How to Feel at Home in the World
Stoicism, Oikeiôsis, and Cosmopolitanism
One of the fundamental principle of Stoicism is cosmopolitanism: humanity is one big city of beings capable of reason, in virtue of which we should treat everyone justly, i.e., with fairness and respect. This principle of action is derived from what the Stoics thought is a natural principle, which was incorporated into stoic philosophy from the beginning, with the writings of Zeno of Citium: oikeiôsis.
The term is translated in a variety of ways, including “appropriation,” “familiarization” and “endearment,” but what is most revealing is the Greek root: oikos means household or family, and is the same root of the modern terms ecology and economics (indeed, one of the leading journals in ecology is named Oikos). The best way to understand the notion, then, is that oikeiôsis is a process by which we come to perceive something as our own, as belonging to us.
Those who followed Zeno stated that oikeiôsis is the beginning of justice. (Porphyry, quoted in Richter, p. 75)
But what, exactly, does the natural process consist of, and why do the Stoics derive from it what amounts to a moral duty?
The most famous Stoic associated with the theory is Hierocles, who flourished in the second century (not to be confused with the fifth…
