
Cicero is like a philosopher who wandered into the wrong bar.
Imagine a man ordering a glass of reason while everyone else is chugging dogma.
That’s Cicero: sharp, skeptical, slightly out of place. When it comes to Stoicism, he’s not so much an ambassador as he is an interpreter—a translator who couldn’t resist scribbling his own notes in the margins.
I came to philosophy the way some people come to cheap wine: hoping for answers but settling for comfort.
Cicero, with his sprawling Roman pragmatism and flirtation with Greek idealism, was my gateway drug a few time.
But the more you read him, the more you realize he’s the kind of guy who’ll explain a religion to you while puffing on a cigarette, smirking like he’s already planning his rebuttal.
Let’s be clear: Cicero wasn’t a Stoic. He didn’t buy the whole “virtue is the only good” shtick. He was an Academic Skeptic, a philosopher who believed truth was about as reachable as the horizon—visible but forever out of grasp.
Yet, he couldn’t resist the allure of Stoicism. It was tidy, logical, and just self-righteous enough to appeal to his Roman audience. His works—On Duties, Tusculan Disputations, On Ends—are laced with Stoic ideas.
But every compliment he gives is tempered with a skeptical shrug, like a chef admiring a rival’s recipe while muttering, “Too much salt.”
The Stoa in Cicero’s Words
Stoicism is an endurance test disguised as a philosophy.
Its key principles—virtue as the only good, indifference to external events, harmony with nature—sound simple until life punches you in the face.
For the Stoics, the secret to life is apathy, not in the “I don’t care” sense but in the “nothing can disturb me” sense.
Cicero, however, wasn’t about to let that slide without commentary.
In On Duties, he riffs on the Stoic philosopher Panaetius like a jazz musician who refuses to stick to the sheet music.
He takes Panaetius’ ideas about moral obligations and layers on his own Roman priorities: civic duty, family, and politics.
Stoicism, for Cicero, wasn’t just about inner tranquility; it was about playing your part in the grand, messy orchestra of society.
His famous line, “We are not born for ourselves alone,” is Stoic on the surface but Roman to the core.
For the Stoics, the we meant everyone, every soul tied to the cosmos. For Cicero, it meant Rome—family, allies, and whoever could keep the Republic alive for another day.
It wasn’t virtue for its own sake; it was legacy, glory, and making sure your name didn’t vanish like smoke after the fire.
Stoic shine, Roman steel. That’s the trick. It’s duty, but with ambition creeping underneath.
Typical Cicero—he gives you something profound, but it’s always got an angle.
A Stoic’s Afterlife? Not Quite
Then there’s The Dream of Scipio, a philosophical acid trip masquerading as a political treatise.
It’s a mishmash of Stoic cosmology, Platonic metaphysics, and Roman nationalism. Cicero paints a vision of the cosmos where everything clicks into place—a celestial machine humming with purpose.
But unlike the Stoics, who saw immortality in virtuous actions, Cicero leans into the idea of a literal afterlife.
For the Stoics, immortality was about being remembered for your virtue.
For Cicero, it’s floating up to the heavens like some spiritual helium balloon.
It’s beautiful, yeah, but it’s like trying to fit a sunset into a sewer pipe—just doesn’t belong.
Explaining to an Apprentice
If I had to explain Cicero’s relationship with Stoicism to an apprentice—let’s call him Timmy, because why not—I’d say this:
“Imagine you’re building a sandcastle, Timmy. The Stoics would tell you the castle doesn’t matter; it’s the act of building it that counts.
If the tide comes in and washes it away, you’re supposed to shrug and say, ‘That’s life.’
Cicero, though? He’d tell you to build it well enough to impress the other kids on the beach.
Maybe add a flag. But he’d also whisper, ‘By the way, the tide’s coming, and it’s going to suck.’”
Cicero’s Skeptical Jabs
Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods is where he really starts heckling from the cheap seats.
The Stoics believed in a rational, providential universe, where everything happened for a reason.
Cicero, playing the part of an ancient George Carlin, wasn’t having it. “If the gods are so rational,” he asks, “why does the world look like a train wreck?”
He questions why divine providence doesn’t prevent suffering or reward virtue more consistently.
This skepticism feels particularly modern. It’s the kind of question you’d expect from someone who’s spent too much time doom-scrolling Twitter or reading Kafka.
Stoic Belief | Cicero’s Commentary |
---|---|
Virtue as the only good | “Sure, but let’s not forget duty to the state.” |
Divine providence | “If this is divine order, I’d hate to see chaos.” |
Emotions are bad | “Grief is natural, just don’t wallow in it.” |
Counterpoints to Cicero’s Approach
Cicero’s critics are like a drunken mob, shouting from every corner of the intellectual wasteland.
The hardcore Stoics? They’d say his skepticism is a cheap knockoff of their philosophy, a watered-down version of the real thing.
Nietzsche? He’d look at Cicero’s Roman morality and laugh, calling it “slave morality” – weak, pathetic, a philosophy for the beaten-down masses.
Then there’s Sartre, the modern existentialist. He’d scoff at Cicero’s reliance on some outside duty, that ancient nonsense.
Sartre’s all about radical freedom, about making your own damn rules, not playing by some godforsaken script written by someone else.
And let’s not forget the real gut-punch: the cultural counterarguments. Take The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti.
A world so empty, so meaningless, that it feels like a trap set by something far worse than what imagination could conceive – a void that laughs at your existence.
In that kind of bleak, suffocating world, Cicero’s optimism looks like some dusty old relic.
His idea of divine purpose? It’s like trying to find water in a desert where even the sun is dead.
Critic/Work | Rebuttal to Cicero |
---|---|
Nietzsche | Rejects universal morality as herd mentality. |
Sartre | Prioritizes individual freedom over duty. |
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (Thomas Ligotti) | Depicts a universe devoid of divine order and human meaning. |
So, here’s the bottom line…
Cicero’s relationship with Stoicism is like a bad marriage: full of admiration, occasional agreements, and constant bickering.
He gives us the framework of Stoicism but fills it with his own doubts, his own humanity.
Reading him, you can’t help but feel like he’s trying to convince himself as much as his audience.
Cicero doesn’t leave us with answers. He leaves us with questions—and maybe that’s the point.
Life doesn’t come with a cheat sheet. It’s messy, chaotic, and often absurd.
Cicero’s brilliance is in showing us that the search for meaning, even if it’s futile, is still worth it.
Camus said, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Cicero might disagree. He’d say, “One must imagine Sisyphus writing a detailed critique of the gods who cursed him in the first place.”
So where does that leave us?
Climbing the same hill, pushing the same boulder, but with a choice: despair or defiance.
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