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Cicero, Book club
Cicero’s political philosophy — IV — Social duties and personal virtues
Duties toward others are deeply intertwined with the cultivation of personal virtues in our attempt to live in agreement with nature
[This series is based on Walter Nicgorski’s Cicero’s Skepticism and His Recovery of Political Philosophy. See part I, part II, part III]
“And Socrates properly persisted in condemning that man who first separated the useful from the right, for that, he charged, was the source of all moral disorder.” (Cicero, Legibus I. 33–34)
It is a common assumption, even and perhaps especially nowadays, that what is right is often in tension with what is expedient, that is, useful for us personally. Apparently, the problem goes all the way back to Socrates, and Cicero wrote an entire book, On Duties, to deal with it.
The surprising and counterintuitive answer that Socrates sketches and Cicero elaborates in detail is that any perceived conflict between ethics and utility is just that, perceived, apparent, not real. Once we properly understand what is actually useful to us then we see that it coincides with the right thing to do.
