Cicero's Concept of the Commonwealth

In the dialogue, other characters serve as sounding boards, or even voices of dissent; for example, Philus, based on a stoic Greek philosopher named Carneades, contradicts Scipio's (Cicero's) views on the nature of justice.

Cicero regarded the commonwealth as an expression of a larger philosophical ideal than that of the Greek city-state, a model that had served the political and philosophical visions of Aristotle and Plato. In the period following Aristotle's death in 323 B.C., a new ideal of social structure was needed to encompass a universal community as broad as humanity itself. Because the Romans were in the business of empire building, the city-state concept would need to be abandoned in favor of a model which could encompass continents. Cicero's concept of the commonwealth offered a more universal approach to the concepts of justice and law in society.

As Sabine and Smith point out in their excellent translation and commentary of Cicero's On the Commonwealth, "when Aristotle died, the city-state had already ceased to hold a place of first-rate importance in the political development of European society

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mpelling men toward rectitude, and recalling them from wrong" (48). Sabine and Smith call upon Carlyle's translation of On the Commonwealth to note, "By an implicit identification of reason with God, Cicero declares in a striking phrase that the true law is an expression of the purpose and rule of God" (48). Their own translation of the dialogue affirms that "it is at once the criterion by which human legislation should be judged, and the source from which it springs" (48). According to Cicero, if true law, being natural, is divinely inspired, then justice, which is the implementation of just laws, must also be divine. In Book III of the dialogues, even Philus takes the position that "justice--assuming that it exists--is the only virtue pre-eminently unselfish and generous, and only a man who is inspired by justice prefers the interests of all men to his own, and is born to serve others rather than himself" (Cicero 203). Philus also acknowledges that Plato and Aristotle would not hesitate to extol the virtue of justice, as it was the desire for justice that prompted them to examine it in the first place. However, according to Philus, social justice has little to do with natural justice, providing that it exists (Cicero 203).
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Approximate Word count = 1668
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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