The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations, of M.T. Cicero, With a Sketch of the Greek Philosophers Mentioned by CiceroCicero, Marcus Tullius
Philosophy
The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations, of M.T. Cicero, With a Sketch of the Greek Philosophers Mentioned by Cicero
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
Ethics -- Early works to 1800; Happiness -- Early works to 1800
XIII. I now, following the authority of this man, will do the same as he
has done; for, as far as I can, I will diminish the disputes, and will
regard all their simple opinions in which there is no association of
virtue, as judgments which ought to be utterly removed to a distance from
philosophy. First of all, I will discard the principles of Aristippus, and
of all the Cyrenaics,—men who were not afraid to place the chief good in
that pleasure which especially excited the senses with its sweetness,
disregarding that freedom from pain. These men did not perceive that, as a
horse is born for galloping, and an ox for ploughing, and a dog for
hunting, so man, also, is born for two objects, as Aristotle says, namely,
for understanding and for acting as if he were a kind of mortal god. But,
on the other hand, as a slow moving and languid sheep is born to feed, and
to take pleasure in propagating his species, they fancied also that this
divine animal was born for the same purposes; than which nothing can
appear to me more absurd; and all this is in opposition to Aristippus, who
considers that pleasure not only the highest, but also the only one, which
all the rest of us consider as only one of the pleasures.
You, however, think differently; but he, as I have already said, is
egregiously wrong,—for neither does the figure of the human body, nor the
admirable reasoning powers of the human mind, intimate that man was born
for no other end than the mere enjoyment of pleasure; nor must we listen
to Hieronymus, whose chief good is the same which you sometimes, or, I
might say, too often call so, namely, freedom from pain; for it does not
follow, because pain is an evil, that to be free from that evil is
sufficient for living well. Ennius speaks more correctly, when he says,—
The man who feels no evil, does
Enjoy too great a good.
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