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
After this, we come to explain the differences between things. And if we
were to say that there is none, then all life would be thrown into
confusion, as it is by Aristo. Nor could any office or work be found for
wisdom, if there were actually no difference between one thing and
another, and if there were no power of selection at all requisite to be
exerted. Therefore, after it had been sufficiently established that that
alone was good which was honourable, and that alone evil which was
disgraceful, they asserted that there were some particulars in which those
things which had no influence on the misery or happiness of life, differed
from one another, so that some of them deserved to be esteemed, some to be
despised, and others were indifferent. But as to those things which
deserved to be esteemed, some of them had in themselves sufficient reason
for being preferred to others, as good health, soundness of the senses,
freedom from pain, glory, riches, and similar things. But others were not
of this kind. And in like manner, as to those things which were worthy of
no esteem at all, some had cause enough in themselves why they should be
rejected, such as pain, disease, loss of senses, poverty, ignominy, and
things like them, and some had not. And thus, from this distinction, came
what Zeno called προηγμένον, and on the other hand what he called
ἀποπροηγμένον, as though writing in so copious a language, he chose to
employ new terms of his own invention; a license which is not allowed to
us in this barren language of ours; although you often insist that it is
richer than the Greek. But it is not foreign to our present subject, in
order that the meaning of the word may be more easily understood, to
explain the principle on which Zeno invented these terms.
XVI. For as, says he, no one in a king’s palace says that the king is, as
it were, led forward towards his dignity (for that is the real meaning of
the word προηγμένον, but the term is applied to those who are of some rank
whose order comes next to his, so as to be second to the kingly dignity);
so in life too, it is not those things which are in the first rank, but
those which are in the second which are called προηγμένα, or led forward.
And we may translate the Greek by _productum_ (this will be a strictly
literal translation), or we may call it and its opposite _promotum_ and
_remotum_, or as we have said before, we may call προηγμένον, _præpositum_
or _præcipuum_, and its opposite _rejectum_. For when the thing is
understood, we ought to be very ductile as to the words which we employ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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