On the Intention of Cicero's<i>De Officiis</i>

Abstract

Recent scholarship has yielded a great deal of information on Cicero's De officiis ; this essay, however, seeks to move beyond information about the work in favor of an interpretation of Cicero's intention in writing it. To this end, the essay analyzes the genre and intended audience of De officiis , the allegedly Stoic teaching contained in it, and the puzzle presented by its crucial third book. The understanding of Cicero's intention that emerges from these investigations is then briefly compared with Cicero's teaching in De finibus . Theessay ultimately claims that De officiis should be interpreted as advocating a sort of Stoicism for the unphilosophical even while urging the views of the Peripatetics on the more sophisticated.