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Full Idea
Some causes are perfect and principal, others auxiliary and proximate. Hence when we say that everything takes place by fate owing to antecedent causes, what we wish to be understood is not perfect and principal causes but auxiliary and proximate causes.
Gist of Idea
When we say events are fated by antecedent causes, do we mean principal or auxiliary causes?
Source
Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 18.41
Book Ref
Cicero: 'On Fate, Stoic Paradoxes, Oratory', ed/tr. Rackham,H. [Harvard Loeb 1942], p.237
A Reaction
This move is described by Cicero as enabling Chrysippus to 'escape necessity and to retain fate'.
| 14062 | Sooner follow mythology, than accept the 'fate' of natural philosophers [Epicurus] |
| 20836 | The Lazy Argument responds to fate with 'why bother?', but the bothering is also fated [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
| 20837 | Fate is an eternal and fixed chain of causal events [Chrysippus] |
| 21679 | When we say events are fated by antecedent causes, do we mean principal or auxiliary causes? [Chrysippus] |
| 23315 | The nearest to ancient determinism is Stoic fate, but that is controlled by a sympathetic God [Stoic school, by Frede,M] |
| 21674 | Even Apollo can only foretell the future when it is naturally necessary [Carneades, by Cicero] |
| 23347 | If I know I am fated to be ill, I should want to be ill [Epictetus] |
| 13162 | Sloth's Syllogism: either it can't happen, or it is inevitable without my effort [Leibniz] |
| 24133 | I have perfected fatalism, as recurrence and denial of the will [Nietzsche] |
| 24152 | Fate is inspiring, if you understand you are part of it [Nietzsche] |
| 9253 | The human heart has a tiresome tendency to label as fate only what crushes it [Camus] |