Cosmopolitanism, Imperialism, and the Idea of Law

Abstract

The cosmopolitan idea that humans have wider and more universal allegiances than to their immediate communities is presented by Cicero in On the commonwealth in both Platonic and Stoic forms. In On laws the more evidently Stoic idea of law as prescriptive right reason governs his argument. The chapter explains what Cicero takes its universal prescriptive force to consist in, and the way he conceives it to be embodied in the law codes of well-regulated constitutions of particular states, whether the Roman Republic at its best or any other ‘good and stable nation’. In On the commonwealth he had argued for the thesis that such states cannot exist or conduct their affairs without justice, which in Book 3 is the focus of a full-scale debate, particularly concerned with the justice or injustice of imperialism, not least Roman imperialism.