Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
De Officiis
Where the honourable and the useful seem to conflict, the conflict is illusory — the honourable is always also the truly useful
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | De Officiis (Late (Cicero's last completed philosophical work, written in the months before his proscription and execution)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
De Officiis
The temporal arc of a life lived under the four virtues — wisdom in childhood and youth, justice in mature political life, magnanimity in adversity, decorum throughout.
Space
De Officiis
The Roman polity as the political space within which the honourable and the useful are tested.
Matter
De Officiis
The embodied Roman citizen — particular cases (Regulus returning to Carthage, the corn-merchant at Rhodes) test the principles.
Observer
De Officiis
The morally serious Roman aristocrat, here Cicero's son Marcus, who is the addressee of the practical instruction.
Energy
De Officiis
The moral energies of the virtues — courage, temperance, the political magnanimity of the Roman vir bonus.
Information
De Officiis
The catalogue of cases, exempla, and principles by which practical reason judges particular situations.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The book's sustained argument that the honourable and the useful never genuinely conflict is the most contested thesis — even ancient critics (Carneades) had argued the cases. Cicero's extensive Roman examples (and especially the long discussion of Regulus, III.99-115) have been read by some as ideologically loaded — defending traditional Roman aristocratic virtues against late-Republican corruption — and by others as the most precise mid-Stoic adaptation to actual political life. The work's sixteen-century career as a Latin school text gave it an oddly bifurcated reception: foundational for Western ethics, yet often read as a manual of decorum rather than a serious philosophical treatise.