Abstract

Central passages: Plutarch On Stoic Self‐Contradictions 1045b–c; 104950, 1056; Stobaeus Ecl. I 79.1–12. The physical and ontological foundations of the Stoic theory of determinism are investigated: the active principle, causation, motion, and qualitative states and how they relate to the Stoic concept of propositions. Stoic teleological determinism grows out of the basic assumptions of Stoic cosmology and is thus firmly anchored in early Stoic physics. Stoic physics stands out in antiquity not so much because it is a deterministic system, but because it contains a worked‐out theory of universal, mechanical, causal determinism. In the Stoic theory of universal fate, the teleological and mechanical aspects of Stoic determinism are combined.