Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 071 - Rhetorical Questions - Cicero.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of King's College London and the Leverhulme Trust, online at www.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, Rhetorical Questions, Cicero. Julius Caesar was a man who was used to getting his own way. So when another man, Quintus Ligarius, took sides against Caesar in a war in Africa, he had him hauled into court so that Ligarius could be executed. This seemed a foregone conclusion. Caesar had already seized unchallenged power as dictator for life over the Romans. But Caesar had not reckoned with the defense council, who was a man of considerable eloquence. The defense council launched into a speech in exoneration of Ligarius, which we can still read today. The speech admitted that Ligarius was on the ground in Africa, but argued strenuously that he had done nothing to oppose Caesar's will. As the speech continued, Caesar began to shake with anger, outraged that the outcome was being thrown into doubt by this upstart lawyer. In the end, Ligarius was acquitted. As for Caesar, on this occasion, he came, he saw, and he was conquered. The name of the upstart lawyer was, of course, Marcus Tullius Cicero. He was one of the greatest minds of Rome in that or any age, and wielded one of its most silver tongues. Cicero was born in 106 BC near Rome into the equestrian class, but his career was built more on talent than on any exalted family background. He served as both questor and consul, and well before his defense of Ligarius he had made a name for himself as the most brilliant legal orator Roman society had to offer. Perhaps the peak of his rhetorical achievements was a set of speeches denouncing a man named Catiline for conspiring to overthrow the Republic. These speeches, and the many other oratorical displays of Cicero that survive today, stand as a monument of good Latin style. For many readers, such as St. Augustine, Ciceroan Latin has been more or less synonymous with good Latin. But Cicero was more than an orator and politician, otherwise we would hardly be devoting an episode to him in this series of podcasts. He was also a philosopher. Indeed, without the philosophical writings of Cicero, there would have been much less to say over the last dozen episodes. Along with Diogenes Laertius, Cicero is the most important source to preserve the ideas of the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Skeptical Academy. He is also the chief source for several major thinkers of his own time. Cicero's own philosophical stance was the outcome of a critical reflection on the teachings of these thinkers. He tells us that only the weak-minded will adhere to a philosophical position out of devotion to a school, rather than out of this sort of independent reflection. Though his writings on philosophy show that Cicero found much to admire in Stoicism, it was the skeptical position that won his heart. This is why I am discussing him here, as we continue to follow the developing story of ancient skepticism. Cicero lived at just the right time to think hard about the relative merits of the Hellenistic schools. The first century BC was a crucial time for the infusion of Greek ideas into Roman society. A series of wars gave Rome secure dominion over Greece, but during the upheaval of these leaders, many well-educated Greeks sought refuge in the embrace of Rome. One of these was the leading academic skeptic, Philo of Larissa, and Cicero studied with him. Cicero was a broad-minded man, though, and also opened his house to a Stoic philosopher named Diodotus. If Rome offered a home away from home to such philosophers as Philo and Diodotus, Athens offered something equally compelling to such Romans as Cicero. It was the home of philosophy. Cicero made the pilgrimage there when he was in his twenties. At Athens, he was able to study with Epicurean philosophers, but more crucial for Cicero's intellectual development was the opportunity to study at the feet of Antiochus of Ascalon. We're fortunate that Cicero had this opportunity, because Antiochus seems to have been one of the most interesting and influential thinkers of the first century BC, and without Cicero's testimony, we would know very little about him. Antiochus, like Cicero himself, was a disciple of Philo of Larissa. But Cicero reports that Antiochus broke angrily with the teachings of Philo when Antiochus received a copy of books Philo had written in Rome. Upon reading them, he was stunned, and at first could hardly believe that Philo was really their author. But once he overcame his skepticism, he disowned Philo and challenged him with a diametrically opposed view on the main philosophical issues of the day and on the history of philosophy itself. You'll remember from last time that Philo was a member of the so-called New Academy, who seems to have softened the skeptical teaching. He held the academic line against the Stoics, insisting that we can never be sure that our impressions are true. But even if absolute certainty remains out of reach, one can still commit oneself and follow plausible belief. This was a new kind of skeptical attitude which allowed its adherents to assent to their impressions. Philo may even have held that when we assent to what is plausible, and it turns out that we are right, this counts as knowledge, albeit a weaker kind of knowledge than the one envisioned by the Stoics. Suppose your friend asks you to name a kind of ruminant animal, apart from the giraffe. Your friend is an avid podcast listener and is sick to death of giraffes. You answer, goats, and you're right, goats are indeed ruminants. Even while being very confident about this, you might admit that you could be wrong. There was that embarrassing incident last month when you identified the spider monkey as an arachnid. Philo says that we must be satisfied with such true judgments that leave open the possibility of error. That is as good as it gets, because no one can have total certainty about anything, not even about whether goats share the exalted company of giraffes and other ruminants by having four stomachs. Antiochus was probably not upset by the fact that Philo had no stomach for defending a stronger skeptical position. As we'll see in a moment, Antiochus himself wanted to adopt an even less skeptical position. Rather, I suspect, what really got his goat was Philo's claim about their shared philosophical heritage. For Philo, the whole tradition of the academy was unified. Socrates and Plato had already adopted the stance recommended by the new academy, embraced what seems most like the truth while realizing that we lack total certainty. Socrates knew only that he knew nothing, as we know from Plato's dialogues, but this didn't stop him from assenting to many beliefs, for instance that it is good to pursue wisdom and virtue. As Cicero puts it, they call the skeptical academy new, but it seems old to me. Against this, Antiochus defended an alternative history. For him, the new academy had opened a schism in the fundamentally unified philosophy of the ancients. Antiochus anticipates the direction Platonist philosophy would take in subsequent generations by adopting a syncretic approach. What I mean by this is that he admires a range of philosophers and philosophical traditions and carefully harmonizes them into a single overall position. He traces his lineage above all to Plato and Aristotle, but also believes that the early Stoics were part of the family. When presenting Antiochus's position, Cicero says that for him, the Stoics were basically just following Plato and Aristotle and changing the terminology. For all of these thinkers, knowledge is possible, knowledge is needed in order to make virtue possible, and virtue guarantees happiness. Without knowledge of what is good, we cannot be good people, and good people are happy people. By focusing especially on these issues of knowledge and on ethical concerns, Antiochus makes a reasonable case for a historical claim that may strike us as preposterous. We certainly do not see Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics as occupying the same philosophical position, but Antiochus is contrasting these admired figures to the new academy, who think knowledge is impossible, and to the Epicureans, who think that happiness lies in pleasure and not virtue. By comparison, he sees the differences between Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism as relatively minor. For instance, he notes that Aristotle rejected the existence of Platonic forms, but he thinks this pales in significance compared to Aristotle's loyalty on the questions of virtue and knowledge. Now, I know what you're thinking. This episode is about Cicero, so why do I keep going on about Philo and Antiochus? It isn't only because Cicero is our primary source of information about the dispute, it's also because the dispute was crucial to Cicero's own philosophical viewpoint. After some ruminating of his own, Cicero decided that Philo had the better of the argument. In his own philosophical works, he adopts the quintessentially skeptical practice of exploring arguments from all the philosophical schools. He's explicit about following this strategy, saying that he discusses philosophy in utromque partem, on both sides of every dispute. For instance, Cicero's work on the nature of the gods pits an Epicurean spokesman and a Stoic spokesman against a new academic critic named Cotta. The adherents of the two dogmatic schools are given ample space to defend their respective theological views. Indeed, one of the three books of the work is devoted entirely to the exposition of the Stoic theory. But then Cotta demolishes each position, leaving the reader where Cicero too finds himself, in a state of well-considered doubt. Along the way, of course, we learn valuable information about the Hellenistic schools, and this work on the nature of the gods remains one of our most important sources for Stoic and Epicurean theology. But Cicero is more than just a source to be mined for information about other thinkers. Even when writing philosophy, Cicero is still a rhetorician, and many times he insists that good philosophy should be stylistically appealing. He criticizes other contemporary thinkers for their poor style—he seems to have in mind especially Epicurean authors, which is ironic given that he was a contemporary of the great Epicurean poet Lucretius. When Cicero follows Antiochus, in taking Plato and Aristotle as his heroes, he emphasizes not only their dialectical approach to philosophy, but also their rhetorical craft. Aristotle is praised for his inquiries into rhetoric, and Plato appears repeatedly as a master of language as well as thought. For Cicero, Plato is, as he has a Stoic spokesman put it, almost a god of philosophers. This point is underscored even when Cicero is praising others—for instance, when he says that Aristotle is the best philosopher, apart from the obvious exception of Plato, the greatest of all. Cicero paid homage to his Greek exemplars not only by discussing their ideas, but also by translating them into Latin. He undertook a Latin translation of Plato's Timaeus, though he didn't manage to complete it. His own works are festooned with translations of passages from Greek, especially Plato. Cicero rightly prides himself not only on his facility with Latin, but also on his ability to render Greek accurately and in good style. He frequently draws attention to the difficulty of translating Greek technical terms, and briefly discusses the merits of alternative Latin versions. For instance, he suggests perturbatio, disorder, rather than a word meaning disease, to capture the Stoic term pathos. In some cases, Cicero's decisions have prevailed down to the current day. For instance, he translates the Greek poiotetes into Latin as qualitates, and we follow him in translating this word as qualities. Menaca claims that the Latin word essentia, the root of our English word essence, was invented by Cicero to correspond to the Greek usia. Cicero's love of Greek and rhetorical prowess were not the only features of his personal history to make themselves felt in his histories of philosophy. In fact, the question of why Cicero wrote so much about philosophy can be answered only by looking a bit more at his life story. I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that he was no fan of Julius Caesar, and the feeling was mutual. He was forced to leave Rome under the first triumvirate when Rome was ruled by Caesar together with Crassus and Pompey. Cicero was able to return in 57 BC, but his renewed opposition meant that when Caesar assumed the dictatorship, Cicero was effectively excluded from politics. This left him with some time on his hands, for which we can be grateful. Most of Cicero's philosophical works were written in the mid-forties BC, while he was cast into the political wilderness. During this time, he was also struck by personal tragedy. His beloved daughter died in childbirth in 45 BC. Thus, a key theme of Hellenistic philosophy had a deep resonance for Cicero. Can philosophy offer us consolation in the face of suffering? Skeptical leanings notwithstanding, Cicero answers this question with a fairly resounding yes in one of his greatest philosophical writings, the Tusculan Disputations. Despite the title, this is not a set of arguments about elephants, but rather a dialogue set in Tusculum where Cicero owned a villa, which included two exercise areas named the Academy and the Lyceum. The dialogue is between two unnamed characters who are considering philosophical arguments on subjects like the fear of death, whether the sage would ever feel distress, and whether we should attempt to eliminate all emotions. Cicero repeats his officially academic stance, declaring that he always follows what seems persuasive, rather than seeking certainty. But aside from this caveat, he supports a strikingly stoic viewpoint. Epicurus is praised for saying that all pain can be mastered, but the praise is damningly faint. Cicero adds that it is hard to see how a hedonist can consistently give such advice. This is typical of his attitudes towards the Epicureans, and also the Aristotelians. Rather disappointingly, Cicero seems to follow the line of other Hellenistic schools in reducing Aristotelian ethics to the claim that external goods, like wealth and health, are intrinsically valuable. Cicero has little patience with this, seeing it as soft-minded. It is unsurprising, then, that he prefers the Stoics, whom he sees as the most tough-minded philosophers and thus as the rightful heirs of the ethical teachings of Socrates and Plato. Like them, the Stoics insist that perfect virtue and wisdom guarantee happiness. Cicero finds this idea to be persuasive, if not certain, and also a potential source of great comfort. He thus agrees with the Stoics that philosophy is the art of healing the soul, as medicine is the art of healing the body. This isn't to say that he hesitates to borrow ideas from schools other than the Stoics. Even the Cyrenaics—remember them?—are commended for their useful advice about anticipating pain so that the pain is less hard to bear when it arrives. Nor are Cicero's favorite Hellenistic dogmatists, the Stoics, above criticism. He complains about their pedantry on more than one occasion, and finds the all-or-nothing ethical theory of the early Stoics too simplistic. In a wonderful rhetorical turn, he writes, Nonetheless, in the Tusculans, Cicero could often pass for a Stoic himself, as when he argues that emotions like anger have no place in the good life. In such passages, Cicero evokes the somewhat later Stoic Seneca, rather than earlier academic skeptics like Arcesilaus. Cicero seems to take sides in other philosophical disputes too. We've already mentioned his work on the nature of the gods. It is pretty rude about the Epicureans, but ends with a qualified endorsement of Stoic theology. He says it seems to be a closer likeness of truth. Another Stoic-inspired work is called De Officiis, roughly On Befitting Actions, since Cicero uses the Latin word officium to translate the Greek katheikon. As you'll remember, Stoics use this word to refer to befitting actions performed by non-sages. Cicero's treatise on the topic draws extensively on the teachings of the Stoic philosopher Panatius, with whom Cicero had a chance to study when he visited the city of Rhodes. So it was thanks to Cicero that these philosophical teachings from Rhodes were led to Rome. Yet another work that argues positively for various philosophical claims is an early treatise with the familiar-sounding title De Republica. Although there is clearly an allusion to Plato's Republic here, we should also not miss the resonance with the Roman Republic itself. Cicero was a lifelong advocate of the traditional Roman model, according to which power is placed in the hands of an aristocratic legislative body, the Senate. He followed Plato and Aristotle in distrusting democracy, because the people are not likely to deliberate effectively. But he was equally opposed to the sort of autocratic rule exercised by Caesar. For Cicero, a legitimate state gets its legitimacy from the fact that it rules in the interests of the people, who have transferred rights and freedom to the aristocratic legislatures for the sake of furthering these interests. Incidentally, like Plato's Republic, Cicero's work ends with a kind of mythic narrative that integrates cosmology into the fabric of a treatise on politics. In Cicero's version, the famous Roman general Scipio Africanus appears to his grandson in a dream vision. This work was later the subject of an influential commentary by an author named Macrobius. We may come back to it at some point. On the whole, then, Cicero sets forth a good deal of positive philosophical doctrine, which is not exactly what you'd expect from a self-confessed academic. Though there have been suspicions that Cicero's devotion to the academic viewpoint wavered, I think we should rather remember that he was a follower of Philo of Larissa. Philo encourages us to follow what is plausible or persuasive, and this is what Cicero does. He often says explicitly, when preferring one view to another, that it is being preferred only as more persuasive and not as definitely true. Hence that last purposefully noncommittal line of his work on the gods, which says not that the Stoic view is true, but that it seems to Cicero a closer likeness of truth. Of course, Cicero was able to make persuasive doctrines even more persuasive by setting them forth in his highly crafted Latin. Indeed, if we had to point to Cicero's chief philosophical contribution, it would be his role in ushering Greek philosophical ideas into Latin. He points to this himself, remarking at one point that in his works, philosophy is being born in the Latin tongue. Philo's brand of academic skepticism would not outlive Cicero, its most famous exponent. In fact, as we'll see before long, skepticism will soon take a more radical turn in reaction against Philo. Cicero's welcoming of Greek philosophy into Latin prose was a far more lasting achievement. No less an author than Augustine would look back to Cicero as a major source, even discussing the topic of skepticism in a title called Contra Academikos, that is, Against the Academics. So it would be worth our while, before moving on to look at later skepticism, to stay here in Cicero's villa for another episode. For some edifying discussion about Cicero's philosophical allegiances and contribution, I'll be turning once more to my colleague, Raphael Wolf. I hope you'll be persuaded to join us both next time on The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.