A central ancient Stoic principle is that humans are inherently social or communal. What do they actually mean by this in terms of our day-to-day affairs though? From our present-day perspective such a belief seems to be straightforwardly true in terms of how we cohabit. We have no contrary record after all of a time in which our species entirely or even widely avoided collective habitation and interaction.

Less self-evident however are some of the everyday practices the Stoics identify around how we enact this essential communal nature. It is one thing to forward a general principle regarding our inherently social constitution. Articulating however what this principle practically means in terms of our daily behaviors toward our fellow humans is another matter.

The coming discussion will examine one such practice proposed in ancient Stoicism regarding how we can action our communal nature. It will also raise the associated notion of what this intrinsic social inclination offers regarding our individual welfare. Up for consideration is whether our impetus toward others for the Stoics comes from our intentions to contribute to a harmonious population, or counterintuitively denotes more personally oriented concerns.

A Brief Overview of Our Shared Rationality

Stoic philosophies of all ancient eras forward the characterization of our communal nature. The early Greek Stoicism of Chrysippus is reported to argue that the “gods made us for our own and each other’s sakes” (LS, 329). Epictetus’ Discourses describe how we are designed to “contribute to the common benefit” (E, 1.19,12). This is a point that the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius later develops in his Meditations into the assertion that in being “made in the interest of another” we are “born for community” (M, 5.16).

The condition underpinning this fellowship in the Stoic view is our common rationality. The term “rationality” is prominent in Stoicism. Generally, its definition encompasses for the Stoics how we can use our own mental reasoning to manage how we feel about or respond to what occurs.

When the broader Stoic notion of a “common rationality” arises though, the Stoics are dispersing the site of our rationality beyond our individual mental borders. The Stoic worldview is that we live in a pantheistic universe, where God’s rationality pervades everything within it to varying degrees. This means that God’s rationality is present within the material substance that comprises you and other aspects of the world. For Epictetus, this universally scattered rationality is why the physical world is ordered according to regular patterns such as plants blooming and fruit ripening (E, 1.14,3). God regulates all such things from within such things.

Coupled with this notion of pantheistic reason, the Stoics, like Plato and Aristotle before them, perpetuate the idea of a “ladder of existence”. For the Stoics, this ladder ranks the degree to which worldly creatures embody God’s perfect rationality. Humans are the most rational of animate things and therefore superior to other creatures and things. Epictetus determines that this means non-human animals for example cannot comprehend the world as rationally as we do (E, 1.6,14–20).

As we will soon see in more detail, part of why we are the most rational creatures for the Stoics concerns what they believe is our capacity to recognize in each other a desire for self-preservation. From this awareness between humans, reciprocal bonds and supports with mutual benefits are manifested. A correlation of rationality with sociality duly emerges, evidenced when Marcus proclaims that “rational directly implies social” (M, 10.2).

Rather than keep our attention at the lofty conceptual level of pantheistic rationality though, as indicated in the opening thoughts in this discussion I want to consider how this rational and communal nature actually manifests in our daily practice. What kind of behavior, according to the Stoic view, either exercises or illustrates our default communal mode?

Cicero and Hierocles on Distinguishing the People in Our Lives

One way we can study this is through a well-known idea forwarded by the 2nd century Stoic, Hierocles. Our record of Hierocles’ work is often fragmented, and largely conveyed via the ancient compiler Stobaeus. In one such work titled “On Marriage,” Hierocles directly perpetuates the general Stoic mandate that humanity in its entirety “is naturally disposed to community” (H, 73). It is in another of his essays though, “How Should One Behave toward One’s Relatives?”, that his position on our communal orientations speaks directly to our everyday interpersonal modes.

Hierocles here asks us to categorically distinguish the people we know well, the people we know less well, and the people we do not know at all. This requires conceptually placing all such people in increasingly distanced, concentric circles. The smaller circles in the center contain the people with whom we are most familiar or close (firstly immediate family, then extended family, then friends, and so on). As the circles become increasingly larger and further distanced from our center, so they come to represent people comprising our wider communities or “tribes,” then people from the same country, all eventually to be encompassed by the circle of the “entire race of human beings” (H, 91).

This kind of categorization is not exclusive to Hierocles. Cicero provides a similar account in his On Duties. Cicero is not himself a Stoic. A connection with Stoicism is nevertheless explicit in this work when Cicero declares that much of it follows the Stoics, in particular a preceding text of the same name by the Stoic, Panaetius of Rhodes (C1, 1.6–7).

It is in On Duties that Cicero presents the fundamental notion of the “fellowship of the entire human race” (C1, 1.50). Cicero elaborates on this concept by firstly emphasizing the importance of our closest relations. His discussion even suggests that the universal fellowship between all humans and our common bonding will be “best preserved if the closer someone is to you the more kindness you confer upon” them (C1, 1.50). The bonding between us all marks the extremity of a cascading structure that moves from “the most widespread fellowship existing among men with all others” (C1, 1.51) to:

…a closer one of the same race, tribe and tongue, through which men are bound strongly to one another. More intimate still is that of the same city, as citizens have many things that are shared with one another … A tie narrower still is that of the fellowship between relations: moving from that vast fellowship of the human race we end up with a confined and limited one (C1, 1.53–1.54).

While similar to Hierocles’ model in categorizing degrees of fellowship, the subtle differences between the actual categories of Cicero’s and Hierocles’ respective accounts are evident. Later Cicero will in fact add to his structural representation the qualification that our relationship with our nation state is most important, in that of “all fellowships none is more serious, and none dearer, than that of each of us with the republic” (C1, 1.57). Cicero then supersedes this with another level that also includes the gods in the categorical structure, describing how “duties are owed first to the immortal gods, secondly to one’s country, thirdly to one’s parents and then down the scale to others” (C1, 1.160).

The emphasis in Cicero’s discussion is thus not simply the differences in our relations to others but also the structural ordering of our assigned duties or responsibilities to each category of others. Given our inherent bond nevertheless with all humans, Cicero is receptive to how our relative duties with different categories of people will often need to be circumstantially re-hierarchized. For example, a fellow citizen such as a neighbor might at some point require our assistance sooner than a family member. In recognizing the mutual bonds between all humans we can rationalize and prioritize our fellowship with someone not directly related to us before seemingly more immediate blood-bonds (C1, 1.59). Due to the universal nature of human fellowship, we will probably in certain circumstances need to lend our support “even to a stranger” (C1, 1.51).

Cicero’s evaluation of our duties to those outside our most inner circles is thus clear. Evidencing Cicero’s Stoic influences, this notion strikes at the heart of what within Stoicism we know as cosmopolitanism — the belief that every human is part of the one community. Such cosmopolitan responsibilities are taken in a very specific direction in Hierocles’ Stoicism.