Skip to content

Details

Hello fellow Students of Stoicism! Looking forward to digging into this one together.
For this session, we'll be reading Hierocles the Stoic on oikeiôsis — the Stoic doctrine of self-appropriation that grounds all of ethics. Why do we care about ourselves? Why do we care about anything? Hierocles argues it starts with self-perception at the moment of birth.
Assignment: Pages 3-33 (the Elements of Ethics text and translation)
Where to find it:

If you have any issues obtaining this material - please feel free send me a line and we'll figure it out.

What to expect: Hierocles builds his case through animal examples — bulls, tortoises, bears, toads, deer, beavers — arguing that creatures perceive themselves continuously from birth, and this self-perception is the seed of everything ethical. Come ready to test his arguments.

AI summary

By Meetup

Reading discussion for Students of Stoicism on Hierocles’ oikeiōsis; aim to grasp how self-perception grounds ethics.

Related topics

You may also like