Determinism And Recurrence In Early Stoic Thought

Abstract

Abstract The Stoic doctrine of everlasting recurrence holds that the present world will be destroyed by a mighty conflagration, but will endlessly recur in great cycles, and is in fact the recurrence of a world that existed in previous cycles. This paper deals with a question concerning the interpretation of the doctrine: how does it relate to determinism? In particular, does it imply determinism? I shall argue that it does, and that the kind of determinism at stake is based on the notion of regularity—it asserts not just that everything is necessitated, but also that the necessity holds in virtue of strict regularities of the form ‘same causes, same effects’ under which they are subsumed.

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