The search for personal identity in stoic thought

fT'HE doctrine with which I shall be concerned is the Stoic A doctrine of oikeiosis. Certain aspects of this doctrine have received considerable attention from scholars, while others, perhaps, have been rather less studied than their importance might seem to call for. The origins and affinities of the doctrine have certainly been much discussed. It has long been recognized that the term oikeiotes played an important part in the thinking of Theophrastus and some have supposed that the doctrine of oikeiosis in Stoic thought was derived in all its essential features from the school of Aristotle.2 But the term oikeiosis itself hardly figures in texts relating to Theophrastus, 3 and it has been argued vigorously by M. Pohlenz and C. 0. Brink that the doctrine of oikeiotes in Theophrastus was essentially a doctrine of biological affinity with a narrower range than the Stoic doctrine of oikeiosis.* If this is so, and the evidence very much supports it, then it follows that there is no reason to doubt that the doctrine of oikeiosis was Stoic in origin, and that it originated within the framework of Stoic ethical doctrine. This does not of course mean that it had no relation to earlier ideas, but in its fundamentals it did represent something that was new in Greek thought. Nonetheless its importance has often been underestimated, 5