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Cicero on the Emotions
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Cicero on the Emotions

Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Translated and with Commentary by Margaret Graver
Buy this book: Cicero on the Emotions

Cicero on the Emotions

Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Translated and with Commentary by Margaret Graver
The third and fourth books of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations deal with the nature and management of human emotion: first grief, then the emotions in general. In lively and accessible style, Cicero presents the insights of Greek philosophers on the subject, reporting the views of Epicureans and Peripatetics and giving a detailed account of the Stoic position, which he himself favors for its close reasoning and moral earnestness. Both the specialist and the general reader will be fascinated by the Stoics’ analysis of the causes of grief, their classification of emotions by genus and species, their lists of oddly named character flaws, and by the philosophical debate that develops over the utility of anger in politics and war.

Margaret Graver’s elegant and idiomatic translation makes Cicero’s work accessible not just to classicists but to anyone interested in ancient philosophy and psychotherapy or in the philosophy of emotion. The accompanying commentary explains the philosophical concepts discussed in the text and supplies many helpful parallels from Greek sources.

283 pages | 3 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2002

Ancient Studies

Philosophy: History and Classic Works

Reviews

“The translation is elegant and fluent, and the varying levels of information in the notes are useful for a range of readers.”

M.R. Wright | Classical Bulletin

“Cicero was a man of wide culture, and he had studied in Greece with good masters, although he knew he was not, by Greek standards, an original philosopher. He is concerned in these books to find a way of dealing with emotion, and with the fact that life is so damagingly exposed to chance and suffering. Ought one really to aim at the passionless existence which the Stoics regarded as best? Were the emotions always bad? . . . . Professor Margaret Graver picks out and handles the third and fourth of Cicero’s four themes. Her idiomatic and readable translation is followed by a full and sympathetic commentary. The book gives an admirable introduction to the philosophical thought of Cicero, and also a whole period of Greek philosophy, including the work of the early Stoics.”--Jasper Griffin, </I>New York Review of Books

Jasper Griffin | New York Review of Books

“Graver’s thoughtful and well-produced book provides an excellent introduction to Cicero’s summary of ancient thought on the emotions . . . and, as such, will prove useful to teachers of ancient philosophy as well as to colleagues in religious studies interested in pre-Christian moral psychology.”

Hans-Friedrich Mueller | Religious Studies Review

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Table of Contents

Preface
Abbreviations and Matters of Citation
Introduction
About the Translation
A Note on the Text
Tusculan Disputations
Book 3
Book 4
Commentary
Book 3: On Grief
Book 4: On Emotions
Appendixes: Sources for Cicero’s Account
Appendix A. Crantor and the Consolatory Tradition
Appendix B. Epicurus and the Cyrenaics
Appendix C. The Early Stoics and Chrysippus
Appendix D. Posidonius
Bibliography
Index Locorum
General Index

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