De Officiis by Cicero IV

For instance, in the First Punic War, when Regulus was taken prisoner by the Carthaginians, he was sent to Rome on parole to negotiate an exchange of prisoners; he came and, in the first place, it was he that made the motion in the Senate that the prisoners should not be restored; and in the second place, when his relatives and friends would have kept him back, he chose to return to a death by torture rather than prove false to his promise, though given to an enemy.

Now that is unbelievable! It goes to show on the one hand how principled his standpoint truly is, and on the other hand, it is also impressive that this standard should be considered so viable. On the one hand, he can provide two specific examples of it that are actual, not hypothetical--of which this is the first. On the other hand, he also seems to believe he can expect such conduct from his son as well, in giving him the advice. If anything, it makes me wonder what it was about the Roman culture that was so special as to produce such nobility.

Now, the men we live with are not perfect and ideally wise, but men who do very well, if there be found in them but the semblance of virtue.

Ah, reminds me of something else the external reviewer said. It is not unreasonable to suppose that some degree of idealisation is important in morality, particularly the virtues. This is consistent with what is being said here, that most people do not display much virtue. The reviewer claimed that idealisation seemed simply to be rejected as "unrealistic" in the thesis, a sweeping generalisation with which I would not agree. For example, I employ idealisation when discussing acting from fellow feeling in Chapter 3, and nowhere do I claim that idealisation is unrealistic. The point is not that one should not idealise such concepts as virtue, I take it. It is that one cannot turn around and label most people as "evil" because they fail to meet some idealised notion of virtue. This intuition is here seen by Cicero's saying that men do very well if there be found in them but the semblance of virtue. In other words, a distinction is being drawn between goodness and virtue that seems reasonable. Someone can do well simply by achieving a semblance of virtue, since the heroism of Regulus could hardly be expected of just anyone. It seems that this sort of judgement will lead right into the section dealing with Singer and actualism.

But if the exaltation of spirit seen in times of danger and toil is devoid of justice and fights for selfish ends instead of for the common good, it is a vice; for not only has it no element of virtue, but its nature is barbarous and revolting to all our finer feelings.

Here and elsewhere, he distinguishes a psychological state properly applied as a virtue, and improperly applied as a vice. For example, an act is of generosity if it shall not prove an injury either to the object of our beneficence or to others. If it does, then it is not of generosity, but of dangerous sycophancy. This reminds me of something that Ayn Rand said about integrity as reported in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff. On the one hand, integrity requires that you practise what you preach. On the other hand, what you preach must also actually be moral in the first place. For example, Hitler preached that one should kill Jews, and he did kill Jews, but this does not mean that he had integrity. So far, Cicero has not spoken of integrity, but he will at some point, and it will be interesting to see what he calls the psychological state behind integrity when it is improperly applied--possibly corruption.

If there is any such thing as propriety at all, it can be nothing more than uniform consistency in the course of our life as a whole and all its individual actions.

I do believe that in this general passage, he is describing what existentialists today would call "authenticity". "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 3.

Indeed, such diversity of character carries with it so great significance that suicide may be for one man a duty, for another [under the same circumstances] a crime.

Nota bene! And here the external reviewer dared to chastise me because the suggestion that there may be more than one right answer to a moral question (p.49) failed to make any reference to "the pioneering work here of Peter Winch". As though I needed any reference to say something so sensible that it has even been recorded here. Only two thousand years before Winch.