Abstract
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC) was the first legal philosopher in history. In Cicero´s thought we can find the Stoic conception of Natural Law, i.e., that Law is derived from God, Nature (Universe) and Human Reason. Indeed, Cicero inherits from Stoicism the Pantheistic view of Natural Law as right Reason in agreement with Nature and God (who is its author, its promulgator and its enforcing judge as well). It is a true Law of universal application, unchanging and everlasting, valid for all nations and all times. While Cicero derived many ideas on Natural Law from the Greeks, he also contributed some key ideas of his own, for instance, that whoever seeks to disobey the Natural Law flees from himself and rejects man´s nature. In other words, when man obeys the Natural Law he is obeying not only a natural and divine rule but also a rule that he gives himself as a fully rational and autonomous legislator. In this piece of research I will focus on the key aspects of Cicero´s Natural Law Theory through three masterpieces of his legal and political thought: De Re Publica, De Legibus and De Officiis, which had great influence over the medieval Christian conception of Natural Law through Lactantius and Thomas Aquinas.
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Notes
- 1.
Of Cicero’s teachers, it will suffice to mention such rhetoricians and orators as Apolonius Molon; philosophers as the Skeptic Philo of Larissa, the Epicurean Phaedrus and the Stoics Diodotus and Posidonius; and jurists of such renown as the two Q. Mucius Scaevola (the Augur and the Pontifex).
- 2.
- 3.
Bretone (1976), 28–40.
- 4.
According to Alfonso Castro, this treatise of Cicero’s served as inspiration to the youngest, most progressive jurists of the day, as for example in the case of his friend Servius Sulpicius Rufus. See Castro-Sáenz (2010), 293.
- 5.
Cicero’s participation in the tribunals owed itself in part to his belief that it was a moral duty as patronus to defend his friends and clientes,as well as the opportunity that legal oratory presented for social and political mobility. See Pina-Polo (2005), 332. According to this reasoning, Richard A. Bauman has written: “Cicero glorifies oratory at the expense of law”. See Bauman (1985), 23. Similarly: Vasaly (2002), 81. Narducci (2009), 310–312.
- 6.
Harries (2006), 153. Actually, Cicero had learned the Twelve Tables by heart as a boy; at Rome, he was a student of Q. Mucius Scaevola the Augur and of the younger Q. Mucius, the Pontifex (De Amicitia 1). For both he retained a lifelong admiration, as seen in his dispute with the young eques and legal expert, C. Trebatius Testa (Ad Familiares, 7.22).
- 7.
De Re Publica, I, 10.
- 8.
- 9.
Castro-Sáenz (2010), 375.
- 10.
Fassò (1966a), 133.
- 11.
Ibid., 134. The essay De Inventione (86 BC) from Cicero’s youth as well as the aforementioned De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum and Tusculanae Disputationes are also of interest despite their indirect connection with legal argument.
- 12.
De Legibus, I, 5, 17.
- 13.
De Inventione, II, 22, 65–68; Topica, 23.89. I have borrowed this quotation from Marcia L. Colish´s book (1985), 88.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
De Officiis, III, 5, 23.
- 16.
De Legibus, I, 6, 19.
- 17.
De Divinis Institutionibus, VI, 8, 6–9.
- 18.
De Re Publica, III, 22, 33.
- 19.
- 20.
De Re Publica, III, 11, 19; De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, III, 20, 67.
- 21.
Digesta, 1, 1, 1, 3.
- 22.
De Officiis, III, 5, 23.
- 23.
- 24.
De Legibus, I, 6, 18.
- 25.
Ibid., I, 15, 42; II, 4, 10.
- 26.
Ibid., I, 16, 43.
- 27.
In accordance with Lactantius’ comment in Book III of De Re Publica, Carneades differentiates between two classes of Justice: Natural and Civil (the first has more to do with prudence than justice, and the second more to do with justice than prudence). See Lactantius, De Divinis Institutionibus, V, 16, 5–13).
- 28.
De Officiis, I, 10, 31.
- 29.
De Legibus, I, 6, 19.
- 30.
- 31.
De Legibus, I, 13, 35.
- 32.
- 33.
See Utchenko (1977), 301.
- 34.
Tusculanae Disputationes, I, 13, 30.
- 35.
See Costa (1964), 50–54.
- 36.
See Navarro Gómez (2009), 39.
- 37.
De Officiis, III, 5, 23.
- 38.
De Haruspicum Responso, XIV, 32.
- 39.
Fassò (1966), 139.
- 40.
De Legibus, I, 5, 16. Tusculanae Disputationes, V, 36, 108: “Patria est ubicumque est bene”.
- 41.
Lactantius, De divinis institutionibus, VI, 8, 6–9.
- 42.
Agustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei, XIV, 23, 2; XIX, 21, 2.
- 43.
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, XVIII, 12.
- 44.
See Nussbaum, M.C., Cultivating Humanity. A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, cit., p. 59.
- 45.
Fassò (1966b), 142–143.
- 46.
- 47.
Employed here is the famous quotation often mistakenly attributed to the Spanish dramatist José Zorrilla, but which appears to have actually been coined by Juan Ruiz de Alarcón and Pierre Corneille.
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Alonso, F.L. (2013). Cosmopolitanism and Natural Law in Cicero. In: Contreras, F. (eds) The Threads of Natural Law. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5656-4_2
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