Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy ISSN 2244-1875 Vol. 24, Number 1, January 2023  Volume 24, 1: 2023 CICERO AND WANG CHONG AND THEIR CRITIQUE OF DIVINATION Mark Kevin S. Cabural Xiamen University, China This article aims to present Cicero and Wang Chong as theorists of divination. While it has already been determined that they advanced both defenses and criticisms, I specifically intend to focus on their significant criticisms of divination, which emerged as corrective for the practice by supporting or disapproving and extending or limiting its underlying principles. I also emphasize that these thinkers have different objectives and emphases in their criticisms. Cicero’s objective is to maintain the fundamental teachings of their forefathers, prompting him to criticize anything that contradicts their teachings. Wang Chong’s objective is to make an appeal and encourage their people to be critical, and he often showed this through his criticism of the old, their classic texts, or even their tradition. In bringing them together, I show a robust and united rebuttal to the old ways of thinking about the divine and its ritualization. In conclusion, I offer an analysis that their critical attitudes, although different and may even be opposed, are complementary and both necessary. Keywords: Cicero, Wang Chong, divination, critique INTRODUCTION There is the usual dissociation between divination and philosophy. However, it is also evident that there are significant instances where philosophical reflection and appraisal of divination figures in ancient philosophical texts. In the opening line of the first book of De Divinatione, Cicero (1923, 223) asserts the ubiquity and long history of divination, which implies its crucial role in the past. Arguably, this is one sterling reason why it did not escape the attention of the philosophers who took divination as an object of their debates. In her recent works, Raphals (2012; 2013, 386) studies and compares the early philosophical debates on divination, where she also identifies Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BCE—43 BCE) and 王充 Wang Chong (27 CE—ca 97 CE) as the first theorists of such practice in the ancient Greco-Roman and early Chinese traditions. 1 However, she mentions that their defenses and criticisms of divination may simply be the foundation of different arguments and objectives. Raphals (2012)—and this is also the