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# Circles of Hierocles

Extend practical concern by drawing people from wider social circles closer

> **Also known as:** Hierocles' Circles; Care About More People

> **Practice basis:** Ancient instruction with a modern title

Picture widening circles of relationship, then choose a person or group to treat as closer to you in concern and action.

## At a Glance

* **Use when:** Distance, unfamiliarity, or group identity makes another person's claim easy to ignore.
* **Trains:** Human kinship, justice, and expanded concern.
* **Time:** One to ten minutes.
* **Timing:** Before or during the relevant situation.

## Purpose

Hierocles describes each person as surrounded by circles: body, immediate family, extended family, local community, neighboring communities, and the whole human race. The task is to draw the outer circles inward, reducing the moral distance between “us” and “them.”

The exercise does not require identical duties to everyone. A parent has responsibilities to a child that do not extend in the same form to every person. It widens concern while allowing roles, capacity, and proximity to shape the action.

**Core Stoic Skill:** Extending appropriate concern across widening human relationships.

## How to Practice

1. **Draw the circles.** Place yourself, family, friends, community, nation, and humanity in widening rings.
2. **Choose an outer circle.** Identify a person or group you habitually treat as distant.
3. **Recognize kinship.** Name the needs, vulnerabilities, and rational nature you share.
4. **Draw the circle inward.** Use a more familiar form of regard or imagine the person as a neighbor.
5. **Choose an action.** Do one just and proportionate thing that follows from the closer view.

## Example: A Distant Neighbor

News of hardship in another part of your city feels abstract. You picture the affected people within the circle of neighbors rather than as a remote category. You learn what is needed and make one contribution suited to your means.

## Common Mistakes

* **Neglecting those already entrusted to you.** Wider concern should not erase close duties.
* **Claiming equal obligations to everyone.** Kinship is universal; particular roles still matter.
* **Stopping at warm feeling.** Complete the exercise with appropriate action.
* **Speaking for people instead of listening.** Concern begins with their actual circumstances.
* **Using circles to absorb difference.** Moral kinship does not require sameness.

## In-the-Moment Phrases

* “Draw the circle inward.”
* “This person is not alien to me.”

## Optional Reflection

Use these questions for journaling or quiet contemplation. Writing is optional.

* Whom did I keep outside concern?
* What appropriate action followed when I drew that circle inward?

## Source Anchors

* Hierocles, fragments preserved by Stobaeus, 4.27.23
* Marcus Aurelius, *Meditations* 4.4
* Epictetus, *Discourses* 1.23

## Related Exercises

* [Role Ethics Review](/wiki/exercises/roles-relationships-and-speech/role-review.md)
* [Exercise of Social Goods](/wiki/exercises/roles-relationships-and-speech/exercise-of-social-goods.md)
* [View from Above](/wiki/exercises/perspective-mortality-and-impermanence/view-from-above.md)


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