The International Community, Stoic Contributions

WHEN DIOGENES OF SINOPE WAS ASKED from whence he came, he answered, "I am a citizen of the world." The word he used when he uttered somewhere around 412 B.C. was kosmopolitēs, from which we obtain the word cosmopolitan. In the Greek milieu in which he answered--focused so much upon the individual city, the polis--Diogenes's concept transcended the conventional.

That concept was taken by the Stoics and expanded as a central them of their political philosophy. For example, the "grave and holy"** Hierocles (f. 2nd century A.D.) describes the Stoic cosmopolitanism as a series of concentric circles of community, from self, to nuclear family, to extended family, to local community, etc. extending more broadly until the outer circle of humanity itself. At this outer level was the cosmopolis. Each and every man was composed of a layered reality, and just as it was a false conception to focus only and self in disregard of outer layers, so likewise it was a false conception to focus on the most general layer--humanity--and neglect the interior core of self. Though the concept was Cynic in origin, it was embraced by the Stoic philosophers, and we find it in full flower with the Roman Stoics. For example, we find the notion peppered in the writings of Cicero.*** The Roman concept viewed the cosmopolis as an outermost community of men governed by natural law.

"Hierocles's Circle"

The early Church found an affinity between the moral teachings of Christ and the Stoic philosophers. For example, it found an allied philosophical thought in the Stoic notion of the natural law and the Stoic notion of the cosmopolis. However, the Church did not accept the Stoic philosophy wholesale, but adapted it, conformed it, and synthesized it with the truths of the Gospel. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains:

Nowhere was Stoic cosmopolitanism itself more influential than in early Christianity. Early Christians took the later Stoic recognition of two cities as independent sources of obligation and added a twist. For the Stoics, the citizens of the polis and the citizens of the cosmopolis do the same work: both aim to improve the lives of the citizens. The Christians respond to a different call: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's” (Matthew 22:21). On this view, the local city may have divine authority (John 19:11; cf. Romans 13:1,4,7), but the most important work for human goodness is removed from traditional politics, set aside in a sphere in which people of all nations can become “fellow-citizens with the saints” (Ephesians 2:20).†

It is therefore from this confluence of a biblical stream and the Stoic stream that the Church sees, at the outermost circle of our obligations, an obligation to humankind which it calls the "universal common good." This Stoic notion of men bound by one God and one universal moral law, and the compatible Scriptural notion of one God, one Redeemer, and one Golden Rule, is at the heart of its vision of the international order.

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*Diogenes Laertius, The Lives of Eminent Philosophers VI.63. (κοσμοπολίτης). The work κοσμοπολίτης is a word derived from world or universe or cosmos (Κόσμος) and city or state or polis (Πόλις). A citizen of the city was a πολίτης (politēs) Thus a κοσμοπολίτης is a citizen of the State.
**The description is from Aulus Gelius, Attic Nights, ix.5.8. Hierocles of Alexandria wrote a book called Elements of Ethics and a book (of which only extracts survive) entitled On Appropriate Acts. It is from this latter text that the notion of the Hierocles's Circle is drawn. See Ilaria Ramelli, Hierocles the Stoic: Elements of Ethics, Fragments, and Excerpts (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 123-27. (trans. David Konstan). The fragments are found in Stobaeus (Eclogai, 4.671-3, 11). Related to this is the doctrine of oikeiōsis which describes how these various levels interact and ought to accommodate to each other.

Each one of us is as it were entirely encompassed by many circles, some smaller, others larger, the latter enclosing the former on the basis of their different and unequal dispositions relative to each other. The first and closest circle is the one which a person has draws as though around a center, his own mind. This circle encloses the body and anything taken for the sake of the body. For it is virtually the smallest circle, and amost touches the center itself. Next, the second one further removed from the center but enclosing the first circle; this contains parents, siblings, wife, and children. The third one has in it uncles and aunts, grandparents, nephews, nieces, and cousins. The next circle includes the other relatives, and this is followed by the circle of local residents, then the circle of fellow tribesmen, next that of fellow citizens, and then in the same way the circle of people from neighboring towns, and then the circle of fellow-countrymen. The outermost and largest circle, which encompasses all the rest, is that of the whole human race. Once these have all been surveyed, it is the task of a well-tempered man, in his proper treatment of each group, to draw the circles together somehow towards the center, and to keep zealously transferring those from the enclosing circles into the enclosed ones. It is incumbent on us to respect people from the third circle as if they were those from the second, and again to respect our other relatives as if they were those from the third circle.

(A. Long & D. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), §§ 53B, 57C-D, p. 349)
***Cicero, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), II.78, 154; De finibus bonorum et malorum (On the Ends of Good and Evil) III.64, and Paradoxa Stoicorum (Paradoxes of the Stoics) 18. We might cite to De finibus for an example:

Again they hold that the universe is governed by divine will; it is a city or state of which both men and gods are members, and each one of us is a part of this universe; from which it is a natural consequence that we should prefer the common advantage to our own. For just as the laws set the safety of all above the safety of individuals, so a good, wise and law-abiding man, conscious of his duty to the state, studies the advantage of all more than that of himself or of any single individual. The traitor to his country does not deserve greater reprobation than the man who betrays the common advantage or security for the sake of his own advantage or security. This explains why praise is owed to one who dies for the commonwealth, because it becomes us to love our country more than ourselves.

Mundum autem censent regi numine deorum, eumque esse quasi communem urbem et civitatem hominum et deorum, et unum quemque nostrum eius mundi esse partem; ex quo illud natura consequi, ut communem utilitatem nostrae anteponamus. ut enim leges omnium salutem singulorum saluti anteponunt, sic vir bonus et sapiens et legibus parens et civilis officii non ignarus utilitati omnium plus quam unius alicuius aut suae consulit. nec magis est vituperandus proditor patriae quam communis utilitatis aut salutis desertor propter suam utilitatem aut salutem. ex quo fit, ut laudandus is sit, qui mortem oppetat pro re publica, quod deceat cariorem nobis esse patriam quam nosmet ipsos. quoniamque illa vox inhumana et scelerata ducitur eorum, qui negant se recusare quo minus ipsis mortuis terrarum omnium deflagratio consequatur (quod vulgari quodam versu Graeco pronuntiari solet), certe verum est etiam iis, qui aliquando futuri sint, esse propter ipsos consulendum.

†Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (s.v. "Cosmopolitanism").