>>>>In part, Cicero's importance comes from the fact that he translates Greek philosophy
into Latin, and into Roman culture more broadly. In this he wasn't alone. The generation that
Cicero was a part of in the early 1st century BC the Roman aristocracy of this generation
was deeply under the influence of Greek philosophy. And people like Cicero had even traveled throughout
the Greek world. Cicero had been to Athens. He'd been to Rhodes. He'd been to the great
intellectual centers of the Greek world to advance his studies. And it helps to understand
Cicero's intellectual outlook if we can contextualize his ideas in terms of two different movements
in Greek philosophy that were prominent in what we call the Hellenistic period of Greece.
Remember back to our conversations about Aristotle, the student of Plato, whose career marks the
symbolic end of the Greek polis and the beginnings of the great age of empires, especially in
the aftermath of Alexander the Great and his conquests. We call this the Hellenistic period
of Greece, and we can track the rise and history of Greek philosophy in this period of different
schools of thought. In fact, the Greek philosophical writings of this period are by and large lost
to history. We certainly don't have as extensive a record of the Greek philosophy of this period
as we do of the age of Plato and Aristotle, whose work survive in some abundance. And
in fact the Romans, like Cicero, are one of the most important sources for our understanding
of the development of Greek philosophy in the centuries after Aristotle--in the Hellenistic
period of Greek philosophy. And Cicero's own philosophical outlook is deeply informed by
currents in Greek philosophy in the Hellenistic period. Cicero's own outlook is deeply influenced
in various ways by a Greek philosophical school known as Stoicism. Stoicism, which develops
in the aftermath of Aristotle in the Greek world, was destined to become the most important
Greek philosophical school in the Roman world. There's almost a certain kind of natural affinity
between the ideas of Stoicism, which place enormous emphasis on duty, on the virtue of
living out your good life according to the duties of the good man, the good citizen,
and the kind of native values of Roman thought--which are, which are somehow parallel to the morality
of Stoicism. The Stoic outlook is an important one in the history of ancient political thought
for two fundamental reasons that we'll consider here. One is the Stoic belief in an orderly
cosmos. Stoicism was destined to become the most important Greek philosophical school
in the Roman world. There somehow a natural affinity between the ideas of socialism which
will place enormous emphasis on virtue, on duty and the native values of Rome, which
also emphasized duty and virtue, and will make Stoicism the most popular and important
philosophical movement under the Roman Empire. Stoicism is important in the history of political
thought for at least two reasons. One is the belief in an orderly cosmos. The Stoics have
a very interesting outlook on the nature of the universe itself and it's at least partly
influenced by contemporary strains of astronomy. This is the period when Babylonian discoveries
in astronomy, the regularity and the movements of the planets, the great discovery that the
stars and the planets can be understood in mathematical, precise, scientific terms, that
there's order behind the movements of the sky influences. The Stoic idea that the universe
itself is rationally ordered by a God that is eminent in the universe itself. And so
the Stoics believe that there is order in nature, and this will deeply influence the
Stoic ideas of political order--their ideas of natural justice. And the second Stoic belief
that's fundamentally important in the history of justice is the belief in common humanity.
The Stoics are cosmopolitans, and in fact, that word cosmopolitan is interesting. It
means "polites," citizen of the cosmos--of the universe. It's a way of saying, "I'm not
a citizen of Athens or of Sparta. I'm not a citizen of Rome or Carthage. I'm a citizen
of the universe. My polis, my city is the universe itself." That all humans, in some
sense, share citizenship in the universe. That the kind of political divisions that
are characteristic of the Greek city state or of the Roman Republic are superseded by
the fact of universal humanity and there's something universalizing, there's something
even inspiring about the Stoic idea of a universal and shared humanity. The belief that all people
somehow share some kind of human element that makes them co-citizens of the universe together,
and these various ethical strands of Stoicism will echo in many places in the thought of
Cicero. But it also helps us to understand Cicero's philosophical context by understanding
the philosophical currents that he was competing against, and in particular, Cicero's political
thought develops against the strains of Epicureanism. Epicureanism is the philosophy that originates
with the great figure of Epicurus, Epicurus. And Epicurus' philosophical system was destined
to become an important one throughout the ancient world, and indeed, was reaching its
height of popularity in Rome in precisely the moment when Cicero was developing as a
political and philosophical thinker. At the heart of Epicurus' whole philosophy is an
idea that is called atomism. Atomism, and that's a Greek term, "atomos," indivisible.
Atomism is a belief that all matter is made up of tiny particles that are indivisible--atoms.
Epicurus' philosophy begins from a physical account of the natural world and it says that
everything is made of atoms. All matter is made out of indivisible particles and these
particles are eternal, indivisible and they're all there is. You don't have any kind of immaterial
existence. You don't have any kind of immaterial soul that will survive you after you die.
And Epicurus says, you are simply a glomeration of atoms that has a kind of breath, a consciousness
in our terms, and will cease to exist when you die, and the atoms that compose you will
dissolve and simply become a different part of the natural world. So Epicurus' philosophy
very specifically says, "There is no afterlife. All you are is matter. You're made up of atoms,
tiny indivisible particles that dissolve after you die." And the purpose of your life is
to have pleasure, "hedoni" in Greek. It's where we get our word hedonism. Epicurus philosophy
is a hedonist philosophy. Now when we say hedonism in colloquial English, it conjures
images of wild parties or or misbehavior, but hedonism is a specific term of ancient
Greek philosophy that says the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. And in the
Epicurean system, this is a very particular kind of pleasure. It's not physical sensations
of pleasure, it's in fact a kind of highly philosophical, highly refined enjoyment of
life. Epicurus says the purpose of life is to achieve a kind of dispassion, to achieve,
in the the ancient terminology, a a kind of apathy--a kind of cultivated sense that the
externals of the world can't affect you. You shouldn't be overly distressed about your
death. When you die, you cease to exist and you won't care. And in fact many ancient Epicurean
tombstones will say something like, "I didn't exist. Then I lived. Then I died. Now I don't
exist." So that survives on ancient tombstones, and it expresses this Epicurean symptom that
death is nothing to be fearful about. Epicurus' entire philosophical system seeks pleasure
through a rational understanding of the nature of existence, and an indifference, a lack
of fear towards things like death. Epicurus philosophy was considered dangerous by Cicero,
and in particular we know of Epicurus philosophy through a great poem that's written in the
50's BC, so in the lifetime of Cicero. A poem written by a Roman author in Latin, a man
named Lucretius, a poem De Rerum Natura -- On the Nature of Things, a six book epic poem
that survives basically complete and it is our single most important statement of Epicurean
philosophy. In fact the writings of Epicureans, by and large, don't survive. We have only
tiny fragments of his sayings, but we do have the great poem in Latin of one of his admirers,
someone who adhered to his system named Lucretius. And the fact that this poem is written in
the 50's is highly symbolic of the influence of Epicurean philosophy in the realm of Cicero's
day. Epicurus' philosophy entailed certain kinds of political consequences. Epicurus'
philosophy entails a certain kind of political stance toward the world, and in fact, in Lucretius'
poem, the fifth book describes the political ideology of an Epicurean. He says that human
society is built out of necessity. That humans evolve out of nature and and he's been seen
as a kind of proto-Darwinian and that they are built by their own nature to strive for
their existence, to strive for their own success. And Epicurean philosophy has certain political
consequences. Epicurean political philosophy has certain similarities to the political
philosophy of the Sophists that we've explored, especially their beliefs that human society
is conventional, that it's a set of agreements that humans make in order to maximize their
own pleasures. That it's a kind of contract that they make, a mutual compact of non-harm
that political society itself is somehow purely conventional. And Epicurean philosophy teaches,
in fact, a flight from the world. It teaches detachment. It says that the political life
is not the good life. In fact the good life is a philosophical life that is detached from
the life of action, from the life of the community. The Epicurean philosopher seeks a life of
privacy, of private friendship, but not a life of politics. And so Cicero's political
outlook will be in direct contrast because Cicero advocates a life of action, a life
of duty, a life of commitment, a life in which the individual receives the his meaning, his
purpose from his community, from serving his state: and in particular in the republican
ideology of Cicero, from serving the Republic itself, virtuously. So Cicero's political
philosophy is part of the Greek philosophical debates of his world. He'll develop a political
outlook that has its roots in a Stoic cosmology that says there is rational order, that there
is a natural law and natural justice and that this entails that the good life means that
the individual is committed to the good life of his Republic.