Book Club

Cicero’s political philosophy — VI — Politicians and virtue

Here is a thing or two that the Roman statesman Cicero could teach our modern politicians…

The so-called “Hellenistic Prince,” tentatively identified as Scipio Aemilianus, Wikipedia

[This is the last installment of a six-part series on Cicero’s political philosophy. Here are parts I, II, III, IV, and V. The series is based on Cicero’s Skepticism and His Recovery of Political Philosophy, by Walter Nicgorski]

“For there is no other endeavor in which human virtue more nearly approaches the very nature of the gods than either in the founding of new polities or in the preservation of those already in being.” (Cicero, De Re Publica III.12)

These days, everybody loves to hate politicians. And, we must concede, for good reasons. In the past few years we have seen political leaders plotting to overthrow the state, behaving recklessly in the name of self-interest, and even starting wars to further their own financial advantage and achieve “glory” (more on this latter concept below).

And yet, as the Roman advocate, statesman, and philosopher Marcus Tullus Cicero says in the quote that opens this essay, politics understood as working toward the betterment of a polity arguably is the highest profession there can be, and the most consequential. The question, then, is how…