"A CERTAIN SUSPICION OF THE DIVINE": WHY CHRISTENDOM'S PHILOSOPHY CURRICULUM SHOULD REQUIRE STUDY OF THE ROMANS CICERO AND SENECA

“Sic cum inferiore vivas quemadmodum tecum superiorem velis vivere (Thus you should live with your inferior just as you would wish your superior to live with you).” No, this is not a quote from the Gospels—it is not even a quote from a Christian. This was penned by a former advisor to the infamous Nero around 65 A.D., the year that Sts. Peter and Paul were executed by that wicked emperor. Evidence indicates that this man advised Nero to kill his own mother, and certainly he died by suicide (though he was not given much option about doing so). Yet his writings are so Christian that Christians themselves later circulated a fictitious correspondence between St. Paul and the pagan philosopher to try and explain the similarities. The man who wrote these words was the great Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca.
“Invidiam virtute partam gloriam, non invidiam putarem (hatred derived from virtue I would not think is hatred, but the part of glory).” This quote could well be a theologian’s commentary on Jesus’ words, “If the world hate you, remember that it hated me first.” (Jn 15:18) Yet the man who wrote it was a pagan who died before Christ’s birth, a man who did corrupt deeds to achieve the ultimate power of the consulship, who did not scruple to use half-truths to his advantage, a man who married a much younger former ward, and who (like Seneca) died from enforced suicide. Yet no tenderer love could be found than that for his daughter, no higher ideals for a friend could be found than were in his letters and treatises, and he showed an ability to change his faulty ideas and beliefs over time, which is rare, both in his time and in ours. Considered by St. Augustine as the greatest orator, the philosophical source of St. Jerome’s thought, he was a politician, lawyer, orator, consul, and father: Marcus Tullius Cicero.
These two thinkers, writers, and philosophers were very foundational for Western Civilization, particularly for Christian Civilization. From Sts. Augustine and Jerome to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, it is difficult to understand the philosophy, politics, culture, and ideals of the last 2,000 years without studying the two Romans. Whether their principles were used rightly (Augustine, Jerome, Adams, and Jefferson) or wrongly (Rousseau, Diderot), whether these men truly set forth the best possible philosophy without the aid of revelation, it is impossible to study and understand history rightly without knowing the principles of Ciceronian and Senecan philosophy. One may make the argument that there is no great Roman civilization without Greece preceding it, but it is also true that every emperor for 2,000 years in Europe wanted to be the Roman Emperor, and that the Catholic Church based itself in Rome and adopted Latin as its official language. There may be all kinds of complex historical factors behind that, but it is nevertheless true. Europe, for two millennia, (nay, the Byzantine empire of Asia and Africa for a time too), has centered its identity culturally, religiously, and—yes—philosophically around Rome. Which leads to my main point—that it is very important that Christendom begin incorporating Cicero’s and Seneca’s writings into their philosophy and political science core classes.
Let me make it clear that I am not in any way trying to dim the brilliance or diminish the importance of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. As the founders of philosophy (as it is known in the Western liberal arts tradition—yes, and in parts of the East, too), they deserve the glory and respect given them. Undoubtedly it is important for us to study them at Christendom, and in metaphysics (and consequently in theology) especially Plato and Aristotle are enormously helpful. But to study the Greeks is to have only one half of the base on which Western, Christian Civilization and thought are founded. Without the Romans—and the greatest of the Roman philosophers, Cicero and Seneca—there is a massive gap in our historical, theological, and philosophical understanding.
Not only that, but Cicero and Seneca are eminently worthy of being read for their own sake. I contend that they were indeed closer to Christian morality and cosmology even than Plato and Aristotle. Their penetration of human nature, their soaring moral ideals, their moving narratives, and, above all, their value for each and every individual, place them
among the greatest thinkers of all time. While they are still occasionally infected by elitism, they give us such passages as, “Servi sunt. Immo humiles amici. . .immo conservi, si cogitaveris tantumdem in utrosque licere fortunae (‘They are slaves.’ Nay, humble friends. . .nay, fellow slaves, if you have considered the same amount of fortune is permitted to each man --Seneca),” and “There is no king who has not arisen from slaves, and no slave who has not arisen from kings (Seneca).” Does not every man, slave or free, breathe the same air, asks Seneca? Does not every man, humble or noble, have within him a spark of the divine? And though they themselves may have often fallen far short of their own ideals, they give us such pearls of moral wisdom as, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others (Cicero),” and “Non nobis solum nati sumus (not for ourselves alone are we born –Cicero).”
Finally, and very importantly, Cicero’s and Seneca’s philosophy is absolutely foundational to the political philosophy that built our own country, America. As John Paul Ferguson put in in a letter to The Observer, “The belief that the Founding was monolithically inspired by John Locke’s classical liberalism is a myth.” Far more so than Locke or Hobbes, the ancient Romans Cicero and Seneca were among the principle, if not THE primary, sources on which the Founding Fathers drew to develop their political philosophy. Thomas Jefferson said that Cicero was a “major influence” on him while he was writing the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson also said, “Seneca is indeed a fine moralist. . .giving us on the whole a great deal of sound and practical morality,” and he stated that his beliefs in the necessity of religious liberty and equality in the political sphere were ideas drawn from the writings of both Cicero and Seneca. John Adams, Founder and second US President, said that he considered Cicero’s works to be more necessary to him than his limbs. Both James Madison (Father of the Constitution) and Alexander Hamilton (First Secretary of the Treasury) cited Cicero as justification for the tenets they put in the Constitution, Hamilton in a speech and Madison in the Federalist Papers. In fact, later on, while helping President George Washington suppress the Whiskey Rebellion, Hamilton wrote under the pseudonym “Tully” (from “Marcus Tullius Cicero”) and considered himself the “American Cicero.” Finally, when planning our current capital, Washington, D.C., George Washington and the other Founders envisioned it as the “New Rome,” and the classically styled government buildings were specifically designed to look Roman. Whether you greatly admire America’s founding philosophy, as I do, or not, it is a duty of ours as American citizens to understand the intellectual forces that shaped our country, and Cicero and Seneca (not the Greek philosophers) are at the front of that list.
I understand that, in core classes, there are only so many works that can be read and studied, and I also understand why Aristotle and Plato (particularly Aristotle) are used so often. But, as I said at the start of this article, in order to understand Western philosophy and Christian moral theology more fully, in order properly to understand American political philosophy at all, some study of Seneca and Cicero is essential. In Epistulae Morales XLI, on “the god within us,” Seneca declares, concerning an encounter with beauty in nature, “animum tuum quadam religionis suspicione percutiet (a certain suspicion of the divine things pierces your soul).” Every time I pick up a work by Cicero or Seneca, whether in Latin or in English, I find that their words pierce my soul. If Christendom introduced Cicero and Seneca into the philosophy and political science core curriculum, every Christendom student would have the opportunity to study the magnificent Roman philosophers whose works bring to mind “a certina suspicion of the divine.”