"Sed redeo ad formulam" (Off. 3.20): Completeness and Imperfection in Cicero’s "De officiis"

Abstract

In this paper I will try to show that in Cicero’s De officiis the tension between completeness and incompleteness, perfection and imperfection is constitutive. As we shall see, imperfection is set as the epistemological horizon of the treatise, because to deal with officia is precisely to make a choice of a theoretical nature that challenges the concept of completeness at its roots. This epistemological choice has consequences in terms of the morphology of the work. The intention to achieve definitional exactitude is structurally disregarded, frustrated by contents that tend, conversely, towards dilution and dispersion. In this perspective, the third book of the De officiis, traditionally considered the most “imperfect”, fully expresses the conflict between the aspiration to complete a void, to find a formula that can be readily used, and the stationing in the unfinished.