Margaret Graver (Dartmouth College)
[Formatted title: The Madman’s Choice: Plato and Plato’s Republic in De Re Publica 1.1-12]
This paper will assess Cicero’s self-positioning in the preface to De re publica in relation to Plato (as a historical figure) and Plato’s Republic (as a text) in light of the ancient philosophical debate concerning the contemplative life.
While Cicero may have described himself as “a companion of Plato” in the lost first paragraph of the preface of his de Republica, the extant portion of the text is careful to distinguish Cicero’s authorial stance from the type of intellectual activity he associates with Plato. Much as he admires and emulates Plato, he also criticizes him as representing the βίος θεωρητικός, i.e. the life of pure study exempt from political responsibility. In life, Plato is one of those who “travel for the purposes of study” but shun the dangers of public life (De re publica 1.6; cf. 1.14), just as the philosophers of Plato’s Republic “spend their time in the search for truth” but are deficient in that they “do not get involved in public life except under compulsion” (Off. 1.28). Distancing himself from the Platonic life, Cicero argues for the life of public service (βιός πρακτικός), which, he claims, is grounded in “a need bestowed by nature” (De re publica 1.1; cf. 1.3). He thus aligns himself with the Stoics, consistent advocates of this very position, and likewise with Cato the Elder, whom some regarded as insane (demens) for choosing to serve the state.
As Sean McConnell has argued (in OSAP 2012, 307–49), key elements of the discussion are traceable to the Peripatetic scholar Dicaearchus of Messana. The βίος θεωρητικός debate is explicated especially in Thomas Bénatouïl and Mauro Bonazzi (ed.), Theoria, Praxis, and the Contemplative Life after Plato and Aristotle (Brill, 2012); Cicero’s relation to it by Carlos Lévy in the above volume and in Walter Nicgorski (ed.), Cicero’s Practical Philosophy (Notre Dame, 2012); earlier N. Blößner in Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen 2001, 197–271 and Pierre Boyancé in Latomus 1967, 3–26.