What did the founders learn from Cicero?
About this video
A scholar explains what the founders learned from the Roman writer Cicero. Cicero taught that a real republic needs citizens who care about each other's good and are connected in a common purpose, as the word 'commonwealth' suggests. He saw politics as a noble art that helps humans flourish together, not just a struggle for power.
You'll be able to
- explain Cicero's idea of what holds a republic together.
- explain what 'commonwealth' and 'republic' mean.
- contrast politics as a struggle for power with Cicero's view of politics as a noble art.
Key words
- republic
- A government where people make something in common together for a shared purpose.
- commonwealth
- A community organized for the common good; some US states, like Pennsylvania, call themselves this.
- common weal
- The common good or well-being of a whole people.
- flourishing
- Living well and reaching your full potential as a human being.
Transcript
[MUSIC] Cicero wants to talk about what it means to have a real republic and what we owe each other. At the base of all this, there's got to be things that connect us together as citizens, where we actually care about the good of each other. This is all through Cicero and his writings.
I don't know for sure if that's what Jefferson was thinking about, but I know that Jefferson's friend Madison or James Wilson, very much thought about those things. This expression of the American mind, I think, was very much focused on some of the best books that had ever been written on the question of justice and the question of small our Republicanism. Cicero was quite a scholar of the classics, of course. He would take, for example, a platonic dialogue, like the Republic, and write his own version of that, starting out by sitting under some tree or something, thinking about this question of justice, but Cicero brings it. There's a Roman tinge to it. The virtues are all there, but very much this idea of Roman allegiance is there
too. It's all about the connectedness of a people engaged in a common wheel. What is a Commonwealth, for example? We have a couple of states in the United States that are not states, literally, they're commonwealths, and Pennsylvania is one, my old stomping ground. I think what it means is making something in common together. There's a sense in which that's what Republic means.
It's making this association together and for some purpose. Cicero is all about those big questions of why we would even come together in the first place and what our responsibilities as human beings are to each other and how politics is really a noble science that helps us understand those things. Here, we think of politics. It can be pretty down and dirty. Politics can be all about power. It can be all about how one person gets something from another just for their own advantage. It's all those things. It can be very sharp like, but politics is also that art and science that's meant to elevate human beings to be the best that we can be. Though we can't be that way just by ourselves. We need each other to become fully flourishing and to pursue happiness.
Cicero really focuses on those things, and he's a fabulous writer and a fabulous teacher. By reading these works lately, I cannot say enough about something that I think I've neglected a little, but it's not something I've focused on in my scholarship, and now I'm going to go back and do more of that. I recommend this to high school students all across America. I think they will find a very different picture and story than what they hear today about politics, and it might mean something to them. It might mean something to this country if it means something to them. [MUSIC]
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