Skovoroda’s interpretation of the moral teachings of Cicero and Plutarch

Abstract

In the letter to colonel S.I. Teviashov, which accompanied his free translation of Marcus Tullius Cicero’s (stoic philosopher of the 1st century B. C.) work “On Old Age” Skovoroda puts the stoic conception of happiness in the context of his own conception of heart, stating, that “the life is such as the heart”, and the heart is “the precise man in man” and “the essence and head of the man according to the Bible”. The speech of old Cato in Cicero’s work Skovoroda represents as “the portrait of the high feelings of the hearts”, thanks to which Cato refutes the four reproaches to the old age (such as impediments in deeds, weakening, privation of pleasures and the approach to the death). In the same free manner Skovoroda retells the work of Greek moralist of the 1st century A. D. Plutarch “On the tranquillity of the Soul”, renamed by him as «Interpretation of Plutarch on the Peace of Heart», announcing, that he had taken “only the essence of the grapes redressing the pre-Сhristian wisdom in Christian clothes” as concerned in particular the Platonic relation to the death.