cicero on suicide (2009)

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© 2009. Epoché, Volume 14, Issue 1 (Fall 2009). ISSN 1085-1968. 95–111 The Virtue of Suicide and the Suicide of Virtue: A Reading of Cicero’s On Ends and Tusculan Disputations 1 BRIAN HARDING Texas Woman’s University Abstract: This paper argues that suicide is very important for Cicero’s articulation and defense of the philosophical life. Happiness, according to Cicero, is dependent upon a willingness to commit suicide. I explain why this is the case through a discussion of On Ends and the Tusculan Disputations. I conclude with some critical remarks about Cicero’s argument, with reference to book XIX of Augustine’s City of God. W hile there is renewed interest in Hellenistic and Roman philosophy, con- temporary philosophical scholarship has shown a surprising amount of squeamishness about the importance of suicide 2 in philosophy of that period: for example, Pierre Hadot’s recent study, What is Ancient Philosophy only briefly addresses self-killing among the Indian gymnosophists 3 and Julia Annas’s ac- count, in The Morality of Happiness, gives only a paragraph to the issue. 4 This squeamishness has prevented us from taking seriously the central place that suicide played in the philosophy of this period. This in turn has compromised recent attempts to revivify Hellenistic eudaimonism: Michel Foucault, in his return to antiquity in the History of Sexuality (which relies to a great degree on Hadot’s research) 5 attempts to retrieve the Hellenistic notion of a philosophical way of life, but elides the importance of suicide as a sine qua non of this way of life—Foucault’s squeamishness is particularly surprising since Discipline and Punish suggested a stronger stomach. 6 In my view, any discussion of Hellenistic eudaimonism—particularly, but not only, in its Roman variations—must con- front suicide. Diogenes Laertius’s The Lives of the Philosophers is replete with account of the deaths of eminent philosophers. While numerous rumors regarding causes of death are reported, typically at least one will be a rumor of suicide: the

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Page 1: Cicero on Suicide (2009)

© 2009. Epoché, Volume 14, Issue 1 (Fall 2009). ISSN 1085-1968. 95–111

The Virtue of Suicide and the Suicide of Virtue: A Reading of Cicero’s On Ends and Tusculan Disputations1

BRIAN HARDINGTexas Woman’s University

Abstract: This paper argues that suicide is very important for Cicero’s articulation and

defense of the philosophical life. Happiness, according to Cicero, is dependent upon a

willingness to commit suicide. I explain why this is the case through a discussion of

On Ends and the Tusculan Disputations. I conclude with some critical remarks about

Cicero’s argument, with reference to book XIX of Augustine’s City of God.

While there is renewed interest in Hellenistic and Roman philosophy, con-temporary philosophical scholarship has shown a surprising amount of

squeamishness about the importance of suicide2 in philosophy of that period: for example, Pierre Hadot’s recent study, What is Ancient Philosophy only briefl y addresses self-killing among the Indian gymnosophists3 and Julia Annas’s ac-count, in The Morality of Happiness, gives only a paragraph to the issue.4 This squeamishness has prevented us from taking seriously the central place that suicide played in the philosophy of this period. This in turn has compromised recent attempts to revivify Hellenistic eudaimonism: Michel Foucault, in his return to antiquity in the History of Sexuality (which relies to a great degree on Hadot’s research)5 attempts to retrieve the Hellenistic notion of a philosophical way of life, but elides the importance of suicide as a sine qua non of this way of life—Foucault’s squeamishness is particularly surprising since Discipline and Punish suggested a stronger stomach.6 In my view, any discussion of Hellenistic eudaimonism—particularly, but not only, in its Roman variations—must con-front suicide. Diogenes Laertius’s The Lives of the Philosophers is replete with account of the deaths of eminent philosophers. While numerous rumors regarding causes of death are reported, typically at least one will be a rumor of suicide: the

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understanding being that the manner of the philosopher’s death should not be the result of meaningless causes, but ought to be consistent with, and exemplary of, his life and teachings.7 One fi nds suicide in even more surprising places, e.g., playing a prominent role in Seneca’s theodicy.8 A discussion of the place of sui-cide in Hellenistic eudaimonism as a whole is needed, but beyond the scope of this paper; in this paper I have the more modest goal of addressing the role that suicide plays in Cicero’s ethics. I will argue in this paper that for Cicero self-killing is the solution to a problem that cuts to the heart of Hellenistic eudaimonism: the relationship between virtue and other goods. It must be said at the outset that Cicero’s approach to this problem is highly Roman, by which I mean practical: his approach to philosophy is much less rigorous and theoretically sophisticated than ‘Greek’ approaches, and his focus is primarily on practical problem solving rather than theoretical elegance. Cicero is interested in a theory of happiness only to the extent that it helps him attain happiness; as such his primary concern is to articulate what conditions need to obtain for one to be happy and how one can insure that those conditions do in fact obtain.9

1: Happiness and the Hybrid TheoryBooks four and fi ve of de Finibus are devoted to a discussion of Antiochus’s moral theory, termed by J. Annas the ‘hybrid’ theory. The hybrid theory argues that while virtue is the highest good, necessary and suffi cient for happiness, it is not the only good. There are other goods, which while not as fundamental as virtue, increase the happiness of the virtuous person. The emphasis on virtue as the sine qua non of happiness is drawn from Stoicism, while admission of other goods is derived from Peripatetic accounts. Book four introduces the theory as part of a critique of stoic ethics; book fi ve introduces some objections to the hybrid theory. Like stoicism, the hybrid theory claims to be rooted in a consideration of human nature, but the hybrid theory emphasizes that a human being is a composite of both body and soul.10 The claim that virtue is the sine qua non of happiness is derived from the claim that virtue, the good of the soul, is the most important insofar as the soul is superior to the body it rules. The second claim, that other goods are important elements of happiness, argues that since human beings naturally have bodies it is natural to seek what is good for those bodies. Whence, for a hybrid theorist,11 a life according to nature pursues the goods of both body and soul. The hybrid theorist in book four argues that the stoic emphasis solely on the goods of the soul—virtue—is contrary to nature insofar as it neglects the body and the human being is composed of both body and soul.12 According to the hybrid theory, virtue is desirable in large part because of its role in properly acquiring and maintaining the goods of the body. Indeed, the proper acquisition and maintaining of the goods of the body, the hybrid theory argues, is constitutive

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of virtue. As such, the hybrid theorist claims that the Stoic emphasis on virtue alone is ultimately destructive of morality:

In declaring what is moral to be the only good, you do away with concern for one’s health, care of one’s household, public service, the conduct of business and the duties of life. Ultimately morality itself, which you regard as everything, must be abandoned.13

In short, a concentration solely on the goods of the soul, from the point of view of the hybrid theory, destroys the concerns for external goods that, largely, are constitutive of virtue.

In this way, the hybrid theory argues that virtue is dependent upon the rec-ognition of external goods—a view diametrically opposed to stoicism which denies the existence of any goods other than virtue: “We are seeking a virtue that does not abandon our nature but protects it. Yet virtue as you advocate it protects one part but abandons the rest.”14 The stoic cradle argument, outlined by Cato in book III, presents the infant or child’s desire for goods of the body—in particular, the primary objects of nature, those external goods that are indispensable for life—as major stepping stone toward the fundamental insight that virtue is the highest good; the hybrid theory points out that the realization that virtue is the highest good does not abolish the lesser goods but only adds to them.15 If the hybrid theory is correct, then precisely the externalities the stoic sage is called to be indifferent to are, by nature, important for human happiness and morality. In other words, they are goods worth possessing and the acquisition of them is part of the task of virtue. We should be sure to note that the hybrid theory is neither recommending that material goods replace virtue nor that it is the task of virtue to acquire material goods by any means necessary. The hybrid theorist is only arguing that the stoics are wrong to claim that virtue is the only good:

We love ourselves and want every aspect of mind and body to be perfect. This shows we love all these aspects on their own account, and that they are of the greatest importance in determining whether we live well. Whoever aims at self preservation must also love each of their parts, all the more so the more perfectly developed and admirable those parts are within their own category. We seek a life in which the virtues of both mind and body are fully realized. This is where the supreme good is found, since the latter ought to represent the upper limit of what is desirable.16

In other words, the hybrid theorist claims that the life of virtue with external goods is happier than the life of virtue without other goods. To borrow from Hegel, for the hybrid theorist it is better to be Marcus Aurelius on the throne than to be Epictetus in chains. But it is Epictetus in chains—or Marcus Regulus in Carthage—which furnishes a problem for the hybrid theory: is the happy life dependent on the simultaneous possession of goods of the soul (virtue) and goods of the body? If

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we must have goods of the body to be happy, are we not inescapably wretched insofar as fortune rules our lives? If everything comes down to fortune or luck, then what is the point of entering upon the philosophic quest for the happy life?17 We could term this the Regulus-problem: can a virtuous person be said to be living the happy life while undergoing extreme physical suffering. Regulus gave himself up to be tortured and executed by the Carthaginians so that he would not be shown to be unfaithful; in other words, precisely in exercising virtue, Marcus Regulus suffers great pain. Since it is a task of virtue, according to the hybrid theory, to acquire and protect goods of the body it seems that in the face of a Regulus-problem the hybrid theorist must admit the individual in question is unhappy. But this is not a position the hybrid theorist wishes to maintain because it would suggest that virtue is not suffi cient for happiness. In book fi ve, the hybrid theorist attempts to circumvent the Regulus-problem by adducing a distinction between the happy life—for which the possession of virtue is suffi cient—and the happiest life, which requires both virtue and other goods

Cicero—now arguing against the hybrid theory—claims that there cannot be degrees of happiness and, as such, one cannot maintain the distinction be-tween the happy life and the happiest life. Cicero argues that the hybrid theorist’s distinction is an illusion: although Latin grammar allows for comparatives and superlatives, happiness in a eudaimonstic context does not admit degrees. In short, one is either happy or not happy.18 Of course, without this distinction, suf-fering virtue becomes an insoluble problem for the hybrid theory. The vision of happiness Cicero defends in book fi ve is reminiscent of Cato’s stoicism in book three: based entirely on virtue and independent of bodily goods. Indeed, it must be this way for otherwise, fortune—which ‘controls’ the distribution of bodily goods—would determine happiness. This, in Cicero’s eyes, would spell the end of philosophy. In the Tusculan Disputations, a text we will come to shortly, Cicero addresses this scenario and suggests that if it were the case, then instead of prac-ticing philosophy we should simply hope and pray for good fortune.19

The result of this, according to Cicero, is that the hybrid theory as developed in book IV of de Finibus cannot and should not be maintained. However, while the hybrid theory stalls in its response to Regulus-problems, the criticisms it proffers of stoicism—that the stoic focus solely on the good of the soul ulti-mately undermines virtue—go unanswered in de Finibus. The drama of the text highlights the unhappy ending: Piso, book fi ve’s hybrid theorist, is never convinced by Cicero’s arguments and manages to persuade Lucius to accept the hybrid theory. In this way, de Finibus ends without resolving the central question of what school of philosophy is best able to bring one to happiness: the hybrid theory’s attempt to include goods of the body in an account of happiness fails, but its most important criticisms of Stoic ethics are not answered either. Because the text ends without a ringing endorsement of either Stoicism or the hybrid theory,

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authoritative commentators have maintained that de Finibus is an ‘academic’ exercise simply putting the two systems in contrast and leaving it to the reader to decide the question.20 However, although de Finibus ends without offering its reader a defi nitive account of the good life, it does articulate certain desiderata which any proposed theory must satisfy:

(1) The sovereignty of virtue as the highest good, necessary and suffi cient for happiness, must be maintained.

(2) The happy life must be understood as coextensive with the possession of other goods, in particular the primary objects of nature.

(3) Happiness is to be understood as the possession of all goods, including especially the highest good, not admitting of degrees.

The central diffi culties in developing such a theory are that these three points seem incompatible. The incompatibility of (1) and (2) is particularly obvious: if virtue is necessary and suffi cient for happiness then it seems that goods of the body are neither and one could be happy with virtue alone. And (3) prevents one from appealing, as Piso does, to degrees of happiness. Since Cicero understands the purpose of philosophy primarily in terms of the quest for happiness, a failure to resolve this apparent incompatibility would suggest that the philosophical way of life ought to be abandoned. So, what is needed is an account the happy life that maintains the sovereignty of virtue as the highest good, and provides a strategy to ensure that virtue is coextensive with other goods. The Tusculan Disputations offers that solution. The solution proffered in the Tusculan Disputations, as indi-cated by the term ‘strategy,’ is most charitably understood as a pragmatic, rather than theoretical solution. That is to say, rather then attempting to show how these desiderata can be logically reconciled with one another, Cicero will attempt to develop a strategy whereby he can have his stoic cake and eat it too. He does this by arguing that the virtuous person can insure that he or she will not have to live in situation that lacks external goods such as the primary objects of nature. Cicero formulates this theory by arguing that the happy person will securely possess external goods insofar as he will kill himself rather than suffer their loss. This strategy ensures in practice that the demands of the hybrid theory, i.e., that the happy life include both virtue and other goods, are met. Instead of attempting to construct a theory that accounts for all three desiderata, Cicero describes a situ-ation that combines virtue with other goods, and then asks what practical steps must be taken to ensure that virtue and other goods remain coextensive. That practical step is suicide, or at least an outlook on life open to suicide. Central to Cicero’s strategy for the attainment of the happy life in the Tusculan Disputations and his solution to the problem left over at the end of de Finibus, is a discussion of death and suicide. Suicide, then, emerges as crucial to Cicero’s adaptation of the hybrid theory in the Tusculan Disputations.

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2: Happiness and Suicide in the Tusculan DisputationsThe Tusculan Disputations begin by discussing and criticizing the interlocutor A’s21 pre-philosophical fears of death and misfortune. Book one focuses on death, book two on misfortune, particularly pain. We will discuss book one in more depth below; some words about book two will be helpful, however, in showing how the Tusculan Disputations implicitly endorses a hybrid theory. The discussion of pain in book two includes a criticism of the stoic claim that pain is not an evil; in admitting that pain is an evil Cicero affi rms that, contrary to Stoicism, there are evils other than vice. If there are evils other than vice, than one can conclude that there are also goods other than virtue. At the same time, Cicero qualifi es this admission with the claim that pain is not the greatest evil: in agreement with the stoics, he admits that the greatest of evils is vice.22 Book II shows us that the Tus-culan Disputations is assuming a hybrid theory in its discussion of happiness.

Returning to book one, following the introductory passages, book one of the Tusculan Disputations begins with a discussion of death and the fear of death. The interlocutor A. evidences, as said before, an un-philosophic fear of death and views death as a threat to happiness. We do not need to go into details regarding M.’s preliminary examination and discussion of A’s opinion. For our purposes, it suffi ces to begin with A’s reformulation of his view following the fi rst round of criticism:

I concede that they are not miserable, those who are dead, because you made me admit that all those who are not, are not and could not be miserable. So what? We who live, who must die, are we not miserable? For instance, who is able to be delighted in life when pondering [cogitandum] day and night that at any time now he must die?23

M’s answer to this objection is to argue that death, from the point of view of those who must die, is a good thing. M.’s argument for the goodness of death is the centerpiece of the fi rst Disputation. M. proceeds by surveying the opinions of various philosophers on the issue, which he divides into two camps: those who affi rm the immortality of the soul and life after death, and those who deny it.24 It is important to note that although Cicero never comes down on either side of this dilemma, but instead argues that regardless of whether or not the soul is mortal, death is good.25 If the materialist philosophers are correct and the soul perishes with the body, then death is the end. With death as the end, there is nothing to worry or bother one anymore; the non-existence of the dead, properly understood, signifi es not a deprivation of good things, but the absence of threats and worry. On the other hand, if those philosophers who affi rm the immortality of the soul are correct, then death still appears as a good: it frees the soul from the body and ascends to the heavens.26 In either case, death is not an evil and consequently

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humanity is not miserable. Acceptance of the non-misery of death is, for Cicero, a key condition for the practical application of his suicide strategy.

Key to his argument against the claim that death is miserable—especially the fi rst horn of the dilemma—is to see death in the context of various miseries which can affl ict us in life. With these miseries in mind, death appears as not merely non-miserable but downright good:

For us however, if it happens that it seems a proclamation from God that we exit from life, let us comply cheerfully and offer thanks and understand that we are released from a jail and loosed from chains, so that we may either return to what is certainly our eternal home or be without all sensation and trouble; but, if on the other hand we are not sentenced, nevertheless, we have the same mind, so that while that day is horrible to others, we esteem that day favorable, and count nothing as evil that we are led to either by the immortal gods or by nature, the mother of all ordered things.27

Since death is not an evil and mortals are not inescapably wretched it follows for Cicero that happiness is possible. This does not mean, however, that most people are not miserable. Indeed, the general misery of human life is precisely what makes the philosophical debates about the highest good in de Finibus so important: it is through philosophy that one learns how to not be miserable.

In the fi rst Tusculan Disputations Cicero uses the caprice of fortune in giving or withholding the goods of the body as an argument in favor of the goodness of death. Simply, given the various (mis)fortunes human life is subject to, death is better understood in terms of an escape from suffering rather than as the cessa-tion of something good, “Death pulls us out of evil, not out of goodness.”28 The view that death is a good, rather than an evil, is an important premise in Cicero’s argument for suicide: if death was an evil, then the sage by defi nition could neither desire nor rejoice in it. However, by understanding death as a good, both the emo-tions voluntatem and gaudium may be felt toward death by the sage. Voluntatem is defi ned by Cicero as the rational desire for some good, gaudium as a rational satisfaction felt by the acquisition or presence of a good.29 One objection to this line of argument is that not every life is characterized by misfortune; there are some human beings who live a life blessed with every good thing such that death, which strips them of these good things, seems to be something lamentable. It is in response to this argument that Cicero introduces the comparison of the lives of Metellus and Priam:

The honored Metellus had four sons, and Priam fi fty, and from these seventeen born to lawful wives: in both cases fortune has the power, but the use of it differs: many sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters laid Metellus upon the funeral pyre, Priam was deprived of his many progeny at hands of the same enemy that slew him after he fl ed to the altar.30

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The happiness of Metellus and the misery of Priam are both the results of fortune giving or taking goods of the body. The only way to escape fortune and ensure the contiguity of virtue with other goods is death, as the case of Priam makes clear: “But if he had died before this [the sack of Troy] he would have escaped all these events.”31 Indeed, the happiness of Metellus vis-à-vis Priam rests only in the fact that he [Metellus] died before anything terrible could happen to him. In more general terms, Cicero’s point is that given the uncertainties of fortune, one can never be sure that the next day will be a good one—in fact, one can be assured of the opposite: sooner or later fortune will bring evils to you. As such, death is best understood as an escape from impending evils. Cicero uses the example of Pompey to illustrate this point:

Pompey, our friend, when gravely ill in Naples, was made better. The Nea-politans crowned him with garlands, as certainly the Puteoli did too, public congratulations were promulgated by towns. . . . If he died then, he would have fallen when his fortunes were at their highest, but by prolonging his life, what incredible calamities he swallowed!32

In other words, if Pompey had died of his sickness in Naples or shortly after his recovery, he would have died happy and successful rather being decapitated by Ptolemy XIII as a gift for Caesar. All this serves to reinforce Cicero’s claim that death, even when ending an otherwise happy life, is not an evil; instead, it func-tions as a ‘pre-emptive strike’ against those turns of fortune which will, sooner or later, deprive one of the goods of both the body and of fortune: “These things are avoided by death because even though they have not come to pass, they are able to happen.”33 Death, whether it is the escape of the soul from the body or the destruction of both, is not a misfortune to be lamented but rather an escape from fortune. This philosophical appreciation of death sets the philosopher free from the wheel of fortune and is central to Cicero’s resolution of the challenge presented by Regulus-problems and the rehabilitation of the hybrid theory, insofar as it prepares the way for sages’ voluntary death. If death was an evil, the sage would seek to avoid it; if death is a good, the sage may, when appropriate, seek out that good, i.e., commit suicide.

As the Tusculan Disputations moves on after book one’s discussion of death, Cicero argues that fortune is able to give and take away all goods excepting vir-tue. The other goods that the hybrid theory affi rms are necessary for happiness, and the pains and suffering that militate against happiness are both under the dispensation of fortune. According to book two, one task of philosophy is noth-ing else than the development of those virtues which enable the philosopher to endure the stormy seas of fortune. In the case of book two, this takes the form of accustoming the body to pain and discomfort, but ultimately, this takes the shape of a willingness to end one’s own life. The point is made particularly clear in the fi fth and fi nal Disputation. At the climax of that Disputation, Cicero raises

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the Regulus-problem, pointing out that extreme pain is the primary threat to his claim—and the fi rst thesis of the hybrid theory—that virtue is necessary and suffi cient for a happy life: “This [pain], to be sure, offers the greatest obstacle to our opinion.”34 Pain provides the fi nal challenge to the claim of Disputation V that virtue alone is necessary and suffi cient for the happy life because Cicero, like the hybrid theorist of de Finibus counts pain as an evil (although not the greatest evil).35

While book two suggests that various endurance exercises can be used to acclimate the body to diffi culty, thereby toughening it up and creating a degree of resistance to physical pain, it nevertheless remains the case that the cruelty of fortune threatens pain to a degree that no human being could stand it.36 The evils of unendurable pain would undermine any claim to be living the good life: Cicero takes it as self-evident that one is not happy when roasting inside Phalaris’s bull.37 It would seem that unendurable pain is capable of overcoming virtue; the upshot of that is to conclude that happiness is not acquired through the study of philosophy—rather than actively seeking happiness through virtue, we should instead merely hope and pray for good fortune.38 In other words, these considerations reinforce the view that there is no way to reconcile (1), (2) and (3). This conclusion can be avoided, however, if we recall the attitude toward death recommended by M. in book one; if death is not an evil to be feared and lamented but instead is a good that can be rationally sought out, then the sage when faced with the evil of unendurable pain will sacrifi ce his life rather than happiness:

Let all [manner of misfortune] be congregated on one man, so that this same man is blind and deaf, moreover, that he is pressed upon by intense bodily pain—these, fi rst of all, kill a good many men through themselves alone—but if they are stretched indefi nitely and bring forth even more vehement tortures, then for what cause is he suffering. . . . The door is near, for death, there and then, is an eternal shelter feeling nothing.39

That is to say, if and when the storms of fortune are so violent that even one who has cultivated virtue can neither endure nor see a reason for continuing in his or her suffering, then that person can preserve his or her happiness by exiting the miseries of life. It might be objected at this point that Cicero never gives clear criteria as to what sort of pain would justify suicide, and that as such, his thinking here is not as clear as one would like. In Cicero’s defense two points could be made. First, Cicero would argue that suicide is only appropriate for the sage and inappropriate for the vast majority of people, and that second, since the Ciceronian sage would have undergone the various endurance exercises described in book II only extreme misfortune would lead him to suicide.40 We can say that he seems to give wider scope than stoicism would: while Stoicism traditionally approved of suicide only in situations where further virtuous action would be impossible, Cicero recommends suicide in situations, such as physical

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pain, where important bodily goods are lacking. To be sure, there are no clear cut rules offered by Cicero of the kind that could be enumerated in a journal article: his thinking here seems to be that such sagacious person would be able to intuit when suicide was called for.

By the end of the fi nal Disputation, it is clear that the philosophical life, understood in terms of the hybrid theory, is inseparable from the willingness to end one’s own life: it is only the willingness to kill oneself that fi nally liber-ates the sage from the wheel of fortune and guarantees the confl uence of virtue and other goods. So long as one is virtuous enough to end one’s own life, argues Cicero, the possession of the goods of the body is not entirely in the hands of fortune. Although fortune can decide what goods or evils to bestow, once one realizes that life is not a necessity but something which can be escaped, it is up to the philosopher to accept or reject those goods by continuing, or escaping, life. Rather than having to choose between virtue and external goods, the sage chooses between a life with both virtue and other goods, and no life at all. The virtuous person is either happy or not—without degrees—because he is either alive or not, without degrees. The embrace of suicide as key to happiness may sound extreme to contemporary ears but is precisely what is called for by Cicero: “Thus, you may leave behind the injuries of fortune, which you are incapable of bearing, by running away.”41

For Cicero, to the extent that one has embraced the possibility of suicide one is liberated from the turns of fortune and the possession of exterior goods becomes under one’s control. Whether or not one suffers the loss of the goods of the body is not in the hands of fortune but the hands of the philosopher: to illustrate this point Cicero cites an exchange between Perses and Paullus. When the imprisoned Perses begged his captor Paullus not to humiliate him by leading him in triumph through the streets, Paullus replied, “That is in your power.”42 In all this it must be emphasized that the praise of the suffi ciency of virtue and philosophy found in Disputation V is only possible on the basis of the discussion of death in Disputation I. Cicero himself makes this point when he alludes to the fi rst Disputation during the fi nale of the fi fth: “In the fi rst day, when we inquired after death itself, much was said about death, so that he who remembers in no way risks esteeming death either as something not to be longed for, or else as something to be feared.”43 Conversely, Disputation I anticipates the conclusion to Disputation V when Cicero presents Cato’s suicide as an example of the actions of the sage.44 It must be emphasized that this pragmatic satisfaction of (1), (2), and (3) is only available to one who possesses the wisdom and virtues of the sage. Only the Sage knows when it is proper to end one’s own life: “It is the appropri-ate action to live when most of what one has is in accordance with nature. When the opposite is the case, or is envisaged to be so, then the appropriate action is to depart from life.”45 The fl ipside of this is worth emphasizing as well: since the

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sage is the only one who has proper understanding of life, it is only the sage who can confi dently end it with the assurance that he is doing the proper things—it is never appropriate for the foolish to kill themselves insofar as they are not in a position to properly evaluate their actions.

3: Conclusion: O Happy Life that Requires Death to Be Completed . . .In sum, de Finibus outlines three desiderata for a theory of the good life:

(1) The sovereignty of virtue as the highest good, necessary and suffi cient for happiness, must be maintained.

(2) The happy life must be understood as coextensive with the possession of other goods, in particular the primary objects of nature.

(3) Happiness is to be understood as the possession of all goods, including especially the highest good, not admitting of degrees

However, it does not offer any satisfactory way of reconciling these three. It has been the argument of this paper that Cicero attempted a resolution in his Tusculan Disputations. The trouble synthesizing these three lies in the Regulus-problem, i.e., the situation where someone in possession of the highest good (virtue) lacks the goods of the body and is not happy. This scenario, of course, suggests that virtue is not suffi cient for happiness. Cicero’s resolution is to argue that when one possesses virtue he or she will have the ability to end one’s life rather than suffer misfortunes substantial enough to threaten the loss of happiness. That is to say, Cicero initially affi rms (1) and (3), and argues for the affi rmation of (2) by recommending the suicide of the virtuous when these goods are threatened. In recommending suicide pending the loss of certain goods of the body, Cicero seems to be admitting that virtue is not suffi cient for the happy life: if it was, there would be no need for suicide. However, Cicero’s suicide strategy makes a life characterized by the possession of external goods dependent upon virtue by stipulating that when these good have utterly forsaken, or about to forsake, the sage he will forsake life: virtue is suffi cient for happiness insofar as virtue will not accept a life of unhappiness. In this, it might seem that Cicero implicitly adds fourth claim:

(4) A suicidal disposition is necessary for the happy life. However, this could lead to a misreading of Cicero’s account of suicide by treat-ing it apart from virtue while for Cicero the suicidal act, on the part of the sage, manifests virtue. To put the matter bluntly: suicide, for the sage, is virtuous.46 The sage’s death, as a virtuous act, is not contrary to the happy life but a capstone for it: it is a happy death ending a happy life before fortune can turn against the sage.

So, the happy life in the Tusculan Disputations is fi nally guaranteed in the happy death of the sage’s suicide. This last act of virtue ensures that virtue and other goods are coextensive in the sage’s life. Cicero’s goal in the Disputations, if we are

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to read him charitably, is not so much conceptual clarity and rigor as much as it is practical applicability. The dependence of the possession of other goods on virtue here is not so much logical or conceptual but pragmatic. Although Cicero cannot provide any argument to suggest that the relationship between virtue and other goods is necessary, such that the possession of virtue might logically imply the possession of other goods, he is able to provide a moral or exhortatory one: the sage’s willingness to kill himself when lacking external goods ensures that he will never live without them. Instead he will virtuously depart from life when the external goods depart from his life.47

In light of this, one must emphasize, rather than evade, the importance of self-killing in Cicero’s discussion of the happy life. Self-killing is key to Cicero’s presentation of the philosophical life in the Tusculan Disputations and his solu-tion to the dilemma developed in book V of de Finibus. The central role that self-killing plays in Cicero’s account of the happy life should not be lost, but is a central part of Roman philosophy in general: elsewhere in de Finibus’s exposition of stoicism it is argued that it is the duty of the sage to kill himself when virtue is threatened;48 and one could point to any number of passages in the more or-thodox stoicism of Seneca that recommend suicide.49 This is why Augustine, in the nineteenth book of The City of God, was correct to focus on self-killing in his critique of Hellenistic—but especially Roman—eudaimonism. Augustine saw the close bond forged by Cicero between philosophical happiness and suicide as testimony to the illusory nature of the claim that philosophy is the path to hap-piness. For Augustine suicide, despite Cicero’s protestations to the contrary, belies claims of philosophy to offer the happy life; the death of the sage is not the last act of the happy life but a desperate slaughter that testifi es to the inexhaustible misery of human life.50

But, as unworkable as the solution of the Tusculan Disputations may be, no other solutions to the problem presented in de Finibus were offered; at the same time, as already noted, even orthodox stoicism fi nds a prominent place for suicide in their accounts of happiness.51 Understanding the importance of self-killing in Cicero’s solution to the Regulus-problem should make us more doubtful about recent attempts to revivify the Hellenistic ideal of a philosophical way of life. Cicero’s strategy unites the philosophical quest for eudaimonism as he under-stands it with the willingness to end that happy life. The mixture of happiness and suicide no doubt strikes many as implausible, and perhaps further confi rms the widespread suspicion that Cicero is a philosophical lightweight. The implausibility of the solution, however, might not suggest shortcomings of Cicero as much as it does of the project of which his works are a small part: the eudaimonistic project of Hellenistic philosophy (which to be sure, could be distinguished from that of Plato and Aristotle) that sought a life free from the problems and misery of the ordinary person.52 If the conjoining of the happy life and suicide is not a formal

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contradiction, it perhaps suggests what Habermas has called, in other contexts, a performative contradiction. This performative contradiction is what Augustine points out when he mockingly exclaims “O happy life, which requires the help of death to be completed!53”

NOTES

1. I am indebted to an anonymous commentator for this title—which is much more striking than my fi rst title—and for other helpful comments that improved this paper.

2. Some scholars, most notably A. J. L. van Hooff in From Autothanasia to Suicide: Self-Killing in Classical Antiquity (New York: Routledge, 1990), have argued that we should avoid the term ‘suicide’ when discussing self-killing in this period because (a) neither ancient Greek nor Latin had such a word, but had to make do with more complicated refl exive constructions to get the point across and (b) the term has pejorative over-tones, inherited from Christianity, which can misdirect our account of the ancient phenomenon. While both of Van Hoof ’s points are well taken, (a) seems to me to be fairly trivial and (b) is questionable: in an era that is rapidly moving toward asserting that the ‘right to die’ is an inalienable human right, it seems questionable to say that ‘suicide’ is always a pejorative term.

3. Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy? trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 96.

4. Julia Annas, Morality of Happiness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 408–9.

5. See the somewhat critical comments in Pierre Hadot, “Refl ections on the Idea of the ‘Cultivation of the Self,’” trans. M. Chase, in Philosophy as a Way of Life, ed. Arnold Davidson (London: Blackwell, 1995), 206–14, and Davidson’s comments in his in-troduction to the same book, 1, 24–5

6. A notable exception to this tradition of squeamishness is Miriam Griffi n. Her pair of papers “Philosophy, Cato and Roman Suicide: I” (in Greece and Rome 33.1. 1986. 64–77) and “Philosophy, Cato and Roman Suicide: II” (in Greece and Rome 33.2 1986. 192–202) are extremely helpful.

7. Van Hooff, From Autothanasia to Suicide, 36.

8. Seneca, de Providentia, VI.6.17–7.24.

9. On this element in Cicero’s thought, the more general comments of P. Hadot in “La philosophie antique: une éthique ou une pratique?” (in Études de Philosophie Ancienne. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1998. 207–232) are particularly appropriate: “Philosophical discourse [le discours du philosophe] takes the form of an appeal, as not only an ex-ercise designed to develop the intelligence of the disciple, but also that of an exercise designed to transform his life. It is in this way that they are no longer constrained only to pedagogy, but the need for psychagogy and for the direction of souls arises, which keeps ancient philosophical discourse from being perfectly systematic. The propositions that they compose do not always express adequately the theoretical

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thoughts of philosophy, but they are to be understood in the perspective of the effect that they aim to produce in the soul of the auditor” (207, my translation).

10. See Cicero, de Finibus, IV.35–38.

11. Because the proponent of the hybrid theory changes in de Finibus (from Cicero in book four to Piso in book fi ve) I shall refer simply to ‘hybrid theorist’ rather than the particular speaker. All quotations from de Finibus are from Cicero, On Moral Ends, trans. R. Woolf, ed. J. Annas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); the Latin text is taken from M. Tulli Ciceronis, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum Libri Quinque, ed. L. D. Reynolds. Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis (Oxford: Claren-don, 1998).

12. Cicero, De Finibus, IV.25.

13. Ibid., IV.68: “Cum enim quod honestum sit id solum bonum esse confi rmatur, tollitur cura valetudinis, diligentia rei familiaris, administratio rei publicae, ordo gerendo-rum negotiorum, offi cia vitae, ipsum denique illud honestum, in quo uno vultis esse omnia, deserendum est.”

14. Ibid., IV.41: “Quaesita enim virtus est non quae relinqueret naturam sed qua tueretur; at illa, ut vobis placet, partem quondam tuetur, reliquam deserit.”

15. See ibid., III.16–23 for Cato’s stoic argument and IV.25–28 for Cicero’s rejoinder.

16. Cicero, De Finibus, V.37: “Ex quo perspicuum est, quoniam ipsi a nobis diligamur omniaque et in animo et in corpore perfecta velimus esse, ea nobis ipsa cara esse propter se et in iis esse ad bene vivendum momenta maxima. Nam cui proposita sit conservatio sui, necesse est huic partes quoque sui caras esse, carioresque quo perfectiores sint et magis in genere laudabilis. Ea enim vita expetitur quae sit animi corporisque explete virtutibus, in eoque summum bonum poni necesse est, quan-doquidem id tale esse debet ut rerum expetendarum sit extremum.”

17. See Cicero’s remarks regarding Theophrastus’s view in Tusculan Disputations, V.9.24–26. All references to the Disputations are to Tusculanarum Disputationum, 2 vols., ed. O. Heine and M. Pohlenz. Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner Verlagsgesellshaft, 1957), my translations.

18. Cicero, De Finibus, V.81.

19. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, V.1.2–3.

20. See J. Annas’s “Introduction” to On Moral Ends, xii; and J. Leonhardt, Ciceros Kritik der Philosophenschulen (munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1999), 53–61.

21. On the ‘names’ of the two interlocutors, and their unique place in Cicero’s corpus, see A. E. Douglas, “Form and Content in the Tusculan Disputations,” in Cicero the Philosopher, ed. J. G. F. Powell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 197–218, 198; and C. Lévy, “L’ Âme et le moi dans les Tusculanes,” Revue des etudes latines 80 (2002): 78–94, 89–90. For the purposes of this paper, the specifi c meaning of A’s name is rather unimportant and I will treat M’s voice as the voice of Cicero.

22. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, II.12.28–13.33.

23. Ibid., I.7.14: “Age iam concedo non esse miseros, qui mortui sint, quoniam extorsisti ut faterer, qui omnino non essent, eos ne miseros quidem esse posse. Quid? qui vivimos, cum moriundum sit, nonne miseri sumus. Quae enim potest in vita esse iucunditas, cum dies et noctes cogitandum sit iam iamque esse moriendum?”

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24. J. S. C. Teijeiro, Tusculanae disptationes y Divagaciones horacianas (Valencia: Universi-dad de Valencia Secretariado de Publicaciones, 1977), 18, summarizes the argument this way: “Regarding the problem of the immortality of the soul, the attitudes of the philosophers can be grouped into two systems, one of those who admit the survival of the soul separated from the body, and the other those who hold that death is nothing else than the total annihilation of being. But in both cases, death is not an evil, either because it either enters into total unconsciousness and, because of a total incapacity to experience pain, complete insensibility, or is the transit to a better life” (my translation).

25. For a slightly longer discussion of the various arguments Cicero employs, with references to the discussion of pain in the second Disputation, see J. S. C. Teijeiro, Disptationes y Divagaciones, 11–26.

26. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, I.11.24: “His sententiis omnibus nihil post mortem pretinere ad quemquam potest; pariter enim cum vita sensus amittitur; non sentientis autem nihil est ullam in partem quod intersit. Reliquorum sententiae spem adferunt, si te hoc forte delecat, posse animos, cum e corporibus excesserint, in caelum quasi in domicilium suum pervernire.”

27. Ibid., I.49.118: “Nos vero, si quid tale acciderit, ut a deo denuntiatum videatur ut exeamus e vita, laeti et agents gratias pareamus emittique nos e custodia et levari vinclis arbitremur, ut aut in aeternam et plane nostram domum remigremus aut omni sensu molestiaque careamus: sin autem nihil debuntiabitur, eo tamen simus animo, ut horribilem illum diem aliis, nobis faustum putemus nihilque in malis ducamus quod sit vel a dis immortalibus vel a natura parente omnium constitutum.”

28. Ibid., I.34.83: “A malis igitur mors abducit, non a bonis.”

29. See Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, IV.6.12–14.

30. Ibid., I.35.85: “Metellus ille honoratis quattuor fi liis, at quinquaginta Priamus, e quibus septemdecim iusta uxore natis: in utroque eandem habuit fortuna potestatem, sed usa in altero est; Metellum enim multi fi lii fi liae, nepotes neptes in rogam imposu-erunt, Priamum tanta progenie orbatum cum in aram confugisset, hostilis manus interemit.”

31. Ibid., I.35.85–86: “Quod si ante occidisset, talem eventum omnino amisissett, hoc autem tempore sensum amisit maolrum.”

32. Ibid., I.35.86: “Pompeio, nostra familiari, cum graviter aegrotaret Neapoli, melius est factum. Coronati Neapolitani fuerunt, nimirum etiam Puteolani, vulgo ex oppidis publice gratulabantur. . . . Qui si mortem tum obisset, in amplissimis fortunes occidis-set, is propagatione vitae quot, quantas, quam incredibiles hausit calamitates!”

33. Ibid., I.36.86: “Haec morte effugiuntur, etiam si non evenerunt, tamen, quia possunt evenire.”

34. Ibid., V.27.76: “Is enim huic maxime sententiae repugnant.”

35. Ibid., II.12.28–13.33.

36. Ibid., II.14.33–18.43.

37. See ibid., II. 7.18 and V.26.75–76.

38. Ibid., V.1.3; note the phrase “dolores intolerabiles.”

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39. Ibid., V.40.117: “Congerantur in unum omnia, ut idem oculis et auribus captus sit, premature etiam doloribus acerrimis corporis; qui primum per se ipsi plerumque confi ciunt hominem: sin forte longinquitate producti vehementius tamen torquent, quam ut causa sit cur feranture. . . . Portus enim praesto est, quoniam mors ibidem est aeternum nihil sentiendi receptaculum.”

40. See the discussions in Griffi n, “Roman Suicide I,” 72–75, Teijeiro, Disptationes y Divagaciones, 25–26 and Annas, The Morality of Happiness, 408–9.

41. Cicero, Tusculan Disptuations, V.41.118: “Sic iniurias forunae, quas ferre nequeas, def-ugiendo relinquas.” On the connection between fortune and necessity, see Academica I.7.29; there Varro suggests that the term fortuna does not imply randomness, but only a necessity whose cause and operations are unknown to us.

42. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, V.40.118: “In tua id quidem potestate est.”

43. Ibid., V.40.118: “Multa primo die, cum de ipsa morte quaereremus, non pauca etiam postero, cum ageretur de dolor, sunt dicta de morte, quae qui recordetur, haud sane periculum est ne non mortem aut optandam aut certe non timendam putet.”

44. Ibid., I.30.74.

45. Cicero, De Finibus, III.60: “In quo enim plura sunt quae naturam sunt, huius offi cium est in vita manere; in quo autem aut sunt plura contraria aut fore videntur, huius offi cium est de vita excedere.”

46. There are interesting comments, developing this line of thought vis-à-vis Roman civic virtue in Carlin Barton, Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 38–47; see also Van Hooff, Autothanasia to Suicide, 130: “In general, the driving forces attributed to the cases of suicide lie in the sphere of male virtue, literally, virtus.”

47. The anonymous referee raises an interesting question that is worth noting, but can’t be addressed here: How would Cicero’s strategy apply in cases where the sage is suffering extreme pain but is unable to kill himself, as in Phalaris’s Bull or some other dastardly scenario? In these cases it seems that sage must simply suffer and be unhappy, as death remains out of reach. Does the fact that suicidal tendencies are not suffi cient for death requiring the addition of suicidal actions suggest that Cicero’s strategy fails on this point as well? Perhaps, but one could imagine a Ciceronian retort to the effect that the sage would know that this was coming, and kill himself before he could be incapacitated. But this hardly seems entirely convincing, and would need much more development that I can offer here.

48. Cicero, De Finibus, III.60

49. For example, see Seneca, de Constantia Sapientis, I.2–3, de Ira, III.15, de Providentia, VI.6.17–7.24, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, XCI.21.25–30; Epicureanism, surpris-ingly, was not partial to suicide and although not condemning it out right never accepted nor theorized about it to the degree the Stoics did, although it is mentioned in Torquatus’s defense of Epicureanism in Cicero’s De Finibus, I.49.

50. Augustine, de Civitate Dei, XIX.4. References are to Augustinus, De Civitate Dei Libri I–X. (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 47, ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb [Turnhout: Brepols, 1955]).

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51. Annas, Morality of Happiness, 408–9: “[Stoic] virtue is not just a state which the virtuous person has, but a disposition which is exercised and life is not worth living if one is deprived of the chance of exercising one’s virtue. . . . [V]irtuous actions can succeed even when the intended outcomes fail, so these conditions will have to be extreme, so extreme as to threaten the agent’s intellectual and affective state. When this happens, and there is ‘not even the hope’ of virtuous action, it is rational for the agent to commit suicide.”

52. For a discussion of the different conceptions of happiness in ancient philosophy, see P. Hadot, “Les modèles de bonheur proposés par les philosophes antiques,” in Études de Philosophie Ancienne (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1998), 327–40.

53. Augustine, de Civitate Dei, XIX.4: “O vitam beatam, quae ut fi niatur mortis quaerit auxilium!” (my translation).