“Set Your Controls for the Heart of the Sun”: De Re Publica and the Governmental Sublime

Abstract This chapter’s reading of the De Re Publica unrolls in five parts. Part one examines the De Re Publica as a continuation of De Oratore. In De Re Publica, the figure of the gubernator assumes many of the same traits as the perfect orator in De Oratore. More specifically, De Re Publica situates the truth of its discourse at the center of four cardinal points: gubernatio, oratio, res ipsae, and an amor that is beyond voluptas. Part two examines the dialectic of the mixed constitution, while part three investigates the role of the gubernator in history. Here is where Cicero’s Republic differs most substantially from Plato’s. Rather than positing an ideal constitution that we should strive to imitate, Cicero’s and Cato’s republic is constituted in the dialectical tension between historical contingency and transcendental forms, between the interests of antagonistic classes and factions and justice. Part four concerns itself with Cicero’s discussion in Book 3 of justice in the art of governing. In part five, the Somnium Scipionis, Scipio’s vision is a dream of both a sublime beyond of the actual republic and of the necessity of a return from the sublime to the world of historical conflict. In the Somnium, we move from envisioning the music of the spheres, as in the myth of Er, to a return to the cave with the philosopher assuming his position at the helm of the ship of state, and hence to the death of Scipio, who Cicero leads us to believe was murdered.