The Academic Treatises gave an extended account of the evolution of the doctrines of the Academy, the school of philosophy founded by Plato and developed over the centuries by his successors. What was called the New Academy flourished in Cicero’s time. In the second century BC, its leading figure, Carneades, adopted a skeptical position, which emphasized probability as against certainty. Cicero gave himself the task of defending this point of view.
He also took the opportunity to justify his overall project by responding to two criticisms he put into Varro’s mouth: first, anyone seriously interested in Greek philosophy could look up the original authors and, second, the Latin language lacked the necessary technical terminology. To counter these objections, Cicero argued that Latin poetry was read and appreciated even though it was heavily dependent on Greek models. Latin was a richer language than Greek; but it was true that an accepted philosophical terminology was needed. This was precisely what he intended to produce.
Posterity has largely justified this defense. While Latin has disadvantages (the lack of a definite article, for one), to some extent Cicero succeeded in widening its range. Some of the terms he coined have had a long afterlife—qualitas, moralis and essentia, for example, are the antecedents of “quality,” “moral” and “essence.”
The next dialogue in the series, On Supreme Good and Evil (De finibus bonorum et malorum), was composed more or less at the same time as the Academic Treatises. In the preface, Cicero makes the point that he is not a mere translator but is trying to express in his own words what lies at the heart of his subject. It is a justifiable claim. He is, indeed, more than a transcriber or even a high-quality journalist. He has read philosophy all his life and feels at ease with it. What he offers is a mature synthesis in which other people’s ideas grow in the field of his own experience of life. His expositions are not only thought but deeply felt.
The different chapters of the book, which has survived in its entirety, are given roughly contemporary settings: Cicero’s villa at Cumae in 50; Tusculum in 52; and then Athens during his grand tour in 79. Epicureanism and Stoicism are examined and rejected. To the Epicurean who asserts that the chief good is pleasure in the sense of an absence of pain and advocates a simple, virtuous and detached life, Cicero replies that what he is talking about is not pleasure in any customary sense. Also he rejects as disgraceful the notion that the man who measures his desires by utilitarian criteria has the firmest grasp on happiness.
If Epicureans say “it is good because it is pleasant,” Stoics answer that “it is pleasant because it is good.” Cato is now given the task of representing the Stoic view that virtue is what we naturally desire, which Cicero rebuts as not taking into sufficient account humanity’s lower faculties. Cicero argues that virtue will not necessarily produce happiness, if, as is admitted, pain is an evil. On Supreme Good and Evil ends on a cautiously optimistic note; virtue outweighs everything and even if the good man is not supremely happy, he is on balance happy.
The Conversations at Tusculum (Tusculanae disputationes) were written in the summer of 45 when Cicero had begun to recover somewhat from Tullia’s death. Again the form is a dialogue set in Cicero’s beloved villa at Tusculum. The two speakers are identified only by the initials M and A, standing either for Marcus and Atticus or Magister (master) and Adulescens (young man). Either way it is M who does most of the talking and the book is a series of essays rather than debates.
Having examined the nature of the good life in the previous books of the cycle, Cicero now turns to practicalities. How is the good life to be lived? He answers the question by citing many instances of human behavior both from the past and from his own time. He mentions the deaths of Cato and Pompey and hints at his feelings for Tullia, while acknowledging that grief is useless and should be put aside. His underlying purpose is to show that right attitudes and a philosophical cast of mind can alleviate misfortune and suffering. Death, he argues, is not an evil, being either a change of place for the soul or annihilation. Physical suffering is of no real importance and can be borne with fortitude. Mental suffering and distress, whether caused by mourning, envy, compassion, vexation or despondency, are acts of the will and can be eliminated by thoughtfulness, courage and self-control. The same may be said for excessive delight, lust and fear. The way forward, Cicero wrote, was to distance oneself from the cares and desires of life.
The whole life of the philosopher, Plato said, is a preparation for death. For what else do we do when we remove the soul from pleasure—that is to say, from the body, from private property (the body’s agent and servant), from public affairs and from every kind of private business: what, I repeat, do we do except call the soul into its own presence and cancel its allegiance to the body? And is separating the soul from the body anything else than learning how to die? So let us, believe me, study to dissociate ourselves from our bodies—that is, to acclimatize ourselves to the idea of death. While we are still alive, this will be an imitation of heavenly life: once we are free from our chains here, our souls will run their race less slowly. For those who have always been shackled to the flesh make slower progress even when they are released. It is as if they have spent many years in manacles. Once we have arrived at the other place, and only then, shall we live. For this life is truly death and I could, if I would, weep for it.
The discipline of the gladiator and the self-sacrifice of the Indian widow who commits suttee and joins her husband on the funeral pyre demonstrate that virtue can transcend pain. In this conclusion Cicero endorses Stoicism in a way that he felt unable to do in On Supreme Good and Evil, written a few months earlier, for he could now see, as the full intensity of his mourning subsided, how he had dragged himself from the brink of breakdown through firmness of mind.
The Nature of the Gods (De deorum natura), Foretelling the Future (De divinatione) and Destiny (De fato) address religious and theological themes. Collectively, they ridicule the anthropomorphic conception of God, or the gods, and propose that Epicurus, who speculated that the gods lived happily but impotently and had no effect on human affairs, was a crypto-atheist. Cicero tends to a Stoic pantheism (which gives him the opportunity to celebrate the physical universe in passages of great poetic grandeur). He criticizes superstition—dreams, portents, astrology and the like—and is particularly incensed by the Stoics’ commitment to the art, or pseudoscience, of divination, by which investigation into the future can make it possible to avoid unpleasant events. Either the future is subject to chance—in which case nobody, not even a god, can affect it one way or the other—or it is predestined, in which case foreknowledge cannot avert it. AS he had been appointed an Augur in 53, it is not surprising to find that Cicero recognizes, even if he does not believe in, the art of augury but thinks it should be maintained for reasons of public expediency rather than accuracy. While external factors may influence our actions, they cannot control them, for that would be to negate free will. To say “what will be, will be” is not to imply that the future is predetermined.