Cicero’s Practical Philosophy

Description

Cicero’s Practical Philosophy marks a revival over the last two generations of serious scholarly interest in Cicero’s political thought. Its nine original essays by a multidisciplinary group of distinguished international scholars manifest close study of Cicero’s philosophical writings and great appreciation for him as a creative thinker, one from whom we can continue to learn. This collection focuses initially on Cicero’s major work of political theory, his De Re Publica, and the key moral virtues that shape his ethics, but the contributors attend to all of Cicero’s primary writings on political community, law, the ultimate good, and moral duties. Room is also made for Cicero’s extensive writings on the art of rhetoric, which he explicitly draws into the orbit of his philosophical writings. Cicero’s concern with the divine, with epistemological issues, and with competing analyses of the human soul are among the matters necessarily encountered in pursuing, with Cicero, the large questions of moral and political philosophy, namely, what is the good and genuinely happy life and how are our communities to be rightly ordered.

The volume also reprints Walter Nicgorski’s classic essay “Cicero and the Rebirth of Political Philosophy,” which helped spark the current revival of interest in Cicero the philosopher.

Contributors: Walter Nicgorski, J. G. F. Powell, Malcolm Schofield, Carlos Lévy, Catherine Tracy, Margaret Graver, Harald Thorsrud, David Fott, Xavier Márquez, and J. Jackson Barlow.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• Éthique et morale
• Philosophie antique
• Political
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Politics

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268158118
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

CICERO S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
CICERO S
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
Edited by
WALTER NICGORSKI
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Copyright 2012 by University of Notre Dame Press
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cicero s practical philosophy / edited by Walter Nicgorski.
p. cm.
Proceedings of a conference held in late 2006 at the University of Notre Dame.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 283) and indexes.
ISBN-13: 978-0-268-03665-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-268-03665-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
EISBN 978-0-268-08763-0
1. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. I. Nicgorski, Walter.
B553.C54 2012
186 .2-dc23
2012003445
ISBN 9780268158118
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources .
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 [e-mail] .
To Teachers Who Prepared Me For Cicero, Led Me to Him, and Inspired Me to Care
Raymond Windle, S. J. (1928-2010) J. William Hunt Leo Strauss (1899-1973)
Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1
Cicero s De Re Publica and the Virtues of the Statesman
J. G. F. POWELL
2
The Fourth Virtue
MALCOLM SCHOFIELD
3
Philosophical Life versus Political Life: An Impossible Choice for Cicero?
CARLOS L VY
4
Cicero s Constantia in Theory and Practice
CATHERINE TRACY
5
Cicero and the Perverse: The Origins of Error in De Legibus 1 and Tusculan Disputations 3
MARGARET GRAVER
6
Radical and Mitigated Skepticism in Cicero s Academica
HARALD THORSRUD
7
The Politico-Philosophical Character of Cicero s Verdict in De Natura Deorum
DAVID FOTT
8
Between Urbs and Orbis : Cicero s Conception of the Political Community
XAVIER M RQUEZ
9
Cicero on Property and the State
J. JACKSON BARLOW
Appendix:
Cicero and the Rebirth of Political Philosophy
WALTER NICGORSKI
Bibliography
Index of Citations of Cicero
General Index
Contributors
J. JACKSON BARLOW is Charles A. Dana Professor of Politics at Juniata College. He has written on Cicero and on American political thought, and is the editor of the forthcoming Selected Writings of Gouverneur Morris .
DAVID FOTT is associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the author of John Dewey: America s Philosopher of Democracy (1998). He is working on a translation of Cicero s De Re Publica and De Legibus as well as a book on Cicero s political philosophy.
MARGARET GRAVER is Aaron Lawrence Professor of Classics at Dartmouth College, where she specializes in post-Aristotelian moral psychology. She is the author of Cicero on the Emotions (2002) and Stoicism and Emotion (2009) and is currently working on a translation of Seneca s Epistulae Morales .
CARLOS L VY is professor of Roman philosophy and literature at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and founder of the Centre d tudes sur la philosophie hell nistique et romaine. He is the author of Cicero Academicus (1992) and of many studies about Roman philosophy, skepticism, and Middle Platonism, especially on Philo of Alexandria. His last published book is Les scepticismes (2008).
XAVIER M RQUEZ is a lecturer in political theory in the Political Science and International Relations Programme at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is the 2006 winner of the American Political Science Association s Leo Strauss award for the best doctoral dissertation in political philosophy. He recently completed a study of Plato s Statesman .
WALTER NICGORSKI is professor in the Program of Liberal Studies and concurrent professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. He is editor emeritus of The Review of Politics and has written and lectured extensively on Cicero s moral and political theory as well as directed summer seminars on the texts of Cicero for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
J. G. F. POWELL is professor of Latin in the department of classics and philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London. His publications on Cicero include editions of Cato Maior De Senectute (1988), Laelius De Amicitia (1990), the Oxford Classical Text of De Re Publica and De Legibus (2006), and the edited or coedited volumes Cicero the Philosopher (1995), Cicero s Republic (2001), Cicero the Advocate (2004), and Logos: Rational Argument in Classical Rhetoric (2007). He is currently working on a new Latin grammar and a study of Latin word order.
MALCOLM SCHOFIELD is Director of Research at the University of Cambridge, where he has been teaching ancient philosophy for nearly forty years. He has published widely in the field, including more than a dozen papers on Cicero s philosophical writings, and is now planning a book on Cicero as philosopher. His latest books are Plato: Political Philosophy (2006) and (with Tom Griffith) Plato: Gorgias, Menexenus, Protagoras (2009).
HARALD THORSRUD is associate professor of philosophy at Agnes Scott College. He is the author of Ancient Skepticism (2009) and Arcesilaus and Carneades in the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Skepticism (2010).
CATHERINE TRACY received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California (under the name Catherine Feeley) and is assistant professor and chair of classics at Bishop s University (Canada). Her current research uses Cicero s writing as a window onto popular politics in the late Roman republic.
Acknowledgments
The publication of this volume of essays on Cicero s practical philosophy is indebted to those who helped conceive of the symposium that brought together the scholars whose work is presented here, those who supported and facilitated it, and those who participated either as authors and primary speakers or as commentators. A serious celebration of Cicero as philosopher as a way of marking my retirement as editor of The Review of Politics was first raised by W. Dennis Moran, my long-term associate at The Review and executive associate editor. I welcomed this idea as a way of more decisively turning my mind and energies back to Cicero, and I received notable encouragement, experienced counsel, and critical financial support from Catherine Zuckert, my successor as editor at The Review , and from Gretchen Reydams-Schils, then director of the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts and my colleague in Notre Dame s Program of Liberal Studies. The Notre Dame Workshop in Ancient Philosophy, of which Gretchen is founding director, also provided financial as well as logistical support all along. Both Catherine and Gretchen contributed as commentators in the course of the symposium, as did other Notre Dame colleagues, namely, Keith Bradley, Edward Goerner, and Michael Zuckert. My colleague Vittorio H sle presented a major paper on Cicero s Plato and participated vigorously throughout the two days of conversation of the symposium. Another colleague, Brian Krostenko, brought his expert knowledge of Latin and Cicero to bear on our discussions, functioning throughout as an ombudsman commentator.
Additional thanks for assistance in funding the symposium goes to The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Notre Dame s Henkels Lecture Fund and Ken Garcia, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Devers Program in Dante Studies, the Department of Classics, the Department of Political Science, the Graduate School, the College of Arts and Letters, and the Program of Liberal Studies. Beyond the funding, Henry Weinfield, then chair of the Program of Liberal Studies, and Mark Roche, then Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, gave welcome encouragement in every way possible. I am grateful to my daughter, Ann Nicgorski, Professor of Art History at Willamette University, for her assistance in selecting appropriate iconography of Cicero for the symposium. Administrative details of the symposium were expertly handled as ever by Harriet Baldwin; I was also assisted in these details by then-graduate students Jeffrey Church and Raymond Hain. I am grateful to these and all who helped with the scholarly celebration of Cicero the philosopher that is recalled and continued through this book.
With respect to this book, I am grateful for the cooperation and assistance of the University of Notre Dame Press, specifically to Barbara Hanrahan, who was confident in the significance of this project from the beginning, and to Harv Humphrey and Stephen Little for their professional help in guiding the manuscript to publication. In production I was aided by the expert copyediting of Josh Messner. With the assistance of the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, I was able to call on the assistance of S. Adam Seagrave in preparing the bibliography and on that of Genevieve McCabe for the preparation of indices. Finally, I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and encouragement. While both reviewers urged me to contribute more in my own name to this volume, I am especially grateful for the suggestion of one reviewer that my 1978 essay on Cicero and the Rebirth of Political Philosophy be reprinted here as a way of making it more accessible at this time and as a testimony of the state of Cicero scholarship and regard for Cicero more than thirty years ago. Thank you to The Political Science Reviewer , where that essay originally appeared, for granting permission for republication here.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations of the works of Cicero generally follow the standard of The Oxford Classical Dictionary ( OCD ). The full titles and abbreviations are also found in the Index of Citations of Cicero at the back of this book.
CD
Augustine, De C