Roman Stoicism and the Concept of the World State Toward a Unified Human Vision

Abstract

The concept of the global city in late Stoic thought represents a comprehensive moral unity, where the Stoics developed this idea and transformed it into a practical philosophy guiding their daily thoughts and actions. The Stoic idea is characterized by its simplicity and brilliance, based on the principle that all humans live in one cosmic city, interconnected like an extended family, and the Stoic acts accordingly for the common good. The ambition of late Stoicism aims to confront the divisive and the Hellenistic era by adopting a universal and holistic vision where humans coexist as brothers. The Stoic perceives the entire cosmos as his city and all people as his siblings, helping the individual face life’s challenges. Modern accounts of Stoic politics have attributed to Zeno the ideal of an isolated community of sages and to later Stoics such as Seneca a cosmopolitan utopia transcending all traditional states. By returning to the Cynic background of both Zeno's Republic and the Cosmopolitan tradition, this paper argues that the independent tendencies that were prevalent in both suggest that the distance between the two is not as great as is often supposed. This account, it is argued, is more plausible than trying to offer a developmental explanation of the supposed transformation in Stoic political thought from isolated community to cosmopolitan utopia.