Stoic Cosmopolitanism

Ideal State or Individual Ethics?

Temple A at Laodicea, photo by the Author

Cosmopolitanism, the notion that all humankind belongs to a single ideal city, the cosmopolis, is crucial both in Stoic philosophy and, increasingly, in modern politics. For a while, after World War II, we lived in a world that — even though divided between eastern and western blocks — seemed willing to come together, if prompted to do so by the threat of nuclear…