Abstract
Of all the losses of ancient philosophical works, the loss of the corpus of the third-century B.C. Stoic Chrysippus is perhaps the most tragic. Although most of the testimonia we possess come from hostile sources, it is, I believe, clear from the information we have that Chrysippus was a philosopher and logician of the first rank.
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References
Josiah Gould, The Philosophy of Chrysippus (Albany, 1970), p. 9.
D. L., 7.180.
Ibid., 7.180–181,
Cf. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. Nidditch (Oxford, 1975), pp. 246–248 (Book II, Ch. XXI, Sees. 24–28): “Liberty consist[s] in a power to act, or to forbear acting, and that only... Since then it is plain, that in most cases a Man is not at liberty, whether he will Will, or no; the next thing demanded is, Whether a Man be at liberty to will which of the two he pleases, Motion of Rest. This Question carries the absurdity of it so manifestly in itself, that one might thereby be convinced, that Liberty concerns not the Will... In this then consists Freedom, (viz.) in or being able to act, or not to act, according as we shall chuse, or will.”
De fato 18.41
Ibid., 17.39.
Ibid., 7A3. H D. L., 7.75.
Boethius, In lib. Arist. PH, ed. Meiser, editio secunda, pp. 234–235.
Kneale and Kneale, The Development of Logic, p. 124. Kneale also suggests the possibility that these accounts represent two conceptions of the modalities, one “absolute” and one “relative.” However, I agree with Sorabji that “it is easier to suppose that in each case there is single sense defined by two necessary conditions” (NC&B, p.79). Cf. M. Frede, Die stoische Logic (Goettingen, 1974 ), pp. 107–117.
Alexander, In an. pr., CIAG 2/1, 184.11–12.
De fato 1.13.
Ibid., 8.15.`
This is, in effect, the fourth of the “Stoic attempts to escape from saying that all events happen of necessity” discussed by Sorabji (NC&B, pp. 74–48), who distinguishes “no less than eight [such] attempts to retreat from necessity” (ibid., p. 71). In what follows I individuate forms of Stoic compatibilism in a somewhat broader fashion. My reasons for doing so will, I hope, become more apparent as this chapter develops.
The Development of Logic, p. 129.
Sextus, PH 2.110.
De fato 13.30.
Of course, the negations of conjunctions reported by Cicero explicitly are Philonian/ material conditionals, a fact recognized by a diverse group of scholars: e.g., S. Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics (New York, 1959), p. 79; M. Frede, Die stoische Logik, pp. 80ff; P. L. Donini, ‘Fato e Volunta umana in Crisippo.’ Atti dell’ Accademia delle Scienze di Torino 109 (1974–75), pp. 1–44; Sorabji, NC&B, pp. 74–78. A consequent problem is that a simple material conditional seems obviously to be too weak to capture the common Stoic conception of the causal relation and the “nexus of heimarmeme” even if the Stoics recognize the point made by Sorabji: “it is not easy to see how cause and effect could be represented as always having a logical link” (NC&B, p. 76). However, if what Chrysippus had in mind was not the Philonian/material conditional but something more like the Diodorean, viz., “never p but not q,” the result would both be somewhat more philosophically satisfying and also better accord with the motion of “invariance” (discussed in the text) that the Stoics connected with the cause-effect relation.
The inference of Lq from Lp and p ⊃ q is fallacious in virtually all contemporary modal systems.
De fato 15, SA 2/2,185.8–9.
PH 2.110.
Benson Mates, Stoic Logic (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961), pp. 45–47.
Origen, Contra Celsum 4.68 = SVF2.626.
This version of the Master is the “Hintikka-like” version discussed in the preceding chapter, where I argued that truth-value link principles and the assumption of the eternal fixedness of truth provide the material for a response to the objection that this version of the argument appeals to an illegitimate premise, “what will, at some time, become impossible cannot earlier be possible.” I argued, in effect, that the Master plus these additional assumptions can be used to constitute an argument for the legitimacy of this premise.
Cf. Cicero, De fato 10.20–21.
Epictetus, Dissertationes, 2.19; Alexander, In an. pr. 115, CIAG 2/1,177ff.
Cicero, De fato 1.14.
M. Mignucci, ‘Sur La Logique Modale des Stoiciens’, in Les Stoiciens et Leur Logique (Paris, 1978), pp. 317–346.
Alexander, In an. pr. 115, CIAG2/1, 177.28–178.1.
Adv. math. 8.11–12.
Ibid., 8.12, 8.69, 8.70.
D. L., 7.69–70; Sextus, Adv. math. 8.96–98.
Kaplan’s concept derives “from the kind of proposition considered by the early Russell” and can be represented (for the case of simple, assertoric, “subject-predicate form” sentence) as an ordered pair of property and “individual.” (David Kaplan, ‘Dthat’, in Syntax and Semantics: Pragmatics, Vol. 9, ed. P. Cole [New York, 1978], p. 226). Cf. Andreas Graeser, ‘The Stoic Theory of Meaning’, in The Stoics, ed. J. Rist (Berkely, 1978), pp. 77–100.
Alexander, In an. pr. I 15, CIAG 2/1, 177.32–33.
Mignucci, p. 320. The account in the text elaborates a bit on what Mignucci actually says: that the proposition that is destroyed, while it can never be true, “n’est pas pour autant tou jours fausse.”
The evidence that Mignucci cites for his claim that “pour Chysippe en particulier, une proposition necessaire est toujours vraie” (p. 320), viz. Cicero, De fato 7.14 and Alexander, De fato 10, SA 2/2, 177.21–22, at most establishes that, for Chrysippus, a necessary proposition cannot change from true to false. This condition entails that a necessary proposition is always true only in the case of a proposition that always exists and, thus, always is either true of false. I find that Sorabji has anticipated (both in NC&B, p. 73 and in ‘Causation, Laws, and Necessity’, in Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology (hereafter D&D), ed, M Burnyeat, and J. Barnes [Oxford, 1980], p. 265) my principal objection to Mignucci’s argument.
Mignucci, pp. 329–330.
A. C. Lloyd, ‘Activity and Description in Aristotle and the Stoa’, loc. cit., p. 11–14, My suggestion, however, involves considerable extrapolation from what Lloyd actually says, an extrapolation with which he might not entirely agree.
Of course, this characteristic amounts to a form of limited fatalism (“fatalism” in the sense of “logical determinism” and “limited” to the class of katagoreutikon propositions).
Such a view does have contemporary advocates, e.g., L. B. Lombard, ‘Events and the Essentiality of Time”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 12/1 (March, 1982), p. 9: “I would like now to put forward an argument for the essentiality thesis, an argument which, if successful, shows that an event cannot occur at any other time than the time at which it in fact occurs, that each event occurs at the same time in every possible world in which it occurs. I offer this argument because it seems to me to be correct and because it seems to capture some important intuitions I believe we have about the relations between events and other entities.’
At De fato 6-8; Cicero’s account, later in the De fato, of Chrysippus’ distinction among types of causes as a strategy for avoiding necessitas fati may represent another argument, to be discussed more fully in Chapter Seven.
Alexander, De fato 10, SA 2/2, 176.14–23.
Ibid., 176.23–24. For more on Alexander’s interpretation of the Stoics as reducing the concept of possibility to an epistemic notion see A. A. Long, “Stoic Determinism and Alexander of Aphrodisias De fato (i-xiv),” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 52 (1970). pp. 247–268; Sorabji, NC&B, pp. 83–84; M. Reesor, ‘Necessity and Fate in Stoic Philosophy’, in The Stoics, ed. Rist, p. 194.
SVF2.965–973.
Alexander, De anima libri mantissa, SA 2/1, 179.6–10 = SVF2.967.
De Stoicorum repugnantiis 46.1055e-f.
D. L., 7.75.
Calcidius, In Timaeum 144 = SVF2.933.
Plutarch, De Stoic, repugn. 47.1056e = SVF2.937.
One common contemporary form, perhaps most notably represented by G. E. Moore (Ethics [New York and London, 1912]), is the suggestion that perhaps the “sense of ‘could have,’ in which it simply means ‘could or should have if I had chosen,’ is all we need to satisfy our hankerings after Free Will” (J. L. Austin, ‘Ifs and Cans’, reprinted in Philosophical Papers, second edition [London, 1970], p. 207). Austin criticizes this suggestion at length in ‘Ifs and Cans’,
SVF2.916.
The degrees to which Chrysippus himself was willing to conflate necessity and fate and the possibility of this conflation’s being due to his critics, who viewed Chrysippus’ attempt to separate the concepts as unsatisfactory, are vexed question. Cf. J. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge, 1969); M. E. Reesor, ‘Fate and Possibility in Early Stoic Philosophy’, in The Stoics, ed. Rist, pp. 187-202; R. W. Sharpies, ‘Necessity in the Stoic Doctrine of Fate’, Symbolae Osloenses 56 (1981), pp. 81–97; Sorabji, NC&B, pp. 64–67, 70–71, 86. Of course, this issue will be complicated if (as this chapter rather tentatively suggests) our evidence represents an amalgam of various positions, perhaps not very carefully distinguished, adopted by Chrysippus at different places in his voluminous writings.
Some have interpreted Chrysippus as confining the action of fate to the realm of antecedent, “assisting and proximate” causes. Cicero evidently holds such a view; but the position he attributes to Chrysippus at De fato 19 is most unclearly described and, it seems, the text corrupt. Proposed emendations do not seem to me to be successful in resolving all the conceptual difficulties with the chapter.
Cicero, De fato 18.42.
For example, at De fato 19.44 (with text emended by Turnebus) Cicero seems to attribute to Chrysippus the view that a prior presentation is not necessary for an act of assent. This does not seem consistent with the position enunciated at 19.43 (“if anything were effected without an antecedent cause, it would be false that all things would happen by fate”) together with the position, apparently adopted by Chrysippus, that all things happen by fate.
This is, in effect, a version of the view of P. L. Donini (‘Fato e Volunta umana in Crisippo’, loc. cit.) and an alternative interpretation of the “sixth attempt” — distinguished by Sorabji NC&B, pp. 81, 86 (iii) — of the Stoics to deal with the relation between fate and human responsibility.
De fato 12, SA 2/2,181.5–6.
De fato 13, 181.13–14.
De fato 14, 183.8–10.
This is, I suppose, the most common contemporary conception of fatalism. There are some ancient analogues of the view, expecially among Middle Platonists such as Albinus. They often interpret the Oedipus story in such a way that is is implied that Laius’ “ultimate fate” was determined irrespective of what he did to attempt to avoid it. Cf. J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists (Ithaca, 1977 ), pp. 294–298.
De fato 12.28.
Ibid., 13.30.
Otherwise, Chrysippus’ doctrine of confalalia events/states of affairs would not constitute a response to the particular problem raised in the Lazy Argument.
De fato 13.30. Although it is certainly not clear from Cicero’s text, perhaps this is a conception of fate as “fixing” but not “necessitating” certain events/states of affairs.
An example would be my falling against someone and knocking him over, having been pushed. Nothing about my “humanness” seems to be crucial to the instrumental role I fulfull in this action: any other physical object could have fulfilled the same role. For further discussion of this “proper nature” account of responsibility, see the commentary of Sharpies on Alexander’s De fato 13 (R. W. Sharpies, Alexander of Aprhodesias On Fate: Text, Translation, and Commentary [London, 1983 ], pp. 142–143).
At the beginning of De fato 14, Alexander argues that this Stoic doctrine does not “preserve the common conceptions of all men with respect to what is up to us” (182.21–22) and goes so far as to accuse the Stoics of “thinking it fit, through deceiving their hearers by the ambiguity [which A. thinks that the “artificial” Stoic account of “to eph’ hemin” introduces with respect to that phrase], to try to flee the absurdities that follow for those who say that nothing is up to us” (182.29–31).
This is implied by Alexander at 182.31–183.3.
De fato 14, 183.11–15.
See SVF2.74; Cicero, De fato 17.40; Verbeke, ‘Aristotelisme et Stoicisme’, pp. 88ff; also, Sharpies, On Fate, pp. 139–140; 144–146.
De fato 14,183.22–23.
Hyppolytus Philos. 21 = SVF2.975.
De fato 14, 183.24–26.
That this is Alexander’s own view is strongly suggested by his comment at 183.27–29: “the voluntary is what comes-to-be from unforced assent; but what is up to us is what comes-to-be with assent in conformity to reason and judgment.”
Sharpies, On Fate, p. 145. Cf. J. M. Rist, ‘Prohairesis: Proclus, Plotinus, et alii’, De Jamblique a Proclus (Entretieins Hardt) 21 (Geneva, 1975), p. 107. Cf, also the suggestion of C. Stough, ‘Stoic Determinism and Moral Responsibility’, in The Stoics, ed. Rist, p. 129, Note 21: “The concept of that which is attributable to something applies more generally in Stoic philosophy to all living things whose behavior is characterized by impulse and assent. But what is attributable to us (as human beings) is more narrowly restricted by the addition of intelligence (logos) to impulse and assent.”
De fato 14, 184.1 Iff, especially 184.25ff. Perhaps Alexander is not considering here an actual group of Stoics that located to eph’ hemin in rational assent but, rather, considering a counterfactual situation: the objection that the Stoics would encounter if they were to attempt to limit their account of to eph’ hemin to what happens “through” (dia) rational or deliberative assent.
Calcidius, In Timaeum 220 = SVF2.S19.
De fato 14, 184.24–26.
Cf. Aristotle, EN 3.3, especially 1112b8–9: “deliberation [pertains to] those matters which occur [in one way] for the most part, but with respect to which it is unclear how they will turn out, and in which there is indeterminacy.”
This view is implied in Aristotle’s discussion of deliberation in De int. 9.18b26ff.
De fato 14, 185.4–7. The text, particularly at the end of the passage, is not good; Sharpies accepts some emendations (of Schwartz and Apelt — see his On Fate, p. 248) that yield a slightly different translation (ibid., p. 63).
Cf. Note 49 of this chapter.
“E” is most commonly instantiated by something like “the agent chooses (or desires) to perform the action in question.” However, other qualifications might be added: e.g., “the agent’s choice is not being forced by some other agent,” “the agent”s choice (or desire) is not a result of some psychotic malady,” etc.
This move will receive further scrutiny in Chapter Seven.
In other words, the sort of responsibility with which they were concerned was (exclusively) what is sometimes termed “moral responsibility,” i.e., the sort of responsi-bility that cannot be attributed to things like automobile tie rods but only to beings recognized as members of some relevant “moral community.”
Of course, the account might also be termed “classical incompatibilist” if the “compelled” (“coacta”) in the following quotation is equated, simply, with “caused,” and this seems to be an equation that Spinoza would accept. The “compatibilist” aspect of the account of freedom that I have in mind is to be found in Spinoza’s refusal to recognize “self-determination” or “self-necessitation” as limiting freedom.
Ethic of Benedict de Spinoza, trans. White and Stirling, Part I, Def. VII, p. 2.
Ibid., Prop. XVII, especially Corol. 2.
Ibid., Prop. XXXIII.
Spinoza customarily (as in Part I, Prop. XXVIII) speaks of an effect as being “determined” (determinetur) by its cause; this determination is viewed by him, I think, as a type of necessitation.
Ibid., Part IV, Appendix I and II, pp. 240–241.
Ibid., Prop. IV, especially the Corollary, pp. 183–184. But cf. Part V. Prop. XXXIV: “The mind is subject to affects which are related to passions only so long as the body exists” (p. 275).
This is the general theme of Part V of the Ethics; cf., for example, Part V, Prop. Ill: “An affect which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it” (p. 255).
This view is expressed toward the beginning of the “Preface” to Part V of the Ethics.
Apatheia is a characteristic virtue of the Stoic sage. However, it does not seem that the Stoics regarded the apathesperson as a person “immune,” so to speak, from causal influences; rather irrational emotions do not influence his giving or withholding assent and the consequent action. See Cicero, De finibus bonorum etmalorum 3.10.35; J. M. Rist, ‘The Stoic Concept of Detachment’, in The Stoics, ed, Rist, pp. 259–272; I. G. Kidd, ‘Posidonius on Emotions’, in Problems in Stoicism, ed. A. A. Long (London, 1971 ), pp. 200–215.
I believe that both Chrysippus and Spinoza would hold that human “assent” and action usually or always is some sort of response to “external stimulus,” but that this fact is not imcompatible with the assent’s (or action’s) being “rational.” An “emotional” response not rationally grounded — whatever that might amount to — is what defeats freedom with respect to an assent/action.
Spinoza, Ethics, Part I, Def. VII.
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White, M.J. (1985). Chrysippus’ Compatibilism. In: White, M.J. (eds) Agency and Integrality. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 32. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5339-0_4
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