Stoic Meditations

I will obey the maxims of our school and plunge into public life, not because the purple robe attracts me, but in order that I may be able to be of use to my friends, my relatives, to all my countrymen, and indeed to all mankind.

Seneca explains that he prefers simple cloths and easily prepared food, not the kind that "goes out of the body by the same path by which it came in."

Cicero introduces Chrysippus' example of a rolling cylinder as an analogy for the inner workings of the human will. This results in a defense of compatibilism about free will based on distinguishing internal from external causes.

Cicero explains that the Greco-Romans were divided on free will along three possible positions, which turn out to be the very same that still characterize the modern debate on the subject.

Cicero presents Carneades' response to Chrysippus' argument about free will and determinism. Though interesting, this time it is the Skeptics who got it wrong and the Stoics who are on target.

Cicero explains Chrysippus' theory of co-causality, which plays a crucial role in his rejection of the so-called lazy argument concerning free will.

Cicero summarizes the so-called lazy argument about the nature of faith, explaining why it doesn't make any sense. Fate, according to the Stoics, just is the universal web of causes and effects.

No external cause need be sought to explain the voluntary movements of the mind; for voluntary motion possesses the intrinsic property of being in our power and of obeying us, and its obedience is not uncaused, for its nature is itself the cause of this.

Cicero nails the Epicureans for their ad hoc theory of the so-called swerve, a sudden lateral movement of atoms meant to preserve the notion of free will in an otherwise mechanistic universe.

Is the fact that Carneades went to the Academy on a given day the result of necessary causes determined from the beginning of time, or of local causes that could have been otherwise?