The Ciceronian Secret to Happiness

To feel good, do good.

Excerpt: "Cicero’s book is in three parts, beginning with a study of what is honorable in life. He asserts that “all that is morally right rises from some one of four sources,” which he lists as truth, justice, nobility, and moderation.

These are, essentially, a variation of Plato’s four cardinal virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance, and Cicero argues that these traits are the foundation for a life of integrity and rectitude.

His letter offers limited encouragement to people who write advice columns. Modern research demonstrates that virtues are indeed most effectively transmitted by parents and peers, whereas outside interventions to teach virtue show only modest effectiveness. But as far as paternal influence goes, the book perhaps had some effect: Though Cicero Minor did not enjoy the illustrious career that his father did, he went on to hold a series of official positions in the Roman Republic.

The second part of De Officiis discusses the worldly rewards people naturally want. Cicero focuses on honor, wealth, and power—prizes bound up with a desire for status that is encoded in our genes. As evolutionary biologists have long argued, these rewards correlate with both reproductive success and resource acquisition. Our ancestors’ drive to succeed has surely passed on to us a craving to be superior to others in money, power, and prestige. Cicero acknowledges this reality, but notes that there are morally better and worse ways to acquire these rewards. Less honorable ways include disloyalty toward others and dishonesty in our dealings. The morally superior means for doing so include generosity, courtesy, and excellence—the virtues from part one, above.

Part three of De Officiis is the most important because he argues that the honorable route to worldly rewards is also the most expedient and effective way to get them and keep them.

In other words, there is no conflict between doing well and doing good.

Back in part two, he realizes that people tend not to believe this, because they operate on the zero-sum assumption that someone must “take something from his neighbour” and so “profit by his neighbour’s loss.” But in part three, Cicero rejects this completely. “For a man to take something from his neighbour and to profit by his neighbour’s loss is more contrary to Nature than is death or poverty or pain or anything else that can affect either our person or our property.”'