What kind of a person is Donald Trump? Now that for two months, he has personalized the office of president, we have new facts to consider in coming up with a description of his inner orientation towards life and reality.
Both Confucius and Cicero make such an analysis an either/or proposition, at the risk of oversimplification.
Confucius advised that people come in only two sorts – one living by principle and the other not living by principle.
The first kind of person he called junzi or “ennobled” in their character. The other kind of person he called xiaoren or “small-minded,” a “little, petty, mean-spirited” person.
Confucius insisted that: See what a person does. Mark their motives. Examine in what things they rest. How can a person conceal their character?
His remarks as recorded in The Analects are:
The mind of one having ennobled character is conversant with righteousness; the mind of the little person is conversant with gain.
Those ennobled in their character think of virtue; the small-minded think of comforts.
So, looking at his performance in office, do we consider Donald Trump to be a junzi or a xiaoren?
Confucius asked: If an ennobled person abandons virtue, how can they retain their ennoblement?
He insisted that: The ennobled person does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue.
Confucius predicted that those who possess virtue, when they exercise government, may be compared to the North Star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn to it.
He added that he who acts with a constant view to his own advantage will be much murmured against.
He observed that the ennobled person acts before he speaks and afterwards speaks according to his actions.
Cicero’s bi-modal criteria for character were either domination by appetite or discipline of appetite.
He wrote: It is our duty to respect, defend and maintain the common bonds of union and fellowship subsisting between all the members of the human race. (De Legibus 153)
Now we find that the essential activity of the spirit is twofold: one force is appetite, which impels a man this way and that; the other is reason, which teaches and explains what should be done and what should be left undone. The result is that reason commands, appetite obeys.
The appetites, moreover, must be made to obey the reins of reason and neither allowed to run ahead of it nor from listlessness or indolence to lag behind; but people should enjoy calm of soul and be free from every sort of passion. As a result, strength of character and self-control will shine forth in all their lustre. (De Officiis 103)
For he who knows himself will realize, in the first place, that he has a divine element within him and will think of his own inner nature as a kind of consecrated image of God. (De Legibus 365)
Those of us who are not influenced by virtue to be good men, but by some consideration of utility and profit, are merely shrewd, not good. (De Legibus 343)
Curse the one who separated utility from justice.
For in proportion as anyone makes his own advantage absolutely the sole standard of all his actions, to that extent he is absolutely not a good man; therefore, those who measure virtue by the reward it brings believe in the existence of no virtue except vice. (De Legibus 35)
The question that must arise in our minds after reading these insights of Cicero and Confucius is whether or not a person of appetite (Cicero), a little person (Confucius), can effectively implement the Caux Round Table Principles for Moral Capitalism and Moral Government?
Cicero provided us with an example of such failure in a letter he wrote to his friend Atticus in 59 BC, as the Roman Republic was starting to collapse. In this letter, Cicero exposed the social force which was dissolving the sustainability of the Roman Republic. The first triumvirate of Pompey, Crassus and Caesar had been in power for several months.
Cicero wrote:
The truth is that the present regime is the most infamous, disgraceful and uniformly odious to all sorts and classes and ages of men that ever was … They hold nobody by goodwill …
Popular sentiment has been most manifest at the theater and the shows … [an actor attacked poor Pompey quite brutally:” to our misfortune you are great” (Magnus) – there were a dozen encores … When Caesar entered, no one clapped.
We are held down on all sides. We don’t object any longer to the loss of our freedom. … All with one accord groan of the present state of affairs, yet no one does or says a thing to better it. The only one to speak or offer open opposition is young Curio.
All this only makes sadness the greater, for we see that the sentiment of the community is free, while its virtue is in chains” [dolor est maior, cum videas civitatis voluntatem solutam, virtutem adligatam]
Some years ago now, the Caux Round Table adopted Cicero’s standard as its motto: Virtus non adligata – “Virtue is not Chained.”

In another letter to Atticus of February 27, 49 BC, Cicero speaks of his ideal public servant, who would not let the Republic down:
Just as a fair voyage is the object of the pilot, health of the physician, victory of the general, so our statesman’s object is the happiness of his countrymen – to promote power for their security, wealth for their abundance, fame for their dignity, virtue for their good name. This is the work I would have him accomplish, the greatest and noblest in human society.