Hierocles of Alexandria
Hierocles was a Stoic philosopher active in the 2nd century AD and is counted among the most significant representatives of Middle Stoicism in the Roman Empire. Little is known about his life; his name and ideas are preserved chiefly through two sources: a fragmentarily surviving work on ethics and numerous quotations compiled by the scholar Johannes Stobaeus in the 5th century in his Anthologiae.
Philosophical Work and Ethics
Hierocles' most important surviving work is a handbook of ethics (Ethike Stoicheiosis – "Elements of Ethics"), substantial portions of which have been transmitted on a papyrus from Herculaneum. In it he develops, in strictly Stoic tradition, a systematic foundation for moral philosophy. The starting point is the Stoic concept of oikeiosis – the natural affinity and attachment to oneself and to one's own nature – which he unfolds with precision and didactic clarity.
The Model of Concentric Circles
Hierocles' best-known and most influential contribution to the history of philosophy is the image of the concentric circles of human belonging (oikeiôsis). In this model, the individual stands at the centre of a system of nested circles: the innermost circle encompasses the self, the next one's immediate family, then extended kin, the neighbourhood, fellow citizens, compatriots, and finally – in the outermost circle – all of humanity.
Hierocles' ethical demand is that these circles be drawn inward through conscious moral effort: the wise person should regard even distant strangers with the same care as their closest relatives. This idea embodies Stoic cosmopolitanism – the conviction that all human beings, as rational creatures, are citizens of a universal world community and ought not to be bound solely by particularistic loyalties.
Significance and Legacy
With this concept, Hierocles placed Stoic ethics on an anthropological foundation that points far beyond his own time. His circle model was rediscovered in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and influenced thinkers who reflected on cosmopolitanism, world citizenship, and universal human rights. It continues to be invoked today in political philosophy and the ethics of global responsibility.
Hierocles thus stands as an exemplary figure for that phase of Stoicism in which the original, natural-law-based ethics of Zeno of Citium was translated into a practical moral philosophy for the everyday life of the Roman citizen and, beyond that, for all of humanity.