Human Nature and the Principle of Justice – Focusing on Cicero’s De Legibus Book 1
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This paper aims to examine the content and strive to demonstrate the coherence of book 1 of Cicero’s De Legibus. The overall structure of the work is approached from the objective set forth by Cicero himself; namely seeking out the nature of justice from the nature of man. Cicero seems to hold a high view of justice, which needs the highest law for its justification. Cicero directly repudiates Atticus’ Epicurean theological stance as an unsuitable foundation for justice. In opposition to the assessment that denounces the appropriateness of the discourse on the gods, I refer to Cicero’s other philosophical works to demonstrate its relevance to the topic of justice. Binding human nature to the celestial beings greatly elevates human moral standards, and sharply distinguishes him from the rest of the creatures bound to inferior animal instinct. This understanding of human nature forms the bedrock for arguing that justice is by nature (ius esse natura). The problem with such ideal was that it failed to reflect the undeniable facts of reality. It was evident that customs differed depending on location and time and sacrificing one’s wealth or life for justice seemed unnatural and foolish. Cicero was fully aware of these objections. I demonstrate some of the challenges Cicero might have faced by comparing our passage with Carneades’ infamous lectures reenacted in book 3 of De Republica and suggest some countermeasures that Cicero might have raised against these attacks. The ultimate response to these objections is to denounce them as a distortion of the true human nature. I claim that the whole point of expanding the discussion from justice to virtue and then to summum bonum was Cicero’s way of setting forth his idea of the ultimate end of human life. Attainment of wisdom is the end of men, the pursuit of which is encouraged by philosophy. The injunction to “know yourself” is the crux of philosophy, which is a cry to understand the divine nature implanted in oneself. In analyzing the tripartite philosophy in the encomium of wisdom, I refer to Cicero’s Tusculanae Disputationes and Scipio’s Dream to demonstrate once again the divine and eternal nature of men. I conclude that the seemingly diverse and loosely connected topics in book 1 of De Legibus coherently encompass the whole nature of men from its divine inception to its eternal termination, and that this sublime nature is uniquely qualified as a foundation for Cicero’s conception of justice.
Abstract
This paper aims to examine the content and strive to demonstrate the coherence of book 1 of Cicero’s De Legibus. The overall structure of the work is approached from the objective set forth by Cicero himself; namely seeking out the nature of justice from the nature of man. Cicero seems to hold a high view of justice, which needs the highest law for its justification. Cicero directly repudiates Atticus’ Epicurean theological stance as an unsuitable foundation for justice. In opposition to the assessment that denounces the appropriateness of the discourse on the gods, I refer to Cicero’s other philosophical works to demonstrate its relevance to the topic of justice. Binding human nature to the celestial beings greatly elevates human moral standards, and sharply distinguishes him from the rest of the creatures bound to inferior animal instinct. This understanding of human nature forms the bedrock for arguing that justice is by nature (ius esse natura). The problem with such ideal was that it failed to reflect the undeniable facts of reality. It was evident that customs differed depending on location and time and sacrificing one’s wealth or life for justice seemed unnatural and foolish. Cicero was fully aware of these objections. I demonstrate some of the challenges Cicero might have faced by comparing our passage with Carneades’ infamous lectures reenacted in book 3 of De Republica and suggest some countermeasures that Cicero might have raised against these attacks. The ultimate response to these objections is to denounce them as a distortion of the true human nature. I claim that the whole point of expanding the discussion from justice to virtue and then to summum bonum was Cicero’s way of setting forth his idea of the ultimate end of human life. Attainment of wisdom is the end of men, the pursuit of which is encouraged by philosophy. The injunction to “know yourself” is the crux of philosophy, which is a cry to understand the divine nature implanted in oneself. In analyzing the tripartite philosophy in the encomium of wisdom, I refer to Cicero’s Tusculanae Disputationes and Scipio’s Dream to demonstrate once again the divine and eternal nature of men. I conclude that the seemingly diverse and loosely connected topics in book 1 of De Legibus coherently encompass the whole nature of men from its divine inception to its eternal termination, and that this sublime nature is uniquely qualified as a foundation for Cicero’s conception of justice.
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