The Just City: The Ciceronian Conception of Justice and Its Reception in the Western Tradition

2026-07-22

One of the most innovative, and historically most influential, notions in the Western debate about justice is the political theory of Cicero (106-43 BCE). This project examines the ways a Ciceronian conception of justice came to be used in political argument at specific inflection points in the history of political thought. Ciceronian justice, responding to the breakdown of order, marked a significant departure from earlier Greek theories of justice. Cicero’s law-centered views on justice, both within and between states, were conceived against moral skepticism and shaped the later history of Western political thought in crucial ways. Cicero’s contribution has been obscured by philological trends keen on crediting Cicero’s political and ethical thought to Greek predecessors, on the one hand, and by the recent historiography on republicanism on the other. Neither of these can answer satisfyingly why Cicero’s legalized conception of justice has impacted Western political theory so thoroughly. How and why did Cicero distinguish his notion of justice from his predecessors? How did his conception come to influence both theory and institutions of justice until the enlightenment and beyond? The project challenges conventional views by focusing on crucial crossroads Cicero’s conception of justice faced from its inception in the late Roman Republic to early modern Europe. Bringing an innovative focus on the longue durée to the topic and bringing together methodological tools from intellectual history, ancient history and philosophy, and legal history, the project provides a deep historical perspective of Cicero’s conception of justice and its later reception. This reinterpretation of the intellectual history of justice in the West reevaluates the historical logic of Ciceronian justice, showing how and why this theory of justice came to play a crucial role in the European heritage by harnessing the reception of classical antiquity to long-term intellectual history.

Switzerland

2025-10-15