"Aristotle and Cicero: Finalism of nature"

LAURA CORSO DE ESTRADA

Puerto Bories

Workshop; HUMBOLDT-KOLLEG: Die Rezeption der Aristotelischen Politik in der Praktischen Philosophie Europas und Lateinamerikas; 2012

von Humboldt, Alexander Foundation-Universidad de Los Andes, Instituto de Filosofía

  EL PRESENTE TRABAJO, EXPUESTO COMO CONFERENCIA, HA SIDO RECOGIDO PARA SU PUBLICACIÓN EN UN VOLUMEN MONOGRÁFICO COLECTIVO SOBRE EL TEMA DEL WORKSHOP. DICHO VOLUMEN SE ENCUENTRA ACTUALMENTE EN ETAPA DE PREPARACIÓN.Edd. del Volumen: Eckhart Schütrumpf, Francisco Bertelloni, Joaquín García Huidobro.Acompaño con la certificación correspondiente, en versión impresa de este informe.ABSTRACT: ARISTOTLE AND CICERO: FINALISM OF NATURE Cicero?s speculative effort within the whole of his more specifically philosophical writings is focused in responding to the problem, certainly of a Greek origin, which centres on the ?physis-nomos? binomial and on the moral and political projections that the diverse character of subalternation of its components entails. But his express determination to establish, as the epistemological matrix scope of the solution to that problem, the one that is proper to the philosophical way, leads him, from a methodological point of view, to the constitution of a corpus expressive of the different levels of the organic treatment of the subject, with the aim of considering the practical order of human life and developing its foundations. Cicero carries out this elaboration through a work of reception and critical revision of the historical-philosophical context of the issues he deals with, in accordance with the schools of his time. He thus receives in his own concept of ?natura? ?through which he grants an entitative support to his ?jusnaturalism? in practical-moral and juridical matters- some theses of an Academic and Stoic tradition as well as of a clear Aristotelian origin.  My paper is, on the one hand, a proposal of an analytical reconstruction of Aristotelian theses from Politics L.I within the context of  Ciceronian ?jusnaturalism? as expounded in those passages of his corpus that are more directly related to the locus of Politics L.I.  And, although Cicero offers a doctrinal elaboration going beyond the exegetic possibilities of that Aristotelian locus, he has incorporated into his synergy of sources some elements that are expressive of the Aristotelian doctrinal presence, which he himself states taking into account.  In this sense, the approach to Cicero?s De finibus bonorum et malorum III is particularly interesting as to the initial considerations which he states about his frequentation of Aristotelian writings and to the developments offered in the same text in relation to human natural inclinations for the unfolding of life in common. However, throughout this paper I shall also consider, from a perspective of the genetic constitution of the Ciceronian corpus, some passages from other works that may be linked, from a speculative point of view, to certain passages from the Aristotelian text of Politics L.I. To that effect, I shall stop to consider some Ciceronian developments in De republica,  De legibus,  the above-mentioned De finibus bonorum et malorum, as well as in some parallel loci in De natura deorum, De senectute, De amicitia and De officiis. Cicero knows that his posture presupposes taking a stand regarding a large tradition that precedes him.  And in this sense the filiations of Greek schools, as Cicero exposes them, seem to empower him to compose a synergy of teachings of diverse origin, which in his own time remain somehow restated starting from the methodological-doctrinal transformations of the second, third and fourth Academy. Cicero offers some large developments about the philosophical debates of a Greek origin on the natural inclinations of the world as a whole and of the living beings inhabiting it, and incorporates to his own elaboration some Aristotelian theses about man?s ultimate end, his natural condition and the hierarchy of his perfective goods.     As in the Aristotelian text of Politics L., Cicero accounts for the constitution of life in common by way of the existence of an inclination inherent to the condition of human nature, whose development concerns its perfective finalism. This is why, on the other hand, my paper intends to discern -through inquiry into sources- the components of Aristotelian finalism that are present in Cicero?s concept of nature and, with this respect, to consider the extent of their influence upon the context of the features characteristic of the finalism of a Ciceronian tradition. I shall also attend in both authors to the ethical projections of their respective finalistic concepts of nature within the sphere of human condition.