Ciceronian Natural Law and Friendship

Liberalism’s social and political standing seems increasingly precarious. Forces from the political left and right assail the excesses and injustices of modern politics and economics, lamenting inequality, nihilism, escapism, environmental degradation, and alienation.¹

In the absence of any shared concept of the Good, social and political life is infected by incivility, irreconcilable differences, and distrust. Skepticism of institutions has become a default position, especially among younger generations. We live in an age devoid of broad-​based moral authorities.

Liberalism’s defenders, especially economists, often respond with data showing historical growth in wealth, prosperity, and well-​being across the world. Trade and markets have lifted millions of people out of poverty and destitution. Life expectancy has increased, modern innovation continues to impress, and the availability of reliable energy has improved the quality of life for billions. This growth is correlated with the rise of liberal political and economic ideas since the late eighteenth century. Why would anyone want to move toward a pre-​liberal or post-​liberal order? Why is there such a disconnect between reality as described by the data and that perceived by liberalism’s detractors?

I would argue that both sides have a point. Those critical of what they call the “liberalism” are not fabricating widespread unhappiness, alienation, and distrust. Classical liberal economists are not fabricating their data. Despite over two centuries of increased prosperity, however, the wealthiest country in the world suffers from an epidemic of social and spiritual poverty and despair. What good is innovation, wealth, and a longer life, if we are miserable? Has the “promise” of political and economic liberty been realized?

Seth Kaplan, in Fragile Neighborhoods, appreciates the paradox. He observes that studies show that in the United States “our families and communities suffer from social problems that shock the rest of the world, and ought to shock us: family disintegration, homelessness, school shootings, racial animosity, skyrocketing rates of loneliness and depression, and deaths of despair—alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide. No country in history has had such material wealth alongside such unprecedented social decay.”² Furthermore, “we don’t feel obligated to help our neighbors, give back to our community, or even (in many cases) care for members of our own family—and we resist joining any group or association that might create such obligations.”³

Classical republicans have long critiqued classical liberalism as a political and economic system indifferent to virtue tending to cede ground to vice. Classical liberalism champions rights and freedom, only to see that same freedom used for violence and all sorts of base pursuits. For some, liberal individualism inevitably degenerates into an interminable power struggle between competing moral visions where soft despotism, rather than reason or cooperation, determines winners and losers.

Abandoning individual rights, private property, and free markets would not remedy the ills highlighted by critics; neither should we dismiss despair and social poverty. What is needed, in part, is a return to the foundational ideas and traditions that made liberalism possible. A liberal political order may be resilient in the face of vice, but it is not immortal. That is why Locke, Hume, Smith, and the American Founders gave so much attention to moral and ethical formation in addition to institutional design. John Locke, for example, provided an interesting but overlooked recommendation for where such formation may come from. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke advises:

Reference to Cicero as “Tully” is a centuries-​old tradition, and Locke is not alone in recommending his De Officiis (On Duties) as a foundational text for ethical formation alongside Holy Scripture.

Locke’s reference to Cicero is more than a token gesture. It was a recognition that the best of modern political and economic thought would be an extension, not a rejection, of the West’s classical and Christian heritage. Indeed, of the Classical authors and muses for the early modern champions of political and economic liberty, none loomed as large as Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC) sought, unsuccessfully, to resist the Roman Republic’s decline into decadence and imperialism. He quickly ascended the cursus honorum (course of honors: the career path for aspiring Roman statesmen). He became consul in 63 BC when he famously (and controversially) put down a conspiracy led by Catiline to overthrow the Roman government. He was especially effective as an orator in the Forum and the Senate, and his mastery of Latin provided a foundation for the language itself. His prolific writing has been used for education for over two millennia, and he is among the most important primary sources for our knowledge of the ancient world. Among the pre-​Christian ancient writers, he remains one of the most copied, read, cited, and quoted individuals in history.

Knowledge of Cicero and his writings has waned, however, and he is often disparaged as derivative and unoriginal. His debt to Plato and Aristotle is undeniable, but that debt does not detract from his significance. Cicero’s translation of Greek ideas into Latin transmitted core political, philosophical, and rhetorical ideas to the Western world. In many ways, we still see the ancient world through his eyes. Early modern liberals certainly did. Cicero was so widely read among the educated that citing him was often unnecessary.

While the Christian tradition remained dominant in intellectual life, thinkers had begun to seek other sources for moral and political thinking independent of Holy Scripture, but which commanded authority. Cicero was overwhelmingly the most important non-​Christian writer for the task.

Michael C. Hawley’s book Natural Law Republicanism: Cicero’s Liberal Legacy⁵ is an invaluable outline of Tully’s importance for the liberal republicanism of the early modern period, which contributed to the emergence of what came to be known as “liberalism” by the nineteenth century. The Enlightenment ideals of popular sovereignty, private property, and rights were not a departure from ancient and medieval traditions, but a continuation of thinking grounded, if not originating, in Cicero. Hawley says that a Ciceronian tradition of natural law was a tool for mediating between individual and collective interests, as well as between transcendent moral order, personal liberty, and popular sovereignty. The Ciceronian tradition of natural law gave early modern liberals hope that greater political and economic freedom would not need to descend into vice and mob rule. Hawley shows that it is Cicero’s thinking which helps unite and reconcile the liberal and republican traditions present at the American Founding.

Cicero’s ideas on natural law are particularly helpful for addressing the tension between individual and collective interests. Following the Stoics, in part, Cicero defines law in De Legibus as “the highest reason, inherent in nature, which enjoins what ought to be done and forbids the opposite. When that reason is fully formed and completed in the human mind, it, too, is law.”⁶ He positions the individual actor and society in an order grounded in reason whose source is divine. We do not live in a “chaos;” we live in a “cosmos” with moral law, rights, and duties to which both men and the gods are subject. Admittedly, most humans will know little of this law, but our capacity to reason will provide an opportunity to grasp pieces. Through education, experience, and relationships we can cultivate a more mature use of this reason which, in turn, will lead to greater discernment about right and wrong action.

It may initially appear as though Cicero’s grounding of law in human reason would preclude anything universal, but that conclusion is a product of modern currents of thought. It is not Cicero’s view. For him, justice is not subjective or contingent, nor does it depend upon popular assent and self-​interest. Right reason leads us to do what is honorable irrespective of whether we’re held accountable to a judge or witnesses, or of whether such action is sanctioned by popular opinion.⁷ Cicero says: “There is one, single, justice. It binds together human society and has been established by one, single, law. That law is right reason in commanding and forbidding.” Furthermore, Cicero explains, justice would crumble without the support of nature:

Furthermore, because we naturally desire the company and affection of others, we moderate our self-​interest to avoid isolation and loneliness. The common human capacity to use reason is evidence for our participation in nature and our gateway to understanding that same nature. This, for Cicero, is cause for great hope because no one reasons in an alternate reality. “I simply state this basic fact: nature has given to mankind such a compulsion to do good, and such a desire to defend the well-​being of the community, that this force prevails over all the temptations of pleasure and ease”⁹ Using the gifts of oratory, education, and the experience of political life especially, Cicero is hopeful that humans can move toward greater harmony and ethical maturity.

Critics of a natural law approach will quickly point out difficulties, including cultural differences and the risk that some may claim to have “privileged access” to the “right version” of natural law and use that claim to assert authority. Cultural diversity across time and place and the reality of genuinely irreconcilable differences seem to preclude the existence of any universality in the realm of law and morality.

Cicero dismisses this critique by extending its “logic” to the kinds of biological universality we readily see. Do senses and basic human needs of food and water differ from person to person or nation to nation? Do the means of human reproduction, death, and the centrality of speech differ among peoples? Cicero is not ignorant of distinctives in appearance, nor does he dismiss the need for prudence in law and everyday life. But for Cicero, the universal aspects of humanity, which can be physically verified, extend to ideas about morality and virtue. To put it another way, Cicero denies the existence of neither particularity nor universality, nor does he set them at odds. Natural law does not negate differences, but it helps explain and facilitate how we come to agreements and understanding despite diversity. We clearly perceive, as Francis Hutcheson—an enthusiastic Ciceronian—explained, unity in patterns of human judgment of moral and aesthetic beauty amidst a great diversity of particular opinions.¹⁰

Another response to natural law skeptics, I suggest, is Cicero’s emphasis on friendship. Our common reason, purpose, and humanity are made clearer in our relationships with others, as is our grasp of Nature and nature’s law. These political implications for Cicero’s understanding of friendship are often overlooked.

Cicero’s chief work on friendship was written within the last years of his life. De Amicitia (or Laelius: On Friendship)¹¹ is a compelling philosophic dialogue on the nature of friendship. Central to the argument is that our need for friends does not evince weakness; it is not a necessary evil but a necessary good. “We need friendship all the time, just as much as we need the proverbial prime necessities of life, fire, and water.”¹² This is why Cicero (in the voice of Laelius) “urges” his readers “to place friendship above every other human concern that can be imagined! Nothing else in the whole world is so completely in harmony with nature, and nothing so utterly right, in prosperity and adversity alike.”¹³

How, then, does Cicero define friendship? “Friendship may be defined as a complete identity of feeling about all things in heaven and earth: an identity which is strengthened by mutual goodwill and affection. With the single exception of wisdom, I am inclined to regard it as the greatest of all the gifts the gods have bestowed on mankind.”¹⁴ Cicero’s idea of friendship is not a friendship of utility or mere association, but a relationship with other humans for friendship’s sake and for the good of the friend. Cicero further observes that the joys and pains of life are meant to be shared with friends. He even argues that the love and memory of a deceased friend, in a way, keeps that friend “alive” simply through longing affection.¹⁵

Cicero sees how friendship is truest between good people: those of a mature reason who know and live what is honorable and virtuous. Friendships break down not simply over disagreement, but out of greed or asking a friend to do something that is not honorable. They also break down due to dishonesty, manifested in excessive praise or criticism. Furthermore, for Cicero, Nature points humanity toward friendship, as he says:

Does friendship then point us back to nature? Cicero does not, to my knowledge, say this explicitly, but human beings are the way in which nature knows itself. As David Walsh put it, “The universe needs persons to interpret itself back to itself, not just for the sake of interpreters.”¹⁷ No single person could claim to apprehend all of what that nature is and demands, and in human relationships we learn more deeply about that “Nature” of which are simultaneously a part and yet separate from. Humans are the way in which Nature sees itself as something to be known. Friendship is not merely a natural and necessary relation, it is itself a means by which we, as persons, come to learn and know that nature and, by extension, the natural law. Friendship is not only part of what it means to be human and in harmony with one another and with nature; friendship is needed for us to know nature itself. Reason is essential, but reason does not operate in a vacuum. In requires embodiment and enactment. We use reason in the context of history and relationships, which allows us to grasp what is and is not right according to nature.

Ciceronian thinking directly influenced many of the greatest and most influential minds of Western thought: Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Machiavelli, Luther, Calvin, Grotius, Hume, Locke, John Adams, and James Wilson to name just a few. And, as Michael Hawley has shown, it would be hard now to conceive of a liberal-​republican tradition emerging without the aid of Ciceronian concepts of natural law.

What, then, might this have to do with social poverty and the post-​liberal criticisms mentioned earlier? Through a Ciceronian lens, we can begin to see that while the data may show obvious indicators of prosperity and physical well-​being, a crisis in character and culture will likely lead to the problems described by Seth Kaplan. Institutions matter, to be sure, but for Cicero the character of the people and their leaders matter more. This is a core tenet of republicanism, but there’s no reason for it to be incompatible with liberty.

Modern society emphasizes moral autonomy and digitally mediated relationships. These trends and forces are hostile to genuine friendship because they undermine our recovery of virtue, duty, and natural law. We know each other less deeply and less intimately. We lack knowledge of our place geographically and historically. That isolation contributes to the social poverty, alienation, despair, and dehumanization characteristic of our allegedly advanced and flourishing age.

To be sure, the response to this crisis is not one moral code from a government or democratic majority, imposed on the masses “for their own good.” A better, more Ciceronian response would be to strengthen those institutions—families, churches, local communities, schools—best positioned to facilitate friendships and deep, meaningful relationships amid great diversity. And one way to strengthen those institutions is to reduce governmental interventions of them.

Neither I nor Cicero would claim that the recovery of friendships and friendship-​facilitating institutions, however, are a panacea. From a Christian perspective, the ancients lack an adequate concept of the will and of sin. These concepts would help diagnose social and cultural problems more comprehensively. Cicero’s emphasis on reason, especially, is inadequate without accounting for how will and imagination are essential in human knowledge and action, in friendship, and in our apprehension of what is good, true, and beautiful. And while Cicero has a robust understanding of “things divine,” his appreciation for the spiritual side of friendship and the natural law, or of the importance of revelation, is insufficient. This, of course, is not exactly fair to Cicero. It is like faulting him for being insufficiently Christian before the birth of Christ. Still, it’s important to recognize that in the years between Tully’s death and the emergence of modern liberalism, there is an accumulation of insight, especially from the Christian tradition, made over more than 1500 years, that enhances what the ancient Greeks and Romans left undone.

From at least the days of Lactantius, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine, Cicero has been taken seriously by people of many different religious and philosophical persuasions, and his work has proven itself as an admirable starting point for a tradition of liberty and virtue. If liberalism is to become more than just a tentative, public truce amid spiritual and cultural decay, we would do well to recover the work of Cicero and the tradition he inspired.