking of the omnipresence of what modern physics calls “dark matter.” Does not dark matter force us in the direction of the ancient notion that “space” is in fact more like a fluid than a void? 20. In modern physics we have a similar conceptual conundrum of explaining how the cosmos can simultaneously be infinite and constantly

Notes to Pages 136 – 141  351 expanding. Only something finite can expand if we understand the terms. And if by cosmos we mean all that is, then the cosmos is constantly expanding into the nothing. And hence the whole includes both being and nothing. Therein we are projected into yet another conundrum of the relation between being and nothing, which physics, as physics, cannot begin to articulate. 21. If a thing has extension, it can be cut in half. And the half can then be cut in half infinitely. Modern physics tries to solve this conundrum by going “down” in search of the ultimate small particle, and then posits that it is in fact a quanta of energy and no longer matter at all. This would seem to raise certain problems if it is true that E = mc2. 22. In this regard, Hobbes’s treatment of the senses in part 1 of Leviathan is altogether Epicurean. It represents an attempt to turn even sight, seen by the ancients as the highest of the senses, into a form of touch — that is, it has a materialistic basis in some atoms touching other atoms. 23. The “New” Academy was far more skeptical about the possibility of differentiating knowledge and truth from falsity than the Epicureans or Stoics. The Socratic/Platonic doctrine that one can know what one does not know was transformed by the New Academy into a belief that we could not know anything with certainty, followed by an utterly inconsistent conclusion that we could none­ theless have knowledge of “probabilities.” Something is more or less probable only in comparison to something that is true. From the Original Academy to the time of Cicero, the ground of truth had become confused or just plain lost altogether as a question. In this respect, Heidegger would be correct that there had been a form of “forgetting.” 24. The Stoics used logic, but Cicero criticizes them for their tedious deployment of it that disassociates it from everyday speech. 25. De Finibus 2.2.3–4. 26. Ibid., 2.2.5. 27. On occasion, also an element of synthesis, or putting back together. This is where a poetic element frequently entered — what one put back together didn’t end up being identical to what was initially taken apart. 28. At the beginning of the first chapter of the Metaphysics, Aristotle makes it clear that his predecessors were incomplete in that they relied on one or at most two of the four kinds of causality. He says Socrates relied upon formal causality and Plato relied upon formal and material causality. Aristotle asserts that one must always have a doctrine of final causality. He implies that a complete understanding requires integrating all four forms of causality: material, efficient, formal, and final. Whether Aristotle ever succeeds in that integration is another question. Cicero seems to be moving toward Aristotle in this regard and criticizing dialectic for eschewing a doctrine of efficient causality. This need

352  Notes to Pages 141 – 142 for the integration of the four causes is a notion to which Heidegger returns at the beginning of his The Question Concerning Technology. Hence a truly architectonic account would have to weave together the four causes and the five basic forms of questioning. 29. In Plato’s Sophist, and elsewhere, it is suggested that being has to be associated with an element of dynamis, being able to move or be moved, to act or be acted upon. This comes close to inserting an element of efficient causality. But by this definition, an unmoved mover would not have being. Aristotle is, of course, the one who argued that being implied an element of dynamis or energeia. Aquinas relies on a somewhat transformed version of the same notion. This “dynamism” or energy always moves toward an end. Thus it can account for both the efficient and the final cause. But detached from the formal cause, and its phenomenological basis, such thinking runs the risk of moving off into sheer poetry. And it is hard to see how something can act and be acted upon without reference to material causality. 30. De Finibus 2.6.18. One needs to see that in my terms, dialectic is dependent on a prior self-showing by phenomena that are already publicly available. Dialectic is dependent on phenomenology. 31. Ibid., 4.4.10. 32. In the Phaedo, Plato points to Socrates’s poetic limitations just as he points to Socrates’s erotic limitations in the Phaedrus and especially the Symposium. And beyond that, Plato sees there are Socratic limitations in Socrates’s reliance on dialectic almost alone. Plato is intent on overcoming that limitation. Cicero seems to admit no such limitation, but he sees that dialectic and division and other elements of logic have no basis upon which to become autonomous, which by implication could be a charge laid at least close to the door of Socrates. For an elaboration of these themes, see the Plato essays in Smith, Between Eternities. 33. Let us leave Cicero’s discussion of the Epicureans with something of a formula. It would obviously need further elaboration to become fully transparent. The Epicureans relied almost completely on material causality and that reliance led to various inconsistencies. They had no definitions, no answer to the “what is” questions. Hence, they had no ability to account for formal causality. They had motion everywhere, but no way to account for it, no efficient cause. Since the being of a thing has to also account for its ability to both move and be moved, and motion moves toward an end, they also needed a final cause, which they could not supply. But for Cicero, as for Plato, the formal cause has to be the point of departure, and with that reliance we see the importance of the phenome­ nological focus on how things show themselves publicly in both sensations (eide) and opinions (idea). This is the basis of the Platonic interchangeability of eidos and idea, which nonetheless masks a conundrum rather than providing a

Notes to Pages 144 – 146  353 solution. But eventually one sees the need for thought moving beyond the formal causality of its beginnings to also supply an efficient and final cause. Cicero tries to show that this ultimately implies the necessity of natural theology. One can never avoid the question, Quid sit deus? But one does not start from that question or try to get to it directly. That leads to the danger of alogon, that is, mystical, solipsistic experiences. Then, in order to speak, one is led back to the priority of formal causality and its reliance on how things show themselves in a res publica. 34. In the Gospel according to John, we find the phrase “in the beginning was the Word.” In scripture, “Word” corresponds with the Greek term logos. Prior to the creation, God existed as pure Word, or as Hegel would have it, in significantly changed form, Begriff. The issue is how does the Greek word logos fit with the element of will that we associate with the God of scripture? In the Stoic conception, logos does not line up with will. I would argue that Hegel’s Logic has to be read as an ontology. One cannot purge Hegel’s Logic of ontological presuppositions. And hence the Hegelian Begriff, prior to being immanent, must line up with will, otherwise, how it achieves immanentization is not clear. I don’t think you can make the Hegelian logic work as a purely immanent logic of concepts spawning each other without an efficient cause. 35. We find something like this in some variants of the big bang theory where the cosmos will eventually collapse back into the monster of all dense atoms and bang once again. In other variants, which cause even greater conceptual nightmares, the cosmos expands eternally and infinitely. 36. Cicero, in a move that is quite Platonic, uses the terms anima and mens (mind) interchangeably. The Stoics try to make this move, but do so less consistently. 37. This puts the Stoics closer to Rousseau and his notion of amour de soi and its relation to well-being and human happiness. 38. Given the centrality of self-preservation in the accounts of Hobbes and Locke, and the extent to which, especially for Locke, the family is posited as not natural or even existent in the state of nature, self-preservation also takes priority over preservation of the species in modern liberalism. The account of self-preservation in modern liberalism is far more narrow and reductionist than the broader Stoic notion of “self-love” understood as including the longing for perfection. The complication for the Stoics is that we must choose this possibility; it is not actualized by mere instinct. But how do we get the freedom from necessity to make the choice? 39. See Aristotle, Politics 1252a1–1253a19. 40. In that move was opened not so much Stoic coolness to the human things as an indifference to the greatest reward the political can offer — fame and reputation.

354  Notes to Pages 148 – 155 41. De Finibus 3.1.2. 42. He does return to this issue in his confrontation with Stoic natural theology, which we will consider in chapter 6. 43. How one knows that a position is probable without comparing it to the truth remains locked in mystery. One is simply assuming what one claims cannot be known. 44. De Finibus 5.5.12. 45. If tranquility of mind is a/the highest end, what is implied? Here we might hearken back to the Lockean view that natural man is fundamentally anxious because of the inconvenience of the natural situation, and in Heidegger’s view anxiety reaches an even higher level as the dominant mood for our time and the primary opening to philosophy itself. Which mood is more productive of the good, tranquility, anxiety, or something else altogether, such as boredom or premodern awe and wonder? However we answer the question, ethics, politics, cosmology, and psychology have to be brought together in a consistent fashion. If tranquility is the greatest good, does necessity have to be the highest cosmological principle? If chance reigns cosmologically, are anxiety and active engagement required? Those are recurring fundamental questions. They are questions that are not being asked in our time and hence we put together inconsistent combinations of physics, politics, ethics, and psychology, disciplines that now all proceed independently, as if consistency did not matter. 46. De Finibus 5.13.37–16.44. 47. Ibid., 5.24.69. One is reminded of the old witticism regarding the cosmopolitan person who loves “humanity” but cannot stand particular individuals. Piso loves universal participation, but approaches it from withdrawn and inert staring. 48. Strauss, On Tyranny, 191–92. 49. De Finibus 5.29.86–87. Six.  Cicero on Natural Theology 1. The Hortensius is no longer extant, except for a few fragments. 2. This is certainly true of the early Augustine who accepted the place of free will and the place of good works or moral virtue in the pursuit of salvation. That the later Augustine became more pessimistic and what one might call more Calvinist and deterministic is well known. That is the problem we are always confronted with when we consider Augustine. There were really at least two theological Augustines.

Notes to Pages 156 – 159  355 3. In the Euthyphro, Plato has his Socrates raise some disquieting questions about whether piety reduces to attempting to engage in barter and commerce with the gods. 4. Strictly speaking, the origin of the doctrine of the separation of church and state is a Christian doctrine descending from “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:25). This is true despite the history of the intertwining of throne and altar in medieval Europe. An interesting question is if religion has greater hegemony when it is intertwined with the state or if it doesn’t gain greater power when emancipated from state control. There is another question of what happens when theology is emancipated from architectonic philosophy. 5. This was true even of Aquinas, for whom there was a symbiotic relation between philosophy and theology. Natural reason pointed toward theology; reve­ lation completed the longing of natural reason without overcoming, repudiating, or replacing it. 6. See Smith, “Joseph Cropsey on the Ancients and Moderns.” As for the modern determination to establish secular supremacy of the state and autonomy for philosophy, I agree completely with Cropsey. I am not sure, however, that it is a reestablishment. 7. We saw this same issue regarding the antinomy of necessity and chance in our discussion of cosmology. Again, if one followed the reflections in contemporary physics regarding cosmology, one would see that the relation between chance and necessity is an issue that has not gone away. There is, however, almost always a profound philosophical confusion on this front, where alternately chance and necessity are used in contradictory ways. One should consider Nietz­ sche’s observation in the second epigraph to this chapter. Does one need to simply choose chance or necessity and then make present a consistent position, or should one attempt to synthesize the two? 8. In Christian theology there is a divergence between God’s omniscience and omnipotence. Omniscience seems to imply fate and predestination, God knows everything that will happen in advance. Nothing can really change. Omnipotence stresses God’s will and the fact he can at any moment do anything he wants. The one characteristic stresses necessity, the other chance. Emphasis on omniscience leads down a straight path to Calvinist predestination and an extreme emphasis on grace; the emphasis on omnipotence leads down a path to nominalism and the potential negation of reason. It is an antinomy that never leaves Christian theology and never can. Lurking here is the central Christian conundrum on the relative relation between grace, works, and faith as primary for salvation.

356  Notes to Pages 159 – 162 9. Chance can rule in a variety of ways. For example, chance could manifest itself (1) through miracles and other divine intrusions into the natural order; (2) simply because the cosmos has an accidental and hence precarious origin; (3) because of the “overdetermination” of competing efficient causes; (4) because of the unpredictable deferred ramifications of man’s deeds, especially his philosophical, moral, and political deeds; or (5) simply because even as creator, God does not deal with day-to-day natural occurrences, such as floods, hurricanes, or weather more generally. 10. If good works and excellent deeds are not primary in man’s salvation, if all is predetermined, once again man ceases to be a primarily moral being. Grace or faith alone does not require human excellence, even if it is more egalitarian than a reliance on good works and virtue. 11. As these antinomies are reproduced within Christian theology, it becomes the basis of support for various Christian denominations, none of which should be allowed to negate the others. And this is at the heart of the American republican approach to religion, which relies, as does the extended republic argument, on the avoidance of a majority opinion being able to tyrannize. Christianity, which is based on articles of faith that need philosophic explanation and articulation — rather than on laws that need interpretation, as with Judaism and Islam — is perfectly suited to this diversity and thereby to republican purposes. 12. According to the twentieth-century Thomist Etienne Gilson, Aquinas is still leaving God “in” nature as the ruling element of its active power: “God is innermost in each and every thing, just as its own esse is innermost in the thing. . . . A rather startling statement indeed, and one I do not advise you to repeat without first specifying that Thomas himself is speaking. You would probably be charged with pantheism” (Gilson, The Spirit of Thomism, 69). 13. The God of scripture communicates primarily through prophets, which is to say, wise men. And He communicates largely in clear speeches. This is not to say that interpretation is not still needed, but that interpretation itself requires wise men and not the fuzzy, emotional, and intoxicated. 14. De Divinatione 2.31.66. 15. In Christian theology the basis of conscience is the Holy Spirit. 16. De Divinatione 2.37.80. 17. Ibid., 2.41.85–86. 18. Ibid., 2.61.127. 19. Ibid., 2.64.132; 2.65.134. 20. Ibid., 2.54.92–93. 21. Ibid., 2.55.94–95.

Notes to Pages 162 – 168  357 22. The problem in this direction is when science fails to grasp its limits, like the limiting antinomies within which it will always operate, and furthermore in its zeal allows itself to become ideological or mythical and divorced from empirical reality (string theory, for example). Along this path we return to a new form of superstition and myth. We have every reason to believe that in our postmodern future superstition and myth are at least as likely to approach from the direction of an ideologically overzealous science as from religion. Yet as Cicero makes clear, we cannot do without knowledge of natural facts. 23. De Divinatione 2.54.110. 24. Ibid., 2.59.122. 25. In Christian terms, works take precedence over grace as understood narrowly as a harbinger of fate and predestination. And rational understanding should take precedence over strong emotional experiences. It is not clear that Cicero is adequately positioned to deal with the issue and status of faith. 26. And this is the understanding of modern disciplines from behavioral psychology to what has come to be called neuroscience. 27. De Divinatione 2.67.139–40. 28. Ibid., 2.42.91. 29. De Natura Deorum 3.11.95. 30. See, in this regard, not only the preface to De Natura Deorum but also to De Officiis (1.2.6) and De Finibus (1.2.5–6). Other similar statements are littered throughout Cicero’s works. As for the De Natura Deorum quote, one must realize that Cicero has put something out in public that, should he be in disagreement, he need only have suppressed and kept out of the light of day. 31. De Natura Deorum 1.3.6. 32. In Cicero’s cosmos, faith seems to be associated with tradition and not with revelation. 33. Consider here the ramifications of De Natura Deorum 3.1–5. 34. Given Cicero’s open hostility to Epicureanism elsewhere, using an Epi­curean spokesperson could lead one all too quickly to dismiss any critique of Plato’s theology as something Cicero would not accept in his own name any more than he accepts Epicurean physics or ethics. In this instance, I believe that conclusion would ultimately be a mistake. This is especially true since Cotta ignores certain elements of this critique but reinforces the criticism that a created cosmos cannot thereafter be eternal, a position attributed to Plato. 35. Presumably fear of retribution would be among the low bases of religion. 36. But he also rejects this notion because it would then become an inappropriate model for the human soul. 37. De Natura Deorum 1.2.4.

358  Notes to Pages 162 – 172 38. He does repeatedly point out the necessary parallel between understanding the divine mind and understanding the nature of the human mind. So, perhaps, we can read theological implications backward from our forthcoming consideration of ethics in chapter 7. 39. De Natura Deorum 1.12.29–30. 40. This divide exists within Christian theology. On the one hand there is the early, more Platonic and Neoplatonic Christianity, found in Ambrose and Augustine, that sees God as mind and man as longing to return to oneness with this divine mind — hence the resurrection of the soul as pure mind. Then there is the turn of Aquinas, who presents human substance as a mind/body whole where the soul itself is body-like. For Aquinas, human substance is “complex,” but divine substance is “simple” and therefore not a body/mind whole. Aquinas also literally asserts that humans long to “see” God and not in some metaphorical sense. Whether all of this leads him to conclude that the resurrection is the resurrection of the body remains somewhat ambiguous. This issue reemerges in Christian theology regarding whether various elements of the Trinity are pure mind or body. Christ obviously is body at one point. The Holy Spirit seems to be pure spirit. God the Father remains a more open question. There are various permutations within Christian theology, including the Mormon position that both Father and Son are body and only the Holy Spirit is not. The primary point at present is that the issues being enjoined by Cicero continue to return. 41. This, of course, is the problem Hegel tried to solve by making the incorporeal Spirit prior to immanentization, composed of all ideas and concepts without concrete form, long for concrete form. Hegel gave a depiction of Spirit becoming concrete and immanent so that it could think itself as something concrete. But to do that, Spirit had to go from being One to being immersed in the Many concrete forms of the entire cosmos — in Stoic fashion. Spirit then needed temporality or history to find its way back to self-conscious oneness in concrete form. For this account one must turn to Hegel’s Logic, which is in reality a theological/ontological treatise. The point here is that Hegel is still trying to overcome the antinomies Cicero had already presented — but Cicero would deny that one can transcend those antinomies. And so for Cicero there would always remain a mystery at the core of being. The fact that one cannot transcend the antinomies, that reason cannot penetrate the core of mystery in being, and that there is a phenomenological basis in everything from fear to wonder that moves man means that religion will always reconstitute itself. This is why religion will never be abolished and why it will always remain imperative to constitute as rational a religion as possible. As a historical fact, the early Church fathers, in

Notes to Pages 172 – 175  359 relying heavily on Cicero, thought he had done a very considerable job of bringing together natural theology and Christian faith. 42. I would argue Hegel is much closer to being a Stoic than a Christian —  or at best tries to synthesize the two. This observation would probably be dismissed by an author like Robert B. Pippin. Pippin is one of few authors from whom one can genuinely learn regarding the Western philosophic tradition. And he is one of the few, seemingly unreserved, defenders of modernity. He concludes that the most significant defense of modernity is offered by Hegel. But Pippin’s Hegel is stripped of metaphysical, ontological, and theological components. Yet Pippin praises Hegel as “the last philosopher in our tradition to have offered a positive account of the ‘whole.’ That is, he tried to understand the unity of such different domains as science, ethics, art, religion, politics and philosophy” (see Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism, 260). I agree. And that is at the heart of Hegel’s greatness. Hence it is not clear how one honors Hegel by dropping a good part of his own account, especially the ontological and theological parts. Pippin sees that at the core of modernity is what I have called “constructivism,” or proceeding from a self-legislating Ego. His Hegel represents a response to this constructivism by showing how the development of spirit takes place in a situated and social environment over time. I agree. And this is what I have called phenomenological. But it is not clear to me that Hegel is the best author to use to ground this social, phenomenological, basis for thought. And it is not clear that Hegel can be made consistent without the ontological/theological accoutrements he thought necessary. I continue to assert my point: one either confronts these issues directly and holistically or surreptitiously. One cannot proceed by simply dropping necessary components. I hope to return to a confrontation with Pippin’s position in a forthcoming essay. 43. As to creation ex nihilo, much depends on how one conceptualizes the nihil. It can either be the total null set, or it can be the no-thingedness of undifferentiated matter. God either creates the matter itself and forms it or forms previously undifferentiated matter. In Genesis, the matter is ambiguous, opening the door to interpretation. 44. See Smith, “Jerusalem and Washington: Political Philosophy and Theology,” in Between Eternities. 45. Consider De Natura Deorum 1.44.124. 46. Ibid., 1.44.123. 47. Ibid., 1.43.121. 48. Ibid., 1.32.91–92; 1.40.110–11. 49. Ibid., 1.38.105–6. 50. Ibid., 1.35.97.

360  Notes to Pages 175 – 182 51. Ibid., 1.44.122. 52. This is not entirely the esotericism that recognizes the differences in ability among possible readers, or even just the prudent concern for public opinion. This is a mode of writing that goes with a form of thinking that is not dogmatic but tries to open spaces for the future. 53. De Natura Deorum, 3.4.9. 54. As Cotta refutes the position of Balbus point by point, henceforth, for the sake of brevity, I will present the Stoic position through Cotta’s responses. A full treatment of the text would have to attend to those elements of Balbus’s account that Cotta ignores or misrepresents. 55. De Natura Deorum 3.5.11–13. 56. We need a basis for telling the difference between Moses and Paul, on the one hand, and the average hucksters or madmen, such as David Koresh or Jim Jones, on the other. 57. That there is a wry humor and playfulness operating in Cicero should never be missed. 58. This is evident in the willful, omnipotent God of the medieval nominalists. See Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity. 59. De Natura Deorum 3.10–11.26–27. 60. This is the view of Christian theology that sees God creating each soul independently at the moment it enters a body. 61. De Natura Deorum 3.11.27–28. 62. It becomes clear that in the end the Stoics are every bit as much materialists as the Epicureans. In offering for inspection the idea of a possible complex whole, we again see the quiet way in which Cicero intimates possibilities and thereby opens future philosophical spaces to be occupied. It is in the interstices of his presentations that one sees possibilities open. Out of antinomies and conundrums come possibilities, to be ever reenjoined. 63. De Natura Deorum 3.14.35–36. 64. Ibid., 3.15.38–39. 65. This of course raises for us the question of whether what transpired in the garden of Eden, or thereafter leading up to the Flood, or what happened before the giving of the law to man by God, were not events perfectly predictable to God. This would require an extended series of reflections, so at present I will leave matters at asserting that there is no thought introduced by scripture that Cicero did not in one way or another already consider, or, more generally, that unaided thought cannot raise on its own. We see this in Cotta’s reflections on whether things like reason itself are not, at best, mixed blessings for human beings. 66. De Natura Deorum 3.27.69.

Notes to Pages 189 – 192  361 Seven.  Cicero on Ethics 1. For that matter, that was already true in a different fashion in the presentation by Homer of the “wily” (phronesis) Odysseus. 2. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1166a1–1166b37. 3. Even a seeming deontologist like Kant adds an element of consequentialism with his doctrine of “universal history.” 4. Nicomachean Ethics 1178a8–14. 5. Cicero’s ethical split with Stoic teachings parallels his similar split with them on cosmological issues. And this split is also clear despite the fact that he says explicitly in De Officiis that he will more or less extend and amend the presentation of the Stoic ethical thinker Panaetius. He primarily follows the Stoics in agreeing that the greatest good is not pleasure and the greatest evil is not pain. That Cicero wears a Stoic mask elsewhere in his teaching should be kept in mind, as should his occasional seeming to align himself with some permutation of the Academy. But as always, he is vague about which Academy he has in mind. It is only the Original Academy of Plato that he follows to any significant degree. I will continue to insist that Cicero’s own teaching is to be found in the interstices of the texts, and his ethics is no more fundamentally Stoic than is his epistemology a version of the Old or New Academies, both of which are incapable of having any cosmology. 6. I would go so far as to say ultimately there is no deontological position that is not simultaneously consequentialist. Kant’s position is linked to his doctrine of history that leads toward a cosmopolitan outcome, and Christian ethics has as its consequence the salvation of the soul. 7. There was an attempted modern recovery of this republican notion of the place of virtue and that politics was an end in itself by Rousseau. But Rousseau radically constricted his notion of virtue to Stoic self-control and laboring self-reliance combined with patriotism. His citizen did not so much conquer chance individually as become the pawn of the General Will — known in a different republican tradition as majority tyranny. 8. See Aristotle, Politics 1295a25–1295b15. 9. The United States is a commercial republic that has an increasingly large number of detractors. But this is frequently because our defense of commercial republicanism is almost always off point. Capitalism, as it came to be called by Karl Marx, was explicitly first defended by a professor of moral philosophy, Adam Smith — Smith’s phrase was “system of ordered liberty.” The turn to commerce was seen as fostering virtues necessary for republican government. Capitalism was not seen as an end in itself. Unfortunately, commercial republicanism seems

362  Notes to Pages 193 – 195 to have become reduced to being the means to the emancipation and autonomy of the “dismal science” from any ethical considerations, for the unlimited pursuit of wealth as an end in itself. I nitially, commercial republicanism was defended by authors like Montesquieu — and to a lesser extent by Hume and Smith — for the equality of means it could bring for untold numbers and not just the few, for the education and emancipation it could produce not only from poverty but from ignorance, and for the public virtues of freedom and self-government it could bring, not simply for the fact that the unlimited pursuit of wealth was always good in and of itself rather than as a means. In the process of losing this older understanding, we have forgotten the discussion of virtue in our republican discourse. Thus we are left defending unlimited greed divorced from honor, and in the process leave commercial republicanism ultimately defenseless. The solution will not be found in institutional tinkering or technical and bureaucratic control. The solution will be found in soulcraft. 10. It was still the case for Montesquieu in the Spirit of the Laws that the “principle” of a republic was virtue; fear was the principle of despotisms (see vol. 1, bk. 3). Of monarchies Montesquieu says the principle is “honor,” but by this he means only “preferment,” which is in effect reducible to vanity. This is no more than an external reliance on the opinions of others as a form of restraint. This is not what Cicero means by honor understood as a high, internal, self-­ conscious self-conception that provides an internal check on behavior. When I talk about the republican need for an ethic of honor, it is Cicero’s notion upon which I will rely. 11. Cicero, De Officiis 2.2–3.9–11. According to Cicero’s explicit remarks, Panaetius in fact made a grave error in raising a question about whether moral excellence (honestum) and expediency or utility (utile) can conflict. Cicero’s explicit doctrinal assertion is that the two are not in conflict and that we can bring them together. In fact, we should never even raise the question regarding their possible divergence. We can also bring together self-interest (utile) and public interest (justice). But to do so one must understand both honestum and utile in an appropriate fashion. 12. Ibid., 1.1.2. 13. Ibid., 1.1.3–4. 14. Important to repeatedly note, they also do not have a cosmology. 15. In De Officiis we are explicitly directed by the author to consider Cicero’s Academica. As we mentioned in chapter 3, it is unfortunate that we have such a questionable and incomplete text, composed of several versions, none surviving in its original form. It was undoubtedly the document where Cicero attempted to sort through the various permutations of Academic thought.

Notes to Pages 195 – 197  363 16. De Officiis 1.2.6. 17. Honestum is a rich term that is roughly comparable to the Greek kalos/ kalon. But they are not identical. The Greek implies noble and beautiful as it relates to behavior but also to the very being and appearance of an individual as if the two could not be separated. The Latin term implies morally good and decorous in the sense of propriety understood as the virtue of following the art of noble living. At one point Cicero uses the analogy that a connoisseur of music will know when a note is just slightly off. Likewise a person of honestum will know when an action is just right or just slightly off. Cicero very suggestively also links honestum with the Platonic notion of eidos, the form or face of a thing. There is a form or face of honestum, the way it looks to the person “in the know.” See the Greek gnostike in this regard. 18. That broader perspective may implicate one’s immortal reputation and influence after one is dead. One is reminded of Aristotle’s question regarding whether a man can be judged happy while he is still alive. 19. De Officiis 1.4.11. Only in man does the self-conscious awareness of death put one in touch with the ultimate future. Golden retrievers do not anguish over the coming possibility of death. One might keep in mind that Hobbes tries to build on only the instinct of self-preservation, but he bases it on self-­ conscious awareness of death, not simply on unconscious instinct. Darwin tries to build only, or at least primarily, on the instinct for the preservation of the spe­ cies. Either by itself is partial and inadequate. Cicero combines both instincts, and then goes beyond them. 20. Heidegger would argue that an articulate understanding of the authentic temporality of man was unavailable in the tradition until he articulated it. I think he is simply wrong, and I offer Cicero’s discussion in De Officiis as evidence. Like so much of German thought, which did not take place under the influence of Latin, Heidegger’s is far more informed by Greece than either permutation of Rome. 21. De Officiis 1.4.13. 22. Ibid., 1.43.153. 23. Ibid., 1.6.18. 24. Ibid., 1.6.19. 25. In the Platonic dialogues, there are but rare examples of Socrates in motion, except for the briefest of intervals. In Plato’s works, the Symposium includes two specific mentions of Socrates being motionless when struck by an idea. In the Phaedrus, Socrates is recumbent under a tree. Only in the Laws is the discussion conducted in motion, but Socrates is not present in that dialogue. The dramatic depiction of rest, and only occasional motion, is ubiquitous in the Platonic dialogues in relation to Socrates.

364  Notes to Pages 197 – 205 26. However, in book 5 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle asserts that there is such a thing as “complete” justice, which is a moral virtue and hence both a habit and a mean and requires the existence of all the other virtues. Aristotle says nothing more about it and discusses instead what can be called political justice. Cicero’s justice is far closer to what Aristotle calls “complete” without reducing it to a habit or a mean. It also requires the existence of the other virtues. 27. De Officiis 1.7.20. For Aristotle, see Nicomachean Ethics 1124a. 28. De Officiis 1.7.20. 29. Ibid., 1.7.21. 30. This puts Cicero much closer to Hobbes than Locke on the origin and status of private property. For Hobbes, private property is whatever the sovereign says it is, regardless of its origin. 31. One should not immediately jump to conclusions. In the circumstances of the modern world, the republic itself may have duties Cicero would not have seen. But those duties should not usurp and render pointless the duties of individual citizens. 32. De Officiis 1.14.43. 33. Consider Politics 1256a1–1256b38. 34. De Officiis 1.11.35. 35. Ibid., 1.12.38. 36. Ibid., 1.9.28. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., 1.9.29. There is no such thing as a purely private ethics that eschews the political and moral arenas. On this level one cannot seal off what is due to Caesar and God and live a withdrawn, private ethical life. 39. Ibid., 1.13.41 (emphasis mine). 40. This of course leaves this New Prince wide open to the manipulative control of the philosopher-king Machiavelli and his modern descendants. 41. Perhaps that imperial expansion was needed in Machiavelli’s time of a Europe of fractious and fragmented squabbling small states confronted by an encroaching Ottoman Empire. That is not our situation now. We, like Cicero, need to look within again both individually and societally. 42. De Officiis 1.18.81. 43. Ibid., 1.15.46. 44. Yet as the histories of Washington and Lincoln show, for all the difference in their souls from those of Alexander and Caesar, war is not always avoidable in the name of justice. And hence the older notions of courage are still needed, as are manifestations of the older understandings of greatness of soul. 45. De Officiis 1.19.62. 46. Ibid., 1.19.65.

Notes to Pages 206 – 212  365 47. Again, Cicero does say that there is a difference between overweening ambition and seeking a “good name.” Of the pursuit of the latter, he says it can be accomplished through military deeds in defensive wars, through public mani­ festations of personal character, associations with the virtuous, public eloquence, deeds that spare the poor and innocent, and public expenditures for the public interest, but never through personal extravagance. 48. De Officiis 1.25–26. 49. Ibid., 1.25.88. 50. Once again, Cicero tries to downplay the “hot” element of thumos found in Plato’s seemingly greater appreciation of spiritedness than what shows up in Cicero’s moral universe. Across the board Cicero relies less on hot emotional ele­ments like thumos, eros, and even mania than does Plato. 51. De Officiis 1.26.90. 52. Ibid., 1.27.101. 53. Ibid., 1.21.110. 54. Ibid., 1.27.93. 55. Ibid., 1.35.126–27. Modesty deals with natural bodily functions. Cicero is clear that there is nothing immoral about attending to those functions in private, including sexuality, but it is indecent to perform or discuss them in public. There is no prudishness associated with the virtue of modesty in Cicero’s understanding, or any need to mortify the flesh. But this observation needs to be taken together with Cicero’s quite surprising espousal of the virtue of chastity —  at least for some public servants, such as the vestal virgins. But even they are primarily needed in Cicero’s eyes as an example to the general citizenry to support modesty. The underlying premise is that the passions should never be publicly displayed or enflamed. 56. Nicomachean Ethics, see, esp., bk. 7. 57. De Officiis 1.31.110. 58. Ibid., 1.31.112. 59. Ibid., 1.31.113–14. The excellence needed for a republican citizen is a more or less full-time job, and the teaching of this excellence should be the focus of a republic. Between Machiavelli and Cicero we are offered the choice between impetuosity and steadfastness on the one hand, and imperial expansion and a more lasting and just republican focus on domestic justice on the other. 60. De Officiis 1.43.153–44.156. 61. Ibid., 1.44.155. 62. Ibid., 1.44.157. 63. Ibid., 1.42.150–51. Cicero cites chefs as vulgar, but we might now see that as including more than a little artistry. Little imagination is required to include other professions, such as allegedly one of oldest, drug-dealing, and

366  Notes to Pages 212 – 215 anything that leads to dissipation and dependency when exempted from modera­ tion. One wonders if modern winemaking or fashion designing would cross the divide into artistic for Cicero. 64. Ibid., 1.42.151. 65. We might remind ourselves of how limited actual “liberal” possibilities were as recently as the beginning of the modern age. Women were particularly limited, leisure and liberality for them being associated fairly exclusively with upper-class marriage and the Church. Young gentlemen were almost as limited. For the noninheriting sons, who would not manage the feudal lands, the military, the Church, and the universities (still somewhat limited in number until rather late in time and almost always linked to the Church) were the only real venues. The professions of medicine and law were not yet accepted as truly liberal. We moderns have created far more possibilities for leisure and “liberal” occupations and life choices, but this expansion ironically comes at a moment when we have lost almost all respect for the actual notion of truly “liberal” or “liberated” lives, frequently in the name of the mantra about race, class, and gender, and the pursuit of some radically egalitarian and anarchistic outcome as the good. I would suggest that a truly healthy future republic will have to recover the notion of “liberal” and investigate the multiple options that will be available in the coming postmodern world, which will have become capable of freeing itself as completely as humanity ever has from numbing manual labor and majority ignorance and poverty. 66. De Officiis 2.2.7–8. In this vein, Cicero asserts in book 1 that he sides, for purposes of the argument there, primarily with the Stoics, whereas in book 2 he makes a bow to the Academics. As always he is vague about which branch of the Academy he has in mind and sends the reader off to his Academica, which once again is unfortunately no longer extant in a useful form. He does assert, however, that the Academy as he understands it is not composed of relativists who think nothing is true, who are forced to “wander in uncertainty and never know what principles to adopt.” 67. Ibid., 2.3.9. 68. Ibid., 2.3.12. 69. Ibid., 2.4.15. 70. Ibid., 2.6.19–20. 71. We know how important labor then becomes in the teachings of both Hegel and Marx. 72. De Officiis, 2.5.18. 73. Ibid., 2.6.19–20. 74. Ibid., 2.6.21.

Notes to Pages 215 – 220  367 75. One can put the matter as saying that Cicero is an idealist with modest expectations, an idealist who makes bows to realism. 76. De Officiis 2.6.22. 77. Ibid., 2.7.23–24. 78. Ibid., 2.8.29. 79. The political manifestation of love includes patriotism and also sympathetic concern for one’s fellow citizens. 80. Aristotle says essentially the same thing; see Nicomachean Ethics 1155a18–32. 81. De Officiis 2.9–11.34–38. 82. The comparison would need at least a chapter of its own. For a short version of Aristotle, friendships based on mutual pleasure are the least durable. When the friends cease to give each other pleasure, or to love the same pleasures, the friendship dissolves. Friendships based on utility are the more durable, but when the mutual usefulness dissolves, so does the friendship. When the partners cease to be useful, primarily as business partners, the friendships dissolve. Friendships based on shared virtue are the only really durable friendships. And since the virtues can be ranked hierarchically, the friendships based on the highest virtues are the most durable. In this regard Aristotle even explicitly argues that the friendship of marriage may commence as a friendship based on pleasure but must be transformed into a partnership based on shared admiration for the other’s virtue to be durable and long lasting; see Nicomachean Ethics, bks. 8 and 9. 83. De Officiis 2.9–10.32–37. 84. Ibid., 2.13–14.45–48. 85. Ibid., 2.23–24.83–84. 86. Ibid., 2.24.84–85. 87. Ibid., 3.2.7. 88. Ibid., 3.3.13–15. 89. Ibid., 3.4.19; 3.8.36. 90. Cicero refers to the Gyges story twice in book 3. The ring of Gyges makes one invisible. The question then becomes, why should one be morally virtuous if there is no danger of being caught and punished? The answer is, one will be punished by internal psychic discord. But what about those for whom avoiding this physic discord is not built into their character? They undoubtedly have to be dealt with by fear and the manipulation of other lower motivations (De Officiis 3.9.38 and 3.19.78). 91. De Officiis 3.10.40–3.21.85. 92. Ibid., 3.22.86. 93. Ibid., 3.10.44.

368  Notes to Pages 221 – 228 94. Ibid., 3.26.99–3.27.101. 95. Oddly, unusual and highly hypothetical examples are increasingly taken as foundational for much of contemporary moral theory in the academy. Eight.  Cicero on Oratory and the Language Arts 1. That led in one of two possible directions: (1) toward the logic of Aristotle as the locus of truth, or (2) toward an essentialist ontology. For Cicero, dialectic has the far more pedestrian function of merely providing clear definitions. It can be argued that the elements of poiesis in the Platonic dialogues are part of Plato’s emendation of Socrates. 2. There is a reason Plato does not let Socrates be the discussion leader of the dialogue Statesman when he had led the discussion of knowledge on the previous day in the Theaetetus; that earlier discussion ended in aporia. Like Cicero in De Oratore, Plato makes the philosopher and statesman converge in what is in the Statesman called the politikos. 3. See my Plato chapters in Smith, Between Eternities. 4. There is one caveat to this statement, which we will see in chapter 9 on politics, where Cicero specifically raises the issue of poetry and imagination. 5. In this regard, I am prepared to hazard a formulaic speculation in Cicero’s name: “oratory must be philosophized, and philosophy must be republicanized” through attaining a public element of oratory. 6. See Cicero, De Finibus 4.3–4.8–10. 7. See Rudolph, Essays on Education in the Early Republic, and Pangle and Pangle, The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders. 8. Again, our present view of rhetoric and oratory is to see them as comparable to the phenomena we get from advertising — where we primarily deal in trickery and misdirection while coming to the very border of what we know to be lies. This view increasingly rules in all of our professional schools — such as law, journalism, advertising, and business. And these schools increasingly supply a disproportionate share of our public officials and officeholders. These schools and their graduates most certainly have disproportionate influence in forming public opinion and through the modern media have disproportionate access to what remains of our public space. These professions attract many of the brightest and best and give access to some of the best incomes. Yet in so many ways, those who rise to the top in our society have the least substantial relationship to philosophical reflection and truth. In using speech as a mere tool for misdirection and the pursuit of private self-interest, we no longer see ourselves as the guardians of

Notes to Pages 228 – 231  369 a public trust but as the users of a mere medium to be manipulated without shame or remorse. Many of our children are raised to believe that the person who does not act with calculating deception is hopelessly out of touch and deserves to be treated like a “sucker.” Caveat emptor is applied to all public speech and, with that proviso, everything is fair game. This is the ultimate ramification when oratory is no longer seen as an arena of truth and becomes divorced from philosophy, to say nothing of ethics. One practical suggestion is that we need to transform the curricula of journalism and law schools, which grant disproportionate access to the public arena in our time; that access is entirely disproportionate to the scope and breadth of the philosophic understanding of our lawyers and journalists. We also need to again dedicate undergraduate education to truly liberating liberal arts education in philosophy, literature, and history. 9. Is there really a reason to believe tyranny cannot make us comfortable, supply us with services, medicine, defense, and make the trains run on time? 10. This view of politics as an end in itself is captured beautifully by Thomas Pangle: “Man is a being who needs to participate in joint endeavors with other men — to give and receive love and honor, to create and contemplate noble men and beautiful things, to engage through speech in the discovery of truth” (Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism, 34–35). 11. Cicero makes it clear that this “negative dialectics” is at the heart of all of the permutations of the Academy of which he was aware. In rejecting negative dialectics, as nothing but occasionally useful, he simultaneously rejects the Academy in any of its permutations. Negative dialectics leads only to skepticism. 12. See, in this regard, De Finibus 2.1–4.3–14 and 2.6.17–18. 13. Cicero, De Inventione 1.1.1. 14. The notion of the necessity of pious misdirection is an impoverished understanding that can all too easily come to underlie seeing political philosophy as merely the defensive face of philosophy before the public. In that understanding, true philosophy is a private theoretical activity that primarily tells lies in public. That is simply not Cicero’s understanding, nor is it a helpful public understanding. 15. It is little wonder that in our time the public arena is viewed by the majority as an arena of noise, an arena of falsity. That phenomenon shows itself. The question becomes, what is required now to make the public arena show itself again as an arena of truth? 16. And this is the ultimate yield of Plato’s Theaetetus, officiated by Socrates. 17. The question we are circling is what place do “creativity,” “invention,” and “imagination” play in phenomenological philosophy? (1) Does creativity primarily manifest itself in the positing ex nihilo of the definitions as a point of

370  Notes to Page 231 departure? (2) Or does creativity come into play through articulating clearly and publicly what is already displayed, if vaguely or inarticulately in everyday public showings? Cicero never really says. Plato chooses the latter; Descartes and especially Nietzsche, the former. Lurking here also is the related question of the place of poiesis: Is its function originary or limited to articulating an already given public showing? Or does poiesis fill in where the phenomena are silent? In the end, Plato undoubtedly deploys poiesis better than Cicero because he sees a need to fill in where the phenomena are silent. 18. Contemporary attempts at “interdisciplinary” studies always start from the assumption of the prior autonomy and independence of various studies —  for example, sociology, logic, anthropology, biology, theories of mind, women’s studies, American studies, medicine, physics, international studies — and then try to put them together into a new, manufactured, artificial whole. To reiterate my previous metaphor, this is trying to build a skyscraper starting with the eighty-fifth floor. The already existing whole lies well below and prior to the alleged autonomy of any of the separate parts, especially as they are now constituted. 19. One is reminded of Heidegger, On the Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, originally taken from course notes and now offered as something of a book. Heidegger argues that logic always presupposes a doctrine of being, in Heidegger’s case a fundamentally “metaphysical” doctrine of being qua “full presence.” For Heidegger, logic always presupposes an ontology and therefore is never autonomous. But for Heidegger, ontology can stand alone in a way it simply cannot for Cicero. If anything takes primacy, if not autonomy, it is ethics. Perhaps what is needed therefore is a book called On the Ethical Foundations of Logic. In this regard, it is hard not to notice that Heidegger’s speech is anything but publicly accessible, anything but capable of public persuasiveness in a res pub­ lica. But then again it is clear that Heidegger is no republican. Cicero’s point is similar to Heidegger’s in the sense that logic is not autonomous, but unlike Heidegger, Cicero will not allow ontology/cosmology to be autonomous any more than logic. And unlike Heidegger, Cicero grasps the priority of the question regarding the good to the question regarding being. And Cicero grasps the phenomenological importance of public persuasiveness for philosophy itself. For Cicero, both logic and ontology always presuppose an idea of the good, not first and foremost an idea of being. In that regard, Cicero stands with Plato. For Cicero, logic and ontology are part of the whole that is political philosophy, but subservient to its architectonic undertakings. In the hands of detached technicians who think they are the masters of an autonomous “science,” every undertaking becomes groundless and pernicious.

Notes to Pages 232 – 235  371 20. Cicero, De Oratore 2.4.17–18. 21. Some readers even take Crassus as a simple mouthpiece for Cicero, as some take Socrates to be a simply mouthpiece for Plato. 22. The characters of the dialogue are as follows. Throughout the discussion we have the two main discussants, Licinius Crassus, who was born in 140 BC and was consul in 95 BC, and Marcus Antonius (Antony), grandfather of the member of the second triumvirate, Mark Antony. At the time of the dialogue, Crassus was roughly forty-nine years old and Antony fifty-two. Throughout, two younger men were also present, F. Sulpicius Rufus, age thirty-three, and C. Aurelius Cotta, consul in 75 BC, who was also thirty-three. On the first day, Q. Mucius Scaevola, a well-known seventy-year-old Stoic, was present. He goes home after the first day, informing two others who were not present on the first day of what had transpired. Those two, close to Scaevola’s age, are Q. Lutatius Catulus, consul with Marius in 102 BC, and his half brother, Julius Caesar Strabo Volpiscus; they arrive for the second day. 23. De Oratore 2.1.1–5. 24. Ibid., 3.1–4.1–16. 25. Herein there is another parallel with Plato’s Phaedrus. In that dialogue, Socrates offers two speeches. There is his first, low speech on eros that depicts its vulgar elements, and then his soaring “recantation” that depicts the grand, noble, and inspiring elements of human nature. Both are parts of the human whole. Antony, who says oratory has three elements — persuasion, instruction, and appeals to the emotions — focuses primarily on the lowest element of the three, enflaming the passions, especially jealousy, which he depicts as the strongest and most useful — far more useful than compassion. Crassus will stress the higher elements of persuasion and the utility of instruction. He too has a discussion of how to appeal to the emotions and passions, but it rests on a different political psychology than that of Antony. In neither instance does the speaker appeal primarily to Machiavellian reliance on fear and blind ambition as the basis of their political psychology. This issue of political psychology and reliance on the high versus the low is worthy of a study in its own right. In what follows we will substantially abstract from this issue. 26. Albeit Catulus won some important victories for Rome, and was, with Marius, co-consul. 27. De Oratore 1.41.187–88. 28. In Plato’s dramatically linked trilogy of Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, the same question is raised: Are the three names — sophist, philosopher, statesman —  indicative of one, two, or three beings? 29. De Oratore 1.48–51.207–23.

372  Notes to Pages 236 – 239 30. On the trilogy of Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, see Smith, “Staring, Caring and Curing in the Platonic Dialogues,” forthcoming. 31. De Oratore 1.23.108; 1.61.259–60. 32. Ibid., 2.19.85; 10.40. 33. Ibid., 2.86.350. 34. One might consider in this regard Machiavelli’s metaphor of the mountain and the valley in the preface to The Prince. 35. De Oratore; consider 3.17.65–68. 36. Ibid., 1.48–49.212–13. 37. We see this attempted wedding of past, present, and future throughout the works of Cicero. It explains his attempts in his political writings De Re Pub­ lica and De Legibus to rewrite the history of Rome along more rational lines than the actual history. Cicero innovates by tracing ideas to historical antecedents. He always tries to find the seeds of his novel future in the past. Cicero is, therefore, a traditionalist revolutionary. He apparently does not think that one can get to the future by simply repudiating the past. Perhaps the true revolutionaries should masquerade as conservatives. 38. De Oratore 1.42.192. 39. The theme of motion versus rest is as ubiquitous in Cicero’s works as it is in the Plato. I offer a few observations that could be worked out in greater detail another time. Crassus is motionless while contemplating. Socrates likewise is rendered motionless by Plato when contemplating, for example, in the Sympo­ sium. Cicero is making a certain concession, silently, in rendering Crassus motionless. This concession comes despite his argument that philosophy should not aim at withdrawn, tranquil, Epicurean contemplation. Those descended from Aristotle are called Peripatetics. This refers to the courtyard outside his school, the Lyceum, which was called a peripatos. Allegedly the Aristotelians would walk about in this peripatos while they discussed ideas. This stood in opposition to Socrates’s motionlessness. In a similar vein, one is reminded of Nietzsche’s observation that one should never trust a thought had while sitting. At present we can leave matters at the fact that this issue of motion versus rest seems to recur well beyond Plato and Cicero. On the political and ethical level, the question reduces to whether the best life is the private, tranquil life withdrawn from engagement, concern, personal responsibility, and striving or the active, engaged, concerned, responsible, probably even anxious life. Is not the latter the ideal of the good life that is most consistent with the defense of liberty and republican practice? 40. The parallel with Plato’s Phaedrus is clear. In that dialogue Socrates offers a speech that depicts the low elements in human nature, recants it, and

Notes to Pages 239 – 242  373 then offers a longer speech on the high and ideal elements in human nature. The overall effect is to show us that both the high and the low exist, but that it is best to take our bearings by the high and ideal — without forgetting the more complicated nature of reality. 41. De Oratore 3.5.19–20. 42. Ibid., 3.5.21. 43. Ibid., 3.6.24. 44. Ibid., 3.12.49. 45. Ibid., 3.25.100. 46. Ibid., 3.14.54. 47. Ibid., 3.16.61. 48. Ibid., 3.16.59–61. 49. See, in this regard, Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 25, 26, 29, 42, 43, 44, 61. 50. We should recall Plato’s Theaetetus, where Socrates calls forth four definitions of knowledge and refutes all of them. The dialogue ends in aporia, or “confusion.” Socrates then goes off to answer the charges that eventuated in his death. Plato is clearly calling into question the public effects of Socrates’s questioning, as does Cicero. From the Theaetetus the positive yield is that if there is such a thing as knowledge, it is already lodged in the “prescientific,” everyday understanding that Socrates on occasion so devastatingly “deconstructs,” as opposed to merely articulating and bringing out into the open. This understanding is likewise reproduced in Cicero in his repeated calls to remain close to everyday speech and understanding. On the second day of Plato’s trilogy, a new discussion leader takes over — the Eleatic Stranger. Like Cicero, he guides the dialogue to the existence of the poli­ tikos, the high-level statesman/philosopher. In the Sophist, it is argued that the victory of the Sophists comes from the fact that they astutely lead their opponents out into the thicket of being/not being, where they become lost and confused. This technique is presented, at least on the surface, as a form of trickery; with this trickery, falsity can trump truth. Antony comes close to an argument like this. The solution in Plato’s trilogy is the rule of the politikos rather than the Sophist. Ultimately, with the names changed, Cicero’s solution is the same. 51. De Oratore 3.20.76. 52. Ibid., 3.23.86–89. 53. Ibid., 3.31.122–23. 54. Ibid., 3.59.223. 55. Once again, for Cicero, the statesman is conceived in precisely the same fashion as the politikos in Plato’s Statesman — as pointing toward various

374  Notes to Pages 242 – 245 forms of “weaving.” And like Plato, Cicero does his own form of weaving of knowledge into a whole. 56. De Oratore 1.8.32–33. 57. Ibid., 3.5.21–22. 58. Ibid., 1.42.187–89. 59. Ibid., 1.49.212–13. 60. Ibid., 3.36.147. We have competing views of oratory that line up with competing views of the nature of philosophy. Only the phenomenological view of philosophy we have been pursuing can be made compatible with oratory and statesmanship. 61. Ibid., 3.17.64. 62. Ibid., 1.35.162; 42.192. 63. For the thinking behind this phrase, see as an example ibid., 3.17.65–66. 64. Ibid., 1.42.192: Omnia enim sunt posita ante oculos, conlocata in usu quo­ tidiano, in congressione hominum atque in foro. 65. Ibid., 3.17.64. 66. Heidegger, Being and Time, 178.

Nine.  Cicero on Politics 1. Cicero’s political teaching is primarily presented in De Re Publica and De Legibus. When confronting these two texts, we see that Cicero seems to adopt the same division between ideal constitution and detailed laws as did Plato. Whether that kind of division is exhaustive for either Plato or Cicero is less obvious than it may seem on the surface of either author’s texts. But our first problem is that neither of Cicero’s texts have come down to us in a complete form. We have less than half of his De Re Publica and possibly about half of his De Legibus. We can fill in some of the missing parts of De Re Publica from commentaries by Augustine and others and can reconstruct its “Dream of Scipio” from an extensive commentary upon it by Macrobius. We do not know for sure how many books De Legibus was intended to have, but probably six, as in De Re Publica. We have only parts of the first three and the vague intimation that two of the other three would have been on courts and the administration of justice and another on education. But a distinctive teaching does emerge, and general principles can be gleaned from what is extant. And other texts help fill in the gaps on subjects such as property and the origin of the state, especially De Officiis.

Notes to Pages 245 – 248  375 2. Consider in this regard, Cicero, De Legibus 3.13.29–33. The modern premise is that success depends on man the maker qua constitutional founder, not man the participant qua virtuous citizen led by philosophic statesmanship. By the modern premise, even a nation of devils, properly organized, allegedly can prosper. Political failures are failures in initial constitution or subsequent conscious institutional tinkering, not failures in the character of citizens. Cicero accepts that the proper, and to some degree calculated and self-conscious, founding of institutions is important, but the character of the participants still remains primary. Rome’s republican constitution was almost totally prescriptive after being based on an initial reaction against monarchy, but it did possess a version of republican virtue up to the point of its imperial expansion. Cicero is a proponent of an element of self-conscious rational founding, at least in his future, but also, as we will see, of the need to make a bow to tradition, both because of the limits of reason and because of the extent to which tradition will always be a supplement to virtue formation through habits admired by a society. Cicero will not allow prescription to be autonomous, nor does he think reason can completely obliterate the knowledge gained by trial and error brought out into the open by the lived experience of distinctive peoples in distinctive places. There must always be a balance between reason and tradition, and one size never fits all, even though Cicero and his characters will speculate on a universal natural or divine law. Cicero leaves vague the difference between the two. 3. De Legibus 3.14.32. 4. Any regime, but especially a republic, will not long last when wealth becomes completely disassociated from virtue and excellence. With that disassociation, wealth quickly becomes illegitimate in the eyes of the majority. 5. We get this teaching primarily in Cicero’s De Re Publica from the mouth of his character Scipio. In the text Cicero explicitly notes that Scipio had many discussions with Polybius, who also holds a permutation of this teaching regarding balanced government. From the drama of the text, and the reliance upon the doctrine in De Legibus, in which Cicero is the primary spokesman, we can conclude this teaching is significantly accepted by Cicero. 6. This is where the sneering at popular rule (mere vulgar populism in the eyes of many) of some contemporary elites, for example, an author such as Pettit, becomes so questionable from a republican perspective. See chapter 1 herein. One should not have unlimited popular rule, but it is necessary to be open to an element of it. And elites need to be grounded in virtue, not simply be of a self-­ selecting academic and bureaucratic origin. Following Cicero, knowledge emancipated from virtue gives no republican claim to rule. 7. Cicero, De Re Publica 1.32.49.

376  Notes to Pages 249 – 250 8. One must constantly keep in mind that for Cicero, philosophy is not reducible to metaphysics in either the traditional sense or the contemporary sense that traces to Heidegger — that is, having a doctrine of being qua full presence. 9. De Re Publica is set in 129 BC in Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus the Younger’s garden — even statesmen need to retreat to a garden on occasion, a small bow to the Epicureans. It represents a flashback to a moment when the Roman Republic, by Scipio’s own words, remained a republic in name only and not in substance. The balance that is being presented by Scipio is an ideal, not a Roman reality. Cicero’s teaching clearly is not, as so many lazily assert, a mere justification of Roman practice or of his own class interests. De Re Publica is presented in six books that take place over three days. Dramatically, Cicero heard of the event from Publius Rutillus Rufus — we have to wonder if Rufus did not also receive it secondhand. It starts in the morning as the sun is rising, and they sit outside in the sunniest part of the lawn. This can be compared with Plato’s Republic, which begins after dark and indoors outside of Athens in the Piraeus. The participants in each have leisure because of a religious holiday — for Cicero it is a Roman holiday, and Plato’s Republic is linked to a foreign religious spectacle. There is a preface by Cicero to each of the three days, at the commencement of books 1, 3, and 5. As in Plato’s Republic, De Re Publica not only takes place during a religious festival but also has a religious poem at the end. The topics of education, the place of literature and drama, the nature of regimes and the ideal best regime, philosophy, and ideal statesmanship are shared by the two texts. Cicero replaces the iconoclastic private citizen Socrates with the famous and successful statesman Scipio. By comparison, in De Legibus they walk along a river in book 1 — likewise the participants walk in Plato’s Laws — and then sit on an island in that river in book 2, shaded from the sun. The setting of De Legibus is outside Rome in Arpinum, the home of the Cicero clan, at a time near his death, and includes as characters Cicero, his brother, Quintus, and the Epicurean Atticus, Cicero’s best friend and publisher. As is true in many Platonic dialogues, in Cicero’s principal political writings issues involving sitting and walking, rest and motion, being and becoming are juxtaposed in the setting that surrounds the texts — in the sun or in the shade. One might conclude that becoming cannot be understood without reference to being (something that stands still) and being cannot be understood without an element of motion and becoming. The choice between motion and rest, being and becoming, is not an either/or choice. One might also conclude that if the sun is aligned with the first cause, as it is in Plato’s Republic, Cicero may believe that the city has to have a greater openness

Notes to Pages 250 – 251  377 to the sun than does Plato. Yet he admits that some issues should exist within an element of shade. In De Legibus, the issues that are discussed in the shade of an island are the concrete laws, many of which clearly have a traditional and ancestral basis. Further, an island is something that stands still in the middle of the flow of becoming all around it. The laws seem to be that island for most human beings, the ones who cannot address issues like nature and God directly, as does Cicero in book 1 of the De Legibus. Obviously there are many more themes that are raised by the setting and drama of the two political dialogues, especially in relation to Plato’s similarly named texts, than we can pursue here. 10. De Re Publica 1.25.39. 11. For a treatment of the religion of the hearth and the clan-based origins of Rome’s ancestral traditions — which stretch back considerably before the founding of Rome — regarding the ancient religion of the hearth, decayed manifestations of which still show up in De Legibus, see Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City. 12. See Aristotle, Politics 1274b30–1275b20. 13. “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” The people in question, “we,” are who we are because of the principles we share. At the time the Declaration of Independence was written, “we” who were citizens were culturally, racially, and linguistically like the other “people” from whom we were intending to separate ourselves. “They” held different principles of justice, the good, and the true. Being a people, in this old and dignified sense — that stretches from Aristotle, through Cicero to the Declaration — rests on shared ideas and ideals. Since the initial basis of American peoplehood was not primarily ethnic, waves of immigrants should have no effect on order and stability if the shared principles underlying peoplehood are maintained. Unfortunately, our principles, and Western principles more generally, have been under sustained attack from within. If ethnicity and shared principles are the two primary bases of peoplehood, if a people’s principles are undermined, nothing is left but racial and ethnic politics. 14. Those conceptions are then kept “out in the open” by phenomenological philosophical articulation. 15. De Legibus 1.6.19–20. The few apparently understand that law has its basis in God and/or nature, as is argued in book 1. 16. This is certainly the conventionalist position presented by the defender of the majority in Plato’s Republic, Thrasymachus. His definition of justice is that it is the advantage of the strongest, and in his view the majority is always the strongest. His version of sophistry was in the service of taking the side of the many. By this depiction, it is the many who are most likely to accept conventionalism. 17. Consider De Legibus 3.13.30–14.32.

378  Notes to Pages 252 – 255 18. Part of the conscious deployment of reason in political life includes defending an element of tradition when reason can provide nothing better and the circumstances are such that a change would likely be for the worse by undermining stability and setting off the spiral to mob rule and tyranny. 19. This need for executive authority goes along with the observation that Plato’s ideal society was too small; see De Re Publica 2.28.51. In general, Scipio says he is not happy with the political works of the Greeks on this score (ibid., 1.22.36). Great cities have to be ranked above small ones, to say nothing of villages and “strongholds.” On this score, Cicero is in agreement with Machiavelli and the moderns in desiring a large republic rather than a small, pugnacious, participatory one. Both Plato and Aristotle saw the small city as the best, and in Aristotle’s case the most “natural.” 20. This goes along with Aristotle’s principle that “political” rule, as opposed to kingly and despotic, requires ruling and being ruled in turn. 21. Politics, 11276b25–40, 1277a8–32, and especially 1283b26–1284a18. 22. Precisely what Machiavelli wanted from these “new” princes was the destruction of tradition, the old “modes and orders.” Cicero will not turn tradition and reason into an either/or choice, as does Machiavelli. 23. In Greek, the word traditionally translated as “republic” is politeia. This should be translated “on the political” or “nature of the political.” Etymologically, it obviously shares a root with the word politika, which is what is operative in the title of Aristotle’s Politics. But for a very long time Plato’s work has been translated as “Republic.” This is misleading; it is an accident that occurred only because the Greek word passed through the Latin res publica or De Re Publica — with its connotation of “public space” — before being handed down to us. This is a sign of the various accidents that occur in ongoing traditions, and those accidents eventually become far too established to change. In the process, synthetic and even transformed meanings are put in place. More to the point, the true difference between Plato and Cicero, especially in their political teachings, is lost: Plato’s “republic” calls for none of the citizen participation out in the open that we find in Cicero. The prevalence of accidents in all traditions should be a warning against believing in inevitability, whether of the progressive form of Hegel and Marx, or the regressive form of Nietzsche and Heidegger. 24. De Re Publica 2.30.52. 25. De Legibus 1.1.5. 26. This discussion is launched by asking Atticus if he will grant that nature is ruled by the mind/will of an immortal God. As an Epicurean, Atticus cannot agree to this premise, but he states that for the sake of advancing the argument the discussants should act as if he accepts the premise. What Cicero

Notes to Pages 255 – 257  379 then deduces is that man has a distinguished status in the cosmos granted to him by the Supreme Creator because he is made in God’s image. From this he deduces that there is a commonwealth of which Gods and men are members. Hence the origin of law goes all the way back to God the creator. Cicero asks Atticus whether he and Quintus accept this. If so, they can proceed with the discussion. Atticus answers, “We have no questions.” Cicero now makes the jump to say that justice follows from nature and not from the opinions of men. One cannot help but wonder if this string of hypothetical reasonings is a form of poetry or history. See De Legibus 1.6.21–1.13.35. 27. At this point, Cicero goes on to drop any pretension of dialogue and gives a long speech. He then explicitly says that such an approach is a way of proceeding in order to “publish to fellow-citizens precepts conducive to their well-being and credit, so designed as to win their acceptance” (De Legibus 1.23.62). 28. We cannot help but wonder if philosophy itself in its public orator/ statesman manifestation is closer to history or poetry as these terms are here defined. 29. De Legibus 1.1.1–3. Cicero explicitly refers us to Plato’s Phaedrus, where a similar, albeit not identical, byplay occurs about trees, rivers, and mythical events (see Phaedrus 229b-c). 30. Apparently thoughts stand still longer than actual nature. 31. One cannot help but be reminded of Augustine and the comparison of the City of God and the City of Man. 32. De Legibus 2.2.4–5. 33. Reason always sets off from a particular, situated present. It cannot simply negate that present and its past. It can engage in balancing acts. I repeat a previously made point: balancing and deconstruction are two entirely different stances. Balancing sees both the limits of reason and the need to defend elements of tradition. Compared to the radical Enlightenment project, deconstructionism is still operating in the same horizon; Cicero and Burke are often generally in agreement, differing primarily on how much reason can actually accomplish — or is it only that they judged what was needed to be balanced in their own times as being different? 34. De Legibus 3.13.29. 35. We assume the sun reference points us toward Plato’s Republic where the sun represents the first cause. Were there two first principles, presumably they would have to be balanced. What they might be is unclear: being and becoming, God and nature, mind and matter are possibilities. But the main point at present is that Cicero forces the cosmological issue at the beginning of the text.

380  Notes to Pages 257 – 258 36. De Re Publica 1.10.15; 14.23–29. 37. Cicero is one of the fathers of what became the Western natural law tradition. He would not have been pleased with later attempts to completely disassociate universal natural law from the need for particular laws. Put differently, following the thesis of Leo Strauss, he would have remained committed to the natural right tradition and not gone over completely to the natural law tradition, which became ever more rigid. In Strauss’s view that rigidity reached a peak in Aquinas and then occasioned the equally rigid response of modern natu­ ral law teachers, such as Hobbes. Hobbes’s teaching is at the forefront of the march of modern political philosophy toward the unchecked hegemony of the universal and the cosmopolitan. With Hobbes we have a teaching applied to all men as human and in the process we completely eliminate the attention to the situated present and its past. That opening led eventually to the political cosmopolitanism of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, and with it the serious move toward the abolition of the political. See Strauss, Natural Right and History, especially chaps. 3 and 4. Cicero would not believe that a universal natural law, or universal law of reason, could be applied, in the same fashion, everywhere and always. He is neither Aquinas on the one hand nor Hobbes, Grotius, or Kant on the other. 38. Compared to De Re Publica, Plato’s Republic is utterly deficient in the popular principle. And for Plato, little takes place out in public. The philosopher-­ kings of Plato’s Republic have no incentive to rule and be ruled in turn, to borrow from Aristotle, or to explain themselves in a public space. They rule privately and through myths like that of the myth of the metals or the Myth of Er. In Plato’s Laws, the same outcome of the nonexistence of a public space is clear in many ways — consider, among other things, the “nocturnal council.” 39. This is the political variant of the theoretical thought that one cannot understand becoming except in relation to something that stands still, being, any more than one can understand being that has no component of motion or action, becoming. One reflects upon the adequacies and inadequacies of a particular regime at a particular time and place, especially a great city, and the universal comes to sight from that set of reflections, not in a direct and unmediated fashion. And all of this is only possible because there is something that doesn’t change in the nature of man and the cosmos. The premise behind modern universalism and cosmopolitanism is the total malleability of man and nature. 40. Consider De Re Publica 2.21.37–43. Aristotle makes a similar point in the Politics about Lycurgus by showing that the best of the three actual regimes sketched in book 2, Carthage, is better than the two actual Greek regimes, Sparta and Crete. The two Greek regimes, in different ways, had conscious founders. Because it was the product of an element of natural growth rather than

Notes to Pages 259 – 260  381 full self-conscious planning, Carthage was better; it was an Aristotelian polity. Actually, in Aristotle’s depiction, Carthage comes closer to Cicero’s balanced regime. Lycurgus was unable to predict all manner of things, which led to problems for Sparta. That shows the limits of the reason of one person in constructing an ideal, stable regime without the aid of history and tradition. See Smith, “Aristotle on Reason and Its Limits,” in Between Eternities. 41. Cicero makes more than a small bow to the importance of trial and error and the collective wisdom of the ages, that is, the wisdom of tradition. But in the end he sides with reason and the need to self-consciously project and open future spaces that time alone would almost never produce by chance, any more than an infinite amount of time would allow a monkey to write Hamlet. 42. De Legibus 1.5.17. 43. Nor does one stand in midair and will to deconstruct all traditions. I cannot repeat too often: despite its critique of reason and self-consciousness, deconstructionism is a descendent of the radical Enlightenment project that tries to self-consciously destroy tradition and faith. 44. Cicero, De Officiis 2.8.29. 45. De Legibus 1.1–2.5–7. 46. See my essay on Derrida in Smith, Between Eternities. 47. De Legibus 1.1.1. To put some previous remarks in a different light, in some ways De Legibus — which includes an element of walking — points toward the setting and actions of Plato’s Laws where the discussants also walk during the dialogue. But the more explicit reference, focused as it is on trees, is Plato’s Phaedrus. The tree in question in the Phaedrus is the one they sit under, in the shade, out of the sun — with all the implications that brings from Plato’s Repub­ lic. The tree in the Phaedrus is a plane tree, which in Greek is platanos. If that is meant to convey that they are sitting under the influence of Plato, who shades them from the sun, all manner of things follow. In De Legibus, first they walk, as is the case in Plato’s Laws, and then they sit, as is the case in the Phaedrus. Plato’s Laws is somewhat rhetorically austere. But the Phaedrus includes some of the more beautiful Platonic, philosophic poetry. To get to the core of what Cicero is doing, all of these intimations would have to be explored. They are by no means throwaway lines, as so many dismissively suggest. But at present we will pursue this issue no further. 48. Here again we are forced to consider Plato’s Phaedrus where his character Socrates makes an argument against writing, which is of course a public act in the public space that helps preserve both national and philosophical memories. The irony for Plato is that his character Socrates is making this argument in a written dialogue.

382  Notes to Pages 261 – 263 49. Romulus’s relation to his brother, Remus, is deleted from the account. As we have seen above, Cicero himself raises the issue explicitly in book 3 of De Officiis. 50. Plato, Phaedrus 229c4–230b1. 51. De Re Publica 6.9–26.9–29. 52. We must keep in mind that the real statesman for Cicero is a philosophic statesman, like the statesman weaver (politikos) of Plato’s Statesman. 53. In De Legibus, Cicero tells the Epicureans and the New Academy to be quiet about issues regarding the state; they have contributed “nothing but confusion” (De Legibus 1.13.39). It is its skepticism that made it impossible for the New Academy to offer a specific cosmology. How could one do that with a good conscience if the necessary knowledge could not be had? But cosmology is one of the five elements that political philosophy must weave together into a whole. We either offer an explicit cosmological teaching, or one will always lurk surreptitiously anyway. Is anything to be gained by keeping suppressed what is better confronted openly and explicitly? 54. De Legibus 2.7.16. Again, this is a teaching more consistent with Cicero’s natural theology and the natural/divine law for which he is arguing. 55. I have already made this suggestion — this necessity that God be both transcendent and in the world may be best handled, in the religions we have seen on this planet, by the Christian notion of the Trinity. 56. This comes closer to the Christian doctrine that the individual soul is created at the time it enters the body and undergoes no further incarnation. In this regard, Cicero has moved away from Plato, but the transmigration of souls was not part of his tradition, as it was with Plato. 57. Unlike the Stoic teaching, there is no cyclical destruction and rebirth of the cosmos, just a more gentle rotation through a great “cosmic year,” a notion taken from Plato. 58. De Legibus 2.11.27–28. The two theological teachings of the two politi­ cal works would then have to be compared with the yield in the discussions of natural theology. Taken together, they force us to reflect upon the relation between the civil theology (that must make a bow to what is one’s own) and rational theology. The gap could be bridged if what is one’s own is also rational. By Cicero’s own standards of natural theology, Christianity could fit the bill of being both our own and potentially rational. 59. The fate of more common individuals is unclear. 60. We should keep in mind that the great philosophical task of Cicero’s time was to defend the political and political commitment. This was different than the Greek task of defending philosophy against the city’s hostility. For Cicero it was the continued existence of a truly political space that was in danger,

Notes to Pages 264 – 265  383 and only philosophy could save it by becoming aware of its own needs, that is, its need for the city. Our need in the present is much closer to Cicero’s than to Plato’s. We do not need to defend philosophy against the city. We need to teach philosophy how much it needs the city and to give it reasons to engage. Cicero is doing precisely that in his discussions in De Legibus and De Re Publica. 61. This is a claim from three to four academic generations ago of scholars like McIlwain and Sabine. After the public arrival of Nietzsche, Heidegger, deconstructionism, and more, such scholars now look quite quaint, and more or less philosophically defenseless. But their claim has surface philosophical plausibility and deserves to be confronted. See the discussion in Wood, Cicero’s Social and Political Thought, 10–11. 62. One should consider here an argument presented by Jacques Maritain: “In their doctrine of immanent action, the Greeks held that the immanence of the intellectual act is, as such, more perfect than that of the act of will. . . . All this led the Greeks to a two-fold conclusion, which, in its first part, formulated a most valuable truth; and, in its second part, transformed that truth into a great error. The great truth which the Greeks discovered . . . is the superiority of contemplation, as such, to action. . . . But the error follows. What did that assertion mean to them practically? It meant that mankind lives for the sake of a few intellectuals. There is a category of specialists — the philosophers — who lead a superhuman life; then in a lower category, destined to serve them, come those who lead the ordinary human life, the civil or political one; they in turn are served by those who lead a sub-human life, the life of work. . . . The high truth of the superiority of contemplative life was bound up with contempt of work and the plague of slavery” (Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics, 172). Maritain goes on to explicitly include Cicero in this accusation, which I would argue is almost completely mistaken. Maritain argues further that the Christians solved this problem by elevating the status of the life of labor, reasoning that Christ himself was a common laborer while on earth. And for the Christians, the contemplation of God was open to far more people than a few philosophers. The contempt held by the Greeks for commerce and labor is clear. But we have seen that Cicero elevates labor to being the very basis of civilization. Unlike the Christians, who remained as skeptical of commerce and usury as the Greeks, Cicero also elevates the dignity of commerce. In this he was well beyond both the Greeks and the Christians. But unlike the moderns, he would not emancipate commerce from either the political or the ethical. 63. On a different level, in De Officiis Cicero argues that cities are the prerequisite for civilization and that cities are the product of human labor. He even follows Locke in seeing the natural things that have not been worked upon by

384  Notes to Pages 265 – 270 human labor as almost valueless. Labor takes the place of slavery and conquest as the basis of value. This is a very modern notion, one approached by no other premodern author. 64. De Officiis 1.7.21. 65. In a similar vein of moving on and not taking revenge for the past, after World War II the Soviet Union, on the basis of the sheer force an occupying power commands, moved both the eastern and western borders of Poland 300 miles west. We proceed on the assumption that it would now undermine peace and justice to try to move those borders back to their original boundaries. Yet even with those borders we assume that we can construct justice and a good life now and into the future for the citizens of Poland, Germany, and Ukraine. Hence we accept those borders as legitimate with an eye to the end of justice, rather than focusing on the legitimacy of their origin. The end takes precedence over the beginning. 66. See my discussion of De Officiis in chapter 7. 67. That approach unhinges the discussion of property from a qualitative discussion of ends. In this regard we can learn how to rethink this issue better from Cicero than from contemporary socialists, or from Locke, Hayek, and Friedman. 68. Modern authors like Hume, Smith, and Montesquieu directly confronted the argument about luxury and the unlimited pursuit of wealth and tried to prove that the pursuit of unlimited wealth and luxury was not a vice, and that in a newly constituted modern republic the pursuit of and the having of excess and luxury would be beneficial rather than a problem. Great as those thinkers were, in the present and coming worlds, I would suggest this issue needs to be rethought. 69. De Re Publica 2.14.26. 70. We have long since forgotten the appropriate relationship between wealth, leisure, and serious citizen participation. One cannot have it all ways at once. Commerce is by far the most benign way to generate necessary wealth. But wealth needs to be seen as primarily a means to more important activities. Commerce unlimited by a discussion of serious ends will, especially in the world that is coming, cannibalize itself. 71. Contrary to the thinking of so many of our “democratically” — and usually anticapitalist — inclined elites, the limiting of vigorous constitutionally constituted executive power is not the primary means to saving the republic. The history of the Roman Republic should provide this lesson — that the reinsertion of citizen involvement and virtue, especially in a commercial republic, is what is needed. Of course, it would not hurt if there was an aristocratic check somewhere in the checks and balances system. And it would not hurt if republican executives saw the need to provide actions worthy of emulation. Unfortunately, there are probably no institutional means to deal with that latter need.

Notes to Pages 271 – 278  385 72. The massive increase in the bureaucratic portion of the executive branch and the ways in which it operates outside the view of the public space is a new problem to which we must turn our thinking. And an executive that can almost completely negate the place of the legislative branch by the use of executive orders is likewise a new danger that must be confronted in our ongoing efforts at rebalancing republicanism. Our problem now may be a too powerful executive on the way to Caesarism. Ten.  A Brief Reflection on Nietzsche 1. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil. Compare the end of aphorism 242 with the end of 251 and also with 208; subsequent citations are to the aphorism. 2. Ibid., 257–60. 3. Ibid., 61; 211. 4. Ibid. See, especially, 204 and 206. 5. I have developed this argument more fully regarding Nietzsche’s rheto­ ric in Smith, Nietzsche, Heidegger and the Transition to Postmodernity. 6. Beyond Good and Evil, 204. 7. Ibid., 62. 8. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In part 4, the same phenomenon is lampooned in the caricatures drawn of several of the “higher men,” especially the person who had become an expert on the brain of the leech. 9. Beyond Good and Evil. One should piece together the thoughts in apho­ risms 53 and 55. 10. Nietzsche uses this “we” throughout Beyond Good and Evil. The term appears to have multiple meanings. 11. Beyond Good and Evil, 205. 12. Ibid., 257. 13. Ibid., 61. 14. Ibid., 284 (emphasis mine). 15. Ibid., 289. Note that the “second cave” metaphor is particularly striking. 16. Ibid., 206. 17. Ibid., 207. 18. Ibid., 211. 19. The contemporary deconstructionist academy has, unfortunately, gone a long way toward helping to actualize Nietzsche’s longing for innocence and forgetting. And as a result, almost everything in our present academic universe is at odds with a genuine liberal arts education, architectonic political philosophy, and republicanism. Our brightest and best are being suborned by Nietzsche’s

386  Notes to Pages 278 – 282 longed-for “innocence and forgetting.” Unfortunately, it is not so innocent, and the politi­cal ramifications are not by any means democratic or republican. 20. If one follows Heidegger and sees this constructivist Ego as meta­ physical, then Nietzsche is the last metaphysician rather than a precursor of a novel future. 21. Beyond Good and Evil, 260. 22. Ibid., 214; 224. 23. Ibid., 211. 24. For an elaboration of this point, see part 2 of Smith, Nietzsche, Heideg­ ger and the Transition to Postmodernity. 25. Zarathustra does “speak” to the sun and to his animals. But can this really be speech in the everyday sense? 26. Beyond Good and Evil, 56. Kauffmann translates the phrase as “a vicious circle made God” or “God is a vicious circle,” or, he notes as least likely, “the circle is a vicious God.” The notion has to be put in the perspective of Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal recurrence. One cannot miss the lurking Stoic element of a faulty, circular god that cannot break out of its own realm of necessity — unconscious like the Stoic logos, but faulty and even vicious, and therefore totally unpredictable. 27. This is nothing but a radical deployment of the modern premise of the malleability of human nature. But it is no longer deployed to have a democratic bent. Now the desire to re-create, and indeed create, man is deployed to create an aristocratic humanity. This is Rousseau’s “metaphysical freedom” turned against democracy. 28. Beyond Good and Evil, 188 and 62. Nietzsche asserts that “man is the as yet undetermined animal.” Man is to be repeatedly determined by a long compulsion in a single direction. Such compulsion implies those who do the compelling. This is not a democratic doctrine of self-creation. 29. Unfortunately, this is the premise underlying fashionable deconstructionist “diversity” and “multiculturalism” in our academies. It is a sheer inconsistent accident that this premise of formlessness, everything is a “text,” is conjoined with egalitarian, anarchistic, and pacifist premises. Nietzsche understood the inner logic more consistently, and it is the necessary logic of modern constructivism shorn of modern rationalist premises and any commitment to republicanism. 30. The contemporary academy has come up with an altogether novel “balance” of elements, part Nietzschean, part radical abstract democratic universalism. Joining the Nietzschean understanding of malleability to radical cosmic formlessness and radical modern egalitarianism results in the roots of the

Notes to Pages 282 – 283  387 contemporary politics of “diversity.” One longs for any diversity in the face of abstract, universalist identity — yet there is also the inconsistent longing to overcome nations. But unfortunately it is a diversity that is only skin deep and hence in reality circles back to a new form of materialist racism. This is far different than an understanding of diversity based on a notion of distinct human souls, some higher, some lower, conjoined with an openness to distinctive and diverse republican spaces. The latter understanding is what republicanism requires and what Cicero offers. 31. The issue of open “public” persuasion is central. In this regard, consider the difference between the texts of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke, and Rousseau, on the one hand, and Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida, on the other, from the perspective of giving their respective texts to a high school student or an educated adult out in a public space. On the one side is publicly accessible speech. On the other is technical speech and jargon. That is the difference between public persuasion in a public space and technical persuasion for a few. Modern philosophy has become increasingly impenetrable publicly, and that makes it intrinsically authoritarian. Nietzsche is clear that his solution requires mass ignorance and forgetting with understanding for only a few. But Nietzsche’s own texts become dangerous because of his ability to offer intoxicating, publicly accessible speech in the service of an outcome that hopes to separate the public from open philosophical discourse. Both the public and philosophy lose in the process. Consider too how many narrow and noncomprehensive “schools of thought” there are in our time and the extent to which education has been reduced to merely being conversant with their existence rather than trying to assess which is true on the basis of its comprehensiveness, internal consistency, public accessibility, and relation to shared phenomena. Consider further how few of today’s dominant schools of thought use public speech and how all are merely partial at best in the issues they discuss — few even attempt to give an explanation of the whole, or to explicitly weave together the five fundamental elements of thought I have suggested in chapter 2. Cicero’s example of how philosophy should proceed in public is better than that of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, and, especially, Nietzsche, to say nothing of the partial and derivative intellectual sectarianism of our time. Cicero’s teaching is reserved but is not furtive in the sense of trying to sneak presuppositions in the back door. He is intrinsically a republican, not an elitist who can talk only to the few who are aiming at the creation of a world ruled by a few. In every regard, Cicero offers the far better model to emulate philosophically. 32. Beyond Good and Evil, 230.

388  Notes to Pages 286 – 287 Conclusion 1. The logic of the present situation simply shows that military and commercial/industrial elites will have an increasingly limited purchase in trying to seize rule if we remain vigilant as citizens. More to the point, they will have difficulty projecting legitimacy even if they do seize control for short periods of time. We should not aim our cannons at nineteenth- and twentieth-century phantoms. The modern industrial age is over; the corporations that dominated that age are not going to be serious players in the future. We need not defend against the same dangers warned of by Tocqueville or of concern in the Progressive era of Wilson and the two Roosevelts. The times have changed. The contest for who shall rule is now taking place elsewhere between, on the one hand, new postmodern elites whose capital is knowledge and information and, on the other, truly free and philosophically informed self-­ sufficient citizens, of which there seems to be a declining supply. It is the new rising postmodern elites who have the most at stake in misdirecting the attention of republican citizens. Old elites will increasingly have a stake in having informed citizens on their side. 2. At this moment, nothing comparable to the self-interested militarists that brought down the Roman Republic is on the horizon. Eisenhower’s “military-­ industrial complex” is not the primary problem from the perspective of republican freedom — it is not to be ignored, but is not our central problem. We should be forewarned by the dangers brought to Rome’s republic by imperial expansion. But imperial expansion should be differentiated from a vigorous forward-­ positioned defensive posture and the defense of allies. A healthy and functioning republic like the U.S. variant need not be isolationist. It should not be imperialist and expansionist. It certainly need not long to be universal and impose universal premises on other nations. The cosmopolitan, postnationalist dream of the end of history is not coming. A confederation of republics after the U.S. model on a global basis is not to be expected and should not form our foreign policy; that would force us into nation-building everywhere we turn. Other republics need to develop their own public spaces, and that will only happen from the ground up with an eye to their own distinctive traditions. 3. It takes a long time to turn a huge oceangoing ship; it will take a comparably long time to turn away from the powerful inertial forces of the age. But one must begin the turn if there is hope of moving in a different direction. 4. Contemporary intellectual fragmentation must be met with a new commitment to a genuine liberal and liberating education for those who presume to rule or be actual citizens. It must be an integrative vision in the fashion we have been sketching.

Notes to Pages 287 – 294  389 5. It is not our institutions that need tinkering; it is our souls that need reordering. 6. See my essay on environmentalism in Smith, Between Eternities. 7. Obviously this implies a knowledge of, respect for, and continuance of the great dialogue of our philosophic and religious Western tradition. Republicanism itself is a thoroughly Western ideal, even if others have tried to adopt it. And we must realize that the West is based on an ongoing, complicated intertwining of philosophy, republicanism, and Christianity. At this present moment, none of those components can be willed away while still saving republicanism into the future. 8. Publicly, philosophy is seen as no more than an ensemble of competing politicized ideologies. Academic philosophy has no pretentions to architectonic status, and it operates in technical languages not amenable to what is left of our public space. 9. If we look closer at the intellectual landscape we see that the all of the disciplines that dominate the life of the mind in our time are themselves fragmented into competing “paradigms,” whether in the social sciences, the humani­ ties, or the natural sciences. The fragmentation has its causes and its distinct history — a history that had, at least at the origins, political and ethical foundations self-consciously understood. The history that followed those choices was anything but inevitable, but at a certain point the outcome has become irreversible. A self-conscious break like the one that brought the modern moment into existence is needed and may be possible in our late modern, early postmodern moment. The fragmentation of knowledge can be overcome by reversing its presuppositions. 10. Civil society as we now use the term is not the same as a genuine public space. Although they undoubtedly mutually and reciprocally support each other, it is the latter that we need to recover; the former tends toward being too intrinsically Epicurean. 11. That holistic effort is what we see especially in the premodern authors. The modern authors set in motion a process of devolution of the parts from the whole, which has led to our contemporary intellectual fragmentation. We must pass beyond Heidegger’s truncated rediscovery of the unity of ethics and ontology to a fuller understanding of the holistic nature of thought as manifested in the premodern authors, to whom we must recur for examples of what is needed in our time. This is not to counsel a return to one of those authors as the one who got it right for all times; it is a warning of the need to learn lessons from the past that we have forgotten. I have argued throughout that this is what we need to do in our time to unleash a future. 12. See my chapters on physics and biology but also on environmentalism in part 4 of Smith, Between Eternities. Consider the extent to which contemporary

390  Notes to Pages 295 – 297 “environmentalism” has ceased to be concerned with mundane things like conservation. Some of our environmental elites are willing to destroy the entire economic base of what is left of modern economies to pursue that great mythical chimera of some presumed capacity to terra-form the planet, but they no longer seem to care about small things, such as the fact that we are using up ancient aquifers in the U.S. Midwest to engage in high-yield farming, which, among other objectives, endeavors to grow more corn so we can mandate 20 percent ethanol in gasoline. This anti-conservationism goes on while there are people starving on the planet, and with larger populations coming in the future this problem will only be exacerbated. This environmentalist shift away from conservation is not about science or saving the planet; it is about restricting old industrial elites, “capitalists,” so new postmodern elites can rule. But they do not intend to rule in the public space required by republics. It is impossible to have a global public space, and it is the planet that the new elites wish to rule. What I am suggesting can also be seen in the environmentalist determination to hamstring the building of nuclear electric plants that would cure the problem of carbon emissions in energy production, if that was the real concern. But that would simultaneous supply enough inexpensive power to support commercial republicanism. That would not advance the cause of rule that is the end for rising new elites. 13. The tradition of architectonic political philosophy is the tale of the “untimely” courage we see in Cicero. The greatest thinkers were the greatest enemies of the ignorance and longing for power of their time. They threw forward spaces that were eventually occupied. We are the deferred ramifications of those thinkers. If we want to help shape the future rather than be pawns of it, we will have to stand in the same fashion toward our future. 14. What also comes from Heidegger is a critique of modern constructivist, instrumental reason that opens the door to understanding that an integrative view of reason is again possible. Unfortunately, so far all that critique has led to is relativism and deconstructive nihilism. 15. I have dealt with this issue in a number of works. In the present context I would direct the reader to my “Joseph Cropsey on the Ancients and Moderns,” in Smith, Perspectives on Political Science, for a sketch of the position I am relying upon here. 16. A serious reading of great literature, and some phenomenologically grounded philosophy, shows this multiplicity of ends, and it also shows actual life with real flesh and blood added to the sinew and ligature of human existence. It is this real diversity that is destroyed by the abstractness of contemporary ideological discourse. And freedom is not an end in itself; it is always the

Notes to Pages 297 – 301  391 means to one of the actual substantive ends that phenomenologically determine human existence. 17. But even wealth, like power, is not an independent end in itself; it is merely a means to other ends. That leaves comfortable existence for as long a period as possible as the dominant conception of the good in our time. For that end, one need not be a citizen. 18. If comfortable self-preservation is the only legitimate end, all serious matters can be handed over to the dismal science of economics, which will then presume to be autonomous. All that is left to calculate is whether markets or bureaucracies are best at producing the only legitimate end. 19. See chapter 1. 20. What we get in the process is a combination of Weber’s “iron cage” and Kafka’s castle. 21. This is not to say that it may not be advantageous to let some things be handled by spontaneous markets and other things administered by professionals. But the discussion should be deflected to how these competing arenas advance “our” understanding of the ordering of ends. The question needs to be approached from a genuinely republican perspective. All sides must justify themselves at the altar of republicanism, and, as I have argued, that needs to be a philosophical altar that has as its venue a public space. 22. Some of the representative names in this approach include Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision, Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory, and Jane Mansbridge, Beyond Ad­ versary Democracy. 23. On the Left, there is always the background premise that the hegemony of participation will lead to greater redistribution of wealth and hence greater social equality. In other words, unvarnished democracy will lead the many to redistribute the property of the few. This is not, of course, the presupposition of the Right’s version of participation, one recent designation of which is called the “Tea Party,” which it would be fair to say is more concerned about political efficacy and local control than economic redistribution. 24. Given the dangers of technological domination, we should retain a commitment to rights that we can assert against intrusion by others and the state — especially the huge modern procedural bureaucratic state. But I would suggest that those rights are going to have to be defended in a new nonconstructivist fashion. That means that instead of the reductionist argument of a perfectly straightforward constructivist like Locke, rights are going to have to be defended with an eye to the full diversity of the human soul and its multiple longings and aspirations and how rights fit with individual self-development.

392  Notes to Pages 302 – 306 Put another way, rights will have to be defended with an eye to ends more than origins, possible perfection and excellence rather than shared bodily proclivities. 25. If those are the greatest evils, as we saw with the ironic republican Pettit, a pharmaceutical solution should lead to the greatest good. Implied is that some level of psychic tranquilization is the good. This is different than the moral attempt by Cicero to bring into being individuals who are not an internal battleground. The alternative is the fully awake, moral, self-conscious concern of citizens who are genuinely free individuals, who have been morally freed to self-control by overcoming internal moral strife. Psychological tranquilization should not be our goal; it is a different end than the internal moral self-control we have discussed. And important watchwords from a citizen perspective should be “awake” and “engaged.” 26. I will rely here substantially on the much discussed Sandel, Democracy’s Discontents. 27. All of the fragmented schools of thought we have been considering seem to abstract from an understanding of the necessity of statesmanship and conscious moral education. Once the importance of those two variables is understood, it becomes necessary to see how important it is for both to be philosophically informed by an architectonic philosophy. 28. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontents, 343 (emphasis mine); 350–51 (emphasis mine). 29. There is a bow to the venue for the storytelling being a local community. But if community already exists, there is no need to fable it in narratives. What is called for is a phenomenological articulation of what is already embedded in that community and its already existing prearticulate set of understandings. What seems to be lurking here is a refusal to validate what already exists and hence the constructivist desire to remake it. 30. One can suggest here that the political psychology of Cicero is more fruitful. 31. Those are two of the deepest psychological drives that the real Nietz­ sche, correctly, wanted to root out of the soul of modern humanity. 32. In this regard, a simple prediction is possible. The genuinely postmodern state will not be a procedural state. It will either be a republican state or a despotic state. 33. I have not discussed feminism in this regard. But that is because the discussion always has to be preceded by the question of which feminism. Under the rubric “feminism” we have everything from the materialist/naturalist feminism of “our bodies ourselves” and what is called “care” feminism, to the straightforward postmodernist, postfoundationalist, deconstructive feminism

Notes to Pages 307 – 310  393 that believes there is no such thing as nature and the difference between male and female is a construct of one kind or another. Feminism simply reproduces the fragmentation, and every position, extant in the larger arena of thought. It does not introduce anything unique. 34. What is paradoxical is that this is as true of communitarian and partici­ patory accounts as it is of deconstructionist theories. 35. This comes close to the Greek understanding of the central importance of the regime, or politeia, in determining human existence. It is precisely the Roman point of a res publica as Cicero develops the idea. And this overarching given points to the fact that all transcendence and detachment has to start from a specific situation. To this fact must be added that human beings always already come forward as individual natures that sort themselves out into a fairly limited group of possibilities — pious, spirited, artistic, philosophic, hedonistic, and a few more. These deeper forms of diversity are far more interesting than the superficial “diversity” of the contemporary ideology of “race, class, gender, and sexuality.” 36. This is the outcome whether we leave what passes for character formation to the private realm of academic, intellectual elites or to privately constituted religious denominations, some of which prefer strong emotions to reason as a means to access the divine. 37. Fairly recent economic events, with the near meltdown of markets and the entire economy, should have taught us that no matter how much bureaucratic oversight we construct, for example, oversight of financial markets or the personal behavior of politicians, it can never take the place of character built on an “internal” sense of honor and shame. The problem is that there have been few ages where the brightest and best have been more morally shameless, with no obvious signs of heeding a conscience. It is as if their selfish behavior was a sign of clearheaded utilitarian reason itself. This combination of rational arrogance and moral indifference is deadly. 38. The souls of our founding generation were, attractive as they may have been in their unique situation, the product of the confluence of several historical currents, which in our time are not immediately available. That confluence was predicated upon the coming together of an emerging rationalist Protestant ethic, with its valorizing of work, and a decaying and transforming feudal, aristocratic ethic. This produced a unique synthetic outcome that conditioned a class of individuals that, by World War II, had increasingly become a narrow, closed economic caste that had to be replaced. The call for “diversity” was initially part — and this was the only sensible part — of the rallying cry for that legitimate and necessary replacement. It could have led to a more inclusive “natural aristocracy.” It has led instead to an intolerant “toleration,” which is narrow,

394  Notes to Pages 310 – 311 closed, illiberal, and relativistic. Simultaneously, it has led to tribalism and yet further fragmentation. The call for diversity must be redirected onto the plane of the equal pursuit of virtue and excellence. The difficult yet necessary task is how to foster a broadly distributed and distinctly American arete with a code of honor and duty that is not the product of the merging of those past historical currents that, even though they still can be creatively tapped, will succumb to a law of diminishing returns as we move further into the postmodern future. It is a profound and necessary task for political philosophy to pursue in a postmodern republican environment. In some ways, it is a task that will be initially unintelligible to many, but they are the ones who will not turn and look at the phenomena (periagoge) as they show themselves. 39. And we now find it more interesting to tear down exemplars worthy of emulation rather than reproduce them. 40. Cicero’s vision of noble virtue significantly truncated everything from martial virtue to thumos and “magnanimity.” In this regard, he feminized virtue while stressing internal self-government. However, spiritedness and magnanimity, two natural qualities, are hardly in oversupply in our time — and are frequently found as little in men as in women. Hence we may have to err back in the direction of fostering them again. Put another way, Cicero’s balance is simply not appropriate for our time in all its outlines, despite being a good example from which to start. 41. We have to reconsider the place of commerce as a support for republicanism since it is, of course, unthinkable that a return to slavery and imperial conquest would be used as a means to the necessary republican generation of wealth. But we need to remember that commerce — and the place of private property — is in the service of republicanism, and not the other way around. Commerce can also, correctly understood, be a basis for the creation of some of the virtues necessary to republicanism. Those virtues include, at a minimum, self-control, self-reliance, steadfastness, independence, the willingness to save money and defer gratification, and a realization that it is worth working for the long run, not the home run. Policy must be ordered to these republican ends. But everything we do now sends the wrong message and supports the wrong habits. Economically we send the message that we support the home run, not the long run. We support public lotteries, get-rich-quick market bubbles, the big lawsuits that set one up for life. All of these are counterproductive for long-term commercial republicanism and for the virtues needed in a republic. This whole mindset is wrongly conceived. In every policy republicans must reward the slow, gradual, long-term accumulation of capital over the home run. We must also see

Note to Page 311  395 that the generation of wealth is more valuable than the mere having of wealth. The former supports useful virtues and habit; the latter supports luxury and undisciplined behavior. We need a long-term, steadfast approach to our economy and our lives rather than the policies that foster, for example, market bubbles that wipe out capital and make saving and deferred gratification seem like a fool’s undertaking. Everything gets out of whack when we focus on short-term unlimited wealth formation by whatever means. Unfortunately, institutional mandates are going to be needed to recreate a sustainable financial background for commercial republicanism. A constitutional amendment would probably be required to outlaw lotteries; significantly restructured tax policy would be needed to support long-term incremental capital formation; courage would be required to confront tort reform. But first we must be clear about our primary political and ethical ends. We must again understand the true status of capitalism as a means to the support of republicanism. The modern commercial republic is not without its enemies. But some of its worst enemies have been those who presume to be its defenders. These “defenders” have frequently reduced commercial republicanism to unfettered economic competition aimed at the unlimited pursuit of wealth as an end in itself and the highest good. Any restraints are seen as vile and counterproductive. Proper restraints and radical redistribution are two different things. As an analogy, consider football, which is a competitive sport and is still played within finite boundaries and with referees to keep the competition fair. Our economic competition also needs rules and boundaries, and significant oversight. Instead of the “nanny state,” the model for the future might be the “oversight state.” Before it became known as capitalism, commercial republicanism was based on an understanding of the political and moral good it advanced. A commercial republic could defend freedom and independence with self-reliance and self-­ government for more than a few. Commercial republicanism was seen as a means; unlimited production of wealth was not an end in itself. The linkage with republicanism was not accidental; it was essential. This connection has been lost by many of capitalism’s contemporary defenders. This links up with the fact that the vital and necessary link between commerce and character has been lost in our time, and as a result we wander in the dark. It is little wonder that we move about back and forth in policymaking, but without a compass. Everything changes when we see commerce as one of our more important classrooms for the development of character, and not primarily an arena for the unfettered pursuit of unlimited wealth. As long as we continue to divorce conceptions of happiness from virtue and character and give public

396  Notes to Pages 311 – 312 and private credence to unlimited wealth and power as the highest ends in life, we will be lost. No matter how lavish and glittering the external vessel we create, we will be left to sail a rudderless ship. If we look to the actual phenomena of human existence, we see that as we bring more excellence to an activity, we receive more enjoyment and satisfaction from it. (One does not have to be a world-class golfer or pianist to know that as we improve our skills, our enjoyment of the activity increases.) Happiness and virtue/excellence are inextricably linked. Somehow we have lost track of the implications of this obvious fact. Wealth is needed as a means to support the leisure necessary to pursue truly human activity — one part of which is republican participation — but we only need so much wealth as a means. After a certain point it is simply true that “the enemy of being is having.” But this fact needs to be understood philosophically and ethically in relation to free choices in our individual lives, not to be used as a basis for envious and resentful redistributive acts imposed by legislation mandated by new postmodern elites occupying ever expanding federal bureaucracies. It is our moral universe that needs to change if we are to regain our policy bearings. 42. And both are based on “internal” forms of restraint: one in a high personal regard for one’s self-image, the other in the notion of “conscience.” 43. Within the scriptural tradition there is also a large element of reliance on fear. This is especially true in the Old Testament and in Calvinist versions of Protestantism. But there is also the more internal element of love in the New Testament and in the Christian introduction of the notion of “conscience.” Those internal elements found within Christianity can support the equally internal needed noble elements based on love of honor. 44. I am not arguing for making an ancients/moderns either/or choice. We should draw from the entirety of the Western tradition, and that means ancient, Christian, and modern. It is all part of what we already are, embedded in the res publica we already occupy. We simply have to bring it out into the open again. 45. This is especially true when, as with Cicero, we have softened the more pugnacious elements of “magnanimity.” 46. As a result we should not be surprised that we create large prison popu­ lations, huge court systems, and incomprehensibly long tax codes largely aimed at sanctions. 47. And for the foreseeable future it will require that those committed to duty and honor avoid the unseemly public spectacle of allowing the honorable person to appear to be a “sucker.” A dose of Ciceronian realism should never be lost — nor should a tempered and limited borrowing from Machiavelli.

Notes to Page 313  397 48. Unlike authors such as Pettit, whose alleged republicanism requires massive bureaucratic intrusions and the transformation of citizens into subjects, genuine republicanism must see modern bureaucracy as destructive of the public space republicanism demands. 49. And it is the souls of individuals that are interesting, not individuals reduced to the tyranny of tribal sociological groupings. 50. In the American case, the founding generation self-consciously launched a secular state precisely for the sake of religious freedom. For the secular state to turn around and become the enemy of religion, apparently in the service of European atheism, goes far beyond irony to simple idiocy. Cicero shows us why religion will never go away, precisely because its origin is embedded in the human phenomena. The issue is always between a philosophically informed religion and irrationalism and superstition. The space for religion opens precisely where a rational science would admit it cannot give answers to every fundamental question. But a rational science that understands its limits could help shield religion from superstition. It is not an either/or choice. Every vagrant daydream or strong feeling is not revelation; every mythical overclaim of reason is not science. 51. Atheism is not what a rational individual should expect in the future. Without a commitment to rational religion we will end up with one form of irrationalist fundamentalism or another. And some of the possible postscriptural permutations are truly frightening to contemplate. The religious longing grows out of life itself. And any rational understanding of the limits of human reason will show that reason can never eliminate the longing for the divine. 52. I hope to return to this issue in a forthcoming work, Smith, On Gentle­ manliness: Toward a Recovery of the Noble.

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400 Bibliography ———. De Natura Deorum. In De Natura Deorum, Academica, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933. ———. De Officiis. Translated by Walter Miller. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913. ———. De Oratore, Books I–II. Translated by E. W. Sutton; translation completed with introduction by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942. ———. De Oratore, Book III. In De Oratore, Book III, De Fato, Paradoxa Stoicorum, De Partitione Oratoria, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942. ———. De Re Publica. In De Re Publica, De Legibus, translated by Clinton Walker Keyes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928. ———. Tusculan Disputations. Translated by J. E. King. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1945. Cropsey, Joseph. Plato’s World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950. Everitt, Anthony. Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician. New York: Random House, 2003. Fox, Mathew. Cicero’s Philosophy of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis. Ancient City: A Classic Study of the Religious and Civil Institutions of Ancient Greece and Rome. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956. Gillespie, Michael Allen. The Theological Origins of Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Gilson, Étienne. The Spirit of Thomism. New York: Harper and Row, 1964. Grant, Michael. History of Rome. London: Faber & Faber, 1979. Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Analysis and foreword by J. N. Findlay. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. ———. “The Question Concerning Technology.” In Basic Writings, edited with introduction by David Farrell Krell, 307–41. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1977. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by Michael Oakeshott. Introduction by Richard S. Peters. New York: Collier, 1962. K lein, Jacob, and Leo Strauss. “A Giving of Accounts.” The College 22, no. 1 (1970): 1–5. Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. 2nd ed. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Bibliography 401 Mansbridge, Jane. Beyond Adversary Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Maritain, Jacques. Scholasticism and Politics. Translated and edited by Mortimer J. Adler. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Press, 2011. Montesquieu, Baron de. The Spirit of the Laws. Translated by Thomas Nugent, with an introduction by Franz Neumann. New York: Hafner Press, 1949. Nicgorski, Walter, ed. Cicero’s Practical Philosophy. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2012. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated with commentary by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, 1966. ———. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. London: Chatto and Windus, 1971. Pangle, Lorraine Smith, and Thomas L. Pangle. The Learning of Liberty: The Edu­cational Ideas of the American Founders. Manhattan: University of Kansas Press, 1993. Pangle, Thomas L. The Ennobling of Democracy: The Challenge of the Postmodern Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. ———. Introduction to The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, by Leo Strauss, vii–xxxviii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. ———. Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. ———. The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Pateman, Carole. Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pippin, Robert B. Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. ———. Modernism as a Philosophical Problem. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. ———. Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Plato. Phaedrus. In Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, translated by Harold North Fowler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914. ———. Symposium. In Lysis, Symposium, Gorgias, translated by W. R. M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976. Pocock, John Greville Agard. The Machiavellian Moment. Princeton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press, 2003. Rahe, Paul Anthony. Republics Ancient and Modern. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

402 Bibliography Rudolph, Frederick. Essays on Education in the Early Republic. Edited by Frederick Rudolph. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. Sandel, Michael. Democracy’s Discontent. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1996. Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Vol. 1, The Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. ———. Liberty before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Smith, Gregory Bruce. Between Eternities: On the Tradition of Political Philosophy, Past, Present and Future. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2008. ———. “The Descent into Ironic Republicanism,” in Between Eternities, 2nd ed. (forthcoming). ———. “Joseph Cropsey on the Ancients and Moderns.” Perspectives on Political Science 43, no. 2 (2014): 73–77 ———. Martin Heidegger: Paths Taken, Paths Opened. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. ———. Nietzsche, Heidegger and the Transition to Postmodernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ———. “Staring, Caring and Curing in the Platonic Dialogues” (forthcoming). Strauss, Leo. The City and Man. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964. ———. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953. ———. “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.” In Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, introduction by Thomas L. Pangle, 174–91. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. ———. On Tyranny. Edited by Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth. New York: Free Press, 1991. ———. Persecution and the Art of Writing. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952. ———. “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, 29–37. ———. Political Philosophy: Six Essays by Leo Strauss. Edited by Hilail Gildin. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975. ———. The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss. Selected and introduced by Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. ———. Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. New York: Schocken, 1965. Strauss, Leo, and Joseph Cropsey. History of Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Tarkov, Nathan, and Thomas L. Pangle. Epilogue to History of Political Philosophy, edited by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, 907–34. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Bibliography 403 Washington, George. Washington’s Farewell Address to the People of the United States. 067-155*Wash Farewell.qrk. Wolin, Sheldon S. Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Politi­ cal Thought. Boston: Little, Brown, 1960. Wood, Neal. Cicero’s Social and Political Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

index

Academica (Cicero), 89, 90 Academy. See “New” Academy; “Old” Academy Adams, John, 65 admiration, 217 affection, 216–17 agape. See love American republican tradition, 29 anger, 216 Antiochus of Ascalon, 89, 100 Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas, Saint Arcesilas, 88, 99 architectonic philosophy, 274, 276, 277–78 aristocracy, 20, 245–46, 252, 280–81 Aristophanes, 66 Aristotle on being and element of dynamis, 352n29 Cicero’s attack on, 121 on courage, 204 death of, 99 on desire, 120 discussion of citizenship, 250 on friendship, 217, 367n82

o n hierarchy of goods, 315–16 on history of philosophy, 335n32 on independent areas of knowledge, 334n29 on justice, 197, 364n26 on liberality, 199 on “mixed” regimes, 252 on morality, 114 Nicomachean Ethics, 189, 190, 318n2 notion of God, 167 phenomenological works, 335n31 on phronesis, 121 on polity, 252, 253 on reliance on causality, 351n28 on separation of politics and philosophy, 17 studies of botany and biology, 150 on theoretical and practical reason, 47 on theoretical and practical wisdom, 191 on virtue, 189, 190, 191 astrology, 162

405

406 Bibliography atheism, 109, 155, 174, 276 atomic theory, 134 Augustine, Saint, 24, 84, 153, 354n2 Augustus, Emperor of Rome, 71 authorship, 340n15 autonomous theory, 329n12 avarice, 202 Bacon, Francis, 23, 116, 128 balanced government (regime), 246–47, 248, 250, 252–53 balancing act vs. deconstruction, 379n33 Being and Time (Heidegger), 104 being associated with dynamis, 352n29 being-becoming conundrum, 328n6, 376n9 big bang theory, 350n16, 353n35 Bloom, Allan, 317n8 Browning, Robert, 126 Brutus, Marcus Junius, 67, 101 Caesar, Julius assassination, 78, 83 background, 76, 79 confrontation with Senate, 76 military victories, 81 reforms, 76 seizure of power, 74 supporters, 80–81 calmness, 206 Carneades, 88, 99 Catiline, 76, 80, 82 Cato, Marcus Porcius (the Younger), 78, 95, 101, 142, 143 Cato the Elder, 258 cause/causality, 108, 109, 119, 141, 164, 336n37, 352n33

chance conquest of, 115–16, 123–24, 188, 205–6, 215, 222, 338n3, 343n42 cosmic element of, 159 in individual and collective behavior, 162–63, 193 Machiavelli on, 187 manifestation of, 356n9 necessity and, 124, 160, 355n7 in political life, 246, 247 principle of, 159 in quantum mechanics, element of, 350n18 reason and, 345n61 virtue and, 115 charity, 199, 200. See also virtue(s) Christianity as civil theology, 320n13, 322n15 connection to Platonism, 319n8 creation of the soul in, 382n56 doctrine of, 319n7 elements of the Trinity, 358n40 evolution of, 358n40 vs. Islam, 319n7 on life of labor, 383n62 origin of, 296 philosophical tradition and, 21–22, 99 as rational religion, 172, 322n16 reformation movement, 321n14 republicanism and, 321n14, 322n16 role in Western civilization, 320n13 salvation of the soul in, 361n6 church and state doctrine of separation of, 156, 157–58, 355n4 relation of, 22, 157–58

Bibliography 407 Cicero, Marcus Tullius association with Christianity, 10, 189, 322n16 Augustine’s view of, 84 background, 71–72 birth, 74 comparison to Nietzsche, 11 comparison to Plato, 64, 118, 260 death, 78 education, 77 exile, 80, 81, 82 failure to discuss poetry, 141–42 fame, 64, 65 full name, 76–77 and his Rome, 70–83 historical epoch of, 67 influence, 24, 66, 154–55 as innovator, 119 last years, 83 letter to son Marcus, 193–94 mode of writing, 66, 68, 83–91 and modernity, 264, 265 on natural theology, 158 on nature of philosophy, 93, 94 notion of res publica, 3 opening future spaces by, 290–91 personality, 65 philosophical works, 65–66, 67 on piety, 156 political career, 77–78, 81 praise of legislators, 206 proponent of the Original Academy, 89 and republicanism, 65–70 reputation, 4 respect for commerce and labor, 10 scholarly studies about, 7, 9, 10–11, 337–38n1 theological discussions, 155–56 travels, 77, 82

Cicero’s history of philosophy ancient myths, 95 arrival of philosophy to Rome, 95–96, 97 birth of poetry, 94 decline of philosophy, 99 emergence of self-conscious philosophy, 98 expansion of audience of philosophy, 96 influence of Pythagoras, 95 notion of “wise men,” 94 phases of development of philosophy, 97–99 post-Socratic development, 98, 99–100 pre-Socratics, 97 retreat from public space, 98–99 return to public space, 100–101 rise of the “New” Academy, 99–100 See also Tusculan Disputations (Cicero) Cicero’s philosophy criticism of Socrates, 243 divergence from Aristotle, 121, 350n15 hostility to Epicureanism, 101, 357n34 link to rhetoric and oratory, 86 overview, 69–70, 264 phenomenology of, 138, 341n8 Platonic thought and, 9, 68, 91, 110 political life and, 85, 86–87 as public phenomenon, 69, 387n31 as resistance to tyranny, 86 Stoic doctrine and, 221, 349n13, 350n15, 361n5 Cicero’s writings challenge of authority, 85, 87 difficulties of reading, 83

408 Bibliography Cicero’s writings (cont.) idea of truth in, 88 irony in, 86 literary technique, 91 overview, 82 Plutarch on, 84 politics and rhetoric in, 88 reliance on historical examples, 87–88 scholars’ opinions about, 84 skepticism, 86, 88 unique form of dialogues, 84–85 See also individual works of Cicero citizens, 19, 126, 314 civic cooperation, 217 civilization, 214, 383n63 civil society, 19, 389n10 Clodius Pulcher, Publius, 76, 80, 81, 82 code of honor, 312, 313, 344n48 commerce acquisition of goods, 211–12 act of lending, 212 creation of wealth, 268, 384n70 as “liberal” occupation, 268 modern republicanism and, 313, 316 Protestant ethics and, 316 purpose of, 394n41 republican citizenship and, 268 commercial republicanism, 27, 267, 361n9, 394n41 common sense, 56–57 communitarian discourse, 302, 303, 304–5 confidence, 217 conscience, 113, 114, 343n38 consequentialism, 189, 190 considerateness, 207, 209 constancy, 125, 210

constructivism, 40, 41, 42, 275, 307–8, 327n2, 335n30 cosmology, 62, 103, 128–29, 132, 144, 349n11 cosmos, 177, 350n20 courage, 204, 205 courtesy, 206 Crassus, Marcus, 79, 80, 81, 82 Cratippus, of Pergamon, 194 creativity, 369n17 Cynics (Cynicism), 88, 99, 137, 138 dark matter, 350n19 death, 103–5, 108 deconstructionism, 328n3, 379n33, 381n43 decorum, 208, 210 De Divinatione (Cicero), 159, 167 De Fato (Cicero), 159 De Finibus (Cicero) construction of synthesis, 150 ending, 149 full title of, 131, 347n3 protagonists, 140, 149–52 reflections of cosmology, 129 representation of Epicureanism, 68, 133–34, 140 return to Original Academy, 149 on science, 141 setting of dialogues, 133, 149 on Stoicism, 142–43 De Inventione (Cicero), 225, 227, 230 De Legibus (Cicero) characters, 255 comparison to Plato’s Laws, 381n47 discussion of law, 255–56, 376n9 discussion of politics, 167, 252, 374n1 on distinction of poetry and history, 255

Bibliography 409 e lements of Stoic cosmology, 262 on relation of divine and man, 257 settings, 376n9 De Natura Deorum (Cicero) on atheism, 174 on atoms and matter, 174–75 on bringing divine to present, 174–76 characters, 159, 165, 176 dialogues, 165–66 discussion of cosmology, 129 discussion of natural theology, 158, 164 on divine creation, 166–67 on existence of gods, 173 inquiry into the form of God, 171 on rational faith, 169 on reason, 166, 169 on separation of nature and divine, 176–80 settings, 164–65 De Officiis (Cicero) on conflict of honestum and utile, 218–19 historical examples, 220 internal harmony argument, 219 on life and death, 106 on love, 253 on nature of humans, 115 on preservation of property, 265 purpose of, 193–94 structure, 195, 218 on virtues, 121, 188, 190 deontology, 189, 190 De Oratore (Cicero) characters, 232, 233, 234, 238–39, 371n22 defence of ideal, 238 on dialectic, 226

ialogues, 233, 236 d discussion of who should rule, 234–35 on eloquence, 223 emulation of Plato, 233, 371n25 on fragmentation of philosophy, 240 on the ideal orator, 233, 241–42 on knowledge, 236 on logic, 225, 227 on oratory, 227, 229, 235, 236, 237 settings, 232, 238–39 structure, 233 summary, 241–44 themes of discussion, 234 on understandings of philosophy, 242–43 De Re Publica (Cicero) characters, 249–50 on citizenship, 250 comparison to Plato’s Republic, 376n9, 380n38 on conception of justice and good, 250 contemplation on cosmos and earth, 262–63 depiction of history of Rome, 249, 260–61, 267–68 discussion of politics, 167, 374n1 discussion of virtue, 116 idea of republic, 191, 254–55 report on two suns, 257, 379n35 on rule of law, 250 Scipio’s dream, 262 structure and settings, 376n9 Descartes, René, 23, 116, 128, 327n2 desire, 120, 121, 205 despotism, 270

410 Index dialectic essence of, 141 function of, 230, 368n1 limits of, 231 meaning of, 229 phenomenology and, 352n30 relation to logic, 226 relation to philosophy, 226 Socratic, 141 distress, 117, 125 diversity, 386n29, 386n30, 393n38 divination, 159, 161–62, 163 divine/divinity anthropomorphic depiction of, 174 bridging the gap between human and, 163 communication with, 161, 162, 171 as creator, maintainer, and overseer, 168, 169 deference to, 181 friendship and, 175 human beings and, 166 loving vs. fearing, 175, 176 mystery of, 170, 171 nature of, 154, 161, 163, 166 in Old and New Testaments, 346n62 piety and, 170 position outside cosmos, 171 proof of the existence of, 167 providence and, 183 questions about creation of, 167–68 reason and, 180 revelations of, 177 separation of nature and, 176–80 Stoics’ view of, 170 virtues of, 180 worthy of veneration, 170 duty, 201, 211

education, 251–52, 345n61 eloquence, 223, 230–31, 241 emotions, 121 end all of justice, 366 ends, discussion of, 384n65, 384n67 environmentalism, criticism of contemporary, 389n12 Epicureanism atomic theory, 134 on chance and necessity, 136 confrontation with Stoicism, 129 on contemplation, 139 cosmology, 137 counterintuitive definitions in, 230 on death, 137 depiction of gods, 173, 174, 175 doctrine of swerve, 135 foundation of, 129 on good life, 138, 139, 141 materialistic monism, 136 on necessity, 136 notion of the whole, 135 on passion and instincts, 140 on pleasure, 137, 142 reliance on material causality, 352n33 retreat from public space, 89 on sensations, 138–40 on soul, 136 Epicurean theology, 166–67 Epicurus, 99, 134–35 epistemology, 62 equality, 250, 264, 318n3 eros, 116, 121 eternal motion, idea of, 136 ethics academic discussions of, 189 cosmology and, 103 of duty and honor, 311–12

Index 411 e galitarian elements of, 211 fundamental question of, 131 internal and external restrains, 192–93 of nobility, 312 notion of private, 364n38 ontology and, 293 phenomenological priority of, 61 psychology and, 131 relation to politics, 191 as set of virtues and duties, 188–89 subfields of, 131 temporality and, 193–96 Everitt, Anthony, 80 evil, 117 existential questions, 61–62 faith, 185 fear, 215, 216, 396n43 feminism, 392n33 fire, metaphor of, 179–80 fixed point, notion of, 45–46, 47, 51 forbearance, 206 force, 187, 204 formlessness, 281, 386n29 fortitude, 205, 206–7 Fox, Mathew, 85, 86, 87, 88 Cicero’s Philosophy of History, 85 fraud, 187, 204 freedom modern view of, 299 as nondomination, 319n12, 325n38, 325n39 freedom of choice, 299, 344n48 freedom of speech, 36 friendship, 217, 367n82 future construction of, 291–92 importance of past traditions for, 288–89

l ink to past and present, 372n37 Nietzsche’s vision of, 282 as repetition of present, 49 generosity, 198–99, 201, 218 Gilson, Etienne, 356n12 glory, pursuit of, 202 God antinomy in understanding of, 172 business of, 173 fear of, 221 idea of, 108–9 impossibility to grasp incorporeal, 171–72 inquiry into the form of, 171 of love, 176 as mind, will, and first cause, 109 nature of, 382n55 notion of angry, 183 omniscience vs. omnipotence of, 355n8 relationship of man and, 181–82, 183–84 separation of nature and, 177 in Stoic cosmology, 262 without virtue, 180 See also divine/divinity good(s) attributes of, 60 deconstructionist version of, 302–3 hierarchy of, 60, 61, 315–16 idea of, 348n14 means of acquiring and using, 211–12 notion of greatest, 138, 354n45 Peripatetic notion of, 125 priority of, 61 pursuit of, 60 three kinds of, 125

412 Index Gracchus, Tiberius Sempronius, 74 Greece, ancient attitude to barbarians, 15 citizenship, 14 city-states, 14 colonization, 15–16 conquest of, 16 education, 18–19 freedom and equality, 14–15, 16 living standards, 15 notions of excellence, 18, 19 origin of philosophy, 17, 19–20 participatory democracy, 14 politics, 16, 17 population, 16 public speaking and rhetoric, 17 republicanism, 17 slavery, 15 status of women, 16 unity and solidarity, 17 wealth, 17, 19 Gyges story, 219, 367n90 Hamilton, Alexander, 18, 301 happiness, pursuit of, 345n61 harmony, 219, 221 hedonism, 26–27 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich cosmological and theological views, 109 defense of modernity by, 359n42 depiction of Spirit, 358n41 on end of history, 328n5 on inevitability of faith, 172 on nature of philosophy, 115, 194, 337n1 ontological synthesis, 172–73 Pippin on philosophy of, 359n42 on source of self-consciousness, 343n32

synthesis of classical and biblical morality, 152 use of Stoic cosmology by, 144 Heidegger, Martin attacks on philosophic tradition, 3 Being and Time, 104 critiques of, 7 on death and life, 104 on ecstatic temporality, 278 on logic, 370n19 on necessity of ongoing “remembrance, 295 on ongoing anxiety, 105 on ontology, 293, 370n19 phenomenological explorations, 54 on priority of the pragmata, 334n28 on religion, 155 on staring at things, 56 on temporality, 4 on truth, 243 Hellenism, decline of, 67 hereditary principle, 252, 253 historical change, 43, 45 history ahistorical moment in, 48–49 Christian version of, 50 distinction between poetry and, 255, 260 idea of end of, 49, 51 linear conception of, 50 movement through, 42–43, 51 phenomenological point of departure, 52 telos of, 51 Hobbes, Thomas, 24, 116, 120, 139, 350n17, 351n22, 380n37 holistic thinking, 293, 389n11 Homer, 109

Index 413 honestum (“moral excellence”) active life in accordance with, 197, 201 conquest of chance through, 188, 201, 222 definition and etymology, 363n17 diversity of individual characters, 209 four parts of, 196, 197 instincts of self-preservation, 195 link to private property, 211 materialism and, 129–30 Stoics’ view of, 221 and utility (utile), 220–22, 362n11 honor, 221, 362n10. See also code of honor human beings diversity, 297 as historical beings, 49, 290 importance of tradition for, 288 motives for cooperation, 215 nature of, 214, 281 restraints to actions of, 311, 312 as social beings, 57–58 submission to authority, 215 as system of longings, aspirations, and desires, 314 See also man human nature, 62, 302 Hume, David, 316, 323n17 idiotes, definition of, 14 indifference, 203, 205 inequality, 308 inner voice, idea of, 182 institutional environment, 288 intellectual environment, 288, 289 interdisciplinary studies, 348n6, 370n18 irrational religiosity, 276 Islam, doctrine of, 319n7

Jefferson, Thomas, 18 Judaism, doctrine of, 319n7 justice, 189, 197, 198, 200, 204, 210–11, 250. See also virtue(s) just war doctrine, 202, 220 Kant, Immanuel, 120, 147, 361n6 Kierkegaard, Søren, 139 kindness, 199, 218. See also virtue(s) knowledge definitions of, 373n50 differentiated from falsity, 351n23 examples of useful, 197 fragmentation of, 130, 225–26, 336n44, 348n6, 389n9 link to rhetoric, 244 of orator, 244 as primary capital, 293 public, 129 weaving of, 259 labor, 213–14, 383n62, 383n63 language arts, 239 law as basis of primary equality, 250 liberal occupations, 366n65 liberty, 248, 251, 264, 313–14 life, 44, 45, 105, 123, 124, 197 Lincoln, Abraham, 224 Locke, John, 29, 119 logic as branch of knowledge, 225 four parts of, 227 Heidegger on, 370n19 limits of, 231 origin of, 348n5 relation to dialectic, 226 relation to oratory and philosophy, 225, 227 status of, 131, 349n9 logos, etymology of, 353n34

414 Index love, 114, 175–76, 215, 216, 253 Lucretius Carus, Titus, 133, 134 Machiavelli, Niccolò on ambition of princes, 25 on appearance of virtue, 204 on chance, 187 on combat with law and with force, 187 commercial republicanism of, 23 on conquest of chance, 116, 346n66 on destruction of tradition, 378n22 lion and fox metaphor, 188 on need for passion, 254 political psychology of, 253 The Prince, 346n66 Madison, James, 18, 301 magnanimity, 10, 122, 168, 189, 206, 394n40 majority, classical view of, 250–51 man in cosmos, status of, 378n26 Pangle’s definition of, 369n10 posthumous recognition, 263 prehistorical, 51 reason and, 195–96 self-conscious awareness of death, 363n19 temporality of, 196 See also human beings Marcus, son of Cicero, 193–94 Maritain, Jacques, 383n62 Marx, Karl, 303, 361n9 materialism, 129–30, 131, 136–37, 179 meta, etymology of word, 328n8 mind acting as self-cause, 164 autonomy of, 138

a s basis of chance, 178 conjunction of nature and, 164 excellence of body and, 151 as form of fire, 179, 180 longing for peace of, 138 vs. nature, 178 operation of, 179 passions and instincts as phenomena of, 146 relative activity and passivity of, 110–11 senses and, 164 tranquility of, 35, 151, 325n39 Mithridates, king of Pontus, 79, 81 moderation, 207. See also virtue(s) modernity alienation from human existence, 8–9 as anti-tradition, 41 assaults on, 7 origin of, 21–22, 296 in relation to the future, 8 modern procedural state characteristics of, 296–97, 308–9 checks and balances, 301 comfortable self-preservation in, 298 communitarian understanding of, 302 conservative permutation of, 297–98 criticism of, 300–301 economic inequality, 297 elites in, 299 highest good in, 298 open public debate in, 298–99 participatory approach, 300–302 redistribution of wealth, 297 “sublimation of the political,” 298

Index 415 modern republicanism vs. ancient republicanism, 4, 21, 22–23, 24, 28 characteristics of, 8 foundation of, 24 hedonism, 26–27 notions of natural nights, individualism, and equality, 21 opposition to despotism, 21 origins of, 21 problem of future of, 28 pursuit of passions and wealth, 25, 27 seeds for eventual destruction of, 23 self-government, 21, 26 technological development and, 26, 27 view of “humanity,” 25 See also republicanism modesty, 365n55 monarchy, 247–48, 318n5 monism, 179 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de, 1, 320n13, 362n10 moral invisible hand, 301 moral shame, 393n37 motion vs. rest, 372n39 myth and mythology, 337n48, 357n22 narratives, 304–5, 306, 327n2 natural law tradition, 380n37 natural philosophy, 127, 128, 130, 131, 139 natural science, 162, 342n27, 346–47n68 natural theology central issue for, 155 Cicero’s treatment of, 154, 156–57

c osmology and, 155 inevitability of, 158 natural science and, 162 See also De Natura Deorum (Cicero) nature as basis of necessity, 178 emancipation from, 128, 138 environmentalists’ demand for, 292 vs. mind, 178 orderliness of, 177 separation of divine and, 176–80 necessity, 159, 160, 355n7, 369n14 negative dialectics, 171, 231, 369n11 “New” Academy, 88, 89, 99–100 vs. “Old” Academy, 89, 100 Nietzsche, Friedrich anti-republicanism, 273, 282 on architectonic philosophy, 277–78 on aristocracies, 280–81 attacks on philosophic tradition, 3, 4 Beyond Good and Evil, 275, 279 break with modernity, 323n22 on chance, 153, 344n44 on circulus vitiosus deus, 280, 386n26 on citizenship, 273–74 comparison to Cicero, 11 on competition of “narratives,” 327n2 constructivist epistemology of, 281 on creation of narratives, 306 critiques of, 7 descendants of, 69 on “last men,” 27 on liberation, 329n15 on man as undetermined animal, 386n28

416 Index Nietzsche, Friedrich (cont.) as modern constructivist, 275 on nature, 127 on nature of philosophy, 273, 274, 275, 280, 337n1 on nihilism, 279 on past, 283 on pathe, 123 on pity and vice, 345n58 on psychology, 336n43 on relation of culture and nature, 281 on religion and religiosity, 155, 276, 282 on rhetoric, 274–75 on science and philosophy, 276 on spirit of revenge, 283, 306 Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 278, 279, 283 on true philosophers, 276–78 understanding of temporality, 278–79, 282 on virtues, 277 on will to power, 40, 122, 279–80 nihilism, 279, 317n8, 359n43 noetic experience, 329n13 Numa, king of Rome, 95 Octavius Caesar, Emperor of Rome, 78 “Old” Academy, 89, 100, 149 ontology, 62, 293, 349n11, 370n19 opening future spaces, 290–91 orator discussion on true, 239–40 oratory development of, 96 as form of statesmanship, 227 as form of truth, 228, 240

high and low understandings of, 236, 237 importance for public career, 224 as language art, 235, 239 modern view of, 368n8 philosophy and, 96–97, 224, 225, 227–28, 232, 237–38 technical elements of, 241 three primary venues for, 235 tradition of, 224 order, 121 paganism, 21, 22 pain, 112–13 Panaetius of Rhodes, 194 Pangle, Thomas, 329n15, 369n10 Parmenides, 336n41 participatory democracy, 14, 20, 301–2 passion, 25, 27, 121, 140, 146, 193, 254 past, 283, 291, 333n22, 372n37 pathe, 120, 122–23 Paul, Apostle Letter to the Romans, 50 Peripatetics, 99, 100, 372n39 persuasion in public speech, 224 Pettit, Philip on active use of public space, 36 concept of state, 33, 36 consequentialism, 32 on democracy, 32 on exclusion from res publica, 37 on freedom, 31–32, 33, 35, 325n38 on human nature, 37–38 on international affairs, 36 on perceived domination, 32 philosophical arguments, 33–34 post-foundationalism, 34, 35

Index 417 Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, 31 on right of resistance, 37 understanding of republicanism, 29–30, 35, 37, 38, 299, 319n12 on use of punishment, 325n39 phenomena, 53–54, 55, 231, 332n19 phenomenology, 108 Philo, 88–89 philosopher duty of, 210 notion of unjust, 203 social status of, 249 philosophy aristocratic element of, 276–77, 280 as basis of all knowledge, 329n15 decline of, 339n4 dialectic and, 226 dogmatism in, 292 emancipation of, 157 as erotic striving for ontological knowledge, 334n27 as language art, 239 nature of, 93, 94, 102–3, 130, 238, 337n1 Nietzsche’s view of, 273–74, 275, 280, 337n1 oratory and, 224, 225, 227–28, 237–38 as political and moral reflection, 20 politics and, 277 principal object of, 107 in public arena, 249, 277, 294, 318n4 schools of, 289 science and, 275, 276 theology and, 109, 158, 275–76, 355n5 Western tradition, 295–96 See also architectonic philosophy

physics, 351n21 piety, 155, 156, 168, 170 Pippin, Robert B., 359n42 Plato on action as form of desire, 121 chariot metaphor, 345n55 comparison to Cicero, 260 dialogues, 54, 55 on ideal regime, 257 metaphor of the cave, 3, 112, 329n15 Parmenides, 328n6 Phaedrus, 345n55 on reliance on causality, 351n28 Republic, 111, 118, 156, 254 on rulers, 118 on Socratic limitations, 352n32 Sophist, 226, 328n6, 352n29 Statesman, 226, 235–36 Theaetetus, 373n50 understanding of soul, 110 Platonism, 173, 319n8 Pocock, J. G. A., 28–30, 33 poetry, 141, 226, 239, 255, 260 poiesis, 55, 226, 260, 369n17 point outside the present moment, 44, 278, 291 poise, 206, 210 politeia, 59, 378n23, 393n35 political community, 264, 265, 304–5 political philosophy architectonic, 47, 63, 390n13 attributes of, 64 characteristics of modern, 27–28, 314 Cicero’s view of, 89–90 constructivist theory and, 41, 42, 296–309 contemporary intellectual fragmentation and, 285–96

418 Index political philosophy (cont.) contemporary political theory and, 39–42 definition, 47, 52–53 evolution of, 20, 51 as form of speech, 64 future of, 2, 176 genuine, 63, 288 idea of good, 51 Leo Strauss on decline of, 326n1 nature of, 46–47, 48, 50, 259 necessary temporality of, 340n1 origin of, 3, 5–6, 13 past tradition and, 40, 295 phenomenological approach, 41, 50 as proto-philosophy, 53 in relation to other disciplines, 295 republicanism and, 288 studies of, 39 theoretical staring, 46, 53 tradition of republicanism and, 41, 63 as “weaving,” 60–64 political psychology, 216, 253, 371n25 political regimes balancing elements, 248–49 comparison of ancient, 380n40 creation of ideal, 257 evolution of, 246, 258 importance of, 393n35 projecting the future of, 256 t ypes of, 246 wealth and, 375n4 political theory, 39–40, 306–7 politics, 207, 245–46, 277, 282 politikos, 55, 191, 226, 233, 236, 368n2, 373n50 polytheism, 154, 180 Pompey, the Great, 76, 81, 82

populism, 319n12 post-foundationalism, 34–35, 40, 45, 295 postindustrial age, 293–94 postmodern elites, 286, 294, 388n1 pragmata, 53, 58, 334n28 private property acquisition of, 201 idea of limits to, 266 justice and, 198 legitimacy of, 199, 265–66 in modern commercial republicanism, 266 natural status of, 201 protection of, 200, 202, 218 self-preservation and, 266–67 in Sparta, 318n1 procedural state. See modern procedural state Protestantism, 342n26 proto-philosophy, 70 prudence, 121 psychology, 62, 116, 130–31, 336n43, 348n7. See also political psychology public education, 228 public persuasiveness, 63, 337n47, 387n31 public space assault of, 263–64 challenges of maintaining genuine, 286–87 dissolution of, 303 fragmentation of, 289, 290 free citizens and, 248, 288 for open debate, 298–99 in Rome, deterioration of, 294 shared, 59 public speech, 54, 63, 98, 224, 228

Index 419 Pyrrho of Elis, 88, 100, 194 Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, 220 Pythagoras, 95 Rahe, Paul, 320n13, 322n15, 323n20 rational faith, 169, 184–85 Rawls, John, 327n2 reason chance and, 345n61 control of appetites with, 207 engagement with present, 379n33 as guide to wrong actions, 182 limits of, 169, 258 man and, 195–96 misuse of, 182 modern view of, 26 as moral cause, 119 in politics, 378n18 relation between faith and, 185, 260 scepticism about adequacy of, 166 tradition and, 75, 254–64, 256, 375n2 “weaving” and “balancing,” 259 Regulus, Roman general, 219, 221 religion American republican approach to, 356n11 in ancient Rome, status of, 157 Cicero’s view of, 154, 184–85 “ death of God” and the end of, 276 of intoxication, 282 limits of reason and, 397n50–51 politics and, 158 post-Christian, 155 premise of pagan, 322n16 rational, 181, 282, 311 regeneration of, 311, 322n16, 358n41 science and, 179 vs. superstition, 397n50

remembrance, doctrine of, 107 republic approaches to maintaining, 309 aristocracy and, 245–46 commercial, 313, 316, 347n2 decline of, 216 etymology, 13–14, 378n23 executive power in, 268–71, 384n71 foundation of, 118 future of, 285–86, 309 history of, 318n5 interaction with global environment, 315 need for fear and love in, 216, 253–54 perspectives on, 254 primary tasks of modern, 315 retreat from, 20 role of citizens in, 302, 309, 365n59 size of, 378n19 virtues and, 191–92, 310–11 republicanism ancient, 13–20 Cambridge School’s version of, 31 enemies of, 293 fight against elites, 294 highest form of, 8 modern bureaucracy and, 397n48 philosophical premises of modern, 1–2 political philosophy and, 288 question of future of, 2, 5–6, 37 reflections on history of, 10 Reformation Christianity and, 319n9 on the road to ironic, 28–38 scholarly literature on, 28–38 as Western ideal, 389n7 See also modern republicanism

420 Index republican tradition, 2, 3, 14–18 reputation, pursuit of, 202, 203, 205 res publica, notion of, 59, 60, 303–4 rhetoric, 227, 228, 274–75, 368n8 rights, 192–93, 391n24 Roman Empire, 83, 339n4, 340n13 Rome antipathy to kings, 269 aristocratic representation, 20 assemblies, 72 balance of power in, 247–48 checks and balances, 269–70 civil war, 78–79, 82 class structure, 71 consuls, 269 decline, 21, 75, 216, 247 deterioration of public space, 294 end of monarchy, 71 executive power, 269–70 extraconstitutional actions, 73–74 First Triumvirate, 78, 81, 82 foundation, 70, 220 law enforcement, 73 magistrates, 72–73, 269 manifestation of republicanism, 20 manipulation of the urban masses, 76 office of quaestor, 79 political reliance on fear, 254 private hedonism, 75 prohibition for army to enter, 339n12 relation between reason and tradition, 75 representation of plebs, 71 role of oratory in, 224 Senate, 71–72, 74, 75, 79, 82, 252, 269 status of philosophy in, 66, 67 territorial expansion, 73

t ribunes, 79 unresolved fundamental issues, 74–75 urbanization, 74 Romulus, 70, 220, 382n49 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 28, 323n22, 361n7 Sandel, Michael, 304 sanitas (“soundness of mind”), 116, 344n45 scepticism, 88, 89, 100, 150, 194–95 scholasticism, 24 science, 22, 141, 179, 275, 276, 357n22. See also natural science self-consciousness, 115, 343n32, 343n41 self-control, 209, 210 self-preservation, 353n38, 391n18 senses, 26, 164 serenity, 206 sexuality, 336n39 Skinner, Quentin, 29, 30, 33 Smith, Adam, 316, 323n17, 361n9 Socrates argument against writing, 381n48 concern with ethics and politics, 98 criticism of, 243 death, 67 on definition of knowledge, 373n50 depiction of philosophy, 108 dialectic of, 140 limitations of, 352n32 on oratory, 240 presence in dialogues, 363n25 reliance on causality, 351n28 on separating wise thinking from elegant speaking, 240 on truth, 54 “what is” questions, 59, 141

Index 421 Solon, 206 soul as cause, 108 definition of, 104 disorders of, 123 as form of air, 179–80 greatness of, 197–98 immortality of individual, 106, 107, 181 irrational elements of, 110 meditations of, 126 memory and, 107 parts of, 214 philosophy as physician of, 111–12 as primary object of philosophy, 105 as self-conscious mind, 109 self-motion of, 164 Speusippus of Athens, 99 spiritedness (thumos), 116, 197–98, 207, 394n40 staring metaphor. See theoretical staring statesmanship, 206, 227, 235, 261, 288 steadfastness, 163, 207, 394n41 Stoicism Cicero’s criticism of, 148–49 on civic participation, 148 concern for res publica, 89 cosmology, 129, 144, 145, 177, 262 counterintuitive definitions in, 230 defense of political virtues, 137 on desire for perfection and happiness, 145 on desire for safety, 145 on divinity, 170, 173, 177, 178, 180, 184 engagement in statesmanship, 261 vs. Epicureanism, 148 on greatest good, 148

honestum (moral perfection), doctrine of, 146, 147, 148, 151 on intentions and consequences, 147 on living in accordance with nature, 145 on logic, 148 on logos, 143, 144–45 on mind, 143, 144, 146–47, 179 on necessity, 145 on politics, 138 in relation to Rousseau, 353n37 rise of, 99 on self-love, 145 on sensations, 140 syllogisms in arguments, 344n46 on virtue, 146 Strabo, 77 Strauss, Leo on access to reality through pragmata, 334n28 commitment to natural law tradition, 380n37 on difference between religions, 319n7 on knowledge, 342n27 on new social science, 342n27 observation about Hegel, 152 on political philosophy, 326n1, 329n15, 333n25 The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 329n15 recovery of Xenophon, 338n2 on reinterpretation of the inherited, 3 suicide, 210 Sulla, Lucius Cornelius, 77, 78, 79, 339n11 superstition, 357n22 sympathy, 214, 215 synthesis, 150, 172–73, 351n27

422 Index technology, 6, 319n12, 323n18, 347n1 teleology, 58, 59 temporality, 4, 193–96, 278–79, 282, 295 Tertullian, 24 Themistocles, 206 theology civil vs. rational, 382n58 cosmology and, 128–29 evolution of, 155–56 philosophy and, 109, 158, 275–76, 355n5 See also natural theology Theophrastus, 150 theoretical autonomy, possibility of a pure, 334n29 theoretical staring, 46, 47, 48, 49, 56 thing(s) attributes of, 57 eidos and idea of, 57, 59 meaning of, 55–56 phenomenology of, 58–59 as pragmata, 58 staring at, 56 that show themselves, 58–59 Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 22, 355n5, 356n12 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 7 tradition future and, 288–89 reason and, 75, 254–64, 256, 375n2 tranquility as the greatest good, 354n45 of mind, 35, 151, 325n39 truth, 54, 55, 105, 225, 228, 351n23 Tusculan Disputations (Cicero) on abandonment of civitas, 240 attack on Aristotle, 121 characters, 101–2, 341n13

in comparison to De Finibus, 341n14 depiction of mind, 120 dialogues, 101, 119–20, 125–26 encounter with Plato, 107, 111 historical overview of philosophy, 94 on issue of nature, 104 on merger of philosophy and oratory, 97 on methods of proving a point, 117 on modes of speech, 101–2 on nature of soul, 103–6 on pain, 112 on primacy of ethics and cosmology, 103 reflections on philosophy, 93, 94, 101–2, 116, 124 statement on school dogmas, 119 structure of, 101 subject of death, 103–4 use of negative dialectics, 101 two fatherlands doctrine, 126, 248, 255 tyranny, 271 United States constitutional amendments, 18, 36 Constitutional Convention, 2 Declaration of Independence, 377n13 foundation of, 18 secular state and religious freedom, 397n50 universal human nature, 207–8, 209 utilitarianism, 213, 214, 216–22 vice(s), 199–200, 203, 208–9 virtue ethics, 189, 190

Index 423 virtue(s) basis of, 114–15 chance and, 115 Christian, 189, 311 duties and, 190 feminization of, 394n40 as good of the soul, 125 individual, 218 link to happiness, 395n41 Nietzsche’s view of, 277 pantheon of, 190–91 penumbral, 207, 209 republic and, 191–92 as reward on earth, 263 Rousseau and notion of, 361n7 separation of moral from intellectual, 318n2 significance of, 310–11 voice of conscience, idea of, 182–83 vulgar occupations, 212

wealth as external good, 211 as mean of individual freedom, 313 as mean to other ends, 391n17 as mean to support leisure, 394n41 pursuit of, 384n68 redistribution of, 200, 391n23 relation to happiness, 313 will to power, 279, 280–81 wisdom vs. contemplative theoria, 191 importance of collective, 381n41 political engagement and, 126 qualities of, 196–97 relation to eloquence, 230–31 wise man, 117, 125, 126, 152 Wood, Neal, 337n1 Word biblical meaning of, 353n34

war, 211, 220, 268. See also just war doctrine Washington, George, 29

Xenophon, 338n2 Zeno, 99

Gregory Bruce Smith is professor of political science and philosophy at Trinity College. He is the author of a number of books, including Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Transition to Postmodernity and Martin Heidegger: Paths Taken, Paths Opened.