Abstract

With the rise of Alexander the Great, the Greek political situation changed drastically. The scope of political philosophy shifted accordingly. Whereas Aristotle focused on the polis and based his political thinking on a thorough empirical research into the constitutions of different poleis and their history, the Stoics took the perspective ofthe large Hellenistic empires and developed a cosmopolitan philosophy. Their cosmopolitism is based on the idea of cosmic sympathy, pervading the whole universe and constituting its unity. The Epicureans, on the contrary, held that the world is governed by chance and luck. The number of worlds is infinite, and all of them are mere conglomerates of atoms resulting from chance collisions. Hence the Epicureans could not espouse a cosmopolitan view of human society