 MastersConnection http://www.mastersconnection.com/index.php/articles/318-cicero 04.11.09 The Ides of March or Cicero’s Natural Law And the Foundation of the American Republic (The Death of Caesar a painting by Vincenzo Camucin) Written by Marian Sardón and Steven Knopp The greatness of Marcus Tullius Cicero has been buried deep in the ruins of ancient history, his eminence all but forgotten in the sands of time. Cicero’s profound impact on world history has been minimized in the eyes of dictators of more recent eras like Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and others who favored another dictator, Julius Caesar, reducing Cicero’s reputation to that of a mere orator. NOTE FROM AUTHORS: "It was important for us to uncover the true figure of Cicero and bring to light why this initiate of the great schools of wisdom has often been mentioned at RSE, and show that his philosophy forms the very pillars upon which the great American Republic was built. Like Cicero’s time two thousand years ago, we are facing a collapse of systems, corruption, tyranny and wars, as we continue to erode the principles of natural law. Will we make a different choice? The champion of the Roman Republic, Cicero, an exceptional jurist and humanist; his work and political thought has been the torch of liberty, justice and freethinking for two thousand years in western history. He died in the late retaliations of the Ides of March, ¬a bloodshed with disastrous consequences for Roman society¬. It is worth reviewing some of the outlines of his work." Cicero was born in Arpinum, south of Rome, in 106 B.C. He excelled as a successful lawyer and very young was appointed as Praetor to fight corruption, to later become a statesman, linguist, orator, philosopher and political theorist. In a Rome plagued by civil wars and dictatorship, he defended the republic against tyranny during his entire political career. He introduced the schools of Greek philosophy in Rome. His humanism, his political and philosophical writings have played a major role throughout our modern history. Cicero’s work was inspired by stoicism although he was fundamentally more eclectic in the way he formulated his line of thought. According to stoic principles, mankind perfects their own nature by following God’s and Man’s law, and when these principles are not respected, human nature is degraded. To Cicero, contemplation and action go hand-in-hand and are essential in order to achieve creative individual genius. Virtue and reason go together, that is, “good thoughts” and “good living” are inextricably combined. Cicero’s moral objective was to commend the traditional Roman virtue of public service and the value of the role of the honorable statesman, in conjunction with the wisdom that he so much loved from Greek philosophy. His political goal was to restore the Republic to its former glory, before Tiberius Graco, and in so doing, to delay the historical clock. Cicero defended a universal human community beyond ethnic differences and a natural law that is the same everywhere and immutably binds every human and every nation. This law emanates from the social and rational nature that is inherent to the human condition. This absolute reason is intuitive and present in all men and women, reason is a divine feature in every human being, and therefore law should derive from reason, since it is the point where god and human converge in one. (Curia Roman Senate/ Photo Credit Judith Geary) Reason is a high criterion that demands knowledge and the consideration of the human condition and its inalienable and fundamentals rights, in the context of welfare and social integration. He argued that a virtuous life required active involvement to improve the well-being of one's community, and feared that a loss of virtue was the root of Rome's difficulties. No legislation that breaks natural law deserves to be defended, because no legislator can make just the unjust by the action of ruling. As Cicero said, “there is only one principle by which men may live one with another, and that this is the same for all and possessed equally by all”. There is no variance across nature, culture, or time. continued at... |
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