To this passion for discovering truth there is added a hungering, as it were, for independence, so that a mind well-moulded by Nature is unwilling to be subject to anybody save one who gives rules of conduct or is a teacher of truth or who, for the general good, rules according to justice and law. This text-based PDF or EBook was created from the HTML version of this book and is part of the Portable Library of Liberty. [6] Although these truths are so self-evident that the subject does not call for discussion, still I have discussed it in another connection. Adopted by the fourth-century Christian humanists, it became transmuted into the moral code of the high Middle Ages. But we possess no substantial, life-like image of true Law and genuine Justice; a mere outline sketch is all that we enjoy. [54] For since the reproductive instinct is by Nature’s gift the common possession of all living creatures, the first bond of union is that between husband and wife; the next, that between parents and children; then we find one home, with everything in common. In this pursuit, which is both natural and morally right, two errors are to be avoided: first, we must not treat the unknown as known and too readily accept it; and he who wishes to avoid this error (as all should do) will devote both time and attention to the weighing of evidence. Cicero wrote On Obligations (De Officiis) in late 44 BC after the assassination of Julius Caesar to provide principles of behavior for aspiring politicians. For we are all attracted and drawn to a zeal for learning and knowing; and we think it glorious to excel therein, while we count it base and immoral to fall into error, to wander from the truth, to be ignorant, to be led astray. And so, when we have leisure from the demands of business cares, we are eager to see, to hear, to learn something new, and we esteem a desire to know the secrets or wonders of creation as indispensable to a happy life. [17] For these reasons it is unlawful either to weigh true morality against conflicting expediency, or common morality, which is cultivated by those who wish to be considered good men, against what is profitable; but we every-day people must observe and live up to that moral right which comes within the range of our comprehension as jealously as the truly wise men have to observe and live up to that which is morally right in the technical and true sense of the word. [53] Then, too, there are a great many degrees of closeness or remoteness in human society. Every treatise on duty has two parts: one, dealing with the doctrine of the supreme good; the other with the practical rules by which daily life in all its bearings may be regulated. When these are modified under changed circumstances, moral duty also undergoes a change and it does not always remain the same. [37] There is extant, too, a letter of the elder Marcus Cato to his son Marcus, in which he writes that he has heard that the youth has been discharged by the consul, when he was serving in Macedonia in the war with Perseus. BOOK I. And therefore we may follow the Stoics, who diligently investigate the etymology of words; and we may accept their statement that “good faith” is so called because what is promised is “made good,” although some may find this derivation rather farfetched. Now, you will be happy that at this time On Obligations PDF is available at our online library. So, then, it is truth that is, as it were, the stuff with which this virtue has to deal and on which it employs itself. [58] Now, if a contrast and comparison were to be made to find out where most of our moral obligation is due, country would come first, and parents; for their services have laid us under the heaviest obligation; next come children and the whole family, who look to us alone for support and can have no other protection; finally, our kinsmen, with whom we live on good terms and with whom, for the most part, our lot is one. It explores the apparent tensions between honorable conduct and expediency in public life. But the very essence of propriety is found in the division of virtue which is now under discussion (Temperance). For he who posits the supreme good as having no connection with virtue and measures it not by a moral standard but by his own interests—if he should be consistent and not rather at times over-ruled by his better nature, he could value neither friendship nor justice nor generosity; and brave he surely cannot possibly be that counts pain the supreme evil, nor temperate he that holds pleasure to be the supreme good. And this is the foundation of civil government, the nursery, as it were, of the state. [99] We should, therefore, in our dealings with people show what I may almost call reverence toward all men—not only toward the men who are the best, but toward others as well. Download Pg Walsh On Obligations doc. Download Full PDF Package. In this example he effectively teaches us all to bestow even upon a stranger what it costs us nothing to give. [30] For, if merely, for one’s own benefit one were to take something away from a man, though he were a perfectly worthless fellow, it would be an act of meanness and contrary to Nature’s law. Constructed to judge of senatorial, whence are such! On Duties is in the form of an extended letter from Cicero to his twenty-one-year-old son, Marcus, who is, at the time, studying in Athens. De Officiis (On Duties or On Obligations) is a 44 BC treatise by Marcus Tullius Cicero divided into three books, in which Cicero expounds his conception of the best way to live, behave, and observe moral obligations. In no other particular are we farther removed from the nature of beasts; for we admit that they may have courage (horses and lions, for example); but we do not admit that they have justice, equity, and goodness; for they are not endowed with reason or speech. [36] As for war, humane laws touching it are drawn up in the fetial code of the Roman People under all the guarantees of religion; and from this it may be gathered that no war is just, unless it is entered upon after an official demand for satisfaction has been submitted or warning has been given and a formal declaration made. But when the young man out of love for the service stayed on in the field, his father wrote to Popilius to say that if he let him stay in the army, he should swear him into service with a new oath of allegiance, for in view of the voidance of his former oath he could not legally fight the foe. download 1 file . New here is his exploration in §107 of the difference between the universal nature and particular nature with which each person is endowed.]. [69] Owing to the low ebb of public sentiment, such a method of procedure, I find, is neither by custom accounted morally wrong nor forbidden either by statute or by civil law; nevertheless it is forbidden by the moral law [law of nature (naturae lege)]. From this attitude come greatness of soul and a sense of superiority to worldly conditions. Cicero mainly focuses on the differences between doing things that are honorable and doing things that are beneficial to oneself, greatly different actions in any situations. We should, therefore, adopt these principles and always be contributing something to the common weal. It is from these elements that is forged and fashioned that moral goodness which is the subject of this inquiry—something that, even though it be not generally ennobled, is still worthy of all honour and by its own nature, we correctly maintain, it merits praise even though it be praised by none. But of all the bonds of fellowship, there is none more noble, none more powerful than when good men of congenial character are joined in intimate friendship; for really, if we discover in another that moral goodness on which I dwell so much, it attracts us and makes us friends to the one in whose character it seems to dwell. For if we bring a certain amount of propriety and order into the transactions of daily life, we shall be conserving moral rectitude and moral dignity. But if there shall be obligations already incurred, so that kindness is not to begin with us, but to be requited, still greater diligence, it seems, is called for; for no duty is more imperative that that of proving one’s gratitude. Copyright ©2003 – 2021, For he who, under the influence of anger or some other passion, wrongfully assaults another seems, as it were, to be laying violent hands upon a comrade; but he who does not prevent or oppose wrong, if he can, is just as guilty of wrong as if he deserted his parents or his friends or his country. [22] But since, as Plato has admirably expressed it, we are not born for ourselves alone, but our country claims a share of our being, and our friends a share; and since, as the Stoics hold, everything that the earth produces is created for man’s use; and as men, too, are born for the sake of men, that they may be able mutually to help one another; in this direction we ought to follow Nature as our guide, to contribute to the general good by an interchange of acts of kindness, by giving and receiving, and thus by our skill, our industry, and our talents to cement human society more closely together, man to man. First, therefore, we must discuss the moral—and that, under two sub-heads; secondly, in the same manner, the expedient; and finally, the cases where they must be weighed against each other. [68] Now the law disposes of sharp practices in one way, philosophers in another: the law deals with them as far as it can lay its strong arm upon them; philosophers, as far as they can be apprehended by reason and conscience. And among our countrymen justice has been observed so conscientiously in this direction, that those who have given promise of protection to states or nations subdued in war become, after the custom of our forefathers, the patrons of those states. Book 1, understandably emphasizing the importance of philosophy bearing fruit in form of moral guidance, explains the discerning of the way or law of nature in the inclinations to the virtues in human beings. [23] The foundation of justice, moreover, is good faith;—that is, truth and fidelity to promises and agreements. To proceed beyond the universal bond of our common humanity, there is the closer one of belonging to the same people, tribe, and tongue, by which men are very closely bound together; it is a still closer relation to be citizens of the same city-state; for fellow-citizens have much in common—forum, temples colonnades, streets, statutes, laws, courts, rights of suffrage, to say nothing of social and friendly circles and diverse business relations with many. With the foregoing exposition, I think it is clear what the nature is of what we term propriety. The following questions are illustrative of the first part: whether all duties are absolute; whether one duty is more important than another; and so on. ], Bold numbers in brackets indicate the standard divisions in Cicero’s texts in which are found in whole or part the sections reproduced here. If, therefore these schools should claim to be consistent, they could not say anything about duty; and no fixed, invariable, natural rules of duty can be posited except by those who say that moral goodness is worth seeking solely or chiefly for its own sake. Although these four are connected and interwoven, still it is in each one considered singly that certain definite kinds of moral duties have their origin: in that category, for instance, which was designated first in our division and in which we place wisdom and prudence, belong the search after truth and its discovery; and this is the peculiar province of that virtue. A common property of all creatures is also the reproductive instinct (the purpose of which is the propagation of the species) and also a certain amount of concern for their offspring. This is Cicero’s major ethical writing and his final philosophical work, done in the last year and a half of his life. For no phase of life, whether public or private, whether in business or in the home, whether one is working on what concerns oneself alone or dealing with another, can be without its moral duty; on the discharge of such duties depends all that is morally right, and on their neglect all that is morally wrong in life. For there is a bond of fellowship—although I have often made this statement, I must still repeat it again and again—which has the very widest application, uniting all men together and each to each. [16] For the more clearly anyone observes the most essential truth in any given case and the more quickly and accurately he can see and explain the reasons for it, the more understanding and wise he is generally esteemed, and justly so. And that friendship is sweetest which is cemented by congeniality of character. [31] But occasions often arise, when those duties which seem most becoming to the just man and to the “good man,” as we call him, undergo a change and take on a contrary aspect. Liberty Fund, Inc. All rights reserved. Then follow the bonds between brothers and sisters, and next those of first and then of second cousins; and when they can no longer be sheltered under one roof, they go out into other homes, as into colonies. These virtues in their broadest significance include all human obligations,1 and form a series of divisions, under one or another of which may be classed every specific duty. He explicitly follows, to the degree that makes sense to him, a text by the modified Stoic philosopher, Panaetius, who had direct impact in the previous century on the statesmen Scipio and Laelius. [102] The appetites, moreover, must be made to obey the reins of reason and neither allowed to run ahead of it nor from listlessness or indolence to lag behind; but people should enjoy calm of soul and be free from every sort of passion. Therefore, inasmuch as in each case some of those things which by nature had been common property became the property of individuals, each one should retain possession of that which has fallen to his lot; and if anyone appropriates to himself anything beyond that, he will be violating the laws of human society. [In Book 2 Cicero has explored the appeal, from the justifiable to the excessive, of the useful or expedient.
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