Oikeiosis is a Greek term that resists clean translation into English. It is variously rendered as affiliation, appropriation, affinity, or familiarization. The root is oikos — household, home — and the term describes the process by which a creature comes to recognize something as its own, as belonging to it, as part of its concern.
The Stoics used oikeiosis in two related but distinct ways. The first describes the natural self-affiliation that every creature has from birth — the basic orientation toward self-preservation and self-care that characterizes all living things. The second, which is the more philosophically significant usage, describes the natural extension of that affiliation outward from the self to others — the process by which a rational being comes to recognize other rational beings as genuinely part of their concern.
Together, these two applications of oikeiosis constitute the Stoic account of the natural basis of both self-care and social ethics. They explain why Stoicism, which might appear from its emphasis on inner life to be a purely individualistic philosophy, in fact requires substantial engagement with and obligation to other people and ultimately to all of humanity.
The First Oikeiosis: Self-Affiliation
The Stoics argued that every creature, from the moment of birth, has a natural orientation toward its own constitution — toward its own preservation, health, and flourishing. This is not a learned behavior or a culturally acquired preference. It is the most basic form of natural affiliation: the creature's relationship to itself as something worth preserving and caring for.
Cicero, drawing on Stoic sources in On Ends, describes this primary oikeiosis in terms that connect it to the broader ethical framework:
"Every animal, as soon as it is born, feels an attachment to itself, and an impulse to preserve itself and to feel affection for its own constitution and for those things which tend to preserve that constitution."
— Cicero, On Ends, III.16, trans. H. Rackham
The philosophical significance of this primary oikeiosis is that it grounds the Stoic account of preferred indifferents. Health is a preferred indifferent — worth pursuing when available — precisely because every creature has a natural orientation toward the preservation of its own constitution. The preference for health over illness is not arbitrary or merely conventional. It is an expression of the most basic form of natural affiliation.
The Second Oikeiosis: Social Extension
The more philosophically consequential application of oikeiosis describes the natural extension of concern outward from the self to others. The Stoics argued that rational beings — human beings — are naturally inclined to extend the affiliation they have with themselves to their children, their families, their communities, and ultimately to all of humanity.
This extension is not unlimited altruism or the erasure of appropriate distinctions between closer and more distant relationships. The Stoics described it using the image of concentric circles — an image preserved in Hierocles, a Stoic philosopher of the second century AD:
Think of a series of concentric circles. The innermost circle is the self. The next circle is the immediate family. The next is the extended family. Beyond that, neighbors and fellow citizens. Beyond that, fellow members of the same broader community. The outermost circle encompasses all of humanity.
The philosophical task, for Hierocles and for the Stoic tradition generally, is not to treat everyone in all circles identically — closer relationships generate stronger obligations — but to work at drawing the outer circles progressively inward, at extending genuine concern to people further from the center of your immediate life.
This is the philosophical foundation of Stoic cosmopolitanism — the idea, articulated most clearly by Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, that rational beings are citizens of a single world community, members of a shared rational order, regardless of the particular political communities they inhabit.
"I am a citizen of the world."
— Epictetus, Discourses, I.9, trans. Robin Hard
Oikeiosis and Justice
The connection between oikeiosis and justice — one of the four Stoic virtues — is direct and important. Justice, in the Stoic account, is the disposition to treat other people rightly — honestly, fairly, and with recognition of the obligations that come with being a social and rational creature. The philosophical foundation of those obligations is oikeiosis: the natural extension of concern that makes other people genuinely part of your moral world rather than merely external to it.
A person who has not developed the second oikeiosis — who has not extended their circle of concern beyond the self and the immediate family — is, in Stoic terms, failing to live according to their rational nature. Human beings are social animals. To live as though only the self and the immediate circle matter is to live in a way that contradicts what you are.
Marcus Aurelius returns to this point throughout the Meditations, often in the context of reminding himself not to be irritated by or indifferent to the people he governs. His argument is consistently grounded in oikeiosis: these people are rational beings, members of the same rational order, citizens of the same world community. To treat them with contempt or indifference is to act against your own rational nature.
"What injures the hive injures the bee."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6, trans. Gregory Hays
Oikeiosis and the Stoic Account of Roles
The Stoic account of social roles — described most clearly by Epictetus in the Discourses — is an extension of oikeiosis applied to the specific relationships and obligations that constitute a particular human life.
Every person occupies multiple social roles simultaneously: child, parent, friend, citizen, colleague, neighbor. Each role generates specific obligations that are expressions of the extended oikeiosis appropriate to that relationship. The child's obligations to parents, the parent's obligations to children, the citizen's obligations to the community — all of these are specific instances of the broader natural affiliation that oikeiosis describes.
Epictetus was particularly attentive to the obligations generated by roles, partly because his own experience as a slave had placed him in relationships where the normal role obligations were radically distorted. His teaching consistently returns to the question of what role you are playing in a given situation and what the genuine obligations of that role require — not the distorted version produced by self-interest, convention, or the desire for approval, but the genuine obligations that follow from the rational nature of the relationship.
Oikeiosis and Modern Ethics
The Stoic doctrine of oikeiosis is one of the most significant ancient contributions to social and political philosophy, and its influence on subsequent thought extends well beyond the Stoic tradition.
The idea that human beings have a natural basis for moral concern that extends beyond the self and the immediate family — that the capacity for justice and social obligation is not an arbitrary cultural imposition but an expression of human rational nature — is a foundational claim in Western moral philosophy. It is present in various forms in Kant's account of rational beings as ends in themselves, in utilitarian arguments for the equal consideration of interests, and in contemporary cosmopolitan political philosophy.
The specific image of concentric circles of concern, extending from self to all of humanity, has been influential in contemporary moral philosophy through the work of Martha Nussbaum, who draws on the Stoic account of oikeiosis in her arguments for cosmopolitan education and global justice.
Primary Sources
- Cicero. On Ends (De Finibus), Book 3. Trans. H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library.
- Epictetus. Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 9. Trans. Robin Hard. Oxford University Press, 2014.
- Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Trans. Gregory Hays. Modern Library, 2002.
- Diogenes Laërtius. Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book 7. Trans. R.D. Hicks. Available via Perseus Digital Library.
Further Reading
- Long, A.A. Hellenistic Philosophy. University of California Press, 1986.
- Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford University Press, 1993.
- Nussbaum, Martha C. The Therapy of Desire. Princeton University Press, 1994.
- Schofield, Malcolm. The Stoic Idea of the City. Cambridge University Press, 1991.