Transcript for Interview with Tad Brennan on Stoic Fate

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0. Introduction

There are two central tenets of Stoicism that seem to contradict each other. On one hand, the Stoics believe in fate, right? Their world is fully deterministic. But on the other hand, the Stoics tell you that your actions, your emotions and your beliefs are fully up to you. But how can that be? If the world truly is deterministic, where does my agency come from?

My guest today is the legendary Stoic scholar Tad Brennan, who will help us resolve this puzzle. We're first going to investigate the Stoic notion of fate and then their conception of freedom before trying to reconcile these two positions. This is not just a theoretical discussion, but one with dire practical consequences. How should we live in a fated world? What does moral responsibility even mean if everything is determined? And what parts of our lives are actually up to us?

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1. Fate

Johnathan Bi: Tell us about the Stoic idea of fate.

Ted Brennan: So fate in Stoicism primarily refers to a network of causes that extends through all time and through all places. Every event that occurs is caused by previous events. And that entire network of events then is rooted in the Stoic view, in Zeus, the main God. So Zeus is also pervasive through all matter, all space, and all time. Fate is, in one sense, that active principle of Zeus, the divine contribution which is animating the whole picture, but is also orchestrating all of the events that we witness, all the events that we partake in.

Johnathan Bi: Right. So this active principle, Zeus, it's like the natural laws? Is that something close that I can think about? It's like something that provides motion in addition to matter, or how should I think about this active principle?

Ted Brennan: So it certainly is a source of motion. That's right. It's active in that sense. Whether it corresponds to something like natural laws is, I think, an open question, and I would generally argue no. So coming from a modern perspective, we're used to brands of determinism that you can think of as natural laws plus initial conditions. Determinism. So it's a whole family of determinisms which say all events now are determined because every event now is caused by a certain initial condition and the unrolling of certain natural laws. Natural laws which can be written in general terms. And then given that trajectory, we can see where things are going to... How they've arrived now and where they'll go in the future. It's not clear that the Stoics structure their determinism around a natural law picture, because there's a different way you can be a determinist after all. I mean, that is, you could be a determinist such that you believe that every single point in time is determined, but without any particular connection to the previous points. The next point is not caused by the previous point. It just is, let's say, written in a book. I mean, imagine that you had two different ways of having the number 1096 determined today. Maybe 1096 today is twice 548 and that's twice 256 and so on. Or maybe there's a book where it just says on Wednesday 1096, on Thursday 37, on Friday two and a half. No connection between these things.

Johnathan Bi: I see.

Ted Brennan: But each one is determined and the book is set up in advance. So that is determinism without generalizable laws.

Johnathan Bi: I see. And so the Stoics are agnostic between these two types, or they're certain that it's not the kind of billiard ball natural law determinism?

Ted Brennan: I'm agnostic between these two because I don't think the evidence is adequate.

Johnathan Bi: I see.

Ted Brennan: I think that in many respects the Stoics did think that the future states of affairs are caused by the earlier states of affairs. But did they think that that was the result of generalizable laws like Newton's three laws of motion? Or did they think that those were the individual fiats of Zeus?

Johnathan Bi: Right.

Ted Brennan: Zeus just says, I'm going to make it the case that this follows from this, this follows from this.

Johnathan Bi: Right. I see. And this is why the God analogy really is helpful, because this is not Zeus representing a series of natural laws. Or it doesn't have to be.

Ted Brennan: We don't Know.

Johnathan Bi: Right. We don't know. It could be Zeus that has an arbitrary will, like the author of a book that has simply written, you will do this, which nonetheless is a kind of determinism. That's the idea.

Ted Brennan: And this matters for the ethics. Here's the axe to grind. There are interpreters who want to see Zeus as more like Newtonian laws, very general, very simple and abstract and thus predictable. Thus you could generate, in our familiar way the future out of a simple bunch of principles. There are people like me who think maybe there's something just deeply arbitrary about it, and that applies in the ethical context as well. We, as ethical agents, you might think, should follow certain basic laws. We should follow, maybe the Kantian imperative.

Johnathan Bi: Right.

Ted Brennan: We should follow, maybe, I don't know, the Ten Commandments. Or you might think, as I'm inclined to think, that what is involved in being a virtuous person is doing one damn thing after another in such a way that you're accurately following what Zeus wants you to do. But there's really no general story to be told. There are no general ethical precepts to be given.

Johnathan Bi: If I tell you to take your only son on top of the mountain and kill him, you do that because that's what God has commanded you to do, right?