Epictetus: What Depends on Us

Continuing with Boulnois’s history of free will, the next exploration concerns the way that Epictetus uses the originally Aristotelian phrase “what depends on us”. Here again Boulnois weaves in much discussion of the broader Stoic school.

“The Stoics were forced, we say, to reconcile determinism with the ‘freedom of assent’. But in the Stoic school, these two concepts are not brought together until Epictetus. It is the interpreters who attribute freedom to impulse, to assent, and to ‘what depends on us’. Is this attribution legitimate?” (Généalogie de la liberté, p. 203, my translation throughout, emphasis in original throughout).

“Cicero believes he sees a break in the determinism of Chrysippus, when the latter affirms that certain things depend on us: our actions. But according to Chrysippus, even what depends on us is subject to necessity: ‘even if many things come from us, these too are no less fated, for they are encompassed in the government of the universe’. Many events can occur only through us, but it is included in the order of the world that we necessarily do what depends on us to accomplish them. An action depends on us if we are its cause. Every act derived from us is imputable to us, even if it comes from an anterior cause, and only passes through us. We act in conformity to our nature, but our nature is part of nature” (pp. 203-204).

Stoic determinism is holistic. Humans do not stand outside of nature or fate; we are part of it. Thus Stoic fate is not something external to us. Every agent contributes to the total working out of the order of cause and effect. Our logos is part of the immanent divine logos that governs the world. Our contribution, which depends on us, is real and not an illusion.

“Even if everything is ruled by fate, certain things depend on us: our actions and certain mental acts. To say that the world is not the exhaustive cause of our assent and of our action, is to recall that we have a directing faculty that is their mistress. We cannot represent fate as something that occurs independent of us: if it is in conformity to fate that a boxer will win his match, this does not mean that he can fight ‘with arms dangling at his sides, under the pretext that according to fate he was bound to get out of it unscathed’; this means that he must fight, and that he will triumph through his strength and skill. Among the events of the world, many can only come to pass if we contribute to them. We cannot bend fate, but we can accomplish it” (p. 204).

We are not like leaves that are simply blown about by the wind, even if those who are dominated by their passions come close to this. The more we engage in critical thought and question ourselves, the more we achieve the freedom of Stoic assent.

“If the agent gives her assent, this produces an impulse (horme), which issues in action. The exterior thing is indeed the active cause of action, but it is the faculty of assent that completes it and that determines whether the agent accedes to the representation. By reason of their proper contribution of assent, individuals having different characters will react differently to the same representations. As a consequence, even if initial causality comes from the represented exterior object, still it is the agent who is the origin of her own action: she is the cause, the one responsible. Thus the fact that certain actions depend on us is compatible with the determinism of fate” (pp. 204-205).

Impulse for the Stoics has a rational character that follows from assent, although we who are not the ideal Stoic sage may assent to bad reasons. Through impulse, assent becomes an efficient cause. We are not just effects of nature, but contributing partial causes.

“For the Stoics, the human being, like all living beings, tends toward what is appropriate to her nature, but she heads toward that end by her assent. ‘What depends on us’ is not the order of the world, but our impulse (horme). Nonetheless, it is necessary to articulate this impulse with the order of the world. How is causal determinism compatible with moral responsibility?” (p. 205).

Within the Stoic system, this tendency of beings toward what is appropriate to their natures takes over some of the role of the banished Aristotelian final cause. Officially, Stoicism recognizes only one kind of cause, which is closer than anything in Aristotle to what later came to be called “efficient”. But Stoic nature is not only a seamless network of efficient causes; it also has a normative dimension. We are not only said to be subject to nature; we are also admonished to live in accordance with nature. If nature were purely and simply a matter of fact, of what is the case, this would make no sense. And for the Stoics, there is also providence exercised by the immanent logos.

“P. Hadot holds that for the Stoics, interior discourse ‘remains entirely free’. But what does ‘free’ mean here? Consent is not ‘free’ in the sense that the directing part of the soul can grant or refuse it, accept a thing or its contrary. It is free in the sense that it reacts to the representation in conformity with its nature, and spontaneously (but in the only possible way). If we want at any price to speak of freedom, it is a monovalent freedom. It is a capacity to act, but it is not the capacity to act and not to act (as in Aristotle). It is necessary also to distinguish: 1) the ambivalence of action (Aristotle): if ‘x can do y’, then ‘x can refrain from doing y’; and 2) the monovalence of action (the Stoics): ‘x can do y’, but this does not imply that ‘x can refrain from doing y’ ” (ibid).

Hadot is known for his accounts of ancient philosophy as not just theoretical discourse, but a way of life. What Boulnois is gently pointing out here is another example of the very widespread tendency to read medieval or modern notions of freedom into the ancient philosophers.

“In this theoretical framework, the agent is indeed the cause of action; but she is not the ultimate cause, because causality passes through her and she does not have the capacity to act otherwise. But then, what is willingness [pleine gré]? — Quite simply, spontaneity, the fact of not being constrained [contrainte] to act by an exterior cause. Action depends on me if I consent to it, because then I take responsibility for the causality, and I incur the blame or praise that it merits” (ibid).

This account of “willingness” as the criterion of moral responsibility is close to that of Aristotle. The very existence of these accounts ought to be recognized as thoroughly refuting arguments that moral responsibility can only be grounded by the postulation of an unobservable metaphysical free will. But they are also better accounts. Willingness and unwillingness are ethical criteria that serve to differentiate our judgment of situations. Metaphysical free will can play no such differentiating role, because it is supposed to be uniformly applicable. That in turn is to say that it can make no practical difference.

“The Stoics are characterized by their unitary conception of the psyche. They do not make a partial instance in us responsible for action (as in Aristotle, the logos, lust, or aggression), but identify its principle with the whole nature of the agent, with her ‘soul’, which includes her character, impulses, and beliefs. An action is accompanied by willingness [pleine gré] if it results from an assent given by the soul to a desirable representation. Acquiescence guarantees that the agent is the triggering cause of the action; it makes her responsible. But this assent is determined; it is in conformity with her individual nature and tendencies” (p. 206).

The Stoic insistence on a strongly unitary and holistic view of the soul stands in contrast to Plato and Aristotle. Plato’s Republic classically compares the unity of the soul to that of a city.

“For the Stoics, as for Aristotle, we can only attribute moral value to an action if it ‘depends on us’. Chrysippus seems to have used the same expression as Aristotle: our action is ‘dependent on us’ (eph’ hemin). But much later a substantialized form appears: ‘the “what depends on us” ‘ (to eph’ hemin); it has become a subsistent faculty: assent. From action that depends on us, we have passed to a principle in us by which action occurs: assent, the principle of action and the key to ethics. For the agent applies her own impulse to her action; the antecedent causes are only conditions sin qua non. But she exercises a causality, and she must assume responsibility for it, the blame or the praise. It is on this that our access to happiness and the freedom of the sage depends” (ibid).

There is value in the Stoic analysis of assent and non-assent to motivating appearances. “What depends on us” has great value as a distinguishing ethical criterion. But not only is the substantialization of what depends on us a reification, it completely changes its character. The late Stoics seem to hold that only something purely inner can depend only on us. The concern to identify something that depends exclusively on us is new; we saw clearly that in general, actions that depend on us do not depend exclusively on us. The claim here seems to be that our assent is the only thing that depends exclusively on us. This kind of assent does seem to be something purely “inner”. But assent is still something that happens. It is not itself a doer. But the later substantialized form is clearly also supposed to be a doer, and indeed the primary doer in us. Coupled with a strongly unitary view of the soul, that makes it into the primary us, or sense of “us”. This is a huge shift.

“As Alexander of Aphrodisias remarks, the Stoics safeguard ‘the “what depends on us” (to eph’ hemin)’ (a substantialized expression, which P. Tillet translates as ‘freedom’), while at the same time suppressing ‘the power of choice’ (exousia tes haireseos), which is to say the ‘capacity to perform contrary actions’. Thus for them, there is no choice between contraries, and responsibility is monovalent. In effect, ‘they affirm that what happens through us (di hemon) depends on us’. Thus everything that happens is in conformity with fate, but we are the causes (responsible) for what results from our impulse and our assent, and is produced in conformity with our nature, that is to say for what occurs through us. Although necessary, the effect produced by us is indeed ours. This action remains imputable to us, because it does not come from an extreme constraint, but is indeed produced by us, even if it results from an internal necessity. Human action is integrated into physical causality: just as the stone falls according to its nature and in conformity with fate, in the same way the human is moved according to her impulse and under the action of fate; her action is at the same time necessary and dependent on her” (pp. 206-207).

Alexander’s claim that the Stoics “suppress” the power of choice is a bit disingenuous. In a later chapter, Boulnois will point out Alexander’s major role in reshaping Aristotelian proairesis (resolution of a deliberation) into a strong notion of binary choice. The occasion for Alexander’s somewhat heavy-handed reinterpretation is indeed the Stoic rejection of Aristotle’s bivalent concept of action. The classic Stoic attempt to view the entire universe as an air-tight system of univocal efficient causality is indeed highly problematic, to say the least. What ought to be defended in this context is Aristotle’s very different, more “humane”, interpretively rich, relaxed pluralistic and non-exclusive notion of causes as reasons why things are this way rather than that. Not having an overly strong, univocal notion of causality in the first place removes the motivation for an overly strong notion of choice. Alexander re-reads Aristotelian causality in a much more systematic and univocal way that brings it closer to the Stoic view, and then finds it necessary to compensate for this with a stronger notion of choice.

All that notwithstanding, not only is there is nothing intrinsically bad about the Stoic motivation to think human action as embedded in the world; it has positive value in its own right. But Aristotle’s “compatibilist” view of human action is quite different from the Stoic one, for all the reasons mentioned above. A more hermeneutic view of causality and an emphasis on temporally extended resolution or commitment rather than punctual bare choice combine to make Aristotle’s approach more attractive.

That the human has a capacity to perform contrary actions seems uncontroversial. But “contrary actions” can be understood in as many ways as actions can be contrary to one another. Aristotle more specifically attributes to rational beings the ability “to act, or not to act” in specific ways. To my ear, acting and not acting in some particular way are not contrary actions properly speaking. I have long puzzled over the motivation for Aristotle’s emphasis on the narrower “to act, or not to act” case as a distinguishing characteristic of rational beings. But as Boulnois points out, Stoicism with its univocal view of causality effectively denies the validity of the “to act, or not to act” case altogether, while upholding the “up to us” criterion for ethical responsibility. But the plot is about to thicken even further. We are about to see why Boulnois still treats it as an open a question whether Stoicism really is determinist in the modern sense.

“The cosmos represents a network of preliminary or auxiliary causes of action, but not as a constraint, since the ‘complete’ cause includes the agent’s own character, beliefs, and dispositions. It only is what it is in its character of being done in this conjunction, but it is indeed she who does it: the determined action is exempt from constraint, indeed compatible with the responsibility of the agent. The Stoic position is compatibilist” (p. 207).

That Stoicism combines a kind of determinism with a defense of the reality of moral responsibility is an apparently obvious ground for calling it compatibilist. But here, suddenly, we have the novel introduction of a notion of “preliminary or auxiliary” causes. These do not behave in the strongly univocal way that we have been considering as characteristic of Stoic causes. Here we begin to see an ambivalence in the notion of “constraint”. At first it seemed to be a synonym for the kind of coercion or extraordinary circumstance that makes an action seem willing and unwilling at the same time. But in the context of a comparison with these new preliminary or auxiliary causes, the classic Stoic univocal efficient causes are in a different sense tightly “constraining” in a way that Aristotelian causes, and now also Stoic preliminary or auxiliary causes, are not.

Here also the Stoic concept of representation intervenes. First, it should be acknowledged that although it is defensible, the translation of Stoic phantasma or phantasm as “representation” is a bit of a stretch. This is definitely a case where a significant work of interpretation is presupposed by the translation. What can be shown is that Stoic phantasms have a strongly representational character. But phantasms have other characteristics as well. In the first instance, they are perceptual images. In Aristotle, the same Greek word is closely linked to the broad but underdeveloped notions of imagination and interior sense. These involve images that are in a way the same as those associated with sensible objects, but different in that they can arise — or be recalled — independent of present sense perception.

Stoic phantasms are also ancestral to medieval sensible species. The classic early Stoic theory of the phantasm forms a three-way bridge connecting optics, the physiology of sense perception, and inner experience. Since the early Stoics hold that everything real is in one way or another connected with embodiment, perceptual images begin as subtle bodies literally transmitted by light. The perceptual images thus transmitted re-present the visible forms of ordinary sensible bodies, and are again re-presented in something that begins to resemble the modern concept of “mind”. At each step, there is a kind of structural translation that preserves the “same” form in a different medium. For the early Stoics, this material translation of forms grounds a strong epistemological realism in an unequivocally physical and physiological theory that tightly knits together a kind of realism with a kind of representationalism.

If we speak of any kind of representationalism in Aristotle, it must be said to have a more poetic and less absolute character. Unlike the Stoics, Aristotle does not rely on a kind of strong identity of the image across a continuous chain of physical transmission to underwrite strong claims of epistemological realism. He does not even separately claim that there is such a tight chain of transmission. Aristotle’s theory is more “relaxed” and aesthetic. It avoids strong claims of identity in representation. While holding that there is such a thing as real knowledge, Aristotle’s moderate realism also avoids the strong realism that unites the “dogmatism” attributed to the Stoics in the ancient world, with the dogmatism that will later criticized by Kant.

Boulnois continues, “The gods have given us the power of using our representations. It is true of itself that an inadequate representation does not take away our assent, and that we can refuse to consent to it. But certain commentators have demanded to know whether a comprehensive representation necessarily entails our assent, or whether it is only an occasion in the face of which we can again refuse consent. Epictetus is nonetheless clear on this point: before the demonstration of a moral contradiction, indeed before an adequate (comprehensive) representation, ‘like a balance, the reasonable soul is inclined, whether it wants to be or not’. It is impossible for the human not to approve that which appears to her as preferable in an adequate representation. There is indeed no place here for free will [libre arbitre] as the capacity of acting otherwise. The evidence of a representation does not do violence to reason, because it is itself recognized as a part of universal reason, and only submits to itself. But this in no way excludes necessity” (pp. 207-208).

“Aulu-Gelle gives another version of the argument: ‘if you throw a long stone cylinder in a steeply inclined terrain, you are the cause and principle of its fall, but soon the cylinder is carried away in rolling, no longer because you made it roll, but because it has the capacity to roll according to its measure and its form. In the same way order, reason, and the necessity of fate move kinds and the principles of causes, but it is our own will (voluntas) and the character of each one that control the impulses that issue from our deliberations and the acts of our spirit’ ” (p. 208).

“For a modern who accepts the principle of inertia, this seems to exclude every human impulse: once the initial impulse is given, it seems that the cylinder continues to roll on its path. But there is no inertia in ancient physics: the effect is always contemporary with its cause; and each nature follows its own tendency. As a consequence, to explain the continued movement of the cylinder, there must be a new impulse, ‘its proper force’, and the internal spontaneity of ‘its nature’. Necessity is compatible with spontaneity. For the movement of an object is produced not only by its antecedent causes (exterior impulse), but again by its own form (cylindrical or conical). There is an impulse proper to the agent; it does not passively submit to the causality of representations; it joins to them its spontaneity. Nonetheless, the nature of our spirit is itself subject to fate. Even what depends on us is explained by the state of our beliefs and our emotions. Our actions reveal what we are. They come from the acquiescence that we give or not, by function of our character, to representations that come from outside. Thus we are responsible” (ibid).

Conversely to the first point about inertia, it might be argued that if we think of form as having a kind of causality of its own, a separate concept of inertia might not be needed. It is not entirely clear which approach is more parsimonious. While it might with justice be said that one universal concept of inertia is simpler than a causal role exercised by innumerable forms, it could also be argued that inertia does not entirely eliminate the relevance of form. An appropriate articulation of form and matter might make a separate concept of inertia superfluous, but inertia does not seem to make all uses of formal and material cause superfluous.

” ‘What depends on us’ has constraint for its contrary, and not necessity. Our assent is indeed ours within the chain of causes, but it comes from the form of our individual soul, which itself obeys a necessary order. From here on, the key to assent lies in a word: voluntas [will]. This becomes the point of contact between a necessary nature and a unified psyche, the nodal point of ethics. Since the will is ours, it depends on us to act. By this articulation between impulse and assent, between the initial movement and the capacity to roll, Stoicism admits the existence of ‘what depends on us’ (in nostra potestate). Representation impresses a movement that is received in the soul, but assent depends on us — it is spontaneous. Once the exterior impulse is received, assent moves itself. We can indeed maintain that everything happens by necessity (modal determinism), without this preventing consent from depending on the soul, because it comes from it. This is why we are responsible for our action” (pp. 208-209).

The references to Latin terms here might seem out of place in the context of Epictetus, who wrote in Greek, but Cicero and Seneca had already written about voluntas before Epictetus flourished. The explicit introduction of a faculty of will is closely tied to the substantialization of occurrences of Stoic assent into a principle that gives assent or refuses it, which Boulnois has already pointed out in Epictetus. Only, according to Boulnois, this is still not yet the free will that is so much insisted upon by later writers.

“Action depends on us if it is committed by (hupo) us, and if it occurs through (dia) us: [quote from Alexander of Aphrodisias:] ‘Nothing of what is produced by anyone (hup’ hekastou) in conformity with their own nature can, they say, be otherwise, but each of the things done by them (hup’ auton) is produced in a necessary way […]: the circumstances being such, it is impossible to submit to them in another way, and not to be moved in this way’. Certainly, the key to decision is assent, and it is possible to refuse an imperfect representation. But this refusal is itself determined by causes: that the agent does or does not give her acquiescence to the representation, itself results from her beliefs and her desires. Thus action is determined, through the agent, by her impulses and her stronger representations. With the Stoics, will is not a free will, because it is a power of consenting to fate” (p. 209).

“Does the necessity of assent render all ethical exercise vain? — In no way. The work on ourselves, the discipline of assent, consists precisely in criticizing the representations that are presented to us, in order to separate our subjective emotions and uncertain beliefs, and to open up a truth adequate to the world. Thus we give our assent to a true judgment, and choose not only what appears to us to be better, but that which is really better” (pp. 209-210).

This is similar to the earlier example of the boxer. If he is fated to win, this does not mean that he does not need to make any effort. It presupposes that (among other things), his character is such that he will in fact make the effort. If he did not have such a character (among other conditions), it could not be truly said that he was fated to win.

“Nonetheless, even if we do not consent, fate is accomplished. If I must go into exile, be imprisoned, or have my head cut off, I can refuse my assent; but necessity is accomplished no less. There are two ways in which fate is accomplished necessarily: assent (if this is the interior principle of my action); and constraint (if I am driven by an exterior principle). It does no good to oppose the order of the world: either the agent consents, and her interior spontaneity coincides with necessity, or she refuses her assent, and what is necessary is accomplished in spite of her, coming from an exterior principle, under the form of a constraint. According to Zeno and Chrysippus, the human is subject to nature in the manner of a dog attached to a chariot: [quote from Hippolytus:] ‘A dog attached to a chariot, if it wants to follow, at the same time follows it and is pulled by it, because it is at the same time the dog’s self-determination (autexousion) and necessity that act; while if it does not want to follow, it is constrained in every way. It is the same with humans: even if they don’t want it (me boulomenoi), they are in every way constrained to follow their fate’ ” (p. 210).

“The dog can refuse to consent to the movement that drags it along, but this will be painful and useless — it will be irresistibly dragged. Or it can trot in the rhythm of the chariot: it will arrive at the same result, but it will be in tune by its assent and will not suffer. If the human refuses her assent to the order of the world, she will be unhappy, since she will arrive necessarily at the contrary of what she wished. When she gives her assent, she will attain a form of happiness, since she will consent to what happens, in accord with nature: ‘if she accomplishes this, she will get what is due to her’. Happy and free, she will blend in with the determinism that she cannot change” (ibid).

“According to Cicero, the Stoics join with the representations received by the senses ‘the assent of the mind’, situated in us (in nobis) and voluntary (voluntarium)’: is this a doctrine of free will [libre arbitre]? No: the expression is clearly a hendiadys [one thing expressed by a conjunction], ‘in us and voluntary’ together translate eph’ hemin (‘what depends on us’). Cicero affirms that we give our assent willingly [de plein gré] (‘voluntarily’), but not that we have an undetermined will. It is not a question of posing a freedom of choice in the face of fate, as a number of commentators affirm, aided by problematic choices of translation. It is a matter of more fundamentally establishing our responsibility, of knowing whether action is voluntary, that is to say ours” (pp. 210-211).

“The Discourses of Epictetus begin with a question: ‘what is it that is in my power, and what is it that is not in my power?’ We will notice the singularization of the question. Aristotle speaks of ‘what depends on us’ (collectively). Epictetus no longer asks about a generic we, or about the kinds of action, but about what depends on me, here and now. Ethics is no longer thought starting from a particular political community (as in Aristotle); it starts from the singular dispositions of each. It is necessary to discover what each can legitimately desire, to separate out a domain that nothing can ever enter, a power that is mine, whatever the external circumstances may be. Does this consist only in assent? The only thing that depends on us is the correct usage of our representations; ‘this alone is emancipated from all obstacles, from all constraint’. By reason of this exclusive concentration on our assent, everything outside it is alien and ‘indifferent’, unworthy of being chosen (aproaireton). If our action deserves praise or blame, this does not concern external circumstances, but the beliefs in the name of which we give our assent and act: what comes from right convictions is beautiful; what comes from erroneous convictions is bad’. It is the assent that we give to our representations that explains the justice of our action. Only by this are we deserving of praise or blame. We have only to render an account of our ‘use of representations’, that is to say the way in which we put our sensible impressions to the test to see if they deserve our assent or not; the rest is not imputable to us” (pp. 211-212).

“It is by this that Epictetus introduces a relation between ‘what depends on us’ and freedom. The Manual begins with this fundamental thesis: ‘Among the things that are, some depend on us (eph’ hemin), and others do not depend on us. […] What depends on us is by nature free (eleutheros), without impediment and without shackles. What does not depend on us is weak, enslaved, in chains, and foreign’. The key to ethical liberation lies in the distinction between our works and the rest; this is what is new. Ethical life is a continual effort to distinguish what depends on us from what does not. This permanent attention frees the agent from the desire to obtain what we cannot have, and that make us depend on someone else. Who submits to this discipline is never frustrated in her desires; this allows her to avoid trouble and the passions” (p. 212).

“Is this a doctrine of freedom of the will? Certainly, in affirming that ‘what depends on us is by nature free’, Epictetus makes freedom a property of our assent. But the judgment is conditional; it is in aligning impulse and desire with what depends on us that we are free, and in desiring what does not depend on us that we are enslaved. As a consequence, the key to freedom lies in the restriction of our desire to ‘what depends on us’. What kind of freedom is involved here? An ethical freedom. Not that of doing everything we want, but that of not desiring what we cannot do. It is only in this extreme restriction that we can let our propensity bloom” (ibid).

Epictetus In Context

The next stage of development in Boulnois’s historical argument about free will focuses on the late Stoic Epictetus (d. 135 CE). An accurate account of Epictetus requires that we understand the views of the Stoic school as Epictetus received them. This affords an excellent occasion to give these views a more than passing mention. (In Généalogie de la liberté, there is an intervening chapter on future contingents in Aristotle’s On Interpretation, but according to Boulnois, it is only the way in which this latter topic was transformed by Boethius (ca. 480-524 CE) that makes it relevant to the genealogical investigation of free will. I may return to his argument about Boethius at some future date.)

Shortly after the time of Aristotle, the Stoic school emerged and became famous. The works of its founder Zeno of Citium (b. 334 BCE) and its main systematizer Chrysippus (ca. 336-206 BCE) are known only from quotations in later writers. But Stoicism came to occupy a significant place in the broader culture of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. In this way, a kind of philosophy achieved wide social influence and diffusion in the broader culture that has rarely if ever been equaled.

In contrast to Plato and Aristotle, early Stoic thought is distinguished by its strongly systematic ambitions and more “dogmatic” style of teaching. Like most Greek philosophers, the Stoics emphasize reason. They rationalize the Greek religious idea of fate in a famously strong form, propounding an unprecedented determinism of cause and effect. They make embodiment a criterion of reality. But while rejecting Platonic forms, they give an important place to incorporeal lekta (“sayables”, meanings, or propositional contents). The Stoics followed the Megarian tradition of formal logic, which differs from that of Aristotle in important ways, and begins with propositions rather than terms.

Stoicism seems to have originated the idea of a deterministic physics. At the same time, the Stoics introduce and universalize a strong notion of providence that would later be adopted by the monotheistic religions. But unlike those later traditions, the Stoics see divinity as entirely immanent in the world.

The Stoics advocate a stern morality, based not on an Aristotelian harmonious coexistence of reason and desire but on a quasi-ascetic ideal of eliminating the passions, while remaining engaged in worldly action. Nonetheless they recognize that elimination of the passions is vanishingly rare in humans.

Passion for the Stoics is a disorder of reason. In those who are ruled by passion, the whole soul is still said to have a rational character. The passions themselves are explained as resulting from rational assent to false propositions. Chrysippus is also said to compare reasoned action to walking, and passion to running, in which it is harder to stop. Meanwhile Stoicism explicitly promotes an egalitarian attitude toward humanity.

Later Stoicism, known mainly from surviving works of Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, focuses primarily on ethics, and has been widely admired. Epictetus — a slave who was later emancipated — is regarded as later Stoicism’s most substantially philosophical representative.

“What is freedom? As a first approximation, the Stoics do not hesitate to repeat the response of the Sophists, for whom it consists in being able to do what we want. Thus Epictetus’s Discourse IV begins with this provisional definition: ‘One who lives as he wants (hos bouletai), […] one whose impulses are not obstructed, in whom desires are realized, in whom aversions do not fail’. To be free is to lead a life in conformity to one’s desires and impulses, without being prevented from accomplishing them. Freedom consists in doing what we want and enjoying it without obstacles.”

“But this definition is ironic and empty, for it remains a promise rarely kept. A bit later, Epictetus continues, ‘Who wants to live in error?’, ‘Who wants to be a dupe in life?’ — And he concludes: ‘No bad person lives as he wants; and as a consequence he is not free’. Ultimately, freedom does not consist only in the satisfaction of our desires and impulses. It only consists in doing what we want on the condition that we will what is good. Freedom of the will is empty if it is not ordered to the good” (Boulnois, Généalogie de la liberté, p. 197, my translation throughout, emphasis in original throughout).

A kind of freedom and a kind of will are important in Epictetus, but close examination will show that he does not have a concept of free will, in the way that that comes to be understood in the later tradition. Boulnois notes that the Sophist concept of doing what we want is political rather than psychological.

“Thus Epictetus transposes the Sophistic definition (associated with a form of political power) to the individual faculties. True freedom is profoundly linked to the will (‘to live as he wants’). It is interior, and consists in holding to the things that depend on us (ta eph’ hemin). But problem is to know what sort of things depend ‘uniquely on us’, and on nothing else. In effect, to live without obstacles and attain serenity, it is necessary to discipline our desires, which trouble us when what we do not desire happens. It is necessary to be able to desire nothing that is in the power of others. ‘Of the various things we love and hate, let us beware. Necessarily, those who have power over them are our masters’. We can only enjoy without hindrance if we limit our desires to the citadel of the soul, that is to say the domain that depends on us” (pp. 197-198).

As this figure of the inviolable citadel of the soul illustrates, later Stoicism develops a much sharper distinction of inner from outer in the human than we find in Plato or Aristotle. Converging with early Christian views, this comes to dominate the subsequent Western tradition. Much of the same Greek vocabulary of Aristotle’s ethics is adopted by the Stoics, but given different meaning. Not until Hegel does this “alienated” separation of inner and outer come to be substantially challenged. For this later Stoic-Christian view, only in the inner are we truly at home, and only in the inner do we find our freedom. A similar privileging of the inner is also characteristic of Avicenna.

“Thus the access to freedom rests in the first instance on exercises that put into practice the delimitation of ‘what depends on us’. The free human is such that ‘everything happens in conformity with her decision (proairesis), and whom nothing can hinder’. In effect, to be free it is necessary to know what depends exclusively on us, and to desire only what is inside these bounds. ‘Who is the unhindered human? The one who desires nothing alien to herself’. The one who is attached to her body, to possessions or to her reputation is chastised, for she obtains neither durable goods nor serenity. The sage knows her place in the universe: ‘What she can choose is without obstacles. What she cannot choose can be obstructed. When she places her good and her advantage in the only objects that cannot be obstructed and that depend on her, she is free.’ Inversely, ‘if she places her good and her advantage in exterior goods, which cannot be objects of her choice, she will be the slave of those who have in their power the things she admires or believes’. As Marcus Aurelius says, ‘If the act depends on you, why do you accomplish it? If it depends on another, from whom do you take it?’ ” (p. 198).

The reference to exercises here is significant. Whatever requires exercises to develop cannot be metaphysically intrinsic or innate.

“The problem of individual freedom is born with this reversal of freedom’s first, political, sense. Freedom becomes a positive attribute, a concept that we can attribute to ‘what depends on us’ (eph’ hemin). The mutation is capital. As Hannah Arendt says, freedom is no longer ‘experienced in the fact of acting and of associating with others, but in the will and in commerce with oneself’. The scission between metaphysical freedom and political freedom is already consummated” (ibid).

The hugeness of this cannot be overstated. What Boulnois here calls “individual” freedom seems to be a freedom that is supposed to be intrinsic or innate to the individual (“metaphysical”), and therefore unrelated to social conditions. But insofar as political freedom consists in civil liberties and civil rights, it is highly applicable to individuals, who have or do not have — or have only some of — such liberties and acknowledged rights. The real contrast is the one he mentions at the end, between political freedom, which depends on and directly refers to our real-world social conditions, and a “metaphysical” freedom that is claimed to be independent of whatever is or is not the case in our social conditions.

“What is the significance of this mutation? In contrast to the Aristotelian universe, which leaves room for contingency in the world of humans, for the Stoics nature is subordinate to fate. But in the grip of fate, is there a place for choice? For responsibility? For freedom?” (p. 199).

“The Stoic doctrine of freedom is generally interpreted in the following manner: by reason of their deterministic physics, the Stoics could not admit that freedom consists in the capacity to choose, therefore they fall back on a doctrine of the freedom of the sage, which consists in consenting to the necessary order of the world.”

[quote from Pierre Hadot:] “There is a difference between the freedom of choice, thanks to which the directing principle has the possibility of rendering itself good or bad, and real freedom, thanks to which, choosing the moral Good and universal Reason, the directing principle succeeds in that its judgments are true, its desires realized, its willings efficacious. It is only this real freedom that is properly freedom.”

“In place of an apparent free will [libre arbitre], a real moral freedom, reduced to the citadel of the soul. This interpretation is characterized by two points: 1) it leaves in the shadow the reality of this freedom of choice: does the human or does she not have the ability to choose between contraries? 2) in opposing apparent freedom to true freedom, it makes it seem as if the question of choice and that of freedom pertain to the same concept. But that is not the case. The double concept of freedom (apparent and true) does not appear until Augustine (see chapter 8), to cover by a single term what among the Stoics are two distinct concepts, and two different questions” (p. 199).

The two concepts are eleutheria (freedom) and proairesis (resolution or “choice”).

“To elucidate these two concepts, it is necessary to examine four questions: 1) Is Stoic thought about causality determinist? 2) In what sense, according to the Stoics, do actions depend on us? 3) Is there a place, for them, for a doctrine of choice? 4) What does being free signify for them?” (pp. 199-200).

The remainder of this post covers Boulnois’s discussion of the first of these. The other three will be treated later. But haven’t we already said Stoicism was determinist?

“The Stoics maintain that everything happens in conformity with fate, fate being the unified network of all the series of causes. But what is it that is a cause? The Stoics no longer call causes the ensemble of explicative factors of a being (as in Aristotle, for whom they come in pairs: agent and patient, matter and form, producer and final cause), but only those that actively produce an effect: efficient causes. According to the Stoics, causality is exercised when a body enters into contact with another body, and they make an incorporeal effect arise: ‘the scalpel is a body, which becomes for the flesh, another body, the cause of the incorporeal predicate “being cut” ‘. The body of the patient remains, but it receives a new predicate. Thus causality implies a contact, and produces a transformation” (p. 200).

Although with a bit of squinting the Stoic lekta can be understood in modern terms as propositional contents, speaking about the cause of a predicate sounds odd to us, because it mixes physics (governed by causes) with logic (which can be thought of as governed by the applicability of predicates). This serves as a reminder that we should not go too far in claims about the “modern” character of Stoic causality.

To my ear, “for whom they come in pairs” in reference to Aristotle sounds too categorical or too simple, but that is a side issue. Much more important is the good contrast he makes between Aristotelian “explicative factors” and a monomorphic notion of efficient cause. When I previously studied Stoicism, I was not yet sensitized to this Aristotelian concern, so in thinking about causality more recently, I have not had the fact that Stoic causality is “efficient” in mind. But from a historical or “genealogical” point of view, this has great significance.

A distinctive feature of the ethically bad or reductionist modern notion of cause that can be very useful in certain kinds of practice — but has an alienating effect on both the practice and the theory of general interpretation in human life — is its amenability to calculation. Even Aristotle — despite his strictures against an excessive desire for precision in ethical matters — notes that the substitutability of means to a given end in principle allows for the same kind of exactness in reasoning about the logistics of means that is characteristic of reasoning about geometrical figures (or, for modern readers, mathematical reasoning in general). This quasi-mathematical precision about the means to ends is just where the “modern” intuition of causality excels, and this is exactly what is needed for a “determinist” account of things.

“After this the Stoics affirm that every effect necessarily has a cause — a version of the principle of causality reduced to efficiency: ‘the world would be dislocated and unhinged, and would not remain eternally one, conforming to a unique order and a unique economy, if we introduced an event without a cause (anaitios)’. Consequently the cause is no longer explicative but efficient. The principle ‘nothing is without a cause’ takes on a new dimension. But above all, the Stoics also maintain the converse: every cause necessarily produces its effect, which is the principle of determinism. According to the testimony of Alexander of Aphrodisias, they declare: ‘From every event follows another that is related to it necessarily (ex anagkes) as to its cause’. Not only is there no effect without a cause, but again every cause necessarily produces its effect: ‘When all the circumstances environing the cause and that of which it is the cause are the same, it is impossible that sometimes they have no effect, sometimes the effect is different, and sometimes the same’. All things being equal otherwise, a cause always and necessarily produces the same effect” (pp. 200-201).

To say with the Stoics that every effect necessarily has a cause is both narrower and more “precise” than to say with Aristotle that every quality of things has a dialectical reason why it is the way it is. Conversely, general interpretation as I understand it is ethically better but logistically weaker than the narrow means-end reasoning at which modernity excels. Determinism depends on this narrowness to exclude ambiguous cases from consideration. The Stoic aitiaton (“effect”, literally “that which is caused”) is literally or identically the passive construction corresponding to a Stoic cause (aitia). For better or worse, the exactness of the Stoic aitia stands in contrast to the relative openness of the Aristotelian aitia.

“On the ground of this new conjunction between causality and necessity, the Stoics admit a universal determinism; each event follows necessarily from causes that precede it, and that necessarily produce the consequences that follow from it. The ensemble of causes and effects thus forms a necessary series, and the ensemble of causal series constitutes a necessary and ordered totality: nature, God, or fate” (p. 201).

The Stoic aitia is subject to a strict “logic of identity” that is foreign to Aristotle. For Aristotle there is such a thing as strict identity, but it only applies to special cases. The Stoics in effect claim that all causes and effects have strict identity.

“The necessary sequence of causes entails the necessity of all events. Everything that will happen in the future is already contained in the present state of the causes, and is determined by the ensemble of the past: ‘it is indeed necessary that what is true comes from causes; thus when it follows, it comes to be necessarily’. The number of causes being finite, their combination must be reproduced periodically, from which arises the thesis of the eternal return (which will be reprised by Nietzsche). As result, the state of the world at a given instant precontains as a necessary cause the ensemble of its future states. As Cicero says, ‘If there could exist a mortal capable of perceiving by the mind [esprit] the relation of all the causes, he would not be mistaken in any way: in effect, one who knows the causes of future events knows necessarily all that will happen’. Only one world is possible. It is indeed necessary. Every omniscient observer knows it” (pp. 201-202).

Perceiving the relation of all the causes would be a kind of omniscience. That which can only be known by an omniscient observer (not us) cannot play a role in real-world ethical practice. Aristotle’s definition of the necessary is the logically weaker and more humane criterion “that which follows always or most of the time“. Stoic necessity is the overly strong “that which follows always”, full stop.

“In this necessary totality, how can human action find a place? The Stoics distinguish between a condition sin qua non and the production of the act. Thus they oppose two sorts of causes: preliminary (procatartic) causes, and the all-encompassing or containing (synectic) cause, the action of the breath [pneuma] that orders and conserves the universe. These distinctions have the purpose of preserving the efficacy of assent: the latter has preliminary causes, but they depend on each agent. Even if necessity governs nature and our representations, it is in our power to give to them or to refuse to them our aquiescence. Fate is not an absolute cause but a preliminary cause, without which it would suppress ‘what depends on us’ (eph’ hemin) and that which is ‘willing’ (hekousion). Chrysippus thus identifies the workings of fate with proximate and preliminary causes: ‘If everything comes to be by fate, it follows that everything comes to be by anterior causes, but not that these causes are principal and perfect; it suffices if they are auxiliary and proximate. If these are not in our power, it does not follow that the impulsion is not in our power’. The auxiliary and proximate cause represents the exterior conditions of fate, the order of the world, but the perfect and principal cause is the assent of the human. It is indeed the human who acts, and who acts according to her consent. Certainly the state of our desires and of our beliefs is determined by the system of the world, but it depends on us to consent and to act. The representations caused by the world do not depend on us, but it is we who consent, and not the impulsion that triggers our action” (p. 202).

The introduction of “preliminary” or procatartic causes here is unexpected. This is a major qualification on what up to now was being said unconditionally. Just now, we were saying that for the Stoics all causes produce their effect necessarily; now it seems that only the synectic or “all-encompassing” causes do so. Is it still appropriate to call this determinism? Perhaps this is why he raised the first question above, about determinism.

Fate was the very thing that led to the discussion of determinism in the first place. Strict determinism and the attempt to represent causality in the world by an air-tight, systematic logic of identity in which all terms are univocal (if indeed that is what we still have here) create artificial problems that later authors will try to solve by positing a radical metaphysical free will. What we might call Aristotle’s “logic of difference” does not encounter these problems, because it does not try to apply overly strong criteria in the first place.

“For it is the very nature of the mind [esprit] that is the principal and perfect cause of assent, and the exterior world only constitutes an antecedent and auxiliary cause: ‘Every rational animal does nothing without the representation of a thing that has been incited from the outset, then only if an impulsion begins (impetum cepit), then only if assent confirms this impulsion’. At the outset the exterior cause is a condition sin qua non, but the moving impulsion and the principle of impulse come from the soul of the agent, who then produces aquiescence by way of confirmation (or infirmation), when the desire has already begun, and thus triggers movement (or not)” (p. 203).

What is this “mind” that is exclusively inner? Does assent even have a principal and perfect cause? A condition sin qua non is a necessary condition, but determinism requires conditions that are both necessary and sufficient.

“Since the doctrine of causality is identically a doctrine of responsibility, every human must be answerable for her action; this is not reduced to the conjuncture of the world and her representations, but comes from herself, by her assent. Nonetheless responsibility does not signify that the agent is the sole origin of movement. It no longer signifies that the action has no exterior causes. For agents are responsible for the actions that depend on them, which is to say that the actions that pass through them and that we can attribute to them, whatever the causal explication of their arising may be” (ibid).

We are responsible for the actions that pass through us. It is unclear to me at this point why responsibility would “no longer” signify that the action has no exterior causes. This seems to imply that it did signify that at some earlier point. I don’t think that is what Boulnois really means.