Cicero’s Challenge

Cicero’s central claim in On Duties (De Officiis) concerns the conduct of an actor. Let’s call the actor Jim. The claim is that when Jim, in acting, confronts different and mutually exclusive alternatives—action A, action B, action C—the morally best alternative is best for Jim. Thus, if some larger good depends on Jim sacrificing his pinky, or his arm, or his child, or his own life, Jim’s making that sacrifice is good for Jim.

Cicero’s ethics are not specific to some particular Jim. Cicero addresses all of us. He’s saying: The action that’s best for you is the action that best promotes the good of the whole of humankind. Always.

If we chatted with Cicero, we might readily concede a general correspondence between the good of the whole and the good of the actor. But we would likely take exception to Cicero’s insistence that the claim always holds. We might say that in some cases, surely, the claim does not hold. In an extreme case, Jim might step up and sacrifice his life to do what is best for the whole. But does Jim need to be told, also: “And it is good for you to do so”? Shouldn’t Cicero, instead, simply applaud Jim and say: “Jim generously sacrificed his own good for a larger good”? After all, isn’t sacrifice about doing something that is not good for you?

Cicero’s claim about these corresponding goods is the central claim of On Duties. The claim is insisted upon throughout the work. The bold and complex nature of the claim is surely one reason why On Duties has been one of the most influential works of Western civilization. On Duties is Cicero’s most famous work.

Contemplating Cicero’s claim is worthwhile for anyone who aspires to be more virtuous. In particular, it is worthwhile to those who are active in moral and political discourse, including classical liberals. Sifting through understandings of “the good of the actor” can help one ponder one’s own motivations to be active in political discourse. It can help one to critically examine whether certain delimited interests sometimes lead one away from the good of the whole and even from one’s own larger good. Also, an enriched understanding of the good of the actor may move one to the civic virtue that Cicero promotes, much as Benjamin Constant promoted the exercise of our “ancient liberty,” meaning our ability to participate in political affairs. Modern liberty will not be sustained without wise, courageous, and sacrificial exercise of our ancient liberties of political engagement.

The Latin term, as well as its cognates, that Cicero uses in speaking of the good of the actor is utile. The term was translated by Walter Miller and others as “expediency.” (The Miller translation is online at Gutenberg and quoted here.)

Before we get to the main discussion, three clarifications may help.

The good of the actor: Active, not passive: When we talk about the good of the actor, Jim, we presuppose that Jim is in an active situation, not a passive situation. The distinction makes all the difference: Suppose a fire breaks out in Jim’s apartment complex and he has time to decide whether he will direct his efforts to saving his dog or to saving a group of people who urgently need help. Cicero would say that Jim’s good would suffer if Jim opted to save his dog. If we changed the situation to passive, however, with Jim away from the crisis entirely and someone else the rescuer, Cicero would not insist that the rescuer’s helping the people, instead of Jim’s dog, was better for Jim (as compared to having saved Jim’s dog but not the people). In the active case and if Jim chose to save his dog, Jim would suffer in the knowledge that he made such a choice. A passive Jim, who makes no such choice, is entitled to let his dog loom larger in his well-​being than some people with whom he is scarcely acquainted. When we talk about the good of the actor, it is always with regard to the active situation, or the action the actor is undertaking.

A triple correspondence: Cicero claims that there is a correspondence between the good of the actor and something else. That something else is, in Latin, honestum. Translations of honestum include good conduct, propriety, moral rectitude, and rightness.

Cicero affirms that good conduct corresponds to the good of the whole. You might think of this correspondence as one between a deontological view and a consequentialist view: our duties are to pursue the actions that promote beneficial consequences for the whole of humankind. We develop our understandings of duties and beneficial consequences each so as to maintain a correspondence between them. The approach embraces both deontology and consequentialism in one encompassing outlook. Both are needed, like a set of wings. A creature cannot fly with just one wing.

Now, the provocative claim in Cicero is his affirmation that an actor’s duties or moral obligations, which correspond to the actions that benefit the good of the whole, in turn correspond to the good of the actor. When Cicero argues that honestum corresponds to the good of the actor, he is, in effect, bringing into correspondence three goods: (1) good conduct, (2) the good of the whole, and (3) the good of the actor.

Here, I variously use “good conduct” and “the good of the whole,” but understand that they are like a set of wings. I am treating Cicero’s honestum as that set of wings and probing Cicero’s claim that that set of wings corresponds with the good of the actor.

Cicero’s challenge is about understandings (including, of probabilities): Cicero writes of “the divine mind” and “God” (singular, universal). What such a beholder comprehends is far above what any man can comprehend. Cicero allows that fortuna plays a role and sometimes arrests the usual or probable consequences of an action. Thus, the divine mind may behold and even anticipate a vagary that prevents one’s good conduct from best conducing to the good of the whole.

Cicero’s challenge may now be stated more finely: Cicero challenges Jim to develop his understandings jointly, such that his understanding of what would advance the good of the whole corresponds to his understanding of what would advance his own good. On Duties may be seen as Cicero reassuring us of the viability of sustaining such an approach to life in a virtuous way. Indeed, he suggests that such an approach is essential to virtue.

Now, let’s turn to different formulations of the good of the actor.

On Duties is divided into three Books. Book I elaborates good conduct/​moral rectitude/​propriety (honestum). It is here that Cicero indicates that good conduct corresponds with the good of the whole. Book II elaborates expediency/​the good of the actor (utile), and how it is achieved. Book III elaborates on seeming conflicts between good conduct and the good of the actor, and here again Cicero insists that, despite the seeming conflicts, good conduct corresponds with the good of the actor.

When Cicero first introduces expediency, he speaks of actions “conducive to comfort and happiness in life, to the command of means and wealth, to influence, and to power, by which they may be able to help themselves and their friends.” Book II is largely devoted to certain delimited interests of the actor, such as health, comfort, security, wealth, family life, friendships, and basic public respect. The gist of Book II is along the lines of the prudential saying, “Honesty is the best policy.” That is, honestum serves such delimited interests. He explains, for example, that the best way to succeed in business or a career is moral rectitude and dependability; that is how a reputation for uprightness is attained. The delimited interests of the actor (Jim) are shown in the following image.

In the image above, the delimited interests are rather plain and accurate. There would not be much disagreement about what constitutes Jim’s comfort, for example. We share a common understanding of those interests. It is when parts of Jim’s interest grow more spiritual that our understandings may differ.

Book II takes up such delimited interests as comfort, wealth, and friendships, these come to be seen as but parts of the whole good of the actor. Book III, about seeming conflicts between expediency and moral rectitude, then indicates that the whole good of the actor goes beyond such delimited interests. Cicero teaches the reader to understand his own good as something larger than such delimited interests, something that entails wider ethical and spiritual concerns. He insists that purported expediency is often only “the false semblance of expediency.” I now add to the image the actor’s understanding of his own whole good:

Next, we recognize that even after we counsel Jim we might not agree entirely with Jim’s understanding of his own good. We might think that Jim is too careerist for his own good, or too vain, or too decadent. We might think Jim is too complacent. Let’s add our understanding of Jim’s whole good:

Finally, Cicero gives a place for a divine beholder. In Book III, Cicero gives the example of someone involved in a friend’s case in court or politics. Jim has taken an oath of truthful testimony and sits in judgment of his friend. Jim’s country’s interest, says Cicero, is served by Jim’s impartiality in being truthful. Jim’s concern for his companion is a definite part of Jim’s good, however. Cicero writes: “When he [Jim] comes to pronounce the verdict under oath, he should remember that he has God as his witness—that is, as I understand it, his own conscience, than which God himself has bestowed upon man nothing more divine.”

Notice that Cicero implies a relationship between the conscience and God, the divine beholder. Clearly, Cicero is suggesting that the path upward runs through the conscience. Cicero goes on to say: “When we are weighing what seems to be expedient in friendship against what is morally right, let apparent expediency be disregarded and moral rectitude prevail; and when in friendship requests are submitted that are not morally right, let conscience and scrupulous regard for the right take precedence of the obligations of friendship.”

Let’s add God’s understanding:

Our diagram shows multiple conceptions of Jim’s good. The image is not meant to suggest that God concurs with Jim or us about Jim’s good, but only that God knows how we understand matters and incorporates that into his understanding.

There will be disagreement, especially as regards the spiritual parts of Jim’s good. Regarding Jim’s good, there is a knowledge problem, even for Jim. And if Jim is especially self-​deluded, the knowledge problem for him is made even greater.

One way to sustain a correspondence between expediency and good conduct is to adjust your understanding of expediency to match your understanding of good conduct.

But another way to sustain correspondence is to adjust your understanding of good conduct to match your understanding of expediency.

In Books II and III of On Duties, Cicero generally presses readers to adjust their understanding of expediency. He wants to push readers to not neglect, even to actively pursue, higher spiritual parts of their good, and not let their pursuits of wealth, career, and comfort warp their understanding of their own good. Thus, it is primarily understandings of expediency that Cicero makes plastic, not understandings of good conduct.

There are, however, a couple of spots where Cicero suggests that our understanding of good conduct may be informed by our practical pursuits and be adjusted accordingly. So, he does sometimes suggest that the adjustment is with understandings of good conduct. He says that breaking a promise may be morally right in exceptional situations, writing, “there are many things which in and of themselves seem morally right, but which under certain circumstances prove to be not morally right.”

On Duties was written in haste and in jeopardy; Cicero was killed by political enemies the following year, 43 BC. Cicero writes On Duties with rambling ebullience and yet also with a resoluteness for his central contention that honestum is never at odds with utile. It hardly seems fair to criticize the work in light of its context. But if there were one way I think it could have been better, it is that Cicero could have conceded more on the plasticity of one’s understanding of good conduct in light of one’s personal knowledge of the good of the actor. Although Cicero writes, “we are not required to sacrifice our own interests and surrender to others what we need for ourselves” and authorizes one to pursue his own interest “as far as he may without injury to his neighbour’s” (154), he does not emphasize enough that you are part of the whole and hence that improving your part improves the whole. There is not enough in the book about remaining focused, husbanding your energies, picking your battles, and making practical compromises so as to sustain the limited good that you can deliver by transcending what, on a simplistic view, would seem morally right. Cicero, however, may have wanted to avoid saying things that readers might seize upon to rationalize evasions of their social duties.

So, Cicero urges you to the conviction that you are to sustain correspondence between your own good and your doing what is morally right. Part of the argument is that good conduct pays in terms of the delimited interests shown in our diagram in green—honesty is the best policy—argued chiefly in Book II. But the bigger part of the argument, and the move that makes a strong version of the conviction coherent and sustainable, comes mainly in Book III, where Cicero points to the more spiritual parts of your own good.

That move can be thought of in two ways. Both ways involving a God-​like beholder, the main features of which are super-​knowledge and universal benevolence. Smith’s “impartial spectator,” in the highest sense of that expression, is such a beholder; and my interpretation of Cicero is a Smithian interpretation. If both ways to make the conviction of Cicero’s correspondence viable depend on the notion of a divine beholder, it would mean that Ciceronian ethics depend on such a notion, just as Smithian ethics depend on the notion of the impartial spectator in the highest sense of that expression.

Both ways also involve a sense of the eternal, if not a theistic conviction of the eternal.

The first way to make a conviction of Cicero’s correspondence work is indicated by Cicero in the quotation above about God and conscience. Smith animates the conscience as a being with whom you find sympathy, calling the conscience “the man within the breast.” He then explains that the man within the breast is a “representative” of the impartial spectator in the God-​like sense of that expression. He also indicated that the man within the breast is a “vicegerent” of that impartial spectator. Your only way up is by way of the conscience, which conveys approval or disapproval of your conduct. Cicero presupposes that people have an interest in avoiding the disapproval of their conscience. That interest is part of the actor’s good; thus, Cicero brings your relationship with your conscience into expediency. Next, Cicero teaches that we should make that interest, i.e., approval from our conscience, loom relatively large in our understanding of our own good. There are two ways to increase the relative weight of conscience. One is to make it wax: Pursue virtue because it is joyful, dwarfing worldly interests such as creature comforts and diversions. The other is to make those other interests wane: Pursue virtue because, in fact, you have nothing better to do. Virtue may not make you enormously joyful, but that other stuff will leave you even less so. As Cicero says in the quotation at the head of this piece, choosing comfort etc. over against the good is demoralizing. If life is a sickness, virtue is the best medicine.

The second way to make conviction of Cicero’s correspondence work subsumes the first way and is thus a compound of the first plus an additional element. The second way is more fully theistic, for its beholderism involves more than super-​knowledge and universal benevolence: It involves a sense of divine justice, as in the hereafter. This second way holds that when you exploit opportunities to advance certain delimited interests in this life, you will pay for it elsewise. What is good for you may not correspond to what is good for You. In On Old Age, Cicero writes about death and the immortal soul, and suggests divine justice in the hereafter:

At the end of On Old Age, Cicero confesses that he is unsure: “[I]f we are not to be immortal, it is nevertheless what a man must wish.” He sustains the beholderist pattern of thought and sentiment. He offers remarks that resonate with the idea of the Christian sojourner:

If life is a sojourn at an inn, we nonetheless have a lifetime of work to do, and Cicero urges us to virtuous activity. Wise classical liberals have argued that liberty depends on virtue. Cicero and Smith imply that virtue depends on a beholder, if only notional. And thusly, Alexis de Tocqueville could conclude that the spirit of liberty depends on the spirit of religion. They stand and fall together.