Cicero and the people's will
philosophy and power at the end of the Roman Republic
- ISBN: 9781009077385
- Editorial: Cambridge University Press
- Fecha de la edición: 2025
- Lugar de la edición: Cambridge . Reino Unido
- Encuadernación: Rústica
- Medidas: 24 cm
- Nº Pág.: 285
- Idiomas: Inglés
This book tells an overlooked story in the history of ideas, a drama of cut-throat politics and philosophy of mind. For it is Cicero, statesman and philosopher, who gives shape to the notion of will in Western thought, from criminal will to moral willpower and 'the will of the people'. In a single word - voluntas - he brings Roman law in contact with Greek ideas, chief among them Plato's claim that a rational elite must rule. When the republic falls to Caesarism, Cicero turns his political argument inward: Will is a force in the soul to win the virtue lost on the battlefield, the mark of inner freedom in an unfree age. Though this constitutional vision failed in his own time, Cicero's ideals of popular sovereignty and rational elitism have shaped and fractured the modern world - and Ciceronian creativity may yet save it.
Part I The Practice of Voluntas
Chapter 1 Forebears of Will
1.1 Greek Forebears
1.2 Latin Forebears
Chapter 2 Innocence and Intent
2.1 Legitimacy and Rationality
2.2 Controversia ex Scripto et Sententia
2.3 Capturing Goodwill
2.4 Guilty and Righteous Wills
Chapter 3 Cartographies of Power
3.1 Intentions, Alliances, and Schemes
3.2 Sua and Summa Voluntate
3.3 Voluntas as Affiliation 3.4 Boundaries of Political Will
3.4.1 The Status Quo and Its Problems
3.4.2 Cicero's Bounded Voluntas
3.4.3 Outer Limits: Violence and Temeritas
3.5 Caesar's Voluntas
Chapter 4 An Economy of Goodwill
4.1 The Rules of Voluntas Mutua
4.1.1 (Re)opening an Account
4.1.2 Checking a Balance
4.1.3 Making Withdrawals
4.2 The Voluntas Economy
4.2.1 Hierarchies of Exchange
4.2.2 Expansion and Crisis
4.3 Theorizing Voluntas Mutua
Chapter 5 Voluntas Populi: The Will of the People
5.1 Introduction: In Verrem 5.2 ''I of All Men, Who to Serve the Will of the People . . .''
5.2.1 The People's Will Is Fundamental
5.2.2 The People's Will Is Singular
5.2.3 The People's Will Is Fallible
5.2.4 The People's Will Needs an Elite to Guide It
5.3 De republica and De legibus
5.3.1 De republica: Will and Freedom
5.3.2 De legibus: The Walls around Will
5.4 Ruin and Rebirth
Part II The Philosophy of Voluntas
Chapter 6 Willpower
6.1 Cicero on Platonic and Stoic Souls
6.2 Tusculan Disputations: Cicero's Struggle for Reason
6.3 Conclusion: Willing, Willpower, and the Will Chapter 7 Free Will and the Forum
7.1 Lucretius' Libera Voluntas
7.2 Cicero's Libera Voluntas
7.3 The Politics of Free Will
Chapter 8 The Fourfold Self
8.1 The Four Personae: Background and Problems
8.2 Will and the Four Personae
8.2.1 The Role of Reason
8.2.2 The Role of Nature
8.2.3 The Role of Fortune
8.2.4 The Role of Will
8.3 Conclusion: Scipio and Foucault
Conclusion
Epilogue: The Afterlife of Cicero's Voluntas
Appendix Occurrences of Voluntas in the Works of Cicero
