Chapter 15 - Empire, Just Wars, and Cosmopolitanism

Summary

Cicero bequeathed to later political thought influential accounts of cosmopolitanism, empire, and just war theory. This chapter examines these themes in his De republica, De legibus, and De officiis. I argue that Cicero’s discussion evinces a nuanced and sensitive treatment of the universalism characteristic of the natural law cosmopolitan tradition and the particularism of the republican tradition. Cicero’s theorizing shows a greater coherence than most modern scholars suppose. Ultimately, his “patriotic cosmopolitanism” offers a rich response to a question of immediate importance in contemporary politics, where the place of the nation in our global order is hotly debated: how may our allegiances to our particular political communities square with our aspirations for global justice? For readers interested in “international relations,” Cicero remains good to think with.