Cicero (on the Stoics) · 106–43 BCE
Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶124 — Cicero (on the Stoics)
From “On the Contempt of Death”
Translation by C. D. Yonge (1853)
Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶124
But a living man does not want a good unless he is distressed without it; and yet we can easily understand how any man alive can be without a kingdom. But this cannot be predicated of you with any accuracy: it might have been asserted of Tarquin, when he was driven from his kingdom. But when such an expression is used respecting the dead, it is absolutely unintelligible. For to want implies to be sensible, but the dead are insensible, therefore the dead can be in no want.
Cite this passage
Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶124, tr. C. D. Yonge (1853)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/tusculan-disputations/1.124
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, tr. C. D. Yonge (1853). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesA living person can be said to lack something, like a king who loses his throne, only because he feels the absence. The dead feel nothing, so it makes no sense to say they lack anything at all.
Themes and situations
- Death and mortality
- Desire and craving
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