Fate and Freedom in Ancient Stoicism and Augustine’s Critique

Abstract

This article is divided into three parts. First, a brief exposition of the ontological foundations of ancient determinism is provided to explain the worldview held by such a philosophical position. The second part sets out the argument used by Chrysippus to make causal determinism compatible with moral responsibility, and points out the tensions that such a position entails. In the third part, the notion of freedom of ancient Stoicism is contrasted with the philosophy of Augustine in order to determine the novelty that Christianity represented in this matter.

1. Introduction

It is not easy to reconstruct Stoic thought, whose first representatives can be placed in the 4th century B.C. and its last around the 2nd century A.D., not even if we limit its thought to its early stages, namely from Zeno of Citium to Antipater of Tarsus. For the reconstruction of Stoic thought, we have at our disposal fragmentary material that is not always coherent1. Moreover, even among those considered representatives of this school, there is no homogeneous thought2.

In the conception of reality held by the early Stoics, there are two theses that are difficult to reconcile: that everything is determined and that man is a moral agent. The difficult reconciliation of these two postulates has recently given rise to an abundant and valuable specialised literature, such as Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy by Susanne Bobzien (1998) and, more recently, Responsabilidad moral y destino en el estoicismo temprano by Laura Liliana Gómez Espíndola (2017). Both works focus, as we will, on the position of Chrysippus, not only because he was the first author to deal systematically with this question in his works On Fate, On the Possible, On Providence and On Nature, but also because, for the Stoic world, this author’s doctrine was considered the undisputed authority (Bobzien 1998, p. 6). This article does not aim to contribute to the reconstruction of the Stoic strategy in order to make determinism and moral responsibility compatible, a task satisfactorily accomplished by the aforementioned works. Through this research, we attempt to open the debate from a new perspective, that is, to determine the concept of freedom implicit in the Stoic proposal by comparing it with the concept of freedom present in the work of (Saint Augustine 1913), specifically in three of his works: The City of God, On the Free Choice of the Will, and On Grace and Free Choice. As is well known, in chapter VIII of book V of The City of God, Augustine takes up both the Stoic conception of causal necessity and Cicero’s critique of it, showing how both positions are overcome by Christianity by making divine omniscience compatible with the freedom of the creature. However, it is in the treatise On the Free Choice of the Will that we find the most solid arguments against the concept of freedom present in the works of the ancient Stoics. In On Grace and Free Choice, there are subtle considerations that allow us to discern how grace works in the intimacy of the person, and how this cannot be assimilated into causal determinism.

This paper is divided into three parts. The first, entitled “Physics, divinity, eternal return and fate”, is introductory in nature and seeks to contextualise the Stoic proposal on determinism within the framework of its ontology. Although this section may be very introductory for specialists, we believe it is important to show how the Stoic proposal on destiny and freedom is indebted to certain philosophical assumptions. The next section, “Determinism and freedom”, critically presents the main theses of the issue at hand, and the last section presents Saint Augustine’s explicit and implicit criticisms of Stoic determinism.

2. Physics, Divinity, Eternal Return and Fate

The first thing to note is that there is a close connection between the physics of these philosophers and their conception of fate, just as their tripartition of philosophical knowledge into logic, physics and ethics presupposes a profound unity3. Stoic philosophy is a thought about unity and, like many of their predecessors, the early Stoics give a reason for this from the interaction of two original principles—in their case, matter and reason. These principles are differentiated as the passive and the determinate. Matter is a receptive principle; reason, on the other hand, is determinate and therefore divine. Perceivable reality is co-principal and its qualification is the responsibility of reason, which is diffused in matter. Even if the thought of the ancient Stoics does not constitute a unitary system, a certain coherence can be found in their physics: “the Stoic philosophy of nature is an attempt to provide a rational explanation for all things in terms of the intelligent activity of a single entity which is coextensive with the universe” (Long 1986, p. 168).

It is more problematic to determine what divinity is. Some identify it with the “ether”, while others consider it to be reason or the active principle4. In Cleanthes, according to Cicero, we find divinity assimilated to the cosmos itself by attributing to it the doctrine according to which, on the one hand, god is the cosmos itself and the name for the mind and soul of the totality of nature and, on the other, he establishes that the truest god is the most remote heat, which he calls ether, highest and everywhere surrounding, which surrounds and embraces all things to the extreme. Cicero himself, in the same work, On the nature of the gods, attributes to Chrysippus the affirmation that the world itself is god, while at the same time affirming—and what we are most interested in emphasising here—the connection between such pantheism and the fatality and necessity of future things: god is the world itself, an intelligent conductor because he operates in the mind and reason, being at once the common and universal nature of things, containing them all and being the force of fate and the necessity of future things (Salles 2022).

Regardless, for these authors, neither theology nor physics are the ultimate, definitive part of their reflection. Practical philosophy is the knowledge in which man must engage and its foundation is to be found in the rationality of the cosmos, since the presence in the cosmos of an immanent rational principle gives reason for it to be administered “by reason and providence” (κατὰ νοῦν καὶ πρόνοιαν), as (Diogenes Laertius 2013) states in the same aforementioned passage.

There is no realm of the cosmos apart from logos, for the cosmos is an animate, rational whole, a whole that constitutes the perfect and absolute. Man, although having a privileged place among the determined beings, is nevertheless a part and therefore imperfect. The perfect is the cosmos, which, according to Cleanthes, according to Sextus Empiricus, “is indistinguishable from a god” (Against the professors IX 88-91 = SVF I 529). The radical difference between part and whole is that only the most perfect is outside the causal order, namely, with the exception of the cosmos, all the various things are generated by other causes.

As has been stated, Stoic determinism is fully indebted to its physics and its concept of unity. The unity of the cosmos is not merely a spatio-temporal unity, but the unity of an eternal necessary causal order. The existence of a closed series of causes is what guarantees that every rational proposition can be true or false:

“Chrysippus uses the following argument: ‘If there is motion without a cause, not every proposition (what the dialecticians call axioma) will be either true or false, since anything lacking efficient causes will be neither true nor false. But every proposition is either true or false. Therefore there is no motion without a cause. If this is so, everything that happens happens through antecedent causes—in which case, everything happens through fate. The result is that everything that happens happens through fate” (Cicero, On fate 20-21 = LS5 38 G).

Providence or fate is identified with this eternal series of closed causes. “For providence will be god’s will, and furthermore his will is the series of causes. In virtue of being his will it is providence. In virtue of also being the series of causes it gets the additional name ‘fate’” (Galen, On Hippocrates’ and Plato’s doctrines II 5, 9-13 = LS 54 U)6. There is no place in the cosmos for arbitrium or freedom understood in the strong sense, as we intend to show.

The cosmos being the ultimate, none of its parts, which are constantly subject to conflagration and destruction (Mansfeld 1979), is ultimate: “Once again the world returns anew to the same condition as before; and when the stars are moving again in the same way, each thing which occurred in the previous period will come to pass indiscernibly [from its previous occurrence]”7. This process of renewal probably has its raison d’étre in the difference that necessarily remains between the whole and the part. Everything is destroyed and rebuilt an infinite number of times; only the gods exist outside this process and therefore they know perfectly well what will happen in the future, for “there will be nothing strange in comparison with what occurred previously”8, not even virtue or vice. “Indeed, no particular thing, not even the smallest thing, can happen otherwise than in accordance with the common nature and according to its reason”9. The cosmos is a whole in the strong sense, for all things that happen in it are causally related; it would cease to have the unity that constitutes it if a causeless movement were introduced into it, which would occur “were everything that exists or happens not to have some preceding causes from which it necessarily follows”10. Hence Chrysippus judged fate to be “an invincible, unblockable and inflexible cause, Unfondable, Inescapable, Necessity and Fatality”11.

“In this way all things are bound together, and neither does anything happen in the world such that something else does not unconditionally follow from it and become causally attached to it, nor can any of the later events be severed from the preceding events so as not to follow from one of them as if bound fast to it; but from everything that happens something else follows, with a necessary causal dependence on it”12.

What is suggestive of the position of the ancient Stoics, in particular Chrysippus (Bobzien 1998), is that they do not see this determinism as incompatible with the concept of moral responsibility or a certain ethics of happiness13. In what follows, we will try to reconstruct their position.

3. Determinism and Freedom

Against the deterministic presuppositions presented, there arises an obvious objection, which the Stoics knew as the lazy argument (ἀργὸς λόγος), as Cicero testifies14 and which Eusebius presents thus:

“If, for example, a man were at once to give credit to the marvellous responses of the gods, that truthfulness or falsehood, and the will to start upon an expedition or any other business, or the unwillingness to undertake such matters, was no work of ours but of inexorable fate, would he not choose to be careless and indolent in all matters that could not be performed without labour and pains and exertion on our own part? For if he thought that this or that would take place by fate, whether we took trouble and care about it or not, would he not certainly wish to choose the easier course, and give himself up to carelessness, since the result to be attained would be brought to pass by fate and necessity?”15

As Cicero, and Aristotle before him, had ruled, once the deterministic assumptions were assumed, all activity would withdraw from life16. Chrysippus solves this objection with manifest perspicacity by distinguishing simple events from concatenated events (Bobzien 1999). This is the theory known as the theory of ‘codestined’ events (confatalia or συγκαθειμαρμένα) (Boeri and Salles 2014, p. 700). Simple are those events that occur independently of people’s actions; for example, “every human being will die” is something whose truth does not depend on the subject, since death is a necessary condition of every mortal being; concatenated events, on the other hand, cannot occur independently of the agent’s actions. Thus, the statement “from Laius will Oedipus be born” depends on Laius actually having sexual relations. This is how Eusebius summarises Chrysippus’ position: “For many things cannot take place without the addition of our willing them, and bringing into play the most intense earnestness and zeal concerning them, because it was fated, he says, that they were to take place with this condition”17. In this way, Chrysippus understands that what is destined to happen with the intervention of a rational agent must happen on the assumption of the will of the rational agent. In this way, man is implicated in becoming, even if it is eternally determined18. As Boeri summarises, the early Stoics maintain that “what happens through us by the work of fate depends on us or (…) what happens through us depends on us” (Boeri and Salles 2014, p. 712).

Alexander of Aphrodisias, one of the important detractors of the Stoic position (Astolfi 2014), criticises Chrysippus’ position “For they (the Stoics) deny that man has the freedom to choose between opposite actions, and say that it is what comes about through us that is in our power”19. In the causal order, man’s freedom is not at odds with causality, since he acts on the assumption of his will. According to the definition of freedom used by these authors, therefore, he is free who has the capacity to do what he wills or acts with will. As Boeri states, “freedom is a certain power of self-determination (ἐξουσίαν αὐτοπραγίας), which can simply mean the capacity to act on the basis of one’s desires and inclinations” (Boeri and Salles 2014, p. 716). Nothing, therefore, prevents a given agent from acting freely. Moreover, as Boeri rightly states, “in fact, according to this idea, freedom seems to require, to a certain extent, determinism, for I will only really be able to do whatever I want (and thus be free) if I include the domain of things I want within the set of things I am destined to do” (Boeri and Salles 2014, p. 717). Nevertheless, as seems to us, this conception of freedom can be characterised as a “weak freedom”, for it identifies the will of the subject with an act of will, which, nevertheless, could not be other than that determined by the causal order. In other words, it is a freedom that does not introduce into reality something truly original.

It seems to us that the concept of “weak freedom” is incompatible with moral responsibility. This is emphasised by Bishop Nemesius, among others:

“But if impulse also follows from necessity where is what is up to us left? For what is up to us must be free. But it would be free if in the same circumstances it were up to us sometimes to have impulse, sometimes not to. But if impulse also follows by necessity, it is clear that the result of impulse will also come to be by fate, even if it is brought about by us and in accordance with our nature, our impulse and our decision.”20

That the impulse (ὁρμή) is prescribed all by necessity is explicitly defended by the Stoics; indeed, if it were not, it would be outside the order of nature (φύσις). The relationship between nature and discernment (κρίσις), however, is less clear, as we shall now explain.

The concept of causality and the concept of nature are intimately linked in the conception of these thinkers. All reality is permeated by logos, so that everything has its own nature. This is how (Nemesius 2008) explains it:

“For if, in the presence of identical causes, as they themselves say, there is every necessity that the same things should happen, and it is not possible for them to happen at one time this way, at another differently, because things have been thus ordained from eternity, then it is necessary that also the appetition of a living thing should utterly and wholly occur in this way in the presence of the same causes.”21

By nature, the animal is directed towards its own self-preservation, rejecting what harms it and craving what is familiar to it by virtue of the principle of self-attachment, and cannot behave differently from what is prescribed by its nature. In the face of certain circumstances, behaviour must be what it is, guaranteeing the order and necessity of the cosmos. The same is true of man; the principle that drives his action is self-esteem. In man, however, the imposition of nature does not immediately follow representation, for man has to evaluate, that is, to discern, unlike irrational animals, whether or not the representation is in keeping with reality: “And since reason (logos) has been given to rational beings as a more perfect supervision, living correctly by reason becomes what is natural for them, since reason becomes an artisan for their drives.”22

According to Alexander of Aphrodisias, all the Stoics agree that the human being “has this advantage from nature over living creatures, that he does not follow appearances in the same way as them, but has reason from her as a judge of the appearances that impinge on him concerning certain things as deserved to be chosen”23. In Origenes’ testimony we find it stated that “a rational animal, however, in addition to its impressionistic nature, has reason which passes judgement on impressions, rejecting some of these and accepting others, in order that the animal may be guided accordingly”24. As Boeri explains, relying on Sextus Empiricus, among the possible persuasive representations for action, some can be true and others false and it is man’s duty to discern between them: “assent can be understood as the mental act by which the subject considers the presentation or proposition to be true” (Boeri and Salles 2014, p. 125). Three factors are involved in every action: “impulsive presentation (φαντασία ὁρμητική), assentment (συγκατάθεσις), and impulse (ὁρμή)”. In fully rational action, a fourth factor is added: “this is a reasoning that precedes assent in which the agent investigates the veracity of the impulsive presentations he receives, which, according to the Stoics, the hasty agent does not do” (Boeri and Salles 2014, pp. 553–54).

Nature is the guarantor that man does not err in the discernment of these representations, for man has by nature “the inclinations for the discovery of what is proper”, as Stobaeus takes up and (Epictetus 1877) affirms: “Just as it is every soul’s nature to assent the true, dissent from false, and suspend judgement in reference to the non-evident, so it is its nature to be moved appetitively towards the good, with aversion towards the bad, and in neither of these ways towards what is neither good nor bad”25. While it is not possible for reason to err in judging, it is possible for man to be hasty and not subject the representation to due discernment. Man can fail in the judgement of reason, not because of a failure of the judgement itself, but because he is hasty in deliberation. Thus, a wise or virtuous man is one who, before acting, pauses and says to his representation: “Appearances, wait for me a little: let me see who you are, and what you are about: let me put you to the test”26; precipitancy and assenting to a cognition uncritically, on the other hand, is proper to vile persons: “So precipitancy and assent in advance of cognition are attributes of the precipitate inferior man, whereas they do not befall the man who is well-natured and perfect and virtuous”27.

Having established these distinctions, it seems to us that, if there is any area of moral responsibility in ancient Stoicism’s theory of action, it is precisely the instant prior to discernment, the determination to discern or not (Eshleman 2024). Paradoxically, if there is no discernment, there is precipitation and, therefore, an action outside rational nature. The question that can be asked is whether that which occurs outside nature also occurs outside the causal order. If the answer were affirmative, we would be faced with an unbridgeable fissure in Stoic determinism; if the answer were negative, it would be difficult to assume moral responsibility. However, according to Epictetus, he who acts without prior discernment acts freely.

And who is able to compel you to assent to that which appears false? No man. And who can compel you not to assent to that which appears true? No man. By this then you see that there is something in you naturally free. But to desire or to be averse from, or to move towards an object or to move from it, or to prepare yourself, or to propose to do any thing, which of you can do this, unless he has received an impression of the appearance of that which is profitable or a duty? No man. You have then in these things also something which is not hindered and is free.28

In this summary review of the Stoic position, we find at least two notions of freedom, one positive and the other negative. The first, which we have called “weak freedom”, consists of the rational agent acting on the assumption of his will and occurs when man acts by submitting his representation to the judgement of reason, that is, when he acts in accordance with what corresponds to a rational agent; the second, acting without prior discernment, is an act outside rational nature but, paradoxically, made possible by it. It is by virtue of this second freedom that the rational agent becomes guilty of his acts. The acts of a rational agent in conformity with nature, although performed by the agent on the assumption of his will, are determined by the pattern of concatenated events; the latter, being contrary to nature, and therefore morally evil, could not occur outside the causal order.

So far, we have set out our exposition and analysis of the relationship between determinism, freedom and moral responsibility in ancient Stoicism. In the following section, we will try to deepen the concept of weak freedom by countering it with the Christian conception of freedom present in Saint Augustine.

4. Augustine’s Critique of Stoic Determinism

Augustine’s critique of Stoic determinism can be found explicitly in the fifth book of The City of God, and implicitly in his On the Free Choice of the Will. Despite a certain evolution in Saint Augustine’s thought, we maintain here not only a genuine fundamental unity in his affirmation of human freedom, but also a simultaneous awareness of the novelty and continuity with the philosophical reflections of his predecessors: “The main lines of Augustine’s doctrine become all the more clear, but they do not represent a real discontinuity or rupture with what philosophy had brought before (Augustine 2010). What they do represent is an ongoing discovery of the central and all-embracing role of the will in human behaviour” (Van Riel 2007, p. 279). In addition, Ganssle (1996, p. 1) underlines the core Augustinian idea on freedom: “Throughout this development, Augustine maintained the position that people have sufficient freedom for moral responsibility”. For his part, Verbeke (1958) demonstrated long ago that Saint Augustine knew and was influenced by Stoic philosophy, and that he fought against many of its elements, especially those related to pantheism and moral responsibility.

In Chapter VIII of Book V of The City of God, Augustine introduces a subtle distinction that allows him to reconcile divine providence with free will: from God comes all power, although not all “will”. Willing is in the possession of the creature who has free will. In Byers (2006), we find a detailed analysis of the Stoic elements of the Augustinian concept of voluntas, as well as the various interpretations to which it has given rise. Against Cicero’s recourse to deny divine omniscience in order to save human freedom, Augustine gives a reason why God’s knowledge of what is going to happen does not eliminate free will:

“We assert both that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we do by our free will whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us only because we will it. But that all things come to pass by fate, we do not say; nay we affirm that nothing comes to pass by fate.”29

God irrevocably knows everything that is going to happen, precisely because He has foreknowledge: everything is present in His sight. He knows all events, not because they all follow His will, but because everything depends on His power. It can safely be said that, for God, the order of causes is determined; that is, He knows everything in its mutual causal dependence, but within this order, He knows and distinguishes those things that happen by necessity from those that follow the free determination of the created will. And this not as one who interprets what He beholds before His eyes, but as one who knows that in which he is present, for God is intimate to ourselves. Barry A. David (2001) provides a summary of the various interpretations of Augustine’s theory of divine prescience.

In Augustine’s doctrine of freedom, to be free means that a person possesses his own will. Here, in our opinion, lies the radical difference between freedom as understood by this author and what we have called “weak freedom” in the Stoics. Whereas the will in a model of “weak freedom” is determined by a cause other than the will itself, in Augustine, the origin of the will is in the will itself: “For we do many things which, if we were not willing, we should certainly not do. This is primarily true of the act of willing itself—for if we will, it is; if we will not, it is not—for we should not will if we were unwilling”30. Further on, he insists, “our wills, therefore, exist as wills, and do themselves whatever we do by willing, and which would not be done if we were unwilling”31. What is proper to free will for Augustinianism, therefore, is that the will itself is not explained by some cause prior to it; it is the will that “puts” its act or which is the cause of its willing (Warchał 2023). In contrast to this position, the will in the Stoic model is presented to us as a merely psychological will. The will of man in Augustine is a “real” will; in fact, the Hipponian argues that God knows what we are going to choose since, being omniscient, what He knows is “real”, not apparent.

In his On the Free Choice of the Will this same question is explained in terms of “power”:

“Hence our will would not be a will if it were not in our power. Quite the contrary: since it is in our power, it is free in us. What we do not have in our power, or what can not be what we have, is not free in us”32

There can be no distance between one’s will and the act of will. “Yet when we will, if we lack the will itself, surely we do not will”33. There is nothing that belongs so intimately to the person as his own will. A will whose act is determined by nature or fate is an impotent will. In this same writing On the Free Choice of the Will we find an objection that is directly applicable to the conception of the early Stoics that has been set forth:

You said: “If free will was given in such a way that it has this movement as something natural, then it is turned to these lesser goods by necessity, and no blame can be attached where nature and necessity predominate.” You should have had no doubts that it was not given in this way, seeing that you do not doubt that the movement is blameworthy34.

If the faculty of will receives its act of will by nature, in those things in which it departs from God, it cannot justly be considered guilty (Rogers 2004). It is remarkable that Augustine appeals to his own experience of the guilty act to argue for the origin of this disordered will. As in the case of the knowledge that the soul comes to have of its own existence, it is not by looking outside, but by attending to one’s own intimacy that we find certainty that the origin of our will is in ourselves.

“Evodius: I see and somehow grasp and comprehend the true things you are saying. For there is nothing I sense as firmly and intimately as that I have a will and that I am moved by it to the enjoyment of something. Surely I find nothing I might call mine if the will—by which I am willing or unwilling—is not mine! Accordingly, if I do anything evil through it, to whom should it be attributed but me? Since the God who made me is good, and I do nothing good except through the will, it is clearly apparent that it was given to me by God, who is good, for this purpose”35.

There is nothing more proper than one’s own will, and that the origin of this willing or unwilling is to be found in one’s own will is a truth which is experienced by everyone and therefore not susceptible to being argued from a syllogism or apprehended as a necessary truth (Hughes 2016). It can be affirmed, however, that if the origin of one’s willing or unwilling were not in one’s own will, we could not be worthy of reward or justly held to be guilty, and he who does not recognise this truth, Augustine judges, “deserves to be excluded from the number of men”.

Consistent with this doctrine, Augustine considers that the origin of moral evil and moral good is not to be found in actions, but in the will itself, for “nothing is so much in our power as the will itself. Surely it is at hand with no delay as soon as we will”36. Hence he can affirm in his treatise On the Trinity that “he who knows righteousness perfectly, and loves it perfectly, is already righteous; even if no necessity exists of working according to it outwardly through the members of the body”37. The will of each one is not only what is most proper to him, but a condition of all true possession. We cannot will something “without the will to will it” (On the Free Choice of the Will III 3, 6).

However, an objection can be raised to what has been said so far, since in his treatise On Grace and Free Choice, we read that “For He begins by working that we will, which He perfects by working along with our willing”38. Moreover, following the Holy Scriptures, he affirms that “not only that good human wills are in God’s power—that is, wills which He makes good from evil, and, once made good by Him, He directs to good acts and to eternal life—but also [human wills] which maintain their worldly condition are in God’s power, in such a way that He makes them inclined as He wills when He wills: either to rewards offered to some people, or to penalties inflicted on others, as He judges in His judgment which is completely hidden but undoubtedly completely just”39. It is worth asking ourselves if, with these affirmations, Augustine is not contradicting himself and presenting us again with a pattern of “weak freedom”. But, undoubtedly, as Weismann (1989, p. 112) argues, Augustinian freedom is existential and integral: “For Augustine, freedom is an existential matter: supernatural love gives significance and shapes existence allowing man to be fully free. So Augustine offers to us an integral freedom comprising the aspects of the whole human existence: his origin and final purpose”.

The difference between Stoic determinism and the order of grace lies in a metaphysics of creation. Only he who has created man and is in his inmost heart can move his wills from “within” by making them will his own will, for “The Almighty accomplishes in human hearts even the movement of their will”40. God moves the will of man by moving his own will, for that same heart is the place where He dwells. Thus, without falling into contradiction, Augustine affirms that “God hardened [the heart of Pharaoh] by His just judgment, and Pharaoh himself did so by free choice”41.

5. Conclusions

Consistent with what is stated in the first part of this work, the primary focus of ancient Stoic philosophy is practical reflection, but all second philosophy must be grounded in an ontology. In the case of the Stoics, a rational discourse of moral action is possible because the cosmos is permeated by rationality: all reality is permeated by logos. Their concept of nature and causality depends directly on the presence of this formal shaping principle. In their conception of reality, there is no room for the arbitrary, the fully contingent or the random, but neither is there room for the truly novel. This worldview allowed them to establish an ethic of “conformity”, i.e., a man is wise and virtuous whose will is fully identified with the course of events and desires nothing that does not depend on him. However, if reality is determined by a necessary order of causes, it becomes difficult to safeguard the free determination of the rational agent. As highlighted, the strategy adopted—at least by Chrysippus—was to appeal to a “weak” concept of freedom: that which the agent does, assuming his will, is voluntary, even when this is determined by nature itself. The fact that the will of the rational agent is determined by nature is explicitly affirmed by Stoic thinkers. Human nature differs from animal nature not because the voluntary prevails over the natural, but because natural action must be preceded by discernment. This understanding of free action, as we have emphasised, makes it difficult to explain vicious actions. For there to be an action contrary to nature, there must be a sphere in which the subject is situated outside of nature. Such is the case, it seems to us, with culpable actions, i.e., those in which man has acted without deliberation.

Now, if the action of the subject, even when it occurs outside of nature, could not have been different from how it occurred, since all action is virtually contained in the causal order, it seems to us that the strategy chosen by Stoicism to explain moral responsibility does not go beyond a mere psychological description of the possibility of wrongdoing. In our opinion, the incompatibility of Stoic determinism with an ethics of responsibility is best seen in the classic question of the indiscernibles. They understand that, when the same cosmos is necessarily destroyed and regenerated, both the people in it and their circumstances will necessarily be the same, such that there would be no way to distinguish the Socrates who lived in the second cycle from the Socrates who would live in the fifth: he and all his decisions would necessarily be the same. Any novelty in the elements of the cosmos, even in the smallest, would make the generated world completely different, and therefore would occur outside of necessity.

From the perspective presented, it seems to us that the philosophical doctrine of freedom that emerged with Christianity, and specifically with Saint Augustine, represents a true novelty. Free will is such because the will of the subject is not determined by the subject’s nature. For an action to be voluntary, it is not enough for a will to be assumed; this will must have its origin in the will itself. It cannot be explained by anything prior to the subject itself, such as its nature, except by divine motion. God, who is a personal being with intelligence and will, can move wills toward Himself, such that, in this way, man can possess what He wishes to give him. The doctrine of creation, and specifically of the presence of God in the depths of the heart, makes it possible to justify a will that, being moved by another, truly belongs to the subject, since this “other” is not a principle that is in the order of nature, but rather is a transcendent, creative being who is present in the interiority as “someone”, not as “something”. The way God can move wills toward Him is not the order of a determined causality. A sign that man is free is that he can not only will personally that to which God “moves” him, but that he can also will to oppose this motion, giving rise to a disordered will, which is the origin of moral evil. Moreover, ultimately, divine will (a completely free will) is not determined by anything prior to its will. God wills what He wills because He wills, without this perfect self-determination entailing contingency or arbitrariness. In the universe of the Stoics, whatever is not determined by a cause exists outside the order of rationality and therefore outside of reality itself. It seems to us that the difficulty these thinkers had in proposing a strong concept of freedom capable of safeguarding moral responsibility lies in a metaphysics incapable of accounting for the positively indeterminate, i.e., the truly free and, therefore, novel.