The Expanding Circles of Concern
Deliberately widen your care outward from self to family to humanity to all life.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 80%
The second-century Stoic Hierocles taught oikeiosis: picture concern as a set of concentric circles. It begins naturally with the self, then extends early in life to caretakers and parents, then to wider family and friends, then to fellow citizens, and eventually to all humanity. Pigliucci, following modern Stoic scholars like Chris Gill, adds two further rings, sentient animals, because they can suffer, and the environment as a whole, because human flourishing depends on it. The practice is to deliberately pull each outer ring inward toward the center. Crucially, the Stoics rejected the modern split between self-regard and altruism: helping others makes you a better person, and becoming a better person automatically improves how you treat others, so widening the circle is simultaneously self-interest and virtue.
Origin
Attributed to the Stoic Hierocles (~2nd century CE), extended to animals and environment by modern scholar Chris Gill, as relayed by Massimo Pigliucci on Modern Wisdom.
Core principles
- 01Concern radiates naturally from the self outward.
- 02Widening the circle is a practice, not an automatic state.
- 03Self-regard and other-regard are not a tradeoff but reinforce each other.
- 04The circle can extend past humanity to sentient animals and the environment.
- 05Caring for the wider world is also self-interest, because we depend on it.
How to run it
- 1
Begin with the innermost circle: yourself
Acknowledge that concern for oneself is natural and the starting point. The exercise builds outward from here rather than denying self-concern.
- 2
Extend to caretakers and family
Move concern to those closest, the parents and caretakers we bond with early, then to other family members and friends.
- 3
Extend to community and country
Deliberately widen concern to fellow citizens of your city and then your country, treating their welfare as connected to yours.
- 4
Extend to all humanity
Push the circle out to humanity at large, the cosmopolis, regarding every person as worthy of moral concern.
- 5
Extend to sentient animals and the environment
Add the further rings: other sentient animals, because they can suffer, and the environment as a whole, because our survival and flourishing depend on it.
Pro tip Ground this in dependency and reason, not wishy-washy sentiment; you protect the environment because you'd otherwise poison yourself.
Watch out Avoid framing it as a mystical 'Gaia oneness'; keep the reasoning concrete.
In the wild
Pigliucci argues the ancient Stoics wrongly saw nature as merely for human consumption, but their own logic of expanding circles points further. You want clean air and water for everyone because human flourishing depends on it; safeguarding the environment is protecting your own survival. The concern is the same expanding concept the Stoics already had, just extended one or two rings outward.
→ Environmental care reframed as rational self-and-other interest, not sacrifice.
Common mistakes
Treating care for others as self-sacrifice
Assuming altruism means losing something, when the Stoics held that helping others and improving yourself are the same act.
Stopping the circle at humanity
Ending moral concern at fellow humans and excluding sentient animals and the environment that we depend on.
Turning it into vague mysticism
Framing the outer rings as sentimental Gaia-style oneness rather than a reasoned, dependency-based concern.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone wanting a structured practice for growing empathy and expanding their moral circle over time.
Not ideal for
Those seeking a purely sentimental or mystical 'oneness', this is a reasoned, dependency-based expansion.
From the transcript
“we should make an effort to expand that kind of concern to further and further circles out there”
“whenever you help other people you're actually helping yourself because you're making yourself a better person”
From the episode
The Stoic Guide To A Happy Life - Massimo Pigliucci - #239
Massimo Pigliucci