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WorkCicero

A Treatise on the Chief Good and Evil

Three answers to what a life is finally for — pleasure, virtue alone, virtue with good fortune — each argued by a Roman who held it.

by Cicero322 passages held

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Original title
De finibus bonorum et malorum
First published
45 BCE(aged 61)
Original language
Latin

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Overview

Some Romans told Cicero that philosophy was beneath a man of his standing, and others that anyone serious would read it in Greek, and he answers both before he starts. Roman jurists, he points out, had argued at length over whether a slave woman's child counted as her master's income; his own question is larger. What is the final good, the one thing that everything else in a life is chosen for? He wrote the five books in about six weeks in the summer of 45 BCE, dedicated them to Marcus Brutus, and gave each of three answers its strongest advocate before replying to it. Lucius Torquatus argues for pleasure, Epicurus's answer, at Cicero's villa near Cumae in 50 BCE. One passage of that speech has travelled far beyond the book: its argument that nobody wants pain for itself, scrambled into nonsense, became lorem ipsum, the dummy text of typesetters and designers since the 1960s. Richard McClintock, a Latin scholar at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, traced it back to its source and first published the discovery in 1994. Cato argues for virtue alone, the Stoic answer, in a neighbour's library at Tusculum in 52 BCE. He was Brutus's uncle, and he had killed himself at Utica in April 46 BCE rather than accept Caesar's pardon. The last word goes to Marcus Piso, in Athens in 79 BCE, when Cicero was a student there: virtue, Piso holds, is by far the greatest good, but health and fortune count as well. Cicero's reply to Cato is that Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, took over what the older schools had taught and gave it new names. His reply to Piso demands that Piso prove his central claim, and the book leaves the demand unanswered: the friends walk back into town with the question still open.

Key concepts

What is the 'chief good' the whole book argues about?

It is the final end: the one thing everything else in a life is chosen for, while it is chosen for nothing beyond itself. Its twin, the chief evil, is what everything is finally avoided for. Each school in the book gives a different answer, pleasure, virtue alone, or virtue with bodily and outward goods, and Cicero holds that the whole conduct of life depends on which is right.

What does Epicurus mean by pleasure?

Not only enjoyment in the moment but, above all, the settled state of being free from pain and trouble, which Epicurus counts as the highest pleasure. Cicero objects that the one word is being made to cover two different things, pleasure in motion, like a thirsty man drinking, and pleasure at rest, once the thirst is quenched, and asks which of the two a newborn infant is supposed to be seeking.

Why does every school here begin with newborn animals?

Because a creature not yet taught anything shows what nature itself aims at, so each school reads its answer into the cradle. Epicurus says the newborn seeks pleasure and shuns pain. Cato's Stoics say it first loves itself and wants to keep itself whole. Piso's Old Academy says that love of self grows, as reason develops, into care for the whole human being, body and mind.

What are 'preferred' things in Stoic ethics?

Things such as health, wealth and a good name: worth choosing when a choice arises, yet not goods, because only virtue is good. Their opposites, sickness or poverty, are 'rejected' but not evils. Cicero coins the Latin words for Cato in the book itself. The distinction lets the Stoic act sensibly in ordinary life while still saying virtue alone makes a life happy.

What does Piso mean by a life that is happy but not the happiest?

That virtue is enough to make every good person happy, while health, freedom from pain and good fortune can still make one happy life better than another. Arcesilaus, racked by gout, could say the pain did not reach his mind, yet he would still rather have been without it. Cicero replies that happiness admitting degrees sits badly with happiness being secured by virtue alone.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Is Pleasure What Life Is For?

If every animal seeks pleasure from birth, is a life free of pain the whole of what we want? Cicero lets the Epicurean case be made at full strength, then asks whether its best followers live by it.

Torquatus argues that pleasure, above all the settled calm of being free from pain, is the end everything else serves, and that the virtues and friendship earn their place by securing it. Cicero's reply turns the school against its own examples: Torquatus's ancestors acted for honour, not pleasure; Epicurus called his agonised last day happy and left money for birthday feasts after teaching that death is nothing to us. Many Epicureans, Cicero grants, are faithful friends who live by duty, which he takes as evidence that honour outweighs pleasure.

  • pleasure
  • pain
  • happiness
  • friendship
  • ethics

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Virtue and Nothing Else

Can virtue alone make a life good, whatever happens to the body and its fortunes? Cato's Stoic answer is yes, and the price is that health and wealth stop counting as goods at all.

Cato builds from the newborn creature's love of its own being to a reason that values only what is right. Health, wealth and their opposites become things 'preferred' or 'rejected', worth selecting but never good or evil, and anyone short of perfect wisdom is as far from virtue as someone who never tried. The world, on this view, is a city shared by gods and humans. Cicero's reply is that Zeno kept the older schools' substance, gave it new names, and then drew conclusions no one can live with.

  • virtue
  • nature
  • reason
  • duty
  • wisdom
  • stoicism

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Virtue and Good Fortune

Is a good person happy whatever befalls them, or does a whole human life need health and fortune too? Piso's answer tries to keep both, and Cicero asks whether it can.

Piso, speaking for Antiochus's Old Academy, argues from the whole of human nature: body and mind, the child's hunger to know, the love of learning that made Archimedes miss the fall of his city. Virtue is by far the greatest good and makes every wise person happy, but bodily goods count, so one happy life can be happier than another. Cicero presses the weak point: the Stoics are at least consistent, and Piso must prove the claim again. The friends walk back into Athens with the question still open.

  • virtue
  • happiness
  • human nature
  • nature
  • intellectual life
  • suffering

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Within this work

passages held
322
distinct concepts
321
by passages held, corpus-wide
#232

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “happiness” and “virtue”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 26 pairings. 78 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
happinessvirtue38
stoicismvirtue38
pleasurevirtue29
epicureanismpleasure22
happinessstoicism22
painpleasure19
human naturevirtue17
happinesspleasure15
hedonismvirtue10
hedonismpleasure9
happinesspain8
pleasurestoicism8
epicureanismpain7
hedonismpain7
human naturepleasure7
painvirtue7
happinesshedonism6
human naturestoicism6
painstoicism6
epicureanismhappiness5
epicureanismvirtue5
happinesshuman nature4
epicureanismhedonism3
epicureanismstoicism2
hedonismhuman nature2
human naturepain2

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. -70 Orations

    Four volumes of the speeches themselves — some delivered, some, like the case against Verres, only published. The philosophical books that fill the rest of the shelf came later, most of them once he had been shut out of that life.

     EN
  2. -54 The Republic (De re publica)

    Plato wrote a Republic and then a Laws; Cicero set out to do both, and the treatise on law is this book's companion — begun a couple of years later and left unfinished.

     EN
  3. -52 Treatise on the Laws (De legibus)

    Unfinished, unpublished, and on the available evidence never released at all. For centuries it travelled as the lesser half of a pair whose better half had gone missing.

     EN
  4. -46 Brutus or History of Famous Orators (Brutus; Orator)

    Not the speeches but the account of them, made when the courts had stopped sitting. The edition carries Orator with it, the portrait of the ideal speaker written for the same dedicatee in the same year.

     EN
  5. -45 A Treatise on the Chief Good and Evil (De finibus bonorum et malorum) you are here EN
  6. -45 On the Nature of the Gods (De natura deorum)

    Finished after the Tusculan Disputations, it opened a run of three books on religion: On Divination and On Fate followed in 44 BCE.

     EN
  7. -45 The Academic Questions (Academica)

    Readers who wondered why Cicero sided with the sceptical Academy were sent here by On the Nature of the Gods, written later the same year: this is where he defends arguing every side of a question and settling for the probable.

     EN
  8. -45 The Tusculan Disputations (Tusculanae Disputationes)

    The practical sequel to the treatise on the chief good, written next: that book compares what the schools say the good is, and this one puts the answer to work against fear and grief.

     EN
  9. -44 On Friendship (De Amicitia)

    Copyists kept this and On Old Age bound together for so long that printers followed them. The edition prints the Dream of Scipio after it, which belongs to De re publica.

     EN
  10. -44 On Moral Duties (De officiis)

    The last of his philosophical books, and the one that travelled furthest: for centuries afterwards it was simply the standard book of conduct.

     EN
  11. -44 On Old Age (Cato Maior de Senectute)

    Written alongside On Friendship and sent to the same friend, Atticus; the later book refers back to this one by name.

     EN
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