Peter Jones

Could Cicero help MPs who can’t govern?

[Getty Images] 
issue 13 November 2021

MPs are not exactly attracting plaudits for their recent attempts at governing. Perhaps Cicero’s three-book work On Duties (De Officiis) might be of assistance. It was written in 44 BC, a few months after the tyrant Julius Caesar was assassinated. Seeing life as a complex of obligations to others and oneself, Cicero picks apart the challenges this raises. Book III is of particular interest, where he tackles the problem of how to resolve a situation in which there is a clash between what is advantageous and what is right. He is not looking for the perfect solution, he says — no one is perfect — but for a working solution that ‘comes within the range of our comprehension’ and is ‘relevant to all mankind’. His example is Caesar’s assassination. Surely, he says, nothing could be worse than murder, especially of a friend? But Caesar was a tyrant, and Romans saw it as a noble deed.

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