I originally read an edition of this book that only included the two books of the Academic Questions. A large part of that work consists of a sustained discussion of the certitude of perception and truth - or the lack there of. As with most of Cicero's works, it functions as a survey of contemporaneous philosophical opinion.

In De Finibus (aka The End Of Good And Evil), as is usual, Cicero relates the different perspectives of the various philosophical schools of the day. One can tell that Cicero was not all that taken with Epicureanism; Cicero's chosen interlocutor, who relates their position that pleasure is the greatest good and pain the greatest evil, also thoroughly dismantles that position and shows it to be inconsistent. The Peripatetics and Stoics come off far better given that they presented a virtuous life as the greatest good, and a lack of it to be the greatest evil. The various virtues that Cicero often enumerates are honor, courage, temperance, etc. Much of this work sets the stage for the subsequent work and it's discussion centering on death and the imperturbable mind.

Cicero starts the Tusculan Disputations attempting to show that death should not be considered an evil and something to be feared. He follows that up with a defense of the imperturbable mind of the philosopher. Cicero seems to be promoting mainly the Stoic position in this regard.

I must say that while I agree partially with Cicero's contention that the philosopher should not be given to an excess of emotional states, I don't think that an absolute negation of all the emotions he lists (e.g. anger, grief, etc) is even possible. I wouldn't support it even if I thought it were possible. I could imagine a Stoic society looking something like a dystopian nightmare; sort of like the movie Equilibrium, where all states of feeling and emotion are strictly controlled, if not prohibited outright. Cicero (through his interlocutor) attempts to refute the Peripatetic position that negative emotional states should be moderated, not eradicated. Cicero seemed to think that anger is an immediate state after absolute serenity. Of course, human emotions aren't that simple. Anger starts as a simple feeling of aversion that can grow from minor annoyance to rage, given that it is left to proceed unchecked. His denunciation of pity I also found to be hardly appealing. Cicero claims that one should help those in need without recourse to pity, but I can only ask why? Certainly, reason alone cannot be the driving factor for helping someone in need. Compassion seemingly needs to be the catalyst. That pity is the same as compassion for Cicero is not absolutely clear, but the fact that he also denounces love (seemingly as the Greek concept of Eros), seems to suggest that any feeling/emotion was suspect in Cicero's view. Apathy has taken on very negative connotations in our time (and rightly so!), but for the Stoics (and for Cicero) pathos (i.e. passions/emotions/feelings etc) was something to be eradicated as much as possible, and apathy was a philosophical goal. Granted, pathos carried the meaning of "disturbance" more than our analogous English words often do; although, we get a sense of this when we use words rooted in Greek like “pathology”, “psychopath” and “sociopath.” Still, one can't help but view the Stoical stance on emotion to be rather excessive; sort of like cutting off a finger to deal with a hangnail. I'm not saying that emotions are not volatile and potentially destructive, but to deny that they serve a purpose, really contradicts the Stoical notion of conformity to nature as far as I'm concerned. Emotions are nothing if not natural. I think the Christian monastics handled the problem of emotions far more practically (they were, of course, influenced by the Platonists). They didn't deny their volatility, but neither did they deny their utility; they believed that human emotions needed to be channeled correctly for them to be used as God intended. Cicero's own likening of the imperturbable mind to being like a still body of water is probably less accurate than likening it to a body of water frozen solid. One might as well be dead if this were to be the goal. I'm not convinced that any ancient philosopher ever did it successfully anyway.

I'm often impressed by Cicero's writing, which I'm sure is even more impressive in the original Latin. I'm not often in agreement with him, but he was certainly sincere and was one of the earliest writers to juxtapose the different philosophical schools and present them in a doxographical fashion. Much of our knowledge of non-extant philosophical works stem from Cicero. I give this book around 3-and-a-half stars. ( )