...In the author’s view, what Cicero owes to Greek thought is less important than what he does not. What is important for Straumann is that Cicero builds his model upon a “natural law” foundation which depends upon pre-political rights. This differs from Polybius, who believed that the state is founded upon the human desire for justice, “that the development of justice and the transition from rule by power and strength alone to just rule, underlines the role of humans’ natural resentment at injustice.”
The prevention of injustice is not quite the same as asserting that there are basic legal rights that have to be defended. Cicero’s ideal state differs from that of Plato because the Platonic state exists to promote virtue and the “legitimacy of government rests on the extent to which it succeeds in making the city’s citizens virtuous,” hence “there is no space for any extra- or pre-political happiness, nor for any normative claims vis-à-vis the state that are not themselves based on the rules of the polity.”
The case against fundamental Aristotelian influence is more complex. In Aristotle’s view, a state is formed when several villages unite to form a single complex community, or polis, large enough to be self-sufficient. It originates from the needs of life and continues so long as it ensures the good life and enables man to express his nature as a political animal. That said, Aristotle also holds that the polis is, by nature, prior to the individual who would not be complete or exist without it. Thus, since the natural goal of the individual is the good life, that goal can only be obtained through participation in the polis. The goal of the state is not, in Straumann’s analysis, to protect the individual’s pre-political rights....