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"This book tells an overlooked story in the history of the will, a contested idea in both politics and philosophy of mind. For it is Cicero, statesman and philosopher, who gives shape to the notion of will as it would become in Western thought and who invents the idea of 'the will of the people'. In a single word - voluntas - he brings Roman law in contact with Greek ideas, chief among them Plato's claim that a rational elite must rule. When the republic falls to Caesarism, Cicero turns his political argument inward: will is a force to win the virtue in the soul that was lost on the battlefield, the marker of inner freedom in an unfree age. Though his vision of a free republic failed in his time, Cicero's ideal of rational elitism has shaped and fractured the modern world - and Ciceronian creativity may yet save it"--
List of contents
Part I. The Practice of Voluntas: 1. Forebears of will; 2. Innocence and intent; 3. Cartographies of power; 4. An economy of goodwill; 5. Voluntas populi: the will of the people; Part II. The philosophy of voluntas: 6. Willpower; 7. Free will and the forum; 8. The fourfold self.
About the author
Lex Paulson is the Executive Director of the UM6P School of Collective Intelligence (Morocco) and lectures in advocacy at Sciences Po-Paris. Trained in classics and community organizing, he served as mobilization strategist for the campaigns of Barack Obama in 2008 and Emmanuel Macron in 2017. He has led projects in democratic innovation and leadership for UNICEF, the US State Department, the French National Assembly and the National Democratic Institute. He served as legislative counsel in the 111th US Congress (2009-2011), organized on six US presidential campaigns, and has worked to advance democratic innovation at the European Commission and in India, Tunisia, Egypt, Uganda, Senegal, Czech Republic and Ukraine.
Summary
The first book to trace Cicero's role in inventing 'the will of the people' and the will as an engine of self-creation. Adept at Greek philosophy and defender of a dying republic, Cicero's ideal of rational elitism has both shaped and fractured the modern world.
