Günter Gawlick: Cicero

As a politician, orator and philosopher, Cicero (106–43 BC) left countless traces in the memory of his contemporaries and later generations. Günter Gawlick shows where we come across these traces and their different evaluations in science, art and everyday life. He also describes how Cicero influenced later developments throughout Europe from late antiquity to the present day: stimulating, pioneering, enlightening and stirring up trouble. Research is stimulated by references to lesser-known testimonies and a new emphasis on familiar testimonies. The author links the attempt to explain the different evaluations of the thinker Cicero with a new conception of him as a philosopher of intellectual freedom and liberation.