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To: betty boop
Cicero was not a Stoic. He was a patriot, a lawyer, a Consul of Rome, a prolific writer, and was eventually assasinated for his refusal to give up the idea of the Republic. Read his writing (in Latin if possible). "Flight from reason" (if he said it) most likely referred to Caesar and Catalina.
16 posted on 12/08/2002 1:38:22 PM PST by widowithfoursons
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To: widowithfoursons; betty boop; Cicero
My apologies to BB for running down this rabbit track. Still, I find this a fascinating topic and discussed but rarely.

To Voegelin, Cicero had "a pathetic mixture of submission to the Hellenic superiority."

This sentiment seems to be the primary source of Cicero's attitude to politics and theory. A second source we have to see in the narrowness of his personality and the conservatism of a newcomer in the Roman aristocratic society. His narrowness and conservatism made him misunderstand fundamentally the actual state of Rome. The external success of Rome im the imperial struggle was doubtless conditioned by the qualities that distinguished the republic favorably from the conquered rivals. But the fact of the success should not obscure the other fact that the internal phases of Roman evolution are parallel with the Greek, that the Republic was in dissolution like any Greek polis, and that only a lucky convergence of ethnical, geographical, civilizational, and historical factors had tipped the scales for the survival of Rome just long enough to carry the state over into the imperial expansion and then keep it going by the organized plunder of the orbis terrarum. Cicero was blind to the tragedy around him; his attitude toward the new type of political master as personified in Caesar was on the whole negative, though he could not quite escape the fascination of this great personality.

Under these circumstances, the Socratic problem had to remain foreign to his soul. There is no spark of understanding for Plato the founder of a new polis. Plato is for him, in spite of his admiration, a philosopher who expounded an ideal system of government with little practical success. Cicero's ideal is not a philosopher-king but the roman citizen in office who compels men by authority and state power to follow precepts, "of whose validity philosophers find it hard to cinvince even a few by their admonitions." Those who govern a city are preferable even in wisdom to those who are mere experts in public affairs without participation in them (Rep. I.2). Rome is successful;

And, betty boop, "dismiss" was unwarranted. I'll leave you the relish to supply the right adjective : )
25 posted on 12/08/2002 2:04:30 PM PST by cornelis
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