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Cicero. Upul Abeyrathne , Dept. of Economics, University of Ruhuna , Matara. Background. There is no systematic work to understand Roman Political Thought.
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Cicero UpulAbeyrathne, Dept. of Economics, University of Ruhuna, Matara
Background • There is no systematic work to understand Roman Political Thought. • As political theory is only one source of political thought the political thought of a nation have to be culled from less formal and direct sources of the nation. • Law, lore and literature are important sources
Law and administration are two great contribution of Rome to the concept and practice of government and politics in the Western World. • Roman Law up holds the concept of world citizenship expressed in the Hellenistic political theory. It has passed its message through institution rather than in ideas. • The Roman Empire has resulted in a marriage of Greek Speculative thinking and Roman institutionalism.
Cicero is the only political writer who has got enduring influences through out the ages. • Lived around 106-43 B.C. • He is not professional political philosopher or leader of a school or academy. But a lawyer and statesman • His works are regarded as reflection of politics rather than on political theory. • He was influenced from Aristotle, Plato and Stoicism.
He has studied law in Rome • He has studied philosophy in Athens and other Greek Centres. • This led him to acquire wide contacts with other people and civilizations. • He has become the leading lawyer of his day and rose to the highest Office in Rome, the Consulate. • However his political fortune was short lived.
Problem of Traditional Republic Institutions • Rome has witnessed growing social and imperial problems • They have been unable to resolve them under the existing Republican Institutional Frame Work. • It moved towards monarchical form of government. • Cicero sought political and administrative remedies for the decay of ancient republican spirit. • But he was unable to understand economic issues and cleavages of the rise of property less proletariat in Rome and other large cities.
Instead of looking into the future and accepting them as permanent, he looked into the past in which there were not such phenomena. • There was a sweeping popular movement of the poor led by Cataline. • He suppressed it ruthlessly. Its leaders were executed under circumstances hardly legal.
Consequences of the Popular Movement • Aristrocats, Wealthy businessmen and Cicero’s friends understood the revolutionary implication of the movement no better than he did. • As a result, monarchical government was supplanted the proud republic in which freedom had been nursed to greatness in so many generations with considerable popular support.
Cicero’s Political Beliefs • He believed in moderation, concord and constitutionalism and political faith. • But they flourished only in a time of social stability. • He believed when political stability is seriously undermined, the constitutionalism as a mere political Faith offers no solutions. • Such situation is to be supplanted by basic social and economic reforms.
He thought such reforms were to be carried out by moderate men of sufficiently conservative, otherwise the traditional social fabric of the state would loose. • Ceaser was assassinated in 44 B.C. and year later, Cicero by the henchmen of Antony , a member of the triumvirate set up after Caesar's death.
He has shown considerable personal courage in opposing the drift towards dictatorship based on popular support. • His main political ideas are included in Republic and Laws. • At glance, one can see a close resemblance of his ideas with that of Plato and Aristotle. • However, he differs from them on account of his sense of the world
Plato and Aristotle had been unable to go beyond city state in conceptualizing political phenomenon. • It was the ultimate political organization for them. • Cicero had a universal outlook. • He believed in the mission of the Roman Empire.
Differences Between Him and Greek Philosophers • Greek Philosophers have shown implicit faith in that once a general principles of government are laid down, the process of government can be safely entrusted to rulers. • Philosophy, not law is the queen of both Plato’s and Aristotle Masterpieces. • Cicero said “ The state is a “community of law” • Rule of Law is important to him.
Differences Between Him and Greek Philosophers • He was also a egalitarian in legal sense. “ We cannot agree to equalizes men’s wealth, and equality of innate ability is impossible, the legal rights at least of those who are citizens of the same commonwealth ought to be equal”. • His faith in law has to do with not only with his legal background but also his personal creed. • He linked the very idea of existence to that of law and government.
Differences Between Him and Greek Philosophers • With out law and government ‘the existence is impossible for household, a city, a nation, the human race, physical nature and the universe itself. • Cicero, however, refused think of law only in term of formal authority and compulson . “True law is right reason in agreement with nature’’. • The task of justice is therefore to discover the “nature of things” in a given situation rather than to impose upon it a pre-maintaining that man is the only living creature endowed with the faculty of thinking and reasoning.
Differences Between Him and Greek Philosophers • “ All men have reasoning faculty in common and hence they should also have the right reason in common”.
Consciousness of Love • Plato and Aristotle were pure rationalists. The accepted the fact the men’s social needs and sympathies as the source or raw materials for the state. • Affection is genetic source of growth of political association but not the standard by which it could be tested. • However, Cicero sees the foundation of law in “our natural inclination to love our fellow men”.
His Classification of State • Kingship, Aristocracy and Democracy • When the governing principle is justice, the form of government make little difference. • He was skeptical and he did not advocate any form of government. • Kingship has got the danger of developing into tyranny, Aristorcacy into plutocracy, Democracy into anarchical mob rule. • The best form of government is the balanced-combination of the good three.
