by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. Bracketed commentary is my own, as is any boldface. Proofreading is incomplete, which means typos are present, especially in the quotations. So consult the original text. Also, I welcome corrections to my interpretations, because I am not good enough with French or Greek to make accurate translations of the texts.]
Summary ofVictor GoldschmidtLe système stoïcien et l'idée de tempsDeuxième partie(2)Aspects temporels de la morale stoïcienneA(2.1)La ConnaissanceChapitre IV(2.1.4)L’interprétation des événementsIII(2.1.4.3)L’usage des représentations45.(2.1.4.3.45)Coopération avec la causalité du Destin
Brief summary:
(2.1.4.3.45.1) Divination of the entirety of God’s providence by interpreting present event-signs is impossible. We turn now to a different kind of interpretation of event-signs that will involve matters of wisdom and conformity with nature. (2.1.4.3.45.2) Our human limitations make us unable to understand the whole of the cosmos and thereby to act exactly like God does. However, by accepting the present moment in a certain way, we can at least act and understand the world in the general way that God does. (2.1.4.3.45.3) Because causality is always active and rational, it is thereby always perfect, in that what happens always does so by necessity. We ourselves should cooperate with God in this divine causality. However, we are such a small part of that causality that we cannot cooperate with God on the cosmic scale. Nonetheless, insofar as we act in accordance with the necessarily causality acting upon us, we can play our small role in the divine causality. That is to say, our causality can partake in the perfection of the divine causality, because perfection here means being necessary. (2.1.4.3.45.4) God knows everything, so God knows how the causal nature of any situation will ultimately result. With that knowledge, God does not need time to deliberate while calculating outcomes of actions that God can decide to take. God knows it all already. There is thus not a delay between God first having an intention for how things happen and then secondly taking on the action that will lead to that end. Even though there is logical order, they transpire in the same instant, namely, the first instant of time. Humans, however, have limited knowledge, and we find ourselves in the middle of a chain of determinate efficient causal relations. This means that we cannot change what happens, and we cannot have acted otherwise, even though it felt like we were choosing one option or another (because in fact the whole decision-making process we underwent followed a course determined by antecedent causality), and we also cannot discern where current events are ultimately leading. As God did not consult us at the beginning of time, the course of events are not in any sense decided by us. That means that although we are the necessary efficient cause for the consequences of our actions, whatever happens does not really depend on us in the sense that it was our choice or intention that really played any role in how things transpire. This would seem to place us into a passive role where it does not matter how we live our lives. For, we have no free will anyway, and whatever happens does not depend on our choices. However, we do have one particular freedom that is not determined by fate, even though it also will have no influence on the course of events. While for God both the intention which comes first logically and the action that comes secondly and that will lead to fulfilling that intention in fact occur simultaneously for him (they are logically ordered but temporally simultaneous), for us, our action or our undergoing of action comes first and our intention, understood as what we want, hope, or intend to happen, comes second, both logically and temporally. Our action comes first logically, because it was determined long before we were even alive, and when it happens, it was really something provided by the antecedent causality. So first we act or undergo action, and only secondly can we decide whether or not we want it, that is, decide that it is something that we have been hoping for, wanting, intending, deem just, and so on. Yet despite this necessary interval, the Stoic sage strives to make their intentions be as simultaneous as possible with their actions and undergoings of actions. They try to keep themselves in a constant state of always wanting what is in fact happening and anticipating that they will want what must necessarily happen next. So, our only freedom is to choose what we want, that is, to choose our intentions. Now, since we cannot change the course of events anyway, and since we cannot know how any particular event must happen necessarily for the sake of the cosmic good, we are best to choose to want whatever is happening. For, it is both necessary and good, regardless of whether or not it is agreeable to our preferences. In that way, we can participate in the divine causality, namely, by placing our value-assigning activities into accord with the fundamental nature of reality, even though what transpires does not actually depend on our affirmational choices.
[Wisdom and Event-Sign Interpretation]
[Wisdom and Event-Sign Interpretation]
[Divine Necessary (Perfect) Causality and Our Necessary (Perfect) Causality Cooperating with It]
[Divine Necessary (Perfect) Causality and Our Necessary (Perfect) Causality Cooperating with It]
Summary
2.1.4.3
L’usage des représentations
2.1.4.3.45
Coopération avec la causalité du Destin
[Wisdom and Event-Sign Interpretation]
(p.99: “ A partir d’ici, il va se produire un revirement …”)
[In sum: Divination of the entirety of God’s providence by interpreting present event-signs is impossible. We turn now to a different kind of interpretation of event-signs that will involve matters of wisdom and conformity with nature.]
[(Please see the following quotation, as I will probably will get some of this wrong. It builds from sections I have not yet summarized.) Although the Stoics believe in divine providence, we will never be able to discern the whole of all causality in the cosmos. So we should not think of interpreting the present event-sign as being a matter of arriving at such humanly impossible knowledge. We turn now to another method of interpretation. We have certain given tendencies toward self-preservation that also direct us toward wisdom as well. But, wisdom will teach us a “good” for the sake of which the sage will accept the sacrifice of his own salvation without ceasing to conform with nature.]
45. A partir d’ici, il va se produire un revirement et un retour. Un passage va s’ouvrir vers une autre méthode d’interprétation. Ce passage, comme toujours, va du même au même, mais, ici encore, le terme finalement atteint va changer entièrement la signification du point de départ. Ainsi, on l’a vu1, les tendances initiales nous portent à nous conserver nous-mêmes, et c’est par elles que nous sommes « recommandés » à la sagesse ; mais la sagesse nous enseignera un « bien », en faveur duquel le sage acceptera le sacrifice de son propre salut sans que, pour autant, il cesse d’agir « conformément à la nature ».(99)1. Cf. pp. 57-58.(99)
[Wisdom and Event-Sign Interpretation]
(p.99: “1. L’effort pour comprendre tel événement …”)
[In sum: Our human limitations make us unable to understand the whole of the cosmos and thereby to act exactly like God does. However, by accepting the present moment in a certain way, we can at least act and understand the world in the general way that God does.]
Our efforts to understand events refer us back to God, who is the “the fountain of all things; from whom all things are ordered in a fixed series” (Marcus Aurelius 2014: 99. Meditations Book VIII, 23). From this common cause of all things, we are just scattered members. Our purpose in all of this is learn how to accept whatever happens, which is yet somehow an active acceptance, since it implies a cooperation (see section 2.1.4.1.39.1). But our faculties of understanding and acting are limited. Now, since our limitations can lead us to certain failures [for example, the failure to really understand why things are happening they way they do and to have a certain sense of how to react], we will need to look at our understanding and action in a different way. Understanding the event on a cosmic scale and wanting or willing it is not possible for us, given our limitations. We cannot imitate and act exactly like God does. But perhaps, by accepting the mutilated present [maybe, the present in terms of its current self-varying], which we cannot escape from anyway, we will succeed in understanding and acting at least the general way God does.
1. L’effort pour comprendre tel événement nous a renvoyés à Dieu, « source commune d’où dérivent, en s’enchevêtrant, tous les événements »2. De cette cause commune, nous ne sommes que des membres épars. Le but de cet effort était de nous apprendre à « accepter ce qui arrive », acceptation active, puisqu’elle implique « coopération »3. Il s’est montré que nos facultés de comprendre et d’agir étaient également limitées. A moins d’accepter l’échec où nous sommes conduits, il faudra, à cette double tâche, trouver un sens nouveau. Comprendre l’événement et le vouloir ne nous est pas possible à l’échelle cosmique. Nous ne parvenons pas à imiter Dieu et à faire comme lui. Mais peut-être, en acceptant le présent mutilé dont, décidément, nous ne pouvons sortir, réussirons-nous à comprendre et à agir à la manière de Dieu.(99)2. M. -Aurèle, VIII, 23 (p. 97, n. 6).3. P. 90.(99)
[Divine Necessary (Perfect) Causality and Our Necessary (Perfect) Causality Cooperating with It]
(p.99-100: “ La causalité est, tout ensemble …”)
[In sum: Because causality is always active and rational, it is thereby always perfect, in that what happens always does so by necessity. We ourselves should cooperate with God in this divine causality. However, we are such a small part of that causality that we cannot cooperate with God on the cosmic scale. Nonetheless, insofar as we act in accordance with the necessarily causality acting upon us, we can play our small role in the divine causality. That is to say, our causality can partake in the perfection of the divine causality, because perfection here means being necessary.]
Causality is active and rational (see the Seneca Letter 65 quotation in section 2.1.4.2.40.2). This constant coincidence [of its active and rational nature] is what makes causality always perfect, and it is what makes God’s action perfect, when taken in the entirety of a full cosmic period as well as in terms of each of its instant. [So the perfection is found in the full development of the causation throughout the cosmic period, spanning between conflagrations. But we, our lives, and our roles in the whole of the development of the cosmos are very small parts of this. So we cannot really “cooperate” with God on the cosmic scale. Nonetheless, this does not change the fact that we ourselves are causes, and we are “perfect causes” just like the divine causality is, even though our causal power is far less extensive. For, put in Cartesian terms, this perfection of causality consists only in acting “according to its own nature” (or “of their own nature”; see Cicero 1968, p.239); and “everything that come to be according to impulse depends on those who exercise the impulse” or “all that comes to be according to impulse depends on those who act thus” (Alexander of Aphrodisias 1983 p.85).] [I do not follow the idea here yet, but it might be that although we are only a small part of the cosmic causality, our small causal role is still a perfect causality, because we act according to our nature or impulse. We need to then understand what makes causality “perfect”. In de fato XVIII, 41, Cicero discusses “perfect and principle causes”. They seem be causes that in themselves necessarily bring about the outcome. See Cicero 1968, p.237. So if we act according to impulse or nature, we are acting I suppose according the necessary and efficient causality acting upon us, and we thereby participate in the overall causality of the cosmos.]
La causalité est, tout ensemble, agissante et rationnelle ; la cause se dé finit ratio.... faciens4. C’est précisément cette coïncidence constante qui la rend parfaite et qui rend parfaite l’action de Dieu, prise dans l’ensemble d’une période | cosmique et à chacun de ses instants. Parcelles détachées de la cause universelle, nous ne l’égalons ni en force ni en raison. Aussi l’entreprise est-elle chimérique, de vouloir « coopérer » avec Dieu à l’échelle cosmique. Mais nous aussi sommes des causes, des « causes parfaites », et dont la perfection, sans doute d’un pouvoir moins étendu, ne diffère cependant en rien de celle qui caractérise la causalité divine. Car, pour reprendre les termes de Descartes, « si je la considère formellement et précisément en elle-même »1, cette perfection consiste seulement à agir « selon sa nature propre »2 ; « tout ce qui se produit selon la tendance de l’agent, dépend entièrement de celui-ci »3.(99-100)4. P. 92, n. 5.(99)1. Médit., IV. Cf. Epict., Diss., I, XII, 26.2. P. 96, n. 1 et le texte d’Alexandre cité p. 98, n. 4.3 Alex., de fato, XXXIII, S.V.F., II, 1001.(100)
[Divine Necessary (Perfect) Causality and Our Necessary (Perfect) Causality Cooperating with It]
(p.100-101: “ La causalité est, tout ensemble …”)
[In sum: God knows everything, so God knows how the causal nature of any situation will ultimately result. With that knowledge, God does not need time to deliberate while calculating outcomes of actions that God can decide to take. God knows it all already. There is thus not a delay between God first having an intention for how things happen and then secondly taking on the action that will lead to that end. Even though there is logical order, they transpire in the same instant, namely, the first instant of time. Humans, however, have limited knowledge, and we find ourselves in the middle of a chain of determinate efficient causal relations. This means that we cannot change what happens, and we cannot have acted otherwise, even though it felt like we were choosing one option or another (because in fact the whole decision-making process we underwent followed a course determined by antecedent causality), and we also cannot discern where current events are ultimately leading. As God did not consult us at the beginning of time, the course of events are not in any sense decided by us. That means that although we are the necessary efficient cause for the consequences of our actions, whatever happens does not really depend on us in the sense that it was our choice or intention that really played any role in how things transpire. This would seem to place us into a passive role where it does not matter how we live our lives. For, we have no free will anyway, and whatever happens does not depend on our choices. However, we do have one particular freedom that is not determined by fate, even though it also will have no influence on the course of events. While for God both the intention which comes first logically and the action that comes secondly and that will lead to fulfilling that intention in fact occur simultaneously for him (they are logically ordered but temporally simultaneous), for us, our action or our undergoing of action comes first and our intention, understood as what we want, hope, or intend to happen, comes second, both logically and temporally. Our action comes first logically, because it was determined long before we were even alive, and when it happens, it was really something provided by the antecedent causality. So first we act or undergo action, and only secondly can we decide whether or not we want it, that is, decide that it is something that we have been hoping for, wanting, intending, deem just, and so on. Yet despite this necessary interval, the Stoic sage strives to make their intentions be as simultaneous as possible with their actions and undergoings of actions. They try to keep themselves in a constant state of always wanting what is in fact happening and anticipating that they will want what must necessarily happen next. So, our only freedom is to choose what we want, that is, to choose our intentions. Now, since we cannot change the course of events anyway, and since we cannot know how any particular event must happen necessarily for the sake of the cosmic good, we are best to choose to want whatever is happening. For, it is both necessary and good, regardless of whether or not it is agreeable to our preferences. In that way, we can participate in the divine causality, namely, by placing our value-assigning activities into accord with the fundamental nature of reality, even though what transpires does not actually depend on our affirmational choices.]
[This paragraph is very tricky for me interpret. In the following, I will try to give the best summarization I can, little by little, with the best elaborations I can in brackets.] Now we will examine the singular event. [Perhaps the distinction is between the one whole cosmic unfolding and any particular present event, but I am not sure.] Because the singular event is caused by God, it is thus not dependent on us. And when something has been perfectly caused (that is, caused by something that necessarily has that particular effect), then the caused thing depends on whatever caused it. [Here “depends on” will not always seem to mean simply coming about as the effect of an efficient cause. I say that, because the effect is said to not depend on us, even though we are the efficient cause of it. Rather, here “depends on” seems to mean, be chosen to take place over some other option. So we might wonder, will I be in some far away place next week? That depends on whether I take a vacation or not. So there is dependence here not just on an action but on a decision and intention.] But we just said that particular events do not depend upon us. [That is to say, events that transpire are not chosen by us over some possible alternative, even though our actions may have brought them about.] Therefore, it seems, we have no causal influence in the world, which then makes it seem impossible for us to cooperate with God’s divine causality, given that it does not need us to transpire. [Here the idea might be that even though we have efficient causality, since whatever we do is predetermined by some antecedent efficient causality, whatever happens does not really depend on us ultimately but rather on decisions made at the beginning of time.] But recall from section 2.1.4.2.42.3 that perfect causality abolishes the distance between intention and act [that is to say, what is aimed toward in the future is expressed now in the causal nature of the current action, which sets the course of forthcoming causal development in a certain direction thus toward a certain target.] So, yes, we cannot be the brute causality of the future things that do not depend on us alone. However, we can become perfect causes, that is to say, we can commit actions that necessitate some future situation, and thus we can see ourselves as playing a causal role in bringing it about, so long as, when the causal event happens, we do everything that depends on our action, even though it happens regardless. [I may have that wrong, so please consult the text below. This is complicated, but I assess the idea as being the following. We are not “brute” causes in the sense of being like an initiating cause that sets things in motion in one direction rather than another. We can only cause what we are caused to cause. But by causing what we are caused to cause, we are still perfect causes. We are just not brute perfect causes, that is to say, future-deciding efficient causes. We should now address an important issue. Does it not feel like we are calculating possible courses of action and then taking one of them on the basis of a decision we are free to make one way or another way? We need to distinguish what it feels like is happening in these cases with what is ultimately happening. Our very decision-making process which seemingly leads us to decide between options was itself, as a deliberative cognitive process, caused to unfold the way it did. Thus, in reality, the world was not forking down two possible future paths, waiting for us to choose one, even though our cognitive process involved us assessing possible paths to take. So it may have felt that way in the critical moment of a consequential decision, but whatever we chose could not have been chosen otherwise anyway. Perhaps we get the feeling that we decide fate only because we are unable to see all the causal factors at work (like our brain chemistry at that moment, our unconsciousness thinking, and so on). So, it is still conceivable that we have no “free will” in terms of choosing the outcomes that happen, even though a significant part of life is engaging in activities that feel as if we do.] To do this, we simply need to reduce the difference between our intentions and our actions. [The next thing we should note is this idea of intention overlapping with action. Why is it that for God, intention and action are part of the same movement, where for us they are not? The idea might be the following. The world is headed in a certain direction, that is, toward an end that does not preexist the present efficient cause in such a way that it can cause (in the sense of final causality) current events to transpire, but rather the end here is the direction toward which current efficiently caused events are headed, being a sort of byproduct of that efficient causality’s directionality. Now, we might here want to imagine the first moment of the cosmos, after a conflagration. We might want to say, the first causal event must have involved God first seeing where he wanted everything to go, that is to say, initially having an intention, which then determined what the first causal event would have to be, so that we would reach that end, with this first causal action transpiring only after the intention was set up. In other words, we might assess a logical order. Before we can determine what action we are going to take, we need to know what it is supposed to accomplish, thus even for God there would need to be a distance between intention and action, at least at the very beginning. But as we saw in section 2.1.4.2.40, for the Stoics, primary causality is efficient and active. It is not final and Ideal/formal. And, because it is efficient, built into its causal nature is already the end it is setting subsequent actions up toward. In other words, from the very first moment of the world, God hits the ground running, in that the first action itself must, though its initial causality, make a decision about where it wants to be going. So God’s intention must always be built into his action. But, this is possible for God, because God can know everything. If God had limited human intellect, when he committed the first act, he would not actually know for sure where things would ultimately go. Humans would need to do a lot of calculating and figuring. But God does not need time to work it all out. He knows from the beginning the direct correlation between the efficient causal nature of an action and the specific final end that ultimately results. And, since God really does decide the first causation of the world, even though it is decided the same moment it is committed, everything else does really “depend” on God in the sense we are using here. But, things are different for us humans, who have limited knowledge of the causal whole and who, by finding ourselves in the middle of the chain of causes, cannot decide alternate paths. We can make decisions, but whatever we chose was really the only thing we could have chosen, despite all the drama of the deliberative process that preceded the “decision”. But God goes from intention to action in the same instant, because he can know the full consequences of any action, and he can decide the action and the intention simultaneously and without deliberation.] And since we cannot, like God can, go from intention to act in one singular instant, as our act is what is first given to us, it will suffice for us instead, in one instant, to take the opposite step and make the act (which does not depend on us) coincide with the intention (which does depend on us). [So we see here now why I am using this sense of “depend on”. The action we take, we would normally say, does depend on us. Why? Because we are the ones who decided to make it in the first place. But instead, we should see that it was never really our decision to take whatever action we are taking. That was decided from the beginning of time by the initial efficient causality. But the idea here in that sentence is still quite tricky. God goes from intention to act, in that order, but without a duration of time. So they are temporally equal but logically ordered. God “first” must decide where the world should go, and “secondly” determine the actions that would lead there, but here the “first” and “second” logically ordered steps do not have a temporal order, for reasons we tried to lay out previously. The next point here is that the order seems already to go the other way for us. First, temporally speaking, we are acting or undergoing action in a certain way, and that way was not ultimately decided by us. So it does not matter really what our intentions are. It is the intentions of God that have already decided everything. Goldschmidt is now saying that we still have a real, non-determined option in this situation. We can make ourselves “intend”, that is, want, decide, etc., whatever it is that is happening and will happen. So we find ourselves in a situation that we are reacting to, which causes a new situation. Whatever happens could not have happened otherwise. But we carry through our actions in either one of two ways. We can experience the world and react to it in a way where we accept whatever happens, no matter whether we like it or not, or we can deny things and wish things to have happened and to happen differently. This is a little like saying, we can either live in the real world as it is, and say that the way the world is is fundamentally good, even when it proves unpleasant or disturbing (even morally disturbing), or we can live in the world as if there is a better world that could have been, but unfortunately or tragically did not happen.] Thus we must “accept” the event and even want it. As Marcus Aurelius says in Book VIII, 23 of his Meditations:
Am I in action; I refer to it some benefit thence to accrue to mankind. Does anything befall me? I accept it, as referring it to the Gods, the fountain of all things; from whom all things are ordered in a fixed series.(Marcus Aurelius 2014: 99)
Yet, to want what happens also involves being responsible for causing what happens. And it furthermore means that we try not to counteract or prevent what is happening. The way we would accomplish this is not by means of our actions (for, our actions cannot change what will happen, they can only participate in making happen what does happen); so that is to say, we take no additional actions to interfere with the course of fate and steer it in accordance with our wishes. Rather, what we “do” is we choose to want what happens, and we participate in its arrival by means of making our intentions (or expectations) for how things will go to line up with how in fact they do go. Thus, to cooperate with the event consists in working within ourselves to combat everything in us that can be opposed to the way things actually do go, namely, our passions and our preferences. [In other words, we do not let ourselves want something particular to happen. We instead allow things to happen, and, as a rule that we constantly follow each moment, we make ourselves want whatever does happen to transpire, even from the very first moment that it begins to occur. Put another way, we never wait to judge whether or not we like what is happening. We from its beginning want to happen whatever is in fact now happening, and we judge it as good and necessary no matter how unpleasant it is. We know in advance that it was fated, and thus could not be otherwise, and because it was fated, it is for the greater cosmic good that it is happening. Choosing either to do that or to instead base our expectations on our passions and personal preferences is the only freedom we actually have. But note, that whether or not we affirm or deny what is really happening and what must next happen, neither choice of affirmation or denial will change the course of events, as neither choice has any efficient causality.] By virtue of the contemporaneity of the intention and the act, it is in the same instant that our will catches up with and recovers the event, and it is also in the same instant that the most secret movement in our moral person cooperates with the course of Destiny, which is ultimately external to us. [So by making our intentions be there already as our activities transpire, by always intending to happen what does happen, our will can “catch up” with the event by not trailing behind it, waiting to see if it conforms or not with our passions and preferences. And this is “the most secrete movement of our moral self,” (I do not know why really, but) maybe because it involves us going beyond the person we think we know ourselves to be, with our preferences and passions, and rather to put into the driver seat of our life a moral self that seeks to accord with the will and intentions of the cosmos. And the course of Destiny is ultimately external to us, because it is decided without our consultation.] Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations Book V, section 8 (part):
Our very word for happening to one, is, to go together appositely, as the squared stones in walls or pyramids, are said by the workmen, to fall or join together, and suit each other in a certain position. Now, there is one grand harmonious composition of all things; and as the regular universe is formed such a complete whole of all the particular bodies, so the universal destiny or fate of the whole, is made a complete cause out of | all the particular causes. The very vulgar understand what I say. They tell you, “fate ordered this event for such a one, and this was prescribed or appointed for him.” Let us understand this even as when we say, “the physician has ordered such things for the patient”: for, he prescribes many harsh disagreeable things; which, yet, we embrace willingly, for the sake of health. Conceive, then, the accomplishing and completing the purposes of the universal nature, to be in the universe, what your health is to you, and thus embrace whatever happens, altho’ it should appear harsh and disagreeable: because it tends to the health of the universe, to the prosperity and felicity of Jupiter in his administration. He never had permitted this event, had it not conduced to good. We see not any particular nature aiming at or admitting what does not suit the little private system, in which it presides. Should you not on these two accounts embrace and delight in what ever befalls you; one is, that it was formed, and prescribed, and adapted for you, and destined originally by the most venerable causes; the other, that it is subservient to the prosperity, and complete administration of that mind, which governs the whole; nay, by Jupiter! to the stability and permanence of the whole. For, the whole would be maimed and imperfect, if you broke off any part of this continued connexion, either of parts or causes. Now, you break this off, and destroy it, as far as you can, when you repine at any thing which happens.(Marcus Aurelius 2014: 60-61, copied from Online Library of Liberty)
[As we see from that last line, we would only deter the cosmic causality, not from acting against fate, which is impossible anyway, but by being dissatisfied with what happens. So in conclusion, we participate in the divine causality by wanting whatever happens. That is the only real variable we can introduce in the world and that is not determinately caused, even though whatever does happen is determinately caused. In other words, we have the power of affirmation and denial. We can either affirm the perfection or goodness or rightness or justice of necessity of what happens or we can deny these things of what happens. But we cannot change what happens, even though our actions play a causal role in it. For, whatever action we take, even though seemingly we take it such that we alter the course of Fate, in fact we were fated from the beginning to do it. However, we were not fated to either affirm or deny the initial situations and outcomes. This is an option given to us so that we can cooperate with the divine causality by placing ourselves in its service willingly.]
2. Revenons donc à l’événement singulier. Etant causé par Dieu, il a ceci de propre de ne l’être à aucun degré par nous ; par définition il fait partie des « choses qui ne dépendent pas de nous » Or, la cause n’est cause parfaite que pour ce qui dépend d’elle. Comment alors « coopérer » à ce qui, précisément, est soustrait à notre pouvoir et, pour se produire, n’a besoin que de Dieu ? – Mais poser la question ainsi, c’est méconnaître que la cause parfaite abolit toute distance entre l’intention et l’acte, entre elle-même et son effet. Sur ce qui ne dépend pas de nous, la causalité brute nous est certes refusée. Mais nous pouvons, à son égard, devenir causes parfaites et nous en attribuer l’avènement, si, lorsqu’il se produit, nous faisons tout ce qui dépend de nous, pour qu’il se produise, lui qui, de toutes manières, se produit. Il suffira pour cela de réduire la distance. Et puisque nous ne pouvons pas, comme Dieu, aller, dans le même instant, de l’intention à l’acte, puisque l’acte nous est donné d’abord, il suffira, dans ce même instant, de suivre la démarche inverse et de faire coïncider l’acte (qui ne dépend pas de nous) avec l’intention (qui en dépend pleinement). Il faut donc « accepter »4 l’événement et le vouloir. Or, le vouloir, c’est-à-dire le causer pour ce qui dépend de nous, cela signifie ne pas le contrarier, ne pas l’empêcher, et cela, non pas par une action (car il ne dépend pas de nous de nous y opposer efficacement), mais, précisément, par nos inten- | tions. Coopérer à l’événement consistera donc à l’opérer en nous, à combattre tout ce qui, en nous, s’oppose à lui, nos passions et nos préférences. En vertu de la contemporanéité de l’intention et de l’acte, c’est dans le même instant que notre volonté rattrape et recouvre l’événement et que le mouvement le plus secret de notre « personne morale »1 coopère avec le cours, extérieur à nous, du Destin. « L’univers est comme mutilé, si peu qu’on retranche à la connexion et à l’enchaînement des causes, non moins que de ses parties. Or tu romps cet enchaînement, autant qu’il dépend de toi, quand tu es mécontent des événements et, en un sens, tu les détruis »2.(100-101)4. P. ex. M.-Aurèle, VIII, 23: Συμβαίνει τί μοι; Δέχομαι…(99)1. On peut conserver cette traduction de la προαίρεσις d’Epictète (voir l’éd. des Entretiens par J. Souilhé, t. I, p. L, n. 3), sous réserve des observations présentées par E. Bréhier, Etudes sur la philosophie antique, Actualités scientifiques et industrielles, n° 1104, Paris, 1950, p. 19.2. M. -Aurèle, V, 8, 13.(100)
From:
Goldschmidt, Victor. 1953. Le système stoïcien et l'idée de temps. Paris: Vrin.
Otherwise:
Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Sharples, R.W. 1983. Alexander of Aphrodisias, On Fate. Translated by R.W. Sharples. Gloucester Crescent, London: Duckworth.
Cicero. 1968. Cicero, De oratore, in Two Volumes, vol.2.3., together with De Fato, Paradoxa Stoicorum, De partitione oratoria. With English translation by H. Rackham. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University / London: Heinemann.
PDF available at:De fato Latin online text:De fato English online text:
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