On Duties
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
On Duties
| Full title | On Duties (De Officiis) |
|---|---|
| Author | Cicero |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Cicero’s last work, a letter of practical moral instruction to his son written in 44 BC as the republic collapsed: the honourable, the useful, and a denial that they ever truly conflict — what seems expedient but dishonourable never actually is. Among the most widely read books in the West for eighteen centuries, and a direct source for Renaissance humanism and the American founders’ vocabulary of duty. |
Where I heard about it
- Brendan McCord — on his Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List (March 2026), under Pursuing the Good Life: Ethics and Personal Growth, next to his other Cicero entry and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations — the classical practical ethics a builder reads before the modern moral theory that follows. Full transcription: The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.
About this edition
Book one treats the honourable under four virtues — wisdom, justice, greatness of spirit and propriety — and insists that justice binds even in dealings with enemies and that promises and property rights are the foundation of social life. Book two argues that reputation and influence are better won by service than by fear. Book three takes on the apparent conflicts between the two.
Connections
- Cicero — the author.
- Stoicism — the tradition Cicero is adapting here, largely from Panaetius.
- Moral Philosophy — the field the treatise belongs to; it was the standard Western textbook in it for centuries.
- Ethics — the practical discipline of book one’s four-virtue scheme.
- The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.