Today's Who's Who in the Medical Humanities is Cicero (102 B.C.E. - 43 B.C.E.) (murdered).
Trying to write a blog post about Cicero is akin to attempting to get Yao Ming into a Mini.
What does one say in such a post about arguably the greatest rhetorician and orator in recorded Western history?
Thankfully, I am guided by the task at hand, which is not to attempt to summarize Cicero, but to discuss some aspects of Cicero's life and work insofar as they may help to illuminate the medical humanities.
There is obviously no shortage of sources, internet and otherwise, on the life and work of Cicero, but much of this briefest of histories on Cicero here is taken from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry.
Cicero, like many of the medieval and Renaissance humanists he would inspire 1300 years after he lived, trained as a lawyer (this is not accidental, in my opinion, but this is a subject for another post). He was not born into the aristocracy, but became an extremely successful attorney, and his legal skills paved a road into politics, holding multiple offices and eventually becoming a member of the Senate.
At the height of his fame, in 60 B.C.E., Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus took control of Rome, and invited Cicero to bring his considerable talents into the service of what would become the Roman Empire. Cicero, however, refused, and remained committed to the ideals of the Roman Republic. His steadfastness would cost him dearly, as he was exiled in 58 B.C.E., forbidden to live within 500 miles of Italy.
(Note: There are some remarkable parallels between these events and those that resulted in another important humanist, Niccolo Machiavelli's exile from Florence 1400 years later. More on this in Machiavelli's Who's Who, which is forthcoming).
Happily for Cicero, his exile ended after a year and a half, though political office was closed off to him, and the next several years saw him write some of his most famous works. Several years later, Cicero became involved in a power struggle between Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian. He backed Octavian in a series of speeches before the Senate (with the ultimate intention of restoring the Republic). The three candidates, however, reached a power sharing agreement, and Octavian did not protect Cicero from Antony's wrath. Cicero, along with his son, his brother, and his nephew were murdered by agents of Antony in or around 43 B.C.E.
Again, I cannot possibly do justice to the significance of Cicero's thought and writings in a blog post, but what I can attempt to do is to describe why exactly Cicero was so important to medieval and Renaissance humanism.
As briefly touched on in this post, a key marker of humanism was a return to the wisdom of antiquity, but the humanists did not regard all of that wisdom as equally valuable. The unquestionable queen of the humanistic discipines was rhetoric.
Why was rhetoric so important to the humanists? Though this is a complicated question, humanism is properly viewed, at least in part, as a dialectical antithesis to the scholastic focus on the Thomist and Aristotelian style of scholasticism, to the abstract questions of logic that began to seem of little relevance to people's actual daily lives.
Rhetoric was viewed as vital because it was then, as it is now, a discipline that can, in the hands of a skilled rhetor, move people, can inspire them to arete, or virtue. William Bouwsma, one of the authorities on this point, notes in his pamphlet, The Culture of Rennaissance Humanism, that
[t]he peculiarity of the renaissance that began in the fourteenth century lay in its special emphasis on rhetoric, in the particular value it attached to graceful, persuasive, and effective verbal communication, both orally and in writing. For the first time since antiquity, rhetoric came fully into its own (9).
It is unfortunate that our society frequently uses conjoins the term "rhetoric" with the adjective "mere," as Bouwsma notes, in part because for the humanists rhetoric was inextricably linked to the bettering of human lives (9). This was wherefrom it derived its imperative for the humanists, at least in part. Again, as Bouwsma notes, "the study of rhetoric included a concern with virtue, especially in its social dimensions" (16)
Where humanism was characterized by a return to the classics and by a hope to use rhetoric in the service of virtue, it is altogether unsurprising that Cicero was a chief source of reference and inspiration for the humanists.
The question, then, is what relevance does Cicero have for the modern-day medical humanist?
In part, and I do not mean to play hide-the-ball, I believe that the foregoing discussion hints at the answer I have stumbled upon: the use of words to humanize medical practice, and by humanize, I mean the cultivation of arete, of virtue. Look again why Cicero was so important to the humanists: he was the greatest (ancient?) exemplar of a discipline that could move the hearts of men, as opposed to conceptual abstraction that was not deemed to have great relevance to most people's daily lives.
Does this not describe quite well some of the most common complaints patients voice regarding their physicians, at least in the U.S.? That physicians seem remote and disconnected, and that much of their health care experiences feels distant and abstracted? That health and treatment are technologized? That providers seem unable to properly communicate and either speak or listen with their patients (listening is most assuredly good rhetorical practice, as any modern appellate lawyer will tell you)?
Naturally, these are some sweeping statements, and they obviously would require significant qualification to be more accurate, but they are not therefore erroneous, in my opinion. Robert Proctor, in his Defining the Humanities, argues that the early humanists argued that "the primary purpose of study was not to become learned, but to become good" (147). Rhetoric was perceived as the principal means to this end. If what the medical humanist is concerned with, at least in part, is assisting in the humanization of medical practice, I would suggest that familiarity with the concept of rhetoric in the service of arete, of truly communicating with and practicing hearing and speaking to patients, would seem to be important, to put it mildly.
The humanists believed that rhetoric was a means of humanizing the practice of learning. I would suggest that this is no less valid today than it was 700 years ago, or 2000 years ago. While Virgil may be the choice for the poet in his journey, perhaps, it is not too much hyperbole to suggest that Cicero remains an important guide for the modern-day medical humanist.
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