The community is more important than the individual: Deliberation, practical rationality, and moral psychology in Cicero's De officiis

西塞罗对伦理问题的看法是由对个人与社会关系的强烈兴趣所塑造的。在他的政治著作中，一个主要的关注点是强调在出现疑问的情况下，社会——尤其是国家——比个人更重要。共同体的优先性(T)是我们了解西塞罗总体观点的一个核心特征。然而，令人惊讶的是，从来没有人调查过T对他的伦理理论到底意味着什么。这就是我的项目的由来。我的目的是提供一个系统的调查，社区的优先权在西塞罗最有影响力的伦理学著作《论官论》中所扮演的角色。我将不仅仅分析T在“责任计算”中所履行的功能，即在特定情况下确定什么行为是适当的过程。我还将讨论T在《论官论》中所涉及的实践理性和道德心理的概念。这为我们对这部作品的理解增加了一个重要的方面，尽管这部作品在伦理学史上有着巨大的影响，但今天它大多被视为斯多葛派哲学的来源。我反思的起点是一个没有得到应有关注的观察：它不适合西塞罗在他的伦理学中提到的幸福主义框架。幸福主义的核心问题是什么对我们的幸福贡献最大，也就是说，什么符合我们自己的利益。相比之下，T似乎要求我们忽略这个问题，而是优先考虑社区的利益。严格来说，这个问题并不新鲜。亚里士多德已经提出了这一观点，他的唯美主义伦理学包含了为他人牺牲自己的生命是正确的，例如在锻炼勇气的时候。然而，当亚里士多德试图调和自我牺牲与他的幸福论时，这在《论官职论》中就不那么清楚了。事实上，我将在这里展示，我们找到了T的另一种非唯目的论基础的元素，它的特点之一，是命令和服从的心理，以及刻意的自我约束。通过探索这些元素，并将张力带到现实主义的框架中，我的项目提供了一个关于“官方”的全新视角。因此，我们不仅可以更好地理解“论官论”对西塞罗自身利益的贡献，例如，在政治著作中。我们也有一个基础，来思考“官论”，一方面与唯达主义传统，另一方面与现代义务论概念之间的关系。这样的思考也是我项目的一部分。

Cicero’s perspective on ethical questions is shaped by a strong interest in the relationship between the individual and the community. One of the major concerns of not just his political writings is to emphasise that in case of doubt the community – especially the res publica – is more important than the individual. This thesis of the priority of the community (T) is a core feature of our picture of Cicero’s general outlook. Surprisingly, however, it has never been investigated what exactly T means for his ethical theory. This is where my project comes in. My aim is to offer a systematic investigation of the role that the priority of the community plays in De officiis, Cicero’s most influential work on ethics. I will not just analyse the function that T fulfils in the ‘calculation of duty’, i.e. the procedure of determining what behaviour is appropriate in a specific situation. I will also discuss the conception of practical rationality and moral psychology that T is connected with in De officiis. This adds an important aspect to our picture of a work which, though of great influence in the history of ethics, is today mostly read as a source for the philosophy of the Stoics.The starting point of my reflections is an observation that has not gained the attention it deserves: T does not fit readily into the eudaimonist framework that Cicero refers to in his ethics. Eudaimonism centres around the question of what contributes most to our happiness, i.e. what is in our own interest. T, by contrast, seems to ask us to ignore that question and instead give priority to the interests of the community. Strictly speaking, this problem is not new. It is already present in Aristotle, whose thoroughly eudaimonist ethics contains the idea that it can be right to sacrifice one’s own life for someone else, e.g. when exercising courage. Yet while Aristotle tries to reconcile the case of self-sacrifice with his eudaimonism, this is less clear in De officiis. In fact, I will show that here we find elements of an alternative, non-eudaimonist grounding for T, which is marked, among other things, by a psychology of command and obedience as well as deliberate self-restriction. By exploring those elements and bringing out the tension to the eudaimonist framework, my project offers a whole new view on De officiis. Thus, we can not only better understand what De officiis contributes to Cicero’s own interests as pursued, e.g., in the political writings. We also have a basis for reflections on the relationship between De officiis and the eudaimonist tradition, on the one hand, and modern deontological conceptions, on the other. Such reflections are also part of my project.