Do the Right Thing
Ask anyone in the Willamette University community — student, faculty, staff, alumni — and chances are he or she can recite our motto, perhaps even in Latin: Non nobis solum nati sumus.
While the words are not etched in granite on any campus building, they are etched in the hearts and minds of all who call this campus home. But what is their deeper meaning? And where do they come from?
The Latin is easy enough to break down, thanks to Ortwin Knorr, associate professor of classics:
non = not
nobis = for us
solum = alone (as in solo or solitude)
nati sumus = we have been born (nati comes from nascor, as in nativity, to be born)
The translation we are familiar with — Not unto ourselves alone are we born — is Victorian English, almost like the King James translation of the Bible, Knorr says. Its source, De Officiis, or On Duties, by Marcus Tullius Cicero, was considered one of the three texts required for a proper education for many centuries. (The others were Plato’s works and Aristotle’s Ethics.) In fact, On Duties was the second book ever printed. The first was the Gutenberg Bible. The widespread popularity of the work explains why early church leaders were familiar with its precepts, which align well with religious teachings.
On Duties is a work in three books addressed to Cicero’s son: The first book explains what is morally right, the second what is advantageous, and the third what to do when the two appear to be in conflict. “Cicero maintained that the purpose of education was to train people to be of service to others and to the common good,” Knorr explains. “This work illustrates the belief that virtue can be taught.” In fact, many other colleges, universities and schools have the same motto.
The phrase comes from the 22nd paragraph of book one, on moral goodness:
But since, as Plato has admirably expressed it, we are not born for ourselves alone, but our country claims a share of our being, and our friends a share; and since, as the Stoics hold, everything that the earth produces is created for man’s use; and as men, too, are born for the sake of other men, that they may be able mutually to help one another; in this direction we ought to follow Nature as our guide, to contribute to the general good by an interchange of acts of kindness, by giving and receiving, and thus by our skill, our industry, and our talents to cement human society more closely together, man to man.
This belief in responsibility to others, Knorr says, “encapsulates Stoic Cosmopolitanism, that we don’t belong just to our own little polis, our own little state, but we are actually citizens of the world. Because we exist in society, to harm another is to harm oneself.”
And when what’s morally right and what’s advantageous are in conflict? “Cicero would say it’s a misconception, ” Knorr says, “that if you think it through, you will realize that the two are always the same. The Stoic philosophy tries to figure out how you can be a happy person in a world that is constantly threatening. The Stoics say many of the things that are bad, like threats, and many of the things that are good, like wealth, are external, and they are not what’s really important. What is important is that you live a righteous life, and the way you do that is by doing right deeds. You could even translate the motto as ‘Do the right thing.’”