“We should regard all human beings as fellow citizens of one cosmic city.”
— Zeno of CitiumReported from Zeno's Republic, in Diogenes Laertius 7.33 and Plutarch; approximate English rendering
Commentary
This claim expresses the Stoic doctrine of cosmopolitanism, the view that all rational beings belong to a single community governed by natural law. Zeno's Republic, which survives only in reports, is said to have proposed a world without the division into cities, and this sentence captures the central idea. Malcolm Schofield, in The Stoic Idea of the City (1991), analyses the Republic in detail and argues that the cosmopolitan ideal was not a call for political abolition but a claim about the moral allegiances of the wise. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, in The Hellenistic Philosophers, stress that the doctrine rested on the Stoic theory of a shared rational nature, which made all human beings potential members of the same polity. Brad Inwood notes that the claim was often contested by later critics, who regarded it as impractical, and that the Stoics themselves recognised the value of civic duties within local communities. Julia Annas has observed the influence of this idea on later Roman political thought. Since the Republic is known only through reports, the wording given here is a paraphrase, and it should be verified against Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch before being quoted.
Commentary
This claim expresses the Stoic doctrine of cosmopolitanism, the view that all rational beings belong to a single community governed by natural law. Zeno's Republic, which survives only in reports, is said to have proposed a world without the division into cities, and this sentence captures the central idea. Malcolm Schofield, in The Stoic Idea of the City (1991), analyses the Republic in detail and argues that the cosmopolitan ideal was not a call for political abolition but a claim about the moral allegiances of the wise. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, in The Hellenistic Philosophers, stress that the doctrine rested on the Stoic theory of a shared rational nature, which made all human beings potential members of the same polity. Brad Inwood notes that the claim was often contested by later critics, who regarded it as impractical, and that the Stoics themselves recognised the value of civic duties within local communities. Julia Annas has observed the influence of this idea on later Roman political thought. Since the Republic is known only through reports, the wording given here is a paraphrase, and it should be verified against Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch before being quoted.