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Chapter 7 - Free Will and the Forum

from Part II - The Philosophy of Voluntas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2022

Lex Paulson
Affiliation:
Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique, Morocco
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Summary

At the beginning of the debate over free will, freedom is nowhere to be found. In the Hellenistic period, the question of human autonomy is not one of freedom (eleutheria) but instead, given the nature of the universe, what is “up to us” (eph’emin) and thus left to our choice (prohairesis). It is Cicero and the Epicurean poet Lucretius who first turn the debate into one specifically over man’s freedom from fate. But Cicero’s idea of the will’s libertas – its opportunity to conquer vice and win honor – is very different from that of Lucretius in De rerum natura, a text Cicero read and may even have edited. De fato, one of the last in his corpus, returns to the question of a libera voluntas explicitly to refute the Epicurean doctrine of the swerve (clinamen) and their abandonment of civic duty. For Cicero, free will is the locus of public virtue, the justification of “praise and honors,” and the power to strengthen ourselves against natural vice. Cicero’s letters reveal, in turn, that this technical treatise on fate has decidedly political stakes for the Roman Republic.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cicero and the People’s Will
Philosophy and Power at the End of the Roman Republic
, pp. 169 - 185
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Free Will and the Forum
  • Lex Paulson, Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique, Morocco
  • Book: Cicero and the People’s Will
  • Online publication: 24 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009082587.010
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  • Free Will and the Forum
  • Lex Paulson, Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique, Morocco
  • Book: Cicero and the People’s Will
  • Online publication: 24 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009082587.010
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Free Will and the Forum
  • Lex Paulson, Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique, Morocco
  • Book: Cicero and the People’s Will
  • Online publication: 24 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009082587.010
Available formats
×