 (The Death of Caesar a painting by Vincenzo Camucin) Written by Marian Sardón and Steven Knopp Copyright© 2009 All Rights Reserved. The champion of the Roman Republic, Cicero, died in the late retaliations of the Ides of March, ¬a bloodshed with disastrous consequences for Roman society¬.
He was an exceptional jurist and humanist, his work and political thought has been the torch of liberty, justice and freethinking for two thousand years in western history. It is worth reviewing some of the outlines of his work. Cicero was born in Arpinum south of Rome, in 106 B.C. He excelled as a successful lawyer and very young was appointed as Praetor to fight corruption, to later become a statesman, linguist, orator, philosopher and political theorist. In a Rome plagued by civil wars and dictatorships, he defended the republic against tyranny during his entire political career. He introduced the schools of Greek philosophy in Rome. His humanism, his political and philosophical writings have played a major role throughout our modern history. Cicero’s work was inspired by stoicism although he was fundamentally more eclectic in the way he formulated his line of thought. According to stoic principles, mankind perfects its own nature by following God’s and Man’s law, and when these principles are not respected, human nature is degraded. To Cicero, contemplation and action go hand-in-hand and are essential in order to achieve creative individual genius. Virtue and reason go together, that is, “good thoughts” and “good living” are inextricably combined.
Cicero defended a universal human community beyond ethnic differences and a natural law that is the same everywhere and immutably binds every human and every nation. This law emanates from the social and rational nature that is inherent to the human condition. This absolute reason is intuitive and present in all humans, reason is a divine feature in every human being, and therefore law should derive from reason, since it is the point where god and human converge in one. Reason is a high criterion that demands knowledge and the consideration of the human condition and its inalienable and fundamentals rights, in the context of welfare and social integration. He argued that a virtuous life required active involvement to improve the well-being of one's community, and feared that a loss of virtue was the root of Rome's difficulties. No legislation that breaks natural law deserves to be defended, because no legislator can make just the unjust by the action of ruling. As Cicero said, “there is only one principle by which men may live one with another, and that this is the same for all and possessed equally by all”. There is no variance across nature, culture, or time. In the light of the eternal, natural law, all men are equal. They are not equal in knowledge and it is not convenient that the State makes them equal in riches, but they are equal in reason and mind, and the general attitude towards what is worthy and honorable. Nothing but wrongdoings, bad habits and judgments prevent men from being equal. All humans possess the same capacity of experience and the same kind of experiences, and they are equally capable of distinguishing good from evil. To Cicero, equality is a moral obligation, every human must be conceded some dignity and respect since we are all part of human kind. A State cannot last in a stable situation unless it is based on the conscience of mutual obligations and mutual acknowledgement of the rights that bind the citizens. The idea of mutual assistance and a just government has three clear characteristics in his respublica: The State is a moral community, a group of people that own all together a government and its law, from there the words res populi or res publica, (people’s business). The idea of mutual assistance and a just government has three clear characteristics in his respublica: Cicero does not accept that the principles of justice are founded on the rules of the legislator, the dictates of people or the decisions of judges. He expresses a serious concern towards an excessive trust in democracy which might lead people and governments to presume that the only standard for law is whatever the majority finds desirable. He insists that the only escape from the whims of the ruling majority is to recognize a natural, universal, eternal model of justice.
Rome’s great legacy was its law, western civilization inherited its principles, premises and terms
to frame and deal with all kind of problems of society, and from them we have two different kinds of
law: In this manner positive law should be an approximation to justice. A perfect legal system should adapt as much as possible to natural law. An illegitimate or unfair rule does not constitute law for Cicero, it should be fought and erased. The principles of natural law are the basic pillars that inspire the laws and norms by which a nation is governed, and in so doing avoid the failure of the legal system. To him natural law marks powerful limits to the legislator and the temptation to fall into a legal tyranny. TO BE CONTINUED...
Steven Knopp, has studied and mastered a variety of subjects, including an in depth knowledge about, and a passion for, the history and foundation of the United States of America. |
(Curia Roman Senate/ Photo Credit Judith Geary) Cicero’s moral objective was to commend the traditional Roman virtue of public service and the value of the role of the honorable statesman, in conjunction with the wisdom that he so much loved from Greek philosophy. His political goal was to restore the Republic to its former glory, before Tiberius Graco, and in so doing, to delay the historical clock. 
