Cicero and Stoicism :: History Philosophy Philosophical Cicero

Cicero, was truly a humanness of the state. His writings also show us he was equally a man of philosophical temperament and affluence. Yet at times these ii forces within Cicero clash and contradict with the early stoic teachings. Cicero gradually espouse the stoic lifestyle but not altogether entirely, and this is somewhat collect to the fact of what it was like to be a Roman of the time. The morals of frequent Rome conflicted with some of the stoic ideals that were set by early stoicism. Thus, Cicero changed the demo of stoicism by romanizing it redefining stoicism into the middle phase. Of Cicero it can be express he possessed a bias towards roman life and doctrine. For Cicero every(prenominal) answer lay within Rome itself, from the ideal governing bole to the place of divination. Cicero does not offer any alternate answers to roman society, which robs him of world truly a unique and bold political philosopher. This is not to ordinate however some of his doctrines are untrue, just that he is somewhat blind by his roman mental pictures and assumptions. The assumptions of Cicero can be noticed when one inspects his affect of the ideal governing body, which he expresses through Scipio (in the commonwealth). Although Cicero presents very convincing arguments for a Composite government, clearly his view is possibly only due towards his notion in the roman structure of government.1 Cicero was limited to roman borders of experience, and this point was better illustrated by his disagreement with Aristotles writings on the decay of states. Cicero was unable to mean on the level of Aristotles logic. He quite simply used roman history as a mapping of the paths of the decay of states. In contrast, Aristotle dumb the underlying forces and influences that transpired when a state degraded. Cicero quite frankly could not run into the forces which Aristotle so eloquently denoted. For Cicero, history offered the only possible paths of outcomes the forces a nd behaviors played unforesightful part on the resulting state.2 A further point of philosophical belief which Cicero contradicted the stoic lifestyle, is religion. Roman tradition conflicted greatly with stoic doctrine, and the two philosophies could neer truly harmonize with one another. This point brought the distinction between the Greek learned world of intellect, and the traditional religious roman patronage. This observation literally draws a line between the two worlds, that of knowledge and reason debate that of tradition and sentiment.