The Stoic Conception of the Good

For the Stoics, self-love is our primary motivation. It is natural for us to have a concern for ourselves, to select what is conductive to our survival and avoid what is detrimental to it. As we grow, we become increasingly aware of what is about the things that attract and repulse us. The behavior of […]

The Stoics on fate

By Stoics, everything happens by fate. Everything is causally determined, which is fate. Fate is the connecting cause of the things which exist, or a rational principle according to which the cosmos is arranged. Cosmos is a chain of events, a chain which is inescapable. It is determined by God. Then what I am doing […]

The Stoics on Agent Autonomy

There were two opinions of the older philosophers regarding the fate. One belonging to those men who believed that everything occured by fate in such a way that everything necessitated (The Fate Principle Argument). The others held that there were voluntary motions of the mind without fate. Chrysippus, a Greek Stoic philosopher, rejected necessity but […]