Linking the natural man to the res publica in the works of Marcus Tullius Cicero

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AbstractThere is no consensus on the importance of Cicero's doctrine of the state (res publica) among the prominent figures and scholars of political theory. In our view, the main reason for this is that the discussion of the political theoretical insights of the corpus Ciceronianum is too often reduced to a repetition of stereotypes. Cicero's key works on political doctrine, such as the De oratore, the De re publica and the De officiis, are mostly analysed from a philosophical point of view, with historical and legal aspects being put to one side. The characteristics of the mixed constitution (mikte politeia), which is at the heart of Cicero's theory of the res publica, are only superficially examined. What is also mostly overlooked is the extremely significant fact that in the De re publica Cicero (unlike Plato, for example) not only develops a philosophically grounded theory of the state, the res publica, but also applies his theory to finding the state, and in particular its ideal form, the optimus status civitatis, in the historical reality of Rome, that is, his own state. In this way, Cicero connects ratio and res, thus establishing the harmony and, indeed, unity of idea and history. The value of this important idea is not in the least affected by the fact that Cicero was undoubtedly an eclectic thinker rather than a consistent exponent of the views of any school or current. That, it seems to us, helped him greatly to lay the foundations of a doctrine of the state that could influence political thought centuries, even millennia, later, up to the political thought of the first decades of the 21st century.