Everything is fated, but the cylinder rolls by its own shape

The cylinder image; Stoic compatibilism

Chrysippe c. 279 BC · c. 206 BCEverything happens by fate, but our acts depend on us as a cylinder rolls according to its shape.

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What it claims

Everything happens by fate and yet our assent, hence our acts, are up to us: fate and responsibility are compatible.

Why

An outside push only starts the act: how we respond comes from the nature of our own mind, so it depends on us.

The same idea through history

Chrysippe230 BCThe first known compatibilist: fate is a chain of causes, but the decisive cause of our acts is our own nature.

Chrysippe230 BCAnother Stoic image, reported by Hippolytus: the dog tied to a cart. If he is willing to follow, he follows voluntarily; if not, he is dragged anyway. (Hippolytus ascribes the image to the Stoics in general, not to Chrysippus in particular.)

Thomas Hobbes1651Same idea, twenty centuries later: liberty and necessity go together.

In short

"Everything is fated, but the cylinder rolls by its own shape" is an argument by Chrysippe (Cicero, On Fate, 39-43; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights VII, 2, 230 BC) on the question "Are we free?" (answer: free without absolute free will). Its claim: Everything happens by fate and yet our assent, hence our acts, are up to us: fate and responsibility are compatible. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Cicero, On Fate, 39-43; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights VII, 2

Valid with an implicit premise

For the Stoics, everything happens by fate: each event is brought about by earlier causes. So what is left of us? Chrysippus (about 280 to 206 BC) answers with an image: a cylinder is pushed down a slope. The push gives it a start, but it is its shape that makes it roll. Likewise an outside impression pushes us, but it is our mind that decides to assent to it. His works are lost: we know him through Cicero, Aulus Gellius and others, who report and discuss him.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, nothing prevents the nature of our mind from being itself just a link in the chain, imposed from outside: then the premises stay true and yet nothing really depends on us.

Valid if P4 is added. The reasoning has three steps: fate works through antecedent causes (P1), but the antecedent cause of our acts is only the proximate cause (P2, P3), so the deciding cause is our nature, and what comes from our nature is up to us (P4). Opponents attack P4: our nature, too, was shaped by antecedent causes (Chrysippus himself partly foresees this, when he says the quality of our minds is "subject to fate", Aulus Gellius VII, 2, 7). They also attack P2: if fate is complete, there is no cause that is not itself caused.

Analogy. A cylinder and a cube placed on a slope and pushed the same way do not share the same fate: the cylinder rolls, the cube tips and stops. The push is the same; what changes is the nature of the object. For Chrysippus, two people receiving the same impression can therefore act very differently, depending on their character, and it is to that character that we hold responsible.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Carneades (reported by Cicero) 140 BC · attacks the conclusion

If everything happens through antecedent causes, everything is linked together naturally; if everything is linked, everything happens by necessity; and if everything happens by necessity, nothing is up to us. But something is up to us. Therefore not everything happens by fate.

Chrysippe replies

Chrysippus (reported by Cicero) Chrysippus's reply

Chrysippus rejects necessity. He distinguishes perfect and principal causes from auxiliary and proximate ones. To say that everything happens by fate is to say that everything happens through antecedent causes, but of the second kind. If those causes are not in our power, it does not follow that our impulse to act is not in our power either: that would follow only if the antecedent causes were perfect and principal.

Cicero, quoted by Aulus Gellius 44 BC · Cicero's remark

Cicero himself judges the question very obscure and very tangled. He writes that Chrysippus flounders and struggles to explain how everything can happen by fate while something remains in our power, and that he gets entangled.

The debate goes on (our summary) Chrysippus thinks he has escaped necessity by distinguishing causes. His opponents answer that this is not enough: if proximate causes are themselves caused, down to the nature of our mind, the result is the same. Cicero, who reports these debates, discusses them drawing on Carneades. The cylinder is Chrysippus's answer to this problem (see P3).

The "lazy argument" (Cicero, On Fate, 28-29) attacks premise 1

If you are fated to recover from this illness, you will recover, whether you call the doctor or not. And if you are fated not to recover, you will not recover, whether you call him or not. One of the two is fixed. So calling the doctor is pointless. By the same reasoning, all action would be removed from life.

Chrysippe replies

Chrysippus (reported by Cicero) Chrysippus's reply: the "co-fated"

Chrysippus distinguishes simple things ("Socrates will die on that day", whatever he does) from linked ones. If it is fated that Oedipus be born to Laius, it cannot be said "whether or not Laius lay with a woman": the two facts are linked. He calls such facts "co-fated". So it is as fated to call the doctor as to recover. The argument is a sophism, for the doctor is part of the fate of the recovery.

Carneades (reported by Cicero) 140 BC

Carneades did not like this kind of answer and judged that one should attack another way, without quibbling. He builds the reasoning seen above (previous objection): if everything happens through antecedent causes, everything is linked and necessary, and nothing is up to us.

Epicurus and Lucretius (the swerve, reported by Cicero) 300 BC · attacks premise 1

Epicurus thinks he escapes the necessity of fate through the swerve of the atom: atoms fall in straight lines, but can deviate by a tiny amount, without a cause. This third movement, neither weight nor impact, is what leaves the mind a free motion. Lucretius (De rerum natura, book II) takes up the idea of the clinamen. Freedom therefore requires, according to them, that not everything have an antecedent cause.

Chrysippe replies

Cicero 44 BC · Cicero's reply (De fato)

Cicero objects that the swerve of the atom must happen without a cause, since an atom falling straight is pushed by no other. He judges that saying this is wishing, not arguing: no cause is given for the swerve, and yet one thinks one has said something.

The debate goes on (our summary) Cicero adds (De fato 23) that Carneades thought the swerve useless: the Epicureans could have defended a voluntary movement of the soul without inventing a swerve. Cicero presents this as a way to resist Chrysippus. The debate between liberty without cause and liberty compatible with causes has stayed alive until today.