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book44 BCE

On Duties

Disciplines:
political philosophy
ethics
stoicism

Summary

Cicero's De Officiis — a letter to his son and the most widely read Latin philosophical work in history — developing practical Stoic ethics around the four cardinal virtues and the concept of appropriate action (officium).

Core Contribution

Officium (duty/appropriate action): the standard of appropriate action for the non-sage in daily life. Four sources of duty: the universal (rational nature), the individual character, social circumstance, and the particular occasion. The conflict of honestum (honourable) and utile (advantageous) is apparent, not real.

Historical Influences

Cicero

Intellectual Lineage

No conceptual lineage found.

Allied Works

Nicomachean Ethics The MeditationsSeneca's Letters

Contemporaries & Peers

No recorded contemporaries.

Minds Influenced

No recorded minds influenced.

Intellectual Posterity

No conceptual posterity found.

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On Duties

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