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On Duties

Cicero/44 BCE / Classical Antiquity
DutyHonor And ExpediencyJusticePublic Life

Ethics in the Roman philosophy tradition, oriented around duty and honor and expediency.

Written in 44 BCE for his son Marcus, Cicero's On Duties adapts Greek ethical traditions, especially Stoic thought, into a Roman account of honorable action. It examines duty in public and private life, the apparent conflict between virtue and advantage, and the obligations that bind citizens, friends, and statesmen.

234 excerpts/3 sections
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Chapters

The structural skeleton of the work

Book I

Book I

106 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Virtue17 excerptsDuty16 excerptsJustice15 excerptsEthics10 excerptsReason10 excerpts

Reason's Future Gaze

But between man and beast there is this essential difference, that the latter, moved by sense alone, adapts himself only to that which is present in place and time, having very little cognizance of the past or the future. Man, on the other hand — because he is possessed of reason, by which he discerns consequences, sees the causes of things, understands the rise and progress of events, compares similar objects, and connects and associates the future with the present — easily takes into view the whole course of life, and provides things necessary for it.

Book II

Book II

55 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Virtue10 excerptsJustice8 excerptsWealth6 excerptsGenerosity5 excerptsHuman Nature5 excerpts

Contempt for Fortune

Life, death, riches, poverty, most violently agitate the great mass of mankind. When men with a lofty and large soul look down on these experiences, whether prosperous or adverse, while any great and honorable object of endeavor proposed to them converges and concentrates their whole being in its pursuit, who can fail to admire in them the splendor and beauty of virtue? This contempt of the mind for outward fortunes thus excites great admiration; and most of all, justice, for which one virtue men are called good, seems to the multitude a quality of marvellous excellence, — and not without good reason; for no one can be just, who dreads death, pain, exile, or poverty, or who prefers their opposites to honesty.

Book III

Book III

73 excerpts

Top themes in this chapter

Ethics28 excerptsJustice18 excerptsVirtue13 excerptsExpediency9 excerptsDuty8 excerpts

Theft Worse Than Death

For loftiness and largeness of soul, and therewith affability, justice, kindness, are more in accordance with nature than pleasure, than life, than wealth, to despise which and to count them as naught when compared with the common good is the token of a great and lofty mind. To take aught from another for one's own benefit is, then, more opposed to nature than death, or pain, or any other adverse experience. At the same time, it is more in accordance with nature to assume the greatest labors and discomforts for the preservation and succor of all nations, were it possible, imitating that Hercules whom human gratitude, commemorative of his services, exalted to a seat among the gods, than to live in isolation, not only free from all causes of disturbance, but even in the fulness of sensual gratification, abounding in resources of every kind, nay, even surpassing all others in beauty and in strength.