Moral Standards
Walter Nicgorski
May 11 & 18
An observation of Benjamin Franklin inspires our seminar title. Upon leaving the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, he was asked what kind of government was created for America. His response? “A republic, if you can keep it!”
Cicero, a master of Latin prose and a great orator, used his talents in defense of the Roman republic as it tottered and eventually fell to Caesar and the imperial system that followed. He reflected on topics that remain critically relevant today: the qualities of leadership and citizenship, the idea of a model constitution, the limits of democracy, the basis for virtues like justice and honesty, the relation of personal virtue and public needs, the ideas of natural law and human dignity, the nature of just war, and the basis and limits of private property.
We will read Cicero’s three most important political and moral
writings: his dialogue On the Republic, selections from his dialogue On
the Laws, and selections from his ethical treatise On Duties. The latter
takes the form of an extended letter to his 21-year-old son away at school.
These writings have influenced Western history—from their impact
on early Christian teachers like Jerome and Augustine to the makers of
the American Revolution and Constitution for whom Cicero was the chief
classical source. Cicero’s On Duties has been seen as second only
to the Bible in shaping the moral language of the West, and his On the
Republic contains the highly influential and inspirational “Dream
of Scipio.”
| Walter Nicgorski previously chaired the Program of Liberal Studies and is currently a professor in this 50-year-old interdisciplinary department which provides the Great Books major at Notre Dame. He is a classically trained political theorist who has published on the moral and political thought of Cicero, that of the American founding, and the theory and practice of moral and liberal education. Professor Nicgorski was a Lilly Faculty Fellow studying the history of the idea of liberal education and the implications for that education found in recent work on moral development. He also served as a visiting scholar at St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge University, and the Institute of Liberal Education at St. John’s College (Sante Fe). In addition, he has directed National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminars for secondary school teachers. |
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