The Piety of the Determined Will: A Critique of Stoic Freedom

Logical Modalities from Aristotle to Carnap, 2016

At the heart of the Stoic theory of modality is a strict commitment to bivalence, even for future contingents. A commitment to both future truth and contingency has often been thought paradoxical. This paper argues that the Stoic retreat from necessity is successful. it maintains that the Stoics recognized three distinct senses of necessity and possibility: logical, metaphysical and providential. Logical necessity consists of truths that are knowable a priori. Metaphysical necessity consists of truths that are knowable a posteriori, a world order according to certain metaphysical principles and natures that god crafts within the constraints of matter. Finally, what is providentially necessary is what occurs according to the chain of fate, but only once it is in process or past. The method of the paper is a close reading of Diogenes Laertius 7.75, adducing broad textual evidence along the way, to show that the Stoic theory of modality embraces Philonian possibility, both that which is capable of being true as a matter of logical consistency, and that which is possible according to the bare fitness of the entity. What differentiates the Stoics from Philo is their additional commitment to possibility as opportunity, resisting the collapse of determinism into necessity.

Ars Disputandi

Stoic philosophy has been charged with an inconsistency insofar as its deterministic worldview appears to conflict with its advocacy of various methods of self-discipline aiming at self-improvement. It is, some claim, self-contradictory to hold persons responsible for adhering to counsel regarding their behavior and attitude if forces beyond their control ultimately determine that their behavior and attitude will not conform to counsel. In this paper, I argue that this complaint is misguided. Though several Stoic philosophers attempted to reconcile their determinism with some conception of free will, I contend that the Stoics should have (or at least could have) rejected the doctrine of free will while defending Stoic counsel and its efficacy for producing a well-ordered mind, virtuous character, and a life of harmony with Nature.

Routledge Companion to Free Will, 2016

Aestimatio: Critical Reviews in the History of Science

2016

On two separate occasions Origen attempted to defend the proposition that human beings are personally responsible for their actions. In his comprehensive exposition of Christian theology, On Principles, written about A.D. 220-25, he devoted an entire chapter to the subject of free will, in the first half of which he attempted to demonstrate on philosophical grounds that human beings are responsible for their behavior and that it is within their power (to e<p' tijivv) to do right and avoid sin, as God in his justice demands (De Princ. 3. 1. 1-5 = SVF 2. 988).1 A decade or so later in his treatise On Prayer Origen again defended human responsibility, this time in order to show that God does not foreordain everything that happens, thereby rendering prayer useless, but rather that human beings remain in control of and responsible for their own decisions and actions (De Orat. 6. 1-2 = SVF 2. 989).2 Origen's two arguments have long been regarded as influenced by the Stoic liter...

2009

Stoic philosophers had to face the accusation of incoherence, self-contradiction and Paradoxes since ancient times. Plutarch in his Moralia writes against them; Cicero devotes a separate work on stoic paradoxes (Paradoxa stoicorum). Even in contemporary Literature there are still discussions on the possibility of such an incoherence and existence of paradoxes in the stoic theory. At first glance, stoic Cosmology gives the impression to both (paradoxically) accept a kind of Determinism, and at the same time it undoubtedly argues for the moral agent’s freedom of the Will. In pre-stoic or even other contemporary to Stoicism Philosophical Traditions, the definitions that these two terms/concepts are given, fairly accuse as incoherent any Theory that does not set them as “contraries”. Under these types of accusations, the stoic Cosmology and Theory of the Freedom of the Will is often to be included. This phenomenal self-contradiction inside the Principles of Stoicism becomes even more ob...

In his A Treatise of Freewill, Ralph Cudworth argues against Stoic determinism by drawing on what he takes to be other concepts found in Stoicism, notably the claim that some things are ‘up to us’ (ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν) and that these things are the product of our choice (προαίρεσις). These concepts are central to the late Stoic Epictetus and it appears at first glance as if Cudworth is opposing late Stoic voluntarism against early Stoic determinism. This paper argues that in fact, despite his claim to be drawing on Stoic doctrine, Cudworth uses these terms with a meaning first articulated only later, by the Peripatetic commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias.

The Routledge Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy, 2020

An overview of the Stoic philosophers and the main elements of their system. A chronological presentation of brief biographies of the Stoics with the most notable contributions of each individual is followed by a sketch of their philosophical system divided into the branches of logic, physics, and ethics. Logic includes topics in rhetoric, dialectic, and epistemology. Physics is the account of physical reality, including ontology, cosmology, and theology. The synopsis of ethics includes the Stoics’ version of naturalism, the doctrine of oikeiōsis, the virtues, emotions, the sage, moral progress, and cosmopolitanism.

2015

This thesis offers a reconstruction and analysis of a debate about responsibility, and causation initiated by Plato, and continued by the Stoics. The pivotal moment of the discussion is a problem I call 'the greatest difficulty,' found in Plato's Parmenides. The debate, however, involves a complex network of arguments including subordinated or parallel discussions about ontology, method, ethics, and epistemology. Instead of isolating the main topic, I highlight the structure of the debate, and the interconnection between its parts, to show the complexity and sophistication of the argumentation in both Plato and the Stoics, and the depth of the Stoics' engagement with Plato's works. The motivation for doing this is to better understand many of the otherwise unexplained and odd starting points of the early Stoic philosophy. But since this requires a reconstruction of the dialectical background the Stoic texts assume, this means that the bulk During my PhD I benefited from participating in KCL's Greek seminar, Yale-KCL's Republic workshops, the Keeling masterclasses at UCL, and the writing groups in Cambridge organised by Dr Moira Faul. I am grateful to everybody who attended these events. I also wish to thank audiences in Fordham University, King's College London, UNAM, and Oxford for their invaluable feedback on different papers which later became part of the thesis.