De finibus bonorum et malorum

De finibus bonorum et malorum ( German: " From the highest good and the greatest evil", "About the goals of human action ") is a philosophical work of the Roman orator, politician and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero. It consists of five books in which Cicero deals with the philosophy directions of the Epicurean hedonism, the Stoics and the Peripatetics and this by introducing the Roman reader. The theme of the work is the question of aspiring to the highest good. It was created in the summer of 45 BC within about one and a half months. Together with the written shortly after Tusculanae Disputationes ( "Conversations in Tusculum " ) De finibus is the most extensive philosophical work of Cicero. The work is dedicated Marcus Junius Brutus.

Content

First and second book ( Liber Primus and Liber Secundus )

In the first two books of Cicero is dealing with the Epicurean hedonism. This takes the form of a fictional conversation with two friends of Brutus to Cicero's estate at Cumae. In the first book put his interlocutor is the doctrine of hedonism, in which the supreme pleasure is considered in the form of analgesia as the highest good. In the second book of Cicero criticized this view, which he attacks the hedonistic definition of lust and equating doubt with the highest good.

Third and fourth book ( Liber Liber Tertius and Quartus )

In the next two books, the school of Stoicism is resolved. In the third book presents Cicero Marcus Porcius Cato interlocutor before the doctrine of the Stoics, in which he introduces Latin terms for the technical terms used by the Stoics. As the highest and only Good Stoic moral good is presented. In his rebuttal in the fourth book Cicero doubted the derivation of the Stoic conception of a presumed natural state as well as the exclusion of other goods through this teaching.

Fifth Book ( Liber Quintus )

In the last book Cicero places in the form of a conversation between him and several friends the doctrine of the Peripatetics in the learned of Antiochus of Ascalon form. This provides the highest good a perfectly happy life, which includes both virtue and physical and external goods. At the end of the book but the logical inconsistency of this doctrine is criticized, so that a final review of a best school fails.