Republicanism

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) is one of those rare names whose work divides the history of philosophy into a before and an after. Before him, political philosophy belonged to the genre of the “mirror of princes” — treatises that prescribed to rulers the classical moral virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance) and obedience to divine law. After him, politics became an autonomous domain, with its own logic, irreducible to morality or theology. This rupture is so decisive that many historians make the birth of modern political philosophy coincide with the writing of The Prince (1513). ...

Why should we obey the State? What makes a law legitimate rather than a mere order imposed by force? In the history of Western philosophy, these questions found their first systematically modern formulation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with three thinkers who changed forever the vocabulary of politics: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The three give radically different answers, but share a method: contractualism — the idea that political legitimacy must be thought from a hypothetical pact among free individuals. ...

Cicero Roman philosopher, orator, and statesman. The most important figure in transmitting Greek philosophy to the Latin world. His eclecticism synthesized Epicureanism, Stoicism, and the skepticism of the New Academy. He coined much of the Latin philosophical vocabulary — essentia, qualitas, moralis — that shaped all subsequent Western philosophy. Key Concepts Natural law: there is a universal moral law, grounded in reason, that transcends the positive laws of each people — the foundation of Western natural law theory Res publica: the republic as “the people’s affair” (res populi); the state is only legitimate when it serves the common good and respects the law Duty (officium): ethical life consists in fulfilling duties arising from reason, human social nature, and the roles each person occupies — systematized in De Officiis Academic probabilism: influenced by the skepticism of the New Academy, he argues that in the absence of certainty we should act according to what seems most probable (verisimile) Humanitas: the ideal of full human formation combining philosophy, rhetoric, and civic virtue; the Roman equivalent of the Greek paideia Highest good (summum bonum): debate among schools — for Stoics, virtue; for Epicureans, pleasure. Cicero leans toward Stoicism but presents arguments from all schools Influenced by Plato and Aristotle — politics, ethics, theory of knowledge Zeno of Citium — Stoicism (cosmopolitanism, natural law, duty) Epicurus — addressed critically Carneades — skepticism of the New Academy Influenced Augustine and all medieval philosophy — Latin vocabulary and natural law Thomas Aquinas — natural law theory Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Rousseau — republican theory Locke and Kant — natural rights and moral duty Renaissance humanism — ideal of humanitas Works On the Republic (De Re Publica, 54 BC); On the Laws (De Legibus, 52 BC); Tusculan Disputations (Tusculanae Disputationes, 45 BC); On Duties (De Officiis, 44 BC); On the Nature of the Gods (De Natura Deorum, 45 BC). ...