We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
The chapter explores how the Stoics account for the totality of movement in the cosmos – in other words, the agency of the world. The Stoics take the world to be a complex and divine living-being. Their physics combines what today we might call physics, biology and theology. The Stoics put forward two premises that appear to be in tension. First, they claim that the active principle is the sole source of movement and cause of everything. Second, they offer a scala naturae according to which kinds of entities differ by the way in which they move and jointly co-cause all movement in the world. This One-Many Problem is the Stoic version of what is later called the problem of free will and determinism, or so I argue. As the Stoics conceive of the problem, the challenge consists in showing how both premises – One Cause and Many Causes – are true. The Stoic approach strikes me as attractive, both because it looks at humans together with animals and other parts of the world and because of its upshot for human agency. Our reasoning, including our decision-making, constitutes some of the causes that co-cause the world’s overall movements. What remains puzzling, however, is that our reasoning is subject to norms. Ultimately, I argue, the puzzle is how norms for practical reasoning fit into the physical world. This reconstruction does justice to the evidence. It recognizes that the Stoics address human movement in the context of a scala naturae. And it predicts what indeed we find: a wide range of texts about the status of human assent, indicative of the awareness that this is not an easy topic.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.