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Reading Ancient Philosophy: Cicero – evening class
This is a 7 week course by Lisa Eberle
Mondays, 6 – 7pm – starting April 20th at the East Oxford Community Classics Centre
What is the best way to live? What obligations towards other human beings does it entail? And how should answers to these questions inform how we act every day? These are the questions that Cicero addresses in On Duties, and for centuries his answers have influenced the thinking of eminent philosophers, including Kant and Montesquieu.
But On Duties is not simply a treatise concerned with a fundamental philosophical problem. Cicero wrote the work between the assassination of Julius Caesar in March of 44 BC and his own public execution nine months later. He addressed and dedicated his account of the best way to live to his son and intended it as a guide for elite Romans more generally. Following his precepts, Cicero thought, might be able to save the Republic that he saw disintegrating before his own eyes.
As a result, reading Cicero’s On Duties, which this seven-week course sets out to do, not only entails analysing and probing his philosophical arguments in the abstract, but also examining their relationship to the history and politics of Late Republican Rome, the concrete context in which Cicero was making them.
Each week we will focus on an assigned section of On Duties i (15-25 pages each week) that you will be asked to read in translation in preparation for the class. The main goal of the class is to discuss and figure out together what Cicero is saying in the respective sections. You will also be introduced to what other scholars have made of Cicero’s arguments and how they fit within ancient philosophy more generally.
For more information and courses, please visit our website at www.eoccc.org.uk