A year before his death, Cicero, a successful roman moralist and statesman, wrote a letter to his son containing what he called “a practical code of behaviour”.
No one will ever write anything more wise, more true, or more useful — Voltaire, referring to this letter¹
It probably comes as no surprise then that a lot of what Cicero discusses in this letter can be found in the thought of other authors and thinkers. Great ideas tend to pop up in different form from one genius’ work to another’s. For example the famous first sentence of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is lifted almost verbatim from Aristotle’s Nichomachean ethics².
At the time of writing, Cicero’s son Marcus has been sent to Athens to study with the leading greek philosopher of the day, Cratippus. His father is keen for him to work assiduously and come back a better man.
The central lesson of Cicero’s letter is that if something is morally wrong, it cannot be advantageous, even if it seems so. As we’ll see, this is an interesting twist on a common bit of career advice many successful business people give.
That sounds broadly correct, our parents all taught us it’s bad to lie and be mean. But is it always bad? It comes down to this: the worst of all punishments is our own moral degradation. You may escape worldly punishment, but acting immorally is degrading. This is how Cicero puts it:
Acting immorally feels bad, why? We can ignore the feeling, but that’s dangerous. There is lots to say here, in fact this feeling is C.S. Lewis’ starting point in his argument for the existence of god in his very interesting book, Mere Christianity.
It feels bad because doing wrong repeatedly takes its toll, and we know that. Few things, however, feel better than morally right acts like helping a granny across the street.
The perfect example of someone who ignored this lesson is Dostoevsky’s character in Notes from Underground⁴. A retired civil servant in St Petersburg who lies and cheats, always in a small way, but over and over for his whole life. He never gets in trouble with the law. And he’s great at rationalising why what he’s doing is right, why lying or stealing is fine when he does it. A bit like the clever nihilists a lot of us were or knew in high school. Clever but not wise. This behaviour allows him to feel self-consistent but really he is miserable, depressed and full of resentment. Because at every lie and every cheat a little bit of him died, and only bitterness is left at the end.
This isn’t a theoretical concern, it can lead to depression and cause real harm. You start to harbour resentment and feel bitter. That’s why Jordan Peterson tells his students to clean their room³.
Cicero is warning his son: don’t fool yourself, if it’s morally wrong, it is always bad for you. Even if you make a quick buck and no-one finds out, because now you are a worse person. That has a real cost. The only yardstick of advantage in our lives and our careers is moral right.
To everyone who proposes to have a good career, moral philosophy is indispensable. — Cicero, letter to his son
Since Cicero is a stoic Seneca is a natural example of his point: he was a moral philosopher, wrote at length about becoming a better man, and was the richest man in the roman empire. He credits his success to his moral principles. What about examples that aren’t two thousand years old though?
A lot of successful business-persons explain their success in the same way: “be a problem solver”, “obsess over your customers”, yada yada, you know the refrain. Ken Griffin says that’s the best way to become the next Ken Griffin⁵. Ray Dalio says we should “optimise for the whole”. Both of them are self-made billionaires.
The link? Solving other peoples’ problems, optimising for the whole, all this is just putting others before us. That’s morality in a nutshell isn’t it? Sort of.
In his Principles, Dalio has a long section on this theme. “To be ‘good’, he says, something must operate consistently with the laws of reality and contribute to the evolution of the whole: that is what is most rewarded. For example, if you come up with something the world values, you almost can’t help but be rewarded.” Dalio’s Bridgewater devised some of the best ways to manage money for others, and couldn’t help but become the largest hedge fund out there. Amazon figured out how to deliver anything we want to our doorstep in a day, and became one of the world’s most valuable brands.
So moral philosophy surely does help us to at least understand what we need to do to have a successful career. Doing something morally wrong is never to our advantage, because our true advantage is found in helping others, the whole. It’s not like being successful equals being moral, but the thing that made the person successful was grounded in morality: in solving a problem many people had.
Honestly there is so much more to be found in this letter, for example Cicero’s thoughts on whether you should always be honest? [Hint: not if it’s morally wrong]. Or the classification of the four cardinal virtues: wisdom, justice, fortitude and temperance, or self-control. But I feel like I should leave some of the good stuff for you to find out when you read the letter for yourself. You will right?
Here then, Marcus my son, is your father’s present to you. Personally, I consider it a substantial one!
Cicero sounds like he had a sense of humour. I put some links below if you want to fact check some of this or dig a bit deeper. If you liked this article you might also be interested in my article on Seneca’s lessons for us, or another or Ray Dalio’s Principles.
[1] Selected Works, Cicero, Penguin Classics, 1971 Edition, p. 157
[2] The first sentence of Anna Karenina is “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”, Aristotle says “For men are good in but one way, but bad in many” shortly after explaining that “happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue”.
[3] Jordan Peterson telling his University of Toronto students why cleaning your room is legitimate psychotherapy.
[4] Take a look at Notes from Underground for a great example of what not to do.
[5] Ken Griffin saying you need to be a problem solver if you want to be the next Ken Griffin.
A PDF of Cicero’s letter can be found here (I only wrote about book III).
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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You.
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