Skip to content
Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter February 27, 2008

Compatibilism: Stoic and Modern

  • Ricardo Salles

Abstract

It is agreed by most scholars that the Stoics were compatibilists regarding the relation between responsibility and determinism. On this view, the Stoics depart from two other positions. Unlike some eliminative determinists — labelled in modern discussions “hard-determinists”, but already active in Antiquity — they assert that, despite determinism, there are things that “depend on us”, or are : things for which we are genuinely responsible and for which, therefore, we may justifiably be praised or blamed. But the Stoics also depart from the libertarian or “anti-determinist” 2 a position championed by the Epicureans in the early Hellenistic period and by Alexander of Aphrodisias on behalf of the Peripatetics, towards the end of the second century AD. Unlike the libertarian, who agrees on the incompatibility alleged by the hard-determinist, but preserves responsibility by rejectin necessitation, the Stoics preserve both responsibility and necessitation.

Published Online: 2008-02-27
Published in Print: 2001-05-23

© Walter de Gruyter

Downloaded on 16.4.2024 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/agph.83.1.1/html
Scroll to top button