We modern defenders of the liberal arts have to choose between Socrates’ vision and Cicero’s vision: Are we citizens of a particular soil and a particular place, or are we connected—across time and space—to all good men and God?
A few weeks ago, I had the grand privilege of attending a Liberty Fund conference on the meaning of conservatism with the brilliant John Grove as Liberty Fund fellow in Indianapolis. Sam Gregg, David Corey, and I were the old guys, gently introducing a new generation of young scholars and writers to the world of Liberty Fund. They did not need much encouragement, and they performed, not surprisingly, brilliantly.
As just noted, we were discussing—in great and wonderfully nerdish detail—the inside baseball of conservatism, considering the ideas of Russell Kirk, Frank Meyer, Robert Nisbet, Roger Scruton, Michael Oakeshott, Friedrich Hayek.
Profs. Corey, Gregg, and I co-discussion led.
During one of Prof. Corey’s directed sessions, it struck me that Socrates and Cicero have radically different views of citizenship, each of which pertains to our debates of the current day. For Socrates, one must be a citizen of a polis. For him, that was specifically Athens. For Cicero, however, one must be a citizen of the universe, a citizen of the “cosmopolis.”
Citizenship, of course, was a central theme of the ancient world. Perhaps the best overall discussion comes with St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, ironically one of the most Greek of all of Paul’s writings. In that letter, St. Paul considers our loyalty to the natural law, to Hebraic law, to the body of Christ, and, perhaps most famously for modern Protestants, to secular governments (Romans 13). Not surprisingly, St. Paul offers a brilliant, if complicated and nuanced, discussion of the matter.
When Socrates is condemned to death by the men of Athens for corrupting the youth—by proclaiming the existence of just one god, thus denying the polytheism of the predominate culture—the great man refuses to repent or to flee to another polis. As he notes, he has been commanded by the god to challenge and question the men of Athens, and his citizenship—especially after serving heroically in an Athenian hoplite and in community politics—remains strictly Athenian.
Then the laws will say: “Consider, Socrates, if this is true, that in your present attempt you are going to do us wrong. For, after having brought you into the world, and nurtured and educated you, and given you and every other citizen a share in every good that we had to give, we further proclaim and give the right to every Athenian, that if he does not like us when he has come of age and has seen the ways of the city, and made our acquaintance, he may go where he pleases and take his goods with him; and none of us laws will forbid him or interfere with him. Any of you who does not like us and the city, and who wants to go to a colony or to any other city, may go where he likes, and take his goods with him. But he who has experience of the manner in which we order justice and administer the State, and still remains, has entered into an implied contract that he will do as we command him. And he who disobeys us is, as we maintain, thrice wrong: first, because in disobeying us he is disobeying his parents; secondly, because we are the authors of his education; thirdly, because he has made an agreement with us that he will duly obey our commands; and he neither obeys them nor convinces us that our commands are wrong; and we do not rudely impose them, but give him the alternative of obeying or convincing us; that is what we offer and he does neither. These are the sort of accusations to which, as we were saying, you, Socrates, will be exposed if you accomplish your intentions; you, above all other Athenians.” Suppose I ask, why is this? they will justly retort upon me that I above all other men have acknowledged the agreement. “There is clear proof,” they will say, “Socrates, that we and the city were not displeasing to you. Of all Athenians you have been the most constant resident in the city, which, as you never leave, you may be supposed to love. For you never went out of the city either to see the games, except once when you went to the Isthmus, or to any other place unless when you were on military service; nor did you travel as other men do. Nor had you any curiosity to know other States or their laws: your affections did not go beyond us and our State; we were your especial favorites, and you acquiesced in our government of you; and this is the State in which you begat your children, which is a proof of your satisfaction. Moreover, you might, if you had liked, have fixed the penalty at banishment in the course of the trial-the State which refuses to let you go now would have let you go then. But you pretended that you preferred death to exile, and that you were not grieved at death. And now you have forgotten these fine sentiments, and pay no respect to us, the laws, of whom you are the destroyer; and are doing what only a miserable slave would do, running away and turning your back upon the compacts and agreements which you made as a citizen.
Though Socrates disagrees with the Athenian decision to execute him, he famously believes in Athens over time, past, present, and future in continuity. Thus, he has the duty to remain and accept the consequences of his actions.
When the Roman Republican Cicero, however, considers the matter in his Platonic dialogue, The Laws, he finds a radically different answer:
Since you grant me the existence of God, and the superintendence of Providence, I maintain that he has been especially beneficent to man. This human animal—prescient, sagacious, complex, acute, full of memory, reason and counsel, which we call man,—is generated by the supreme God in a more transcendent condition than most of his fellow–creatures. For he is the only creature among the earthly races of animated beings endued with superior reason and thought, in which the rest are deficient. And what is there, I do not say in man alone, but in all heaven and earth, more divine than reason, which, when it becomes ripe and perfect, is justly termed wisdom?
There exists, therefore, since nothing is better than reason, and since this is the common property of God and man, a certain aboriginal rational intercourse between divine and human natures. This reason, which is common to both, therefore, can be none other than right reason; and since this right reason is what we call Law, God and men are said by Law to be consociated. Between whom, since there is a communion of law, there must be also a communication of Justice.
Law and Justice being thus the common rule of immortals and mortals, it follows that they are both the fellow–citizens of one city and commonwealth. And if they are obedient to the same rule, the same authority and denomination, they may with still closer propriety be termed fellow–citizens, since one celestial regency, one divine mind, one omnipotent Deity then regulates all their thoughts and actions.
This universe, therefore, forms one immeasurable Commonwealth and city, common alike to gods and mortals. And as in earthly states, certain particular laws, which we shall hereafter describe, govern the particular relationships of kindred tribes; so in the nature of things doth an universal law, far more magnificent and resplendent, regulate the affairs of that universal city where gods and men compose one vast association.
As such, for Cicero, man belongs not to a single city, but rather to the cosmopolis, the city of all good men and the god. In this, Cicero significantly anticipates St. Augustine’s City of God.
We modern defenders of the liberal arts have to choose between Socrates’ vision and Cicero’s vision. Are we citizens of a particular soil and a particular place, or are we connected—across time and space—to all good men and God?
I offer two other quotations to ponder. Here’s Edmund Burke on the matter: “Our country is not a thing of mere physical locality. It consists, in a great measure, in the antient order into which we are born. We may have the same geographical situation, but another country; as we may have the same country in another soil. The place that determines our duty to our country is a social, civil relation.”
And, here is George Washington: “I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my Country can inspire: since there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity: Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained: And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
Burke seems rather Ciceronian, but Washington is harder to decipher. By capitalizing Country, does Washington refer to the United States or to the Cosmopolis? Our answer might very well determine the future of the liberal arts and patriotism.
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The featured image is “Cicero Discovering the Tomb of Archimedes (1853), by Paolo Barbotti, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.