La virtù basta da sola a dare la felicità? Sulle fonti platoniche dell’etica stoica ciceroniana

Can virtue be sufficient by its own to give happiness? On the Platonic sources of Cicero’s stoic ethics. The aim of this paper is to discuss some pages of the fifth book of Cicero’s Tusculanae disputationes in order to demonstrate that, although the Roman author seems to follow the Middle Stoicism in this work, he actually employs theses which are not only Stoic but also Platonic. Whereas scholars usually claim that his philosophical eclecticism is of an uncritical philosophical quality, this way of speaking about philosophy can be read as a Socratic legacy. And also the matter of happiness is essentially Socratic. Indeed, by analysing the relationship between virtue and happiness, Cicero reconstructs the history of philosophy that has its focus in Plato, princeps philosophorum, and Socrates, his master, who – also thanks to Cicero – becomes the exemplum of the perfect wise man, i.e. of the philosopher, happy until his death and beyond it.