Cicero’s De Officiis is a foundational text for two important but seemingly opposed traditions in the history of political thought: republicanism and cosmopolitanism. The former regards the res publica as the proper object of its citizens’ highest allegiance and patriotism as an indispensable virtue; the latter holds that one’s greatest allegiance should be to a notional world community of all human beings. Scholars usually regard Cicero’s strong commitment to the res publica as the product of his unreflective Roman patriotism, which is necessarily at odds with his cosmopolitan account of justice. In contrast, I argue that Cicero offers philosophical arguments for the priority of the res publica that derive from the same Stoic account of sociability that grounds his cosmopolitanism. De Officiis therefore presents a coherent account of what we might call “patriotic cosmopolitanism.” The chapter explicates Cicero’s argument for patriotic cosmopolitanism, draws attention to its theoretical strengths, and considers three important philosophical criticisms and how Cicero might respond.

It is standardly believed that Aristotle thinks that there are two kinds of happiness, one corresponding to intellectual contemplation and the other corresponding to ethically virtuous activities, and the former kind is superior to the latter. This is the Duality Thesis. It is notoriously problematic and does not follow from anything that Aristotle has said to that point. It also prevents solving the Conjunctive Problem of Happiness. Interpreters have felt forced to affirm the Duality Thesis by its apparent textual inescapability. However, the apparent claim depends on supplying “happy” or “happiest” from the previous sentence, as is standard among translators and interpreters. I argue for an alternative supplement that commits Aristotle to a much less problematic and unexpected position.

In De Officiis, Cicero values very highly the little society of parents and their children: an origin of society and seedbed of the republic, whose members should rank extraordinarily high among each other’s priorities. In light of Cicero’s biography and longstanding interest in a philosophical debate about parental love, I argue that Cicero’s position is that nature gives to humans a non-rational desire to care for their children, which leads many parents to rational love of their children, whereby they care about what is natural for at least some other humans, their children, as they care about it for themselves, holding property in common within the household. The rest of the family thereby learn loving attitudes. Such parents and their home are for their children images, however flawed, of virtue and a virtuous society. By making this experience common, nature teaches a lesson in what virtuous altruists would be like.