The Hegemonikon — Ruling Faculty
This week you are going to learn about the hegemonikon (say it: heh-geh-MON-ih-kon), the ancient Greek word the Stoics used for the ruling faculty of the mind. Think of it as the part of you that perceives, judges, chooses, and decides what things mean. It is not your emotions, your body, or your habits; it is the seat of your rational authority, the inner governor from which everything else in your mental life takes its direction. The Stoics believed that tending to this one faculty was the whole of the philosophical life, because if it is in good order, everything else follows, and if it is neglected, nothing else can save you.
Passage
and if you are thoroughly convinced of this (for, at the beginning of this discourse, you allowed that there appeared to you more evil in infamy than in pain), it follows that you ought to have the command over yourself, though I scarcely know how this expression may seem an accurate one, which appears to represent man as made up of two natures, so that one should be in command and the other be subject to it. [21.] Yet this division does not proceed from ignorance; for the soul admits of a two-fold division, one of which partakes of reason, the other is without it; when, therefore, we are ordered to give a law to ourselves, the meaning is, that reason should restrain our rashness. There is in the soul of every man, something naturally soft, low, enervated in a manner, and languid. Were there nothing besides this, men would be the greatest of monsters; but there is present to every man reason, which presides over, and gives laws to all; which, by improving itself, and making continual advances, becomes perfect virtue. It behoves a man, then, to take care that reason shall have the command over that part which is bound to practise obedience.
— Cicero, Tusculans 2.47
Reflection
Cicero arrives from outside the strict Stoic tradition but lands on the same map. He acknowledges what every honest person feels: the soul contains something soft, reactive, and prone to giving up, alongside the reasoning part that can govern and improve. He calls this the two-part soul, and he insists that the rational part must give law to the other. What Cicero adds to your understanding of the hegemonikon is this: the ruling faculty is not born perfect; it becomes excellent through practice and continual advance. The citadel is not built in a day. Each time reason restrains rashness, the walls get a little higher.
Go deeper
When you honestly look at the softer, more reactive part of yourself that Cicero describes, what does it most often ask you to avoid or escape, and what does your reasoning part know about that request?
Practice
Reason Speaks First
At some point today, before you make any decision that carries even mild discomfort (a difficult reply, an uncomfortable task you have been avoiding, a small sacrifice), deliberately let your reasoning part speak first. Say aloud or write one sentence: what does my ruling faculty, at its best, actually think I should do here? Then notice whether the softer, reactive part agrees or protests. You are practicing the exercise of authority.