How did Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman statesman and philosopher, influence the Founding generation, the Constitution, and American political thought? Join Scott Nelson, author of Cicero, Politics, and the 21st Century; Benjamin Straumann, author of Crisis and Constitutionalism: Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution; and Caroline Winterer, author of The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910, for a conversation exploring the political ideas of Cicero, his impact on America, and what we can learn from him today. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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This episode was produced by Melody Rowell, Tanaya Tauber, and John Guerra; it was engineered by Center's A/V team. Research was provided by Liam Kerr, John Guerra, and Lana Ulrich.
Participants
Scott B. Nelson is research and strategy advisor at the Austrian Economics Center. His most recent book is Tragedy and History: The German Influence on Raymond Aron’s Political Thought. He has recently completed his next work Cicero, Politics, and the 21st Century, co-authored with Matthew Edwards.
Benjamin Straumann is ERC Professor of History at the University of Zurich, research professor of Classics at New York University, Alberico Gentili Senior Fellow at NYU’s Institute for International Law and Justice. He is the author of several books, including, Crisis and Constitutionalism: Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution, and is currently working on a five-year research project on Cicero’s thought as well as its historical legacy.
Caroline Winterer is Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies, and by courtesy, professor of classics and of education at Stanford University. She is the author of several books, including The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910, and most recently, Time in Maps: From the Age of Discovery to Our Digital Era.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- Scott Nelson and Matthew Edwards, Cicero, Politics, and the 21st Century
- Scott Nelson, “Cicero’s Fragile Trinity,” Law & Liberty blog
- Benjamin Straumann, Crisis and Constitutionalism: Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution
- Benjamin Straumann, "The classics and the Constitution: the smokescreen of republicanism and the creation of the Republic,” OUP Blog
- Benjamin Straumann, “The Origins of Political Order,” OUP Blog
- Caroline Winterer, The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910
- Caroline Winterer, The Mirror of Antiquity: American Women and the Classical Tradition, 1750–1900
- John Adams, Letter to John Quincy Adams (May 18, 1781)
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Commonwealth and On the Laws
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Moral Ends
- National Constitution Center, The Founders' Library, “Cicero: The Tusculan Disputations”
- National Constitution Center, The Founders' Library, “Cicero: On Duties”
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Orator
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, Political Speeches
- National Constitution Center, The Founders' Library ,"Thomas Paine: Common Sense"
- John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of the United States
- John Finnis, "Natural Law Theories," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Juan Comesaña and Peter Klein, "Skepticism," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- National Constitution Center, The Founders' Library, "Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws"
- Plato, The Republic
- National Constitution Center, The Founders' Library, "Polybius: The Histories"
- Jamie Cohen-Cole, "The Creative American: Cold War Salons, Social Science, and the Cure for Modern Society," Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams (January 21, 1812)
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Old Age
Excerpt from Interview: Scott Nelson highlights Cicero's emphasis on persuasion over coercion in republics, the precedence of natural law over majority opinion, and the importance of balance and virtue in creating a just political community, which influenced the natural rights doctrine of the founding fathers.
Scott Nelson: I mean, after all, we pride ourselves in our republics today on the power of persuasion. Not forcing conclusions or outcomes, but rather in persuading other people, because we believe that we all share in reason. That's actually part of Cicero's notion of the natural law that all human beings share in reason, and that actually there is a law that precedes even political community.
So, I think that this is an important point for Cicero because it means that, let's say majority opinion is not necessarily what makes law. It's not just what the masses say. There is actually a universal objective law out there and a just political community is just only insofar as it respects that kind of law.
I think that once you've established that point, it elides rather easily into the natural rights doctrine of the founding fathers, so I don't think you have to make a very great leap from that notion to the notion that there are certain natural rights that are self-evidence that belong to us all, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or life, liberty and property.
I think that another major issue of importance for Cicero in his De Re Publica, for example, is the notion of balance so that was the mixed regime idea. I mean, one of the great issues for the ancient philosophers is, "Well, what exactly is the best regime? Is it a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a democracy?" And, Cicero says, "Well, actually, we want to have a blend of all these things. A blend not just because they can all check each other and balance each other out, but also because every single one of these regimes has certain virtues, and we want to try to harness the virtues of each of them and- and combine them together. So, a democracy's virtue is that it preserves the liberty of the people, and we want to create a free state."
The virtue of a monarchy is that in times of crisis, well, when you need decisions to be made and actions to be taken, then it's much easier for a single individual to take that responsibility and do it than than to have everybody talking with different ideas.
Finally the aristocracy is supposed to provide a moderating kind of influence between the two, and in order for it to do that, I mean, to moderate against the tyranny of one, on the one hand, but also the tyranny of the majority on the other hand, and I think for Cicero, it's important that those people be the best citizens, that they be good citizens, virtuous citizens, because if they're not, then the regime will become corrupt, and then they'll set a bad example for everyone else.
I think that those are, in a nutshell, some of Cicero's ideas.
Benjamin Straumann discusses the influence of Western European republicanism on character education and the challenges of implementing it in large-scale modern states.
Benjamin Straumann: I think speaking from the beating heart of Western European republicanism, namely the small scale Swiss republic, I'm in a good position to talk about this. I mean, I do think there is a bit more focus on this kind of thing especially in Switzerland. But, it also shows it has a bit of a two edged sword.
I mean, in many ways, this kind of character education that is being dished out here also in primary schools like my kids' or there's a bit more attention on these things, but it's a bit like on the small scale ancient republics. It does have a mildly perhaps repressive or constraining aspect to it, and it's very homogenizing in a way that this brings us maybe back to the Cicero discussion or Cicero question.
One reason why the founders were attracted to Cicero, another reason which we may not have talked about sufficiently but which is key in my view, is that the founders, they did away with the king. They wanted to have a republic. Now, republics were just much smaller than the 13 original colonies, and so everyone said, "Read your Montesquieu, yet you just don't get it. You can't have a large-scale, big, territorial state without a king. That just doesn't work."
The founders said, "No, we can. Look, there is actually this huge thing. It's the Roman Republic." the reply is usually, "Yeah, but that thing also collapsed. How are you going to do that?" Then, the reply to that is usually, "Well, but Cicero has kind of an answer to that, too."
So there is a little bit of falling away from virtue talk and all that. Duty is very much, like De Officiis by Cicero, but in De Officiis by Cicero, also, one has to see its always duties, but duties correspond right, so it's a very loyal way of talking about this. If you have a right to something, I have a duty to give it to you. So, you cannot have rights without duties and vice versa.
It's correspondingly a little bit thin, so it's not this full blown character education that you would get in, I don't know, Sparta, for example. So, it is large-scale. There's a lot of different people and so that's one of the reasons why, although the 13 colonies were much smaller than current day United States, they were still much bigger than any of the other ancient city states.
Caroline Winterer discusses the complexity of the concept of happiness in the 18th century.
Caroline Winterer: I think happiness is one of those 18th century key words in the way that liberty and reason is in that it's simultaneously everywhere, and yet we have a hard time pinning down exactly what they meant by it, a little bit like today when we talk about nature. Everybody means something different by it, yet, we all agree that it's something very, very important.
So, in the 18th century, as you've just said, there is a definition of happiness from the ancient world that is all about a kind of inner inner peace. I think of it a little bit as an inner metronome as someone who grew up playing the piano with a task master of a Hungarian piano teacher. There was always a metronome keeping me right in line. That version of happiness is a little bit like that.
There's another one, though, that is in competition, I think, with that inner definition of happiness. When you look at the way the founders deployed happiness in more public documents, they talk about social happiness and public happiness. They often link those words together.
The Declaration of Independence is the most public of public documents, and it's intended, in some sense, as sort of we're going into business document intended for a European audience, saying, "We're no longer under the aegis of Great Britain. We are hanging our shingle out for business. We are telling you what we're all about, and that you can form trade agreements and political alliances with us."
So, if you imagine that they knew life, liberty, and social or public happiness then, then that starts to mean something closer to what we mean by national security, in that it's saying that we need life, we need liberty, but we also need a state that is strong enough that it can protect us from external enemies and internal anarchy, insurgence of various kinds.
I think that it will always remain a mystery what Jefferson mean, 'cause he knew that this document was really intended for this external audience. It's a diplomatic document. Does he mean life, liberty, and internal peace? Or, does he mean life, liberty, and national security for this new and very fragile republic?
I don't think we're ever gonna know, and I don't actually think we need to decide. I think what's important to know as we think about the American context, is that there are these two ideas that are floating in the air of what the happiness of a polity built on the will of the people really needs in order to survive.
What I would love is if every American out there re-visited these 18th century ideas of happiness, because they're not the materialistic hedonism that we have today when we think of happiness, like I need a BMW. Or, I guess, I live in Palo Alto, I need a Tesla. Nothing against Tesla. But, a kind of pursuit of material gain, that's not what Jefferson meant. He meant something much closer to what you were saying, Jeff, and something much closer to what I was saying. But, they're all different from what we think of today.
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