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2 results

  • THE INCONSISTENCY CHARGE IN CICERO'S DE FINIBUS 1–2

  • Dale Parker
  • Journal:
    The Classical Quarterly , First View
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    18 September 2024, pp. 1-11
    • Article
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  • Cicero often challenged Epicureanism on the grounds of inconsistency. Cicero personifies the charge through his character Torquatus, who defends Epicureanism in De finibus 1–2. Cicero highlights the discrepancies among Torquatus’ beliefs and between them and his behaviour. Torquatus holds that the senses incontestably verify the tenets of Epicureanism, and that logic is superfluous. Yet he is sensitive to the fact that Epicurus’ teachings are not intuitive and require a fair amount of logical argumentation in its defence. Therefore, he defends his school against Cicero's criticisms. But by engaging in a defence of the system, Torquatus has already spoken against his commitment to the obviousness of Epicureanism and his disavowal of logic.

  • Chapter 12 - Nature and Social Ethics

  • Edited by Jed W. Atkins, Duke University, North Carolina, Thomas Bénatouïl, Université de Lille
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Cicero's Philosophy
    Published online:
    08 December 2021
    Print publication:
    16 December 2021, pp 184-199

  • Summary

    This chapter assess the philosophical foundation for Cicero’s views on human social relationships and community in the Roman Republic. Starting from De officiis 1.153, I argue that such a foundation is provided by the specifically Stoic notion of the community of gods and human beings, and of human beings as sharing rationality. The De officiis is then assessed on the basis of Cicero’s emphasis on the social aspect of virtue. The remainder of the chapter traces this same theme throughout Cicero’s theoretical writings (including his works on rhetoric), first in the earlier De inventione, De legibus, and De republica, and second in the De finibus and the Tusculanae Disputationes. Hence the commitment to this Stoic foundation for sociability is a constant in Cicero’s oeuvre.