Hierocles the Stoic

Life and Sources

Little is known with certainty about the life of Hierocles the Stoic, who is generally dated to the early 2nd century CE and associated with the later or so‑called Imperial phase of Stoicism. Ancient testimonies do not record his birthplace, teachers, or institutional affiliations, though some modern scholars tentatively connect him with the intellectual milieu of Alexandria or another Greek-speaking urban center of the Roman Empire.

Hierocles is primarily known through fragments and quotations preserved by later authors. The most important evidence comes from:

• Stobaeus, a 5th‑century CE anthologist, who transmits large portions of Hierocles’ Elements of Ethics and other ethical discussions.
• Gellius (Attic Nights), who mentions and paraphrases Stoic views close to those of Hierocles.
• Later doxographical traditions that refer to Stoic theories of oikeiōsis (appropriation or familiarization), often associated with his name.

Among his works, the Elements of Ethics (sometimes titled Ethical Elements) is the best attested. It appears to have been a didactic handbook, introducing readers to Stoic ethical concepts, family relationships, and civic responsibilities. Additional fragments concern logic and personal identity, suggesting that Hierocles was not exclusively an ethicist, although ethics clearly occupies the central place in his surviving thought.

Because his writings survive only in excerpted and sometimes rearranged form, reconstructing a precise chronology or systematic overview of his philosophy remains difficult. Nonetheless, the available material presents a distinctive and influential version of Stoic moral theory.

Ethics and the Concentric Circles of Concern

Hierocles is best known for his account of moral development in terms of concentric circles of concern. This model, preserved by Stobaeus, visualizes human relationships as a series of ever-widening circles centered on the self:

1. The innermost circle: one’s own mind and body
2. The circle of immediate family: parents, siblings, spouse, children
3. The circle of extended kin: cousins, more distant relatives
4. The circle of local community: neighbors, fellow citizens
5. The circle of fellow countrymen
6. The outer circle of all humanity (and, by implication, all rational beings)

For Hierocles, every human being is naturally situated within all these circles at once, but we typically feel the strongest attachment to those closer to the center. His ethical project is to “draw the outer circles inward”, not by erasing the distinctions between them, but by strengthening the bonds of familiarity and duty to those who are more distant.

He recommends concrete practices of renaming and reclassification: for example, addressing cousins as “brothers,” or fellow citizens as “kinsmen,” as a way of cultivating affective closeness and a sense of shared identity. These rhetorical and psychological exercises help align emotional dispositions with the Stoic conviction that all humans share a common rational nature.

This scheme fits within Stoic cosmopolitanism, which treats all rational beings as citizens of a single cosmos governed by divine reason (logos). Yet Hierocles does not deny special obligations to family and close relations. Instead, he argues for a graded but expanding structure of moral concern: it is appropriate to favor those in the inner circles in many contexts, while still recognizing that those in outer circles are not morally negligible “strangers” but part of one’s extended moral community.

Interpretations of this theory vary. Some scholars emphasize its practical humanism, seeing it as a bridge between ancient Stoic metaphysics and everyday ethical life. Others stress that Hierocles retains a hierarchical ordering of duties, reflecting ancient assumptions about the primacy of family and city. Debates also concern whether his model is best read as a psychological description of natural attachments, a normative ideal for moral cultivation, or both.

Selfhood, Oikeiōsis, and Moral Psychology

A second major theme in Hierocles’ thought is his account of the self and its development through oikeiōsis (often translated as “appropriation,” “familiarization,” or “affinity”). Oikeiōsis is a central Stoic concept describing how living beings recognize themselves and their own constitution as “belonging” to them, and then extend this sense of belonging outward to others.

Hierocles argues that from birth, animals possess an innate self-perception and self-love. Newborn creatures, he maintains, immediately perceive their own bodies and seek their own preservation; they do not, for example, willingly harm themselves. This initial self-concern is not selfish in the modern moral sense; rather, it is a natural orientation toward self-maintenance given by nature. For rational beings, this natural starting point becomes the basis for ethical development.

As human beings mature and acquire reason, this primitive self-love is, on Stoic accounts, supposed to transform into a concern for virtue and for others who share our rational nature. Hierocles elaborates how this occurs through a process in which we first “appropriate” ourselves, then our family, and gradually broader communities. The concentric circles of concern thus rest on a more fundamental theory of personal identity and attachment.

Fragments attributed to Hierocles also discuss personal identity through time, apparently defending the view that a human being remains the same person despite physical and psychological changes, insofar as they retain a continuous rational nature and a unified perspective on themselves. This view aligns with mainstream Stoic materialism but seeks to clarify how a rational agent can be responsible for past actions and future commitments.

Some scholars interpret Hierocles’ emphasis on innate self-perception as an attempt to strengthen the empirical basis for Stoic ethics, grounding universality and obligation in features observable in both human and non-human animals. Others note that critics in antiquity and beyond challenged the Stoic claim that altruistic concern naturally grows out of self-love, questioning whether the move from self-preservation to impartial concern for all rational beings is philosophically warranted.

Reception and Influence

Although not as prominent in ancient sources as figures such as Seneca, Epictetus, or Marcus Aurelius, Hierocles has attracted growing scholarly attention, especially from the late 20th century onward, largely due to the recovery and systematic study of the Stobaean fragments.

In antiquity, his explicit influence is hard to trace, but his themes resonate with broader Stoic currents:

• The idea of a world‑wide community of rational beings anticipating later articulations of Stoic cosmopolitanism.
• The analysis of self-perception contributing to debates over Stoic psychology and personal identity.
• The graded structure of duties echoing in later discussions of natural law and civic responsibility.

In modern scholarship, Hierocles is often cited in discussions of:

• The foundations of altruism in ancient ethics, as a key source for the Stoic account of how self-love expands into other-regarding concern.
• The history of cosmopolitan thought, where his circles of concern offer one of the clearest ancient models of expanding moral community.
• Comparative work on moral development, where his exercises of renaming and reclassification are compared to contemporary practices of perspective-taking and empathy training.

Some interpreters highlight the tension between Hierocles’ affirmation of special duties (to family, city, and compatriots) and his ideal of universal concern. Others regard this tension as a deliberate feature, reflecting the Stoic attempt to integrate local loyalties with an overarching commitment to humanity.

Because the surviving texts are fragmentary and mediated by later editors, questions remain about the completeness of our picture of Hierocles. It is uncertain, for example, how his ethical writings related to his views on physics or theology, both central components of the broader Stoic system. Nonetheless, the extant material has secured his place as a significant representative of late Stoic ethics, particularly on questions of selfhood, moral psychology, and the structure of social obligation.