CICERO and the NATURAL LAW Walter Nicgorski, University of Notre Dame Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.), prominent Roman statesman and consul, preeminent orator, lawyer, and master of Latin prose, and significant moral and political philosopher, left a substantial written legacy. Within that legacy he gives extensive attention to the natural and thus universal basis of justice and right. In fact, it might fairly be said that his treatment of the natural foundation of right is his most important contribution to moral and political thought: it stands historically at a critical juncture where this idea assumes clearly the language of natural law and comes to exercise a direct and formative influence on leading thinkers from the first centuries of Christianity through the Renaissance. Cicero’s impact, both direct and indirect, on important post-Renaissance thinkers such as Locke, Hume, and Montesquieu was substantial, and through such writers, and often directly, his thought and very phrases reached to America’s founding generations. Thomas Jefferson explicitly names Cicero as one of a handful of major figures who contributed to a tradition “of public right” that informed his draft of the Declaration of Independence and shaped American understandings of “the common sense” basis for the right of revolution.[1] Cicero’s On Duties, highly regarded and influential throughout much of Western history, was regularly present in the libraries of early America. John Adams and James Wilson were notable in the founding period for recalling Cicero and his teaching on “the principles of nature and eternal reason.” Wilson had contributed in important ways to the success of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the subsequent ratification of the Constitution. His important lectures on law in 1790–91, which saw President Washington, Vice President Adams, and Secretary of State Jefferson in attendance at times, gave prominent attention to Cicero on natural law.[2]
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 01:04:41 +0000
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