Chrysippus’ Theory of Causes

Abstract

Abstract We know very little about Chrysippus’ theory of causation. Our textual evidence which names Chrysippus directly and can be straightforwardly considered as belonging to a theory of causes is this: a passage in Stobaeus (Eel. 1.138.23-139.4) that presents Chrysippus’ basic account of causation; a distinction of causes in Cicero’s On Fate (Fat. 41-5); and an indirect reference to a distinction of causes in Plutarch’s On Stoic Self-Contradictions (Stoic rep., ch. 47).various works by Galen, Sextus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism book 3 and Against the Mathematicians book 9, and Clement’s Miscellanies book 8.9 we find excerpts and summaries of causal theories of medical, later Stoic, and Peripatetic origin. (A trace of a later Stoic theory of causes can be found in Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Fate 192.18-19.) The reports are mainly eclectic in character, often uncritically juxtaposing and mixing together various theories. But they have one thing in common: they treat the theories they report as finished taxonomies of causes. They present sets of technical terms that are used as names for mutually exclusive classes of causes, so that it is possible to assign any cause to precisely one class (and naturally there are no empty classes). In most cases, causes of more than one type are described as cooperating in one instance of causation.

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