Hēgemonikon

The commanding faculty

In Stoic psychology the hēgemonikon is the ruling part of the soul, seated (they held) in the heart and made of the finest pneuma. It receives impressions, grants or withholds assent, and issues the impulses to act; virtue and vice alike are conditions of this governing center. To live well is to keep the hēgemonikon in accord with reason, and so with the rational order of the whole.