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Socratic Cosmopolitanism: Cicero's Critique and Transformation of the Stoic Ideal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Thomas L. Pangle
Thomas L. Pangle
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Abstract

The post-Cold War era has provoked a revival of various implicit as well as explicit returns to Stoic cosmopolitan theory as a possible source of a normative conceptual framework for international relations and global community. This article confronts this revival of interest in Stoicism with an analysis of Cicero's constructive critique of original Stoic conceptions of the world community. Particular attention is paid to the arguments by which Cicero identifies major flaws in the Stoic outlook and establishes the validity of his alternative notion of the “law of nations.” It is argued that Cicero's transformation of Stoicism issues in a more modest but more solid, as well as more civic-spirited, cosmopolitan theory. At the same time, the implications of Cicero's arguments for our understanding of justice altogether are clarified.

Résumé

La période qui a suivi la guerre-froide a provoqué un regain d'intérêt, à la fois implicite et explicite, à l'endroit de la théorie du stoïcisme cosmopolitain comme source possible d'un cadre conceptuel normatif permettant de prendre en compte les relations internationales et la communauté mondiale. Cet article confronte ce regain d'intérêt pour le stoïcisme avec une analyse de la critique constructive de Cicéon des premières conceptions stoïques de la communauté mondiale. Une attention particulière est portée aux arguments où Cicéon identifie les limites du regard stoïque et établit la validité de sa notion alternative du « droit des nations ». Il est soutenu que la transformation que Cicéron a apporté aux enjeux du stoïcisme dans la théorie du cosmopolitanisme est plus modeste mais plus solide, mais aussi qu'elle s'est réalisée dans un esprit davantage civique. En même temps, les implications des arguments de Cicéron pour notre compréhension de la justice sont aussi clarifiées.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , June 1998 , pp. 235 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1998

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References

1 Waever, Consider Ole, “International Society: Theoretical Promises Unfulfilled?” Cooperation and Conflict 26 (1991), 97–128Google Scholar; and Hassner, Pierre, La violence et la paix: De la bombe atomique au nettoyage ethnique (Paris: Editions Esprit, 1995), 343–354, 385.Google Scholar

2 See Orwin, Clifford, “Distant Compassion: CNN and Borrioboola-Gha,” The National Interest 43 (1996), 42–49.Google Scholar

3 Derrida, Jacques, Cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un effort! (Paris: Galilée, 1997), 20Google Scholar. Derrida cites Arendt's, Hannah discussion in Les origines du totalitarisme. L'impérialisme, trans, by Leiris, Martine (Paris: Fayard-Seuil, 1984), 239ff.Google Scholar, of the decline of the ancient, fundamental ius gentium right of asylum as a major step on the road to the conditions that made totalitarianism possible. Writing in 1950, Arendt notes in particular that this ancient right finds no expression in written international law or the various United Nations declarations of human rights, since they derive from wholly modern and un-Stoic conceptions of the human community and the cosmopolitan principles of justice.

4 See especially Falk, Richard, “The Making of Global Citizenship,” in Brecher, Jeremy, Childs, John Brown and Cutler, Jill, eds., Global Visions: Beyond the New World Order (Boston: South End Press, 1993).Google Scholar

5 Derrida, Cosmopolites de tous les pays, 24, quoting Les origines du totalitarisme, 285.

6 Nussbaum, Martha, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

7 Immanuel Kant, “On the Common Saying, ‘This May Be True in Theory, but It Does Not Apply in Practice,” Part 3 (“On the Relationship of Theory to Practice in International Right”); “Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent,” Seventh Thesis; and “On Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” in Reiss, Hans, ed., Kant's Political Writings, trans, by Nisbet, H. B. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970Google Scholar), esp. 103, where Grotius is explicitly dismissed as a “sorry comforter”; “Doctrine of Right,” Part 2 (“Public Right”), Metaphysics of Morals, secs. 2 and 3. Derrida's invocation of Kant (Cosmopolites de tous les pays, 47–52) seems to indicate an insufficient appreciation of Kant's severe reservations about the sort of cosmopolitanism Derrida is championing; Derrida is eventually forced to recognize that there is at least a considerable tension between his position and that of Kant (53–57).

8 Raymond Aron (who has himself been sometimes identified as a leading “realist” —Smith, Michael Joseph, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger [Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986], 2Google Scholar) has observed that it is the tendency of all contemporary realist thought to “think against” (Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, trans, by Howard, Richard and Fox, Annette Baker [New York: Praeger, 1967], 596Google Scholar).

9 Sandel is responding directly to an earlier, more popular, version of the Nussbaum thesis: see Sandel, Michael J., Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 338–346Google Scholar; Nussbaum, Sandel cites, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” Boston Review (October-November 1994), 3.Google Scholar

10 Cicero On Duties 3.69, 3.74. I cite the works of Cicero and other classical authors according to standard form, using recognized critical editions; unless otherwise noted, all translations from these and other sources are my own.

11 Ibid., 1.1–3, 2.2–6, 2.23, 2.29, 2.65, 2.67, 2.75–76, 3.1–4; Cicero On the Nature of the Gods 1.7; Cicero Republic 1.6–7; and Cicero On Divination 1.2; 2.6–7.

12 See, for example, Cicero On Duties 3.23, 3.69. For Cicero, and generally thereafter until Francisco Suarez (On Laws and God the Lawgiver 2.19.8; see also Isidore of Seville Of Etymologies or Origins 5.4–7), the “law of nations” was a term referring not simply or primarily to international law, regulating relations among nations and alien individuals, but more broadly to that law or body of legal principles that seems to be commonly held by all civilized peoples: for example, the principle that theft is a punishable offence. International law—for example, the sanctity of ambassadors and the “laws of war”—would be a major subdivision of the “law of nations” so understood (see, for example, Livy From the Founding of the City 2.4; 5.27, 5.36, 5.51; 6.1). See Nys, Ernest, Le droit de la guerre et les précurseurs de Grotius (Brussels: C. Muquardt, 1882), 9–13Google Scholar; and Phillipson, Coleman, The International Law and Custom of Ancient Greece and Rome (2 vols.; London: Macmillan, 1911), 1: 57–58, 70–85, 89–97Google Scholar. Cf. Aristotle Rhetoric 1368b7–9, on the “common law” as comprising “whatever unwritten matters seem to be agreed on by everyone.”

13 Plutarch, in what is probably a deliberate rhetorical exaggeration, goes so far as to suggest that there is a link between Zeno of Citium's Republic and Alexander the Great's cosmopolitan imperial vision (On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander the Great 329a-b), and Philo Judaeus (On the Creation of the World 3 and 142–43) contends that the biblical account of creation in Genesis is meant to teach the Stoic notion of cosmopolitan natural law and world citizenship (in other words, the principles of Stoicism are in fact the principles of the biblical God).

14 Xenophon Symposium 2.9–13, 3.4–12, 4.1–6, 4.34–45, 4.61–64, 6.5, 8.3–7. See Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Bk. 7 (on Zeno and other Stoics), secs. 1–3, 19 with Bk. 6 (on the Cynics), secs. 1–2, 14, 19, 85, 104; Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3.200 and context; for the best collection of the fragments and testimonials of Antisthenes, the Cynics generally and other Socratic precursors of Stoicism, see Giannantoni, Gabriele, Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae (4 vols.; 2d ed.; Naples: Bibliopolis, 1990Google Scholar), 2.139–509, 523–89, 648–52; for the scholarly debate over the reliability of the philosophic genealogy offered by Diogenes Laertius, and over the precise relationship of Antisthenes to Cynicism, see Giannantoni's discussion at 3:223–33 and 3.512–27.

15 Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Bk. 6, secs. 5, 29, 37, 42, 54, 63–64, 69–74; Bk. 7, secs. 25–26, 52, 86–89, 91, 99–109, 119–25, 128–31, 134–39, 142–43, 147–49, 151, 160, 165; Dio Chrysostom Discourses 1.42; 14.16; 15.31; 36.17–38; 59.4; Sextus Empmcus Against the Dogmatists 5 (= Against the Ethicists) 22–27, 59–67, 73–78, 180–81, 190–94, 200–201; Plutarch On Stoic Self-Contradictions; Of Common Conceptions, Against the Stoics; von Arnim, H., ed., Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (4 vols.; Leipzig: Teubner, 1904–1923Google Scholar), Vol. 1, frags. 190, 192, 195; Vol. 2, frags. 528, 1195; Vol. 3, frags, of Chrysippus, etc., 16, 314, 323, 324, 327, 330, 354, 366, 548, 567, 604–605, 611, 632, 638, 650; 654, 656, 690, 694, 729, 746, 750, 764, and frag. 117 of Philodemus at 241–42; Cicero On the Ends of the Good and Bad Things, Bk. 3, esp. secs. 11–14, 21–39, 41–73, and Bk. 4, secs. 14–15, 20, 26–43, 45–60, 68–73; Academica 1.35–39; On the Nature of the Gods 1.16, 1.36–41, 2.1–167; On Divination, Bk. 1, secs. 6, 37, 39, 56–57, 72, 82–84, 118, 125–31; Bk. 2, secs. 35–36, 88, 90, 100–102, 130; Seneca Of Leisure 4, 6, 8; the ethical teachings of Epictetus seem to have been close to those of the original Stoics; for the persistent admiration of Cynicism, see Arrian's Discourses of Epictetus, esp. 3.22, “On the Cynic Calling.”

16 Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Bk. 6, secs. 11, 29, 37, 72, 74; Bk. 7, secs. 33–34, 100, 121–25, 131, 188–89; Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, Vol. 1, frags. 216, 228; Vol. 3, frags. 54, 332, 544, 560, 563, 587, 589, 598–603, 613–19, 623, 625–26, 640, 658, 660–669, 677; Cicero Oration in Defense of L Murena 61; On the Ends of the Good and Bad Things 3.48, 3.68, 3.75–76, 4.7, 4.21–23, 4.55–56, 4.74; Laws 3.14; Lucullus (or Academica, Bk. 2) 136–37; On Duties 1.128, 1.148; Tusculan Disputations 4.54. For an instructive discussion of the sources, and an intelligent critique of the contemporary scholarship, see also Paul A. Vander Waerdt, “Zeno's Republic and the Origins of Natural Law,” in Paul A. Vander Waerdt, ed., The Socratic Movement (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). I am in agreement with Vander Waerdt's meticulous critical survey and will therefore not reproduce it here.

17 On Duties 1.7–8, 13–14, 148; 2.35, 3.14–17.

18 See especially ibid., 3.23 (“natura, id est iure gentium”). On the origins of the term ius gentium see Phillipson, International Law and Custom of Ancient Greece and Rome, 1.70–83, and, more authoritatively, Schulz, Fritz, A History of Roman Legal Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), 73 and 137.Google Scholar

19 Rhetoric 1373b4–18, 1375a27ff.; see also 1368b7–9. For prominent examples of references to unwritten laws common among all men, see Xenophon Memorabilia 4.4.19–21; Herodotus Histories 7.136; Demosthenes Against Aristocrates 61; see also Phillipson, International Law and Custom of Ancient Greece and Rome, 1.53–54 and 57–58.

20 Oration in Defense ofL Murena 61–64; cf. von Arnim 1903–24, frag. 640.

21 On the Ends of the Good and Bad Things 3.64; and On the Nature of the Gods 2.154; see also 2.78–79; Laws 1.23 and 1.32.

22 Laelius is Cicero's advocate of natural law in the Republic, speaking at 3.33–35.

23 Republic 2.4–5, 2.12–13, 2.14, 2.15, 2.22, 2.26, 2.33, 2.44, 3.24; cf. 2.10, 2.25, 2.27, 2.31, 2.38, 3.16, 3.28,3.42; cf. On Duties 3.41.

24 Republic 2.18; see also 2.19–20.

25 Ibid., 2.4, 2.5, 2.10, 2.12, 2.16–17, 2.20, 2.26–27; cf. 2.45, 3.26.

26 Ibid., 1.19, 1.30–31; 2.21–22 (cf. 2.52); 6.9-end.

27 Which Scipio pointedly does not regard as divinely revealed (Ibid., 6.10).

28 Ibid., 1.12.

29 Ibid., 6.15–16, 18–19.

30 See also On Divination 2.41, 2.148–50.

31 On the Nature of the Gods 1.2, 1.10, 1.14, 1.60, 2.2, 2.168, 3.4–5, 3.85; see also especially Tusculan Disputations 5.11. St. Augustine's (The City of God 5.9) and Edward Gibbon's (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1, chap. 2, sec. “Of Philosophers”) radical interpretation of Cicero as an esoteric writer goes beyond anything that can be indubitably established from the texts; but it is fair to say that Cicero recognized, and grasped more profoundly the moral consequences of, the grave problem a leading contemporary has stated as follows: “inquiry has its own morality, and is necessarily subversive of political institutions and movements of all kinds, good as well as bad” (Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics [New York: Columbia University Press, 1977], xv).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 On Divination 1.8–10; see Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, Vol. 3, frag. 654; Cicero goes so far as to characterize the Stoics as “those superstitious and nigh fanatic philosophers” (On Divination 2.118), but contrast On Divination 2.51–62—Cato did indeed mock the soothsayers, just as Chrysippus ridiculed portents (2. 61–62) and Zeno doubted divination through dreams (2.119).

33 On the Nature of the Gods 3.93–95. Commenting on these passages, Brown, Peter remarks that Cicero “was far too much of a Roman to attack the established religion of his ancestors” (Augustine of Hippo: A Biography [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967], 80).Google Scholar

34 On the Nature of the Gods 3.38–39.

35 Ibid., 3.66–85. Balbus does not anticipate or resolve these difficulties by reference to an afterlife, perhaps because he has been penetrated by the implications of the Stoic contention that devotion to virtue as the sole highest good compels one to hold that immortality would add nothing to happiness (2.153).

36 Ibid., 3.86–88; cf. Plutarch On Stoic Self-Contradictions 1048b-c, 1049f-52b; and On Common Conceptions, Against the Stoics 1075e-76a.

37 Compare On the Nature of the Gods 2.6–8, 2.166 with 3.11–17 and with On Divination 1.4.

38 On Divination 1.8–11; 2.8.

39 Ibid., 1.81.

40 Ibid., 1.58–59.

41 Ibid., 1.58, 2.100.

42 Ibid., 1.58–62; cf. 2.127–28.

43 Ibid., 2.140–42; cf. 2.150.

44 On Duties 1.6ff., 3.7ff., 3.20.

45 Ibid., 3.12–17.

46 Ibid., 3.11.

47 Ibid., 3.19–20.

48 Ibid., 3.21–26.

49 Ibid., 3.27–28.

50 Ibid., 3.34, 3.37, 3.39; cf. 3.102 and 104, and Grotius' criticism of Cicero's teaching on oaths in the name of the divinity (On the Laws of War and Peace 2.13.15.1).

51 On Duties 3.29–32.

52 Ibid., 1.13; cf. Republic 1.26–29.

53 On Duties 1.13; cf. 1.18–19.

54 Ibid., 1.19, 1.22. As we have seen by now, it is characteristic of Cicero to provoke the reader's thought by combining the exhortation to virtue as the greatest happiness with the insistence that virtue requires self-forgetting devotion to others, together with devotion to virtue for its own sake—which devotion wins for its possessor the greatest glory and in addition the support of the gods, who visit condign punishment on the wicked. Compare, for example, On the Ends of the Good and Bad Things 2.45 with 2.64–65; or Laws 1.37, 1.41, 1.43, 1.48 with 1.58–60; or Republic 3.11 with 6.29; see above all On Duties 1.28 in the light of 1.19, 1.22, 1.70–71, 1.92, 1.153, 3.25, 3.29–31, 3.35, 3.101.

55 Ibid., 1.33; see also 1.88–89, 3.32.

56 Ibid., 1.34–35.

57 Ibid., 1.33–35; cf. 3.46; contrast Dante On Monarchy 2.5.

58 On Duties 2.26–29. This rather flattering judgment on the concern for morality in the war policy of the Roman republic is seconded by Grotius, at least as regards the Roman attention to the need for a just cause for initiating war. In On the Law of War and Peace 2.1.1.1–2, Grotius says of the Romans: “hardly any race has remained for so long a time scrupulous in examining into the causes of war”; on the other hand, however, Grotius later admits the force in Mithridates' accusation of moral hypocrisy directed against Roman punitive war policy (ibid., 2.20.43.3); see the authorities Grotius collects and cites, as well as Vitoria's favourable remarks on the moral character of Roman imperial foreign policy, in Pagden, Anthony and , Jeremy Lawrence, eds. and trans., Political Writings of Francisco de Vitoria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 289–290.Google Scholar Polybius is more ironic in his praise of the Roman republic's concern for a just cause of war: on entering into hostilities with Demetrius, the Romans, remarks Polybius, “sought a suitable opportunity and an excuse that would look good to outsiders; for the Romans gave thought to this part of policy, and in doing so thought nobly” (Histories 36.2; but see also 18.37, on Roman generosity to defeated enemies, and in particular to Hannibal and the Carthaginians).

59 On Duties 1.35–37; see also Republic 2.31.

60 On Duties 3.107–8.

61 Ibid., 1.31–32.

62 Ibid., 3.34.

63 See Dante On Monarchy 2.5, 2.10.

64 On Duties 1.38.

65 Ibid., 2.85; see also 1.26 and Dante On Monarchy 2.5, 2.10–11, as well as Paradiso, cantos 6, 19, and 20.

66 Compare On Duties 3.43: “the greatest perplexity with respect to duty arises with regard to friendship.”

67 Ibid., 1.50–58; cf. 1.160.

68 Ibid., 1.51–52.

69 Ibid., 3.47.

70 The theological dimension of the contemporary revival of Stoic cosmopolitanism becomes especially visible in Derrida, Cosmopolites de tous les pays, 44–46, 52.