Synopses & Reviews
Bobzien presents the definitive study of one of the most interesting intellectual legacies of the ancient Greeks: the Stoic theory of causal determinism. She explains what it was, how the Stoics justified it, and how it relates to their views on possibility, action, freedom, moral responsibility, and many other topics. She demonstrates the considerable philosophical richness and power that these ideas retain today.
Review
"No one with a specialist's interest in Stoic conceptions of causality, fate, modality, or responsibility can afford to ignore this book, which is the most philosophically rigorous and philogically sophisticated treatmentof this body of texts to date. Bobzien's discussion abounds with acute observation and attractive solutions to longstanding textual and interpretative problems. The book is impressive in its details as in its main lines of argument.The Philosophical ReviewR
"This is an awe-inspiring work....It is extraordinarily ambitious. It aims to recover and understand, so far as the sources allow, the entire early Stoic theory of fate, causal determinism, and responsibility. It achieves this ambition while at the same time showing how immensely more difficult the task is than anyone had appreciated before....It will most certainly be the first work that everybody interested has to get to grips with. They will have to start here both xecause the book is a model of scholarly method and because it is an outstanding example of lucid philosophical thinking in an area where clear thought is extremely difficult."--Miles Burnyeat, All Souls College, Oxford in
Review
"No one with a specialist's interest in Stoic conceptions of causality, fate, modality, or responsibility can afford to ignore this book, which is the most philosophically rigorous and philogically sophisticated treatmentof this body of texts to date. Bobzien's discussion abounds with acute observation and attractive solutions to longstanding textual and interpretative problems. The book is impressive in its details as in its main lines of argument.The Philosophical ReviewR
"This is an awe-inspiring work....It is extraordinarily ambitious. It aims to recover and understand, so far as the sources allow, the entire early Stoic theory of fate, causal determinism, and responsibility. It achieves this ambition while at the same time showing how immensely more difficult the task is than anyone had appreciated before....It will most certainly be the first work that everybody interested has to get to grips with. They will have to start here both xecause the book is a model of scholarly method and because it is an outstanding example of lucid philosophical thinking in an area where clear thought is extremely difficult."--Miles Burnyeat, All Souls College, Oxford in
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Determinism and Fate
2. Two Chrysippean Arguments for Causal Determinism
3. Modality, Determinism, and Freedom
4. Divination, Modality,and Universal Regularity
5. Fate, Action, and Motivation: The Idle Argument
6. Determinism and Moral Responsibility: Chrysippus's Compatibilism
7. Freedom and that which Depends on us: Epictetus and Early Stoics
8. A Later Stoic Theory of Compatibilism
Bibliography; Indexes