Cicero Marcus Tullius (106–43 B.C.), Roman statesman, orator, essayist, and letter writer. He was important not so much for formulating individual philosophical arguments as for expositions of the doctrines of the major schools of Hellenistic philosophy, and for, as he put it, ‘teaching philosophy to speak Latin.’ The significance of the latter can hardly be overestimated. Cicero’s coinages helped shape the philosophical vocabulary of the Latin-speaking West well into the early modern period.
The most characteristic feature of Cicero’s thought is his attempt to unify philosophy and rhetoric. His first major trilogy, On the Orator, On the Republic, and On the Laws, presents a vision of wise statesmen-philosophers whose greatest achievement is guiding political affairs through rhetorical persuasion rather than violence. Philosophy, Cicero argues, needs rhetoric to effect its most important practical goals, while rhetoric is useless without the psychological, moral, and logical justification provided by philosophy. This combination of eloquence and philosophy constitutes what he calls humanitas – a coinage whose enduring influence is attested in later revivals of humanism – and it alone provides the foundation for constitutional governments; it is acquired, moreover, only through broad training in those subjects worthy of free citizens (artes liberales). In philosophy of education, this Ciceronian conception of a humane education encompassing poetry, rhetoric, history, morals, and politics endured as an ideal, especially for those convinced that instruction in the liberal disciplines is essential for citizens if their rational autonomy is to be expressed in ways that are culturally and politically beneficial.
A major aim of Cicero’s earlier works is to appropriate for Roman high culture one of Greece’s most distinctive products, philosophical theory, and to demonstrate Roman superiority. He thus insists that Rome’s laws and political institutions successfully embody the best in Greek political theory, whereas the Greeks themselves were inadequate to the crucial task of putting their theories into practice. Taking over the Stoic conception of the universe as a rational whole, governed by divine reason, he argues that human societies must be grounded in natural law. For Cicero, nature’s law possesses the characteristics of a legal code; in particular, it is formulable in a comparatively extended set of rules against which existing societal institutions can be measured. Indeed, since they so closely mirror the requirements of nature, Roman laws and institutions furnish a nearly perfect paradigm for human societies. Cicero’s overall theory, if not its particular details, established a lasting framework for anti-positivist theories of law and morality, including those of Aquinas, Grotius, Suárez, and Locke. The final two years of his life saw the creation of a series of dialogue-treatises that provide an encyclopedic survey of Hellenistic philosophy. Cicero himself follows the moderate fallibilism of Philo of Larissa and the New Academy. Holding that philosophy is a method and not a set of dogmas, he endorses an attitude of systematic doubt. However, unlike Cartesian doubt, Cicero’s does not extend to the real world behind phenomena, since he does not envision the possibility of strict phenomenalism. Nor does he believe that systematic doubt leads to radical skepticism about knowledge. Although no infallible criterion for distinguishing true from false impressions is available, some impressions, he argues, are more ‘persuasive’ (probabile) and can be relied on to guide action. In Academics he offers detailed accounts of Hellenistic epistemological debates, steering a middle course between dogmatism and radical skepticism. A similar strategy governs the rest of his later writings. Cicero presents the views of the major schools, submits them to criticism, and tentatively supports any positions he finds ‘persuasive.’ Three connected works, On Divination, On Fate, and On the Nature of the Gods, survey Epicurean, Stoic, and Academic arguments about theology and natural philosophy. Much of the treatment of religious thought and practice is cool, witty, and skeptically detached – much in the manner of eighteenth-century philosophes who, along with Hume, found much in Cicero to emulate. However, he concedes that Stoic arguments for providence are ‘persuasive.’ So too in ethics, he criticizes Epicurean, Stoic, and Peripatetic doctrines in On Ends (45) and their views on death, pain, irrational emotions, and happiness in Tusculan Disputations (45). Yet, a final work, On Duties, offers a practical ethical system based on Stoic principles. Although sometimes dismissed as the eclecticism of an amateur, Cicero’s method of selectively choosing from what had become authoritative professional systems often displays considerable reflectiveness and originality. See also HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY, NAT- URAL LAW, NEW ACADEMY, STOICIS. P.Mi.