Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 8 - Cicero on the Justice of War

  • from Part II - Political Philosophy and Ethics
  • Edited by Nathan Gilbert, University of Durham, Margaret Graver, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Sean McConnell, University of Otago, New Zealand
  • Book:
    Power and Persuasion in Cicero's Philosophy
    Published online:
    15 January 2023
    Print publication:
    05 January 2023, pp 170-204

  • Summary

    In his De re publica and De officiis, Cicero discusses the conditions that must exist for a war to be justly commenced and waged. In developing his account, Cicero lays the groundwork for many of the principles of the later just war tradition. However, commentators have detected inconsistencies between Cicero’s account of ‘the justice of going to war’ and his reliance on the competitive honor code of the ancient Mediterranean world, which undergirds much of his account of conduct within war. Commentators usually see Cicero’s commendation of wars undertaken for the sake of glory as inconsistent both with the legal and religious principles undergirding his account and with the Stoic account of justice derived from Panaetius, whom Cicero follows in De officiis. In this chapter, I reconstruct Cicero’s account of just war theory and explain why he could plausibly see coherence where the modern commentators see incoherence.