“Up to us”: the Stoic take on the free will problem

Reconciling determinism with agency through the wisdom of Epictetus

Some of the ancient thinkers who thought about free will, left to right, top: Aristotle, Chrysippus, Cicero; bottom: Epictetus, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Plotinus.

I don’t believe in free will, understood as a will that is somehow independent of the universal rule of cause and effect. That would be a miracle, and I don’t believe in miracles either. (Let’s set aside any distracting discussions of quantum mechanics, which are not helpful, since random events are not “willed” anyway.)

Then again, I also do believe that I make my own decisions on all sorts of things, from writing this particular piece to having coffee this morning, to going to see some friends tonight.

How is this possible? Isn’t determinism — the philosophical term for universal cause and effect — inherently contradictory with the notion that we make our “own” decisions? Do I want to eat my cake and eat it too?

One way to explore this topic is by carefully considering a paper published back in 2012 in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy by my colleague John Sellars, entitled “Stoics against Stoics in Cudworth’s A Treatise of Freewill.” (You can download the full text here.)

In the paper, John is concerned with the writings of Ralph Cudworth (1645–1688), a clergyman, theologian and philosopher, and one of the leading figures…