Epictetus Discourses 1.9: What is Stoic Cosmopolitanism?

The Discourses of Epictetus were recorded by his student Arrian during teaching sessions at Nicopolis in the early second century. Chapter 1.3 asked what the Stoic God is. Chapter 1.9 asks what follows from being kin to that God. The answer is one of the most ambitious ideas in Stoic philosophy. View the full Book 1 commentary.

What Epictetus Is Arguing in Discourses 1.9

What we belong to is an important question to ask ourselves. Our sense of community drives us to belong to something. The Stoics understood the importance of society and the social aspect of life. Yet there are different levels to answering the question of belonging. Arrian titled this discourse “What Should We Conclude From The Doctrine Of Our Kinship To God.” The answer Epictetus gives is the same one Socrates gave before him.

We tend to pick and choose which part of our existence we wish to belong to. Unless we are not satisfied with the small piece of earth we were born on, we zoom out and choose a larger and more prestigious domain. We call ourselves Athenians, or Europeans, or members of whatever group seems most sovereign at any given moment. Epictetus cuts through this.

The irony is clear and present. If we identify with a city because it is larger than the patch of earth where our body arrived, why stop there? Why not identify with the largest and most sovereign thing of all: the universe itself? If you are going to choose your identity by scale, choose the whole.

What Is Stoic Cosmopolitanism?

Stoic cosmopolitanism is the philosophical position that every human being is a citizen of the universe, not primarily of their city, nation, or tribe. The foundation is theological and rational. Because all human beings share in the Logos, the rational principle that constitutes and pervades the cosmos, all human beings are kin. This kinship transcends political borders, social hierarchies, and national identities.

The Stoics called the natural process by which we extend care outward from self to family to community to all of humanity oikeiōsis. It is not an obligation imposed from the outside. It is a recognition of what is already true: that everyone around us shares the same divine origin and the same rational nature.

Made From Stardust

Modern science has arrived at the same conclusion from a completely different direction. The carbon in your cells, the iron in your blood, the oxygen in every breath you take: these elements were forged in the cores of dying stars billions of years ago. When those stars collapsed in supernova explosions, they scattered those atoms across the cosmos. The hydrogen in your body is, in some cases, as old as the universe itself. The same quarks, atoms, and particles that constitute you also constitute the furthest galaxy.

This is not a metaphor; it is astrophysics. The Stoics referred to this as sympatheia: the mutual interconnectedness of all parts of the universe. They arrived at it through philosophical reasoning. We now have spectrometers and particle accelerators that confirm it materially. Epictetus’s claim that we are citizens of the universe is not a poetic aspiration. It is a description of what we literally are.

This understanding of where we belong changes everything about what we fear, what we envy, and who we think has power over us. If our actual home is the universe and our actual kinship is with the divine rational order, then no political figure, no emperor, no algorithm, and no social group holds the power we have been giving them.

Kinship With Caesar or Kinship With God

In Epictetus’s Rome, having a relative with power at the imperial court gave you genuine and tangible security: freedom from contempt, freedom from legal danger, freedom from fear. This was not metaphorical. It was a social reality. Epictetus’s argument is the direct comparison: if a human connection to the most powerful person in Rome produces that kind of security, what should a kinship with the maker of all things produce?

The Stoic answer is: complete freedom from griefs and terrors rooted in externals, because you have understood that externals are not where your security lives. Why should any man who understands this not call himself a citizen of the universe?

Self-Sufficiency and the Many Caesars

Autarkeia, self-sufficiency, is for the Stoics not independence as a personal achievement but the natural condition of someone who understands where their real resources lie. If your well-being depends on reason and virtue, and reason and virtue are entirely within your power, then you are genuinely self-sufficient. The problem is that we have systematically replaced this inner sufficiency with external dependency.

It seems that we have become less independent because of reason and logic, the very faculties that set us apart. We have become so attached to others thinking for us that there is great fear that we cannot do it ourselves. Our preferred indifferences have ceased to be indifferences. They have turned into necessities. And the more they depend on externals, the more masters we must obey.

In Epictetus’s Rome, there was one Caesar. In modern life, we have distributed Caesar across our entire existence. The manager whose opinion determines whether we feel valued at work. The employer whose decisions control our financial security. Or the social media platform whose algorithm decides our visibility. Even the friend group whose approval shapes our sense of belonging. Each of them is a Caesar with partial power over a different domain of our lives. And we have given each of them that power by valuing what they control more than we value what is ours. Kinship with God, the recognition that our actual resources are internal and cannot be taken, is the only genuine release from all of them.

The Post We Have Been Given

External powers have hold over us only because of our attachment to the body and its possessions. If we understand that these were never the source of our security, that hold dissolves. In this chapter, Epictetus is responding to someone suffering under genuine political oppression in Rome, asking how to endure when the burden becomes too great. His answer is the station metaphor: God has placed you at this post. Maintain it with the dignity your cosmic citizenship requires.

The Stoics understood that there is always a final freedom available. But the point of this passage is the opposite of departure. It is the affirmation that you have been given a post of cosmic significance, and that maintaining it with dignity is itself the practice of virtue. The less we desire, the freer we become. Our attachments keep us from living. Our fear of dying restricts us while we are alive. Only the present belongs to us.

On Envy and What Actually Harms Us

We envy those around us because we think they have things we deserve, without knowing what sacrifices they have made to achieve them, or how those things have affected their character, the part of themselves they would prefer to keep intact. We determine what we belong to. The bigger we can make this picture, the more we see that trivial comparisons keep us locked up.

Another person cannot make you unfortunate. Only your own judgments about what is good and bad can do that. Another person can take your possessions, your reputation, and your freedom of movement. They cannot take your capacity to reason, to choose, or to live virtuously. What they take was never the source of your well-being. This is the direct answer to envy: what the other person has is not what you actually need.

Live With Nature and Virtue

Stoicism teaches us to live in accordance with nature and to be virtuous. To apply reason and logic to the moment in which we have the agency to give assent to the right impression. This sounds anarchistic when we consider the society in which we live, but it is not. It makes us better citizens of our city, our country, the world, and the universe. Socrates is Epictetus’s model throughout the Discourses, and here he quotes him directly.

Our focus lies too close to home. What we think we belong to is our body and our possessions, not the divine world around us. Instead of elevating our existence to a higher level, we live for ourselves. If we understand that everyone around us is living the same fate, why would we try to subject others to us? Or become subjects to those who presumably have power over us? It is not that they take this power. We give it to them. We choose to value certain things more than ourselves.

Discourses 1.9 and the Modern Search for Belonging

The modern world has not reduced the number of Caesars. It has multiplied them. Where Epictetus faced one emperor, we face a hierarchy of external authorities, each with power over a different slice of our lives: employers, institutions, platforms, opinion groups, identity communities. Each one offers the same implicit deal: affiliate with us and we will give you security, status, and freedom from contempt. The Stoic response is the same now as it was then. These affiliations give you contingent security. Kinship with the Logos gives you something that cannot be taken.

Viktor Frankl, who survived the Nazi concentration camps and developed logotherapy, arrived at a similar conclusion from a very different direction. No external power, however total, can take away the human capacity to choose one’s response to circumstances. The last freedom is always internal. Epictetus would have recognised this immediately. It is the cosmopolitan argument applied to the most extreme external conditions imaginable: even there, the station holds.

The Exercise: Name Your Caesar

Disciplines: Desire · Action   |   Timing: Morning · 10 minutes

Name one Caesar in your life: a person, institution, platform, or circumstance whose approval or judgment has been shaping your choices. Not someone whose opinion you value because they are wise. Someone whose opinion carries weight because you have given it the power to determine how you feel about yourself.

Ask honestly: what are you valuing that gives this person or institution that power? Approval, status, belonging, security, the right to call yourself something? Name the specific good you have placed there.

Now ask what it would mean to find that resource inside the faculty of choice rather than outside it. Not to cut off the relationship or withdraw from the institution. To locate what you are looking for in the one place it cannot be taken from.

Epictetus points out that Caesar’s friends are not actually safer than anyone else. They are more anxious, more dependent, and more exposed. Whatever security you are reaching for through this Caesar, it is not available from that direction.

This exercise is one of 30 drawn from the Discourses. See the full 30 Epictetus exercises from Discourses Book 1.

← Discourses 1.8: Why Virtue Matters | → Discourses 1.10: How to Spend our Time

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Stoic cosmopolitanism?

Stoic cosmopolitanism is the view that every human being is a citizen of the universe, not primarily of their city, nation, or tribe. The foundation is that all human beings share in the Logos, the rational principle of the cosmos, which makes them kin. This kinship transcends political and national distinctions. The practical implication is that we owe concern and fairness to all human beings, not just to members of our own group, because all share the same divine rational origin.

What does Epictetus mean by citizen of the universe?

When Epictetus says we should call ourselves citizens of the universe rather than Athenians or Corinthians, he is making a precise philosophical point: if you are going to choose your identity by scale and sovereignty, choose the largest and most sovereign domain of all. Our primary kinship is not with any political community but with the rational order of things, the Logos, which includes all human beings and all of nature.

How does Discourses 1.9 connect to Discourses 1.3?

Chapter 1.3 established what the Stoic God is: not a separate personal deity but the Logos, the rational principle that constitutes and pervades everything. Chapter 1.9 asks what follows from this. If God is the father and maker of all rational creatures, then all rational creatures are kin, and the political and social implications are cosmopolitan. The two chapters form a direct argument: this is what God is, and this is therefore what we are to each other.

What is autarkeia in Stoic philosophy?

Autarkeia is the Stoic concept of self-sufficiency: being internally fulfilled and independent of external validation or provision for one’s wellbeing. For the Stoics, genuine self-sufficiency is not an achievement but a recognition. If your well-being depends on reason and virtue, and these are entirely within your power, you are already self-sufficient. The problem is that preferred indifferences, things we value but should be able to take or leave, have become necessities. Each new necessity is a new master.

What is the Stoic exercise from Discourses 1.9?

The exercise is to name one Caesar in your life: a person, institution, or circumstance whose opinion or decisions you have allowed to carry the weight of your security or sense of worth. Ask what you are valuing that gives them that power. Then ask what it would mean to find that resource internally instead. This is not withdrawal from the world but a reclaiming of the self-sufficiency that was always there, the kinship with the rational order that no external authority can grant or remove.

Want to Apply This to Your Own Life?

Reading the Discourses is the beginning, not the end. If you want to work through what Epictetus is asking of you and apply it to what you are actually dealing with right now, I offer one-on-one Stoic coaching. Start with a free consultation. Listen to The Via Stoica Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. Browse the Epictetus quotes collection for more passages from the Discourses.

About the Author

Benny Voncken is the founder of Via Stoica, a platform dedicated to making Stoic philosophy practical for modern life. He is a writer, podcast host, and Stoic thinking partner with almost a decade of daily Stoic practice. He creates articles, workshops, and reflections that bring ancient wisdom into everyday use.