Chain of Causes

Abstract

Abstract As the chain of causes present throughout the cosmos, fate is the instrument by which the Stoic god exerts its providential activity. In fact, the Stoic god is often identified with fate understood as the chain of causes. This chapter focuses on how this chain of causes is to be understood. The metaphor of a chain of causes is often used nowadays by causal theorists. But it is argued that the Stoic usage of this metaphor differs greatly from the modern one. Stoic causes are typically simultaneous with their effects (even the so-called ‘antecedent’ causes are), and causation is not a relation between events, but between bodies. In Stoic theory, causal relations are best construed as the production by a body A of a certain effect on a body B. To take a classic example: the scalpel is cause to the flesh of the effect being cut. This conception of cause is reflected in what the Stoics mean by the chain of causes in terms of which they define fate. It is a complex system of reciprocal influence between all the bodies that exist in the cosmos.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 30 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.