1. There Is No Necessity To Live Under The Control Of Necessity
Democritus, whose atomic theory Epicurus inherited and transformed, was a strict determinist: all atomic motion follows necessary paths governed by prior causes, and therefore every event in the universe -- including every human decision -- is the inevitable output of prior conditions. This would make ethical deliberation and moral responsibility incoherent: if your choices are simply the necessary outputs of prior atomic arrangements in your soul, praise and blame, good advice and bad advice, wise deliberation and foolish impulsiveness are all equally determined and therefore equally unavoidable.
Epicurus explicitly and deliberately rejected this conclusion. He introduced the atomic swerve (discussed in A-6) precisely to break the chain of necessity at the physical level, providing the physical basis for genuine freedom of choice. But the argument goes beyond physics: Epicurus also appealed to the direct evidence of our own experience of deliberation. We feel ourselves weighing options, considering consequences, and choosing. This feeling is not an illusion -- it is real evidence of a real capacity. The argument is not that the swerve directly causes our choices, but that a universe with genuine indeterminacy at the atomic level is one in which the kind of genuine agency we experience in deliberation is possible and not ruled out by physics.
The practical importance is enormous: it is only on the assumption that we genuinely choose our beliefs, desires, and actions that Epicurean philosophy makes sense as therapy. We cannot be advised to change what we cannot change.
Epicurus strongly opposed the view that human action is entirely determined by prior causes -- what we would today call strict determinism or fatalism. He recognized that this position, like radical skepticism, is self-defeating in practice: a person who genuinely believed all their choices were determined in advance by necessity could not rationally deliberate, could not hold themselves or others responsible for actions, and could not engage in the practical reasoning on which a happy life depends. Epicurus held that such beliefs are not only false but destructive of the conditions necessary for living well. The atomic swerve -- the unpredictable slight deviation in atomic motion -- was the physical mechanism Epicurus proposed to establish that strict determinism does not govern the universe, leaving room for genuine agency.
Epicurus regarded the fatalism of "the natural philosophers" as worse, not better, than the popular mythology about the gods it was meant to replace: as he tells Menoeceus, it is better to follow the myths about the gods than to be a slave to the fate of the natural philosophers, since myth at least holds out the hope of appeasing the gods through worship, while an inexorable, iron necessity holds out no such hope at all. A universe of that kind, in which advice, blame, and responsibility are all illusions, destroys the very possibility of living wisely.
The Vatican Saying that captures this topic directly states: "Necessity is an evil, but there is no necessity to live under the control of necessity." This has both a physical and an ethical dimension. Physically, the universe is not governed by iron necessity -- events do not flow inevitably from prior causes with no room for deviation. Ethically, even within whatever constraints our circumstances impose, we retain the capacity to choose how to respond to them. The Epicurean philosopher is not a slave to fate, fortune, or external compulsion. The practice of philosophical reasoning is itself the exercise of the freedom we actually possess.
Whom, after all, do you consider superior to the man who ... would deride the fate which some introduce as overlord of everything, but sees that some things are necessitated, others are due to fortune, and others depend on us, since necessity is accountable to no one, and fortune is an unstable thing to watch, while that which depends on us, with which culpability and its opposite are naturally associated, is free of any overlord? For it would be better to follow the mythology about gods than be a slave to the 'fate' of the natural philosophers: the former at least hints at the hope of begging the gods off by means of worship, whereas the latter involves an inexorable necessity. (tr. Long & Sedley)
The man who says that all events are necessitated has no ground for criticizing the man who says that not all events are necessitated. For according to him this is itself a necessitated event. (tr. Long & Sedley)
But many naturally capable of achieving these and those results fail to achieve them, because of themselves, not because of one and the same responsibility of the atoms and of themselves. And with these we especially do battle, and rebuke them, hating them for a disposition which follows their disordered congenital nature as we do with the whole range of animals. For the nature of their atoms has contributed nothing to some of their behaviour, and degrees of behaviour and character, but it is their developments which themselves possess all or most of the responsibility for certain things. It is as a result of that nature that some of their atoms move with disordered motions, but it is not on the atoms that all the responsibility should be placed for their behaviour... Thus when a development occurs which takes on some distinctness from the atoms in a differential way -- not in the way which is like viewing from a different distance -- he acquires responsibility which proceeds from himself; then he straightaway transmits this to his primary substances and makes the whole of it into a yardstick. That is why those who cannot correctly make such distinctions confuse themselves about the adjudication of responsibilities. (tr. Long & Sedley)
From the very outset we always have seeds directing us some toward these, some towards those, some towards these and those, actions and thoughts and characters, in greater and smaller numbers. Consequently that which we develop - characteristics of this or that kind - is at first absolutely up to us; and the things which of necessity flow in through our passages from that which surrounds us are at one stage up to us and dependent on beliefs of our own making... <And we can invoke, against the argument that our eventual choice between these alternatives must be physically caused either by our initial make-up or by those environmental influences> by which we never cease to be affected, the fact that we rebuke, oppose and reform each other as if the responsibility lay also in ourselves, and not just in our congenital make-up and in the accidental necessity of that which surrounds and penetrates us. For if someone were to attribute to the very processes of rebuking and being rebuked the accidental necessity of whatever happens to be present to oneself at the time, I'm afraid he can never in this way understand his own behavior in continuing the debate.. He may simply choose to maintain his thesis while in practice continuing to> blame or praise. But if he were to act in this way he would be leaving intact the very same behavior which as far as our own selves are concerned creates the preconception of our responsibility. And in that he would at one point be altering his theory, at another .... For this sort of account is self-refuting, and can never prove that everything is of the kind called 'necessitated'; but he debates this very question on the assumption that his opponent is himself responsible for talking nonsense. And even if he goes on to infinity saying that this action of his is in turn necessitated, always appealing to arguments, he is not reasoning it empirically so long as he goes on imputing to himself the responsibility for having reasoned correctly and to his opponent that for having reasoned incorrectly. But unless he were to stop attributing his action to himself and to pin it on necessity instead, he would not even be consistent... On the other hand, if in using the word 'necessity' of that which we call our own agency he is merely changing a name, and won't prove that we have a preconception of a kind which has faulty delineations when we call our own agency responsible, neither his own behaviour nor that of others will be affected... ... but even to call necessitation empty as a result of your claim. If someone won't explain this, and has no auxiliary element or impulse in us which he might dissuade from those actions which we perform calling the responsibility for them 'our own agency', but is giving the name of foolish necessity to all the things which we claim to do calling the responsibility for them 'our own agency', he will be merely changing a name; (so) he will not be modifying any of our actions in the way in which in some cases the man who sees what sort of actions are necessitated regularly dissuades those who desire to do something in the face of compulsion. And the mind will be inquisitive to learn what sort of action it should then consider that one to be which we perform in some way through our own agency but without desiring to. For he has no alternative but to say what sort of action is necessitated and what is not . . But unless someone perversely maintains this, or makes it clear what fact he is rebutting or introducing, it is merely a word that is being changed, as I keep repeating. The first men to give a satisfactory account of causes, men not only much greater than their predecessors but also, many times over, than their successors, turned a blind eye to themselves - although in many matters they had alleviated great ills - in order to hold necessity and accident responsible for everything. Indeed, the actual account promoting this view came to grief when it left the great man blind to the fact that in his actions he was clashing with his doctrine; and that if it were not that a certain blindness to the doctrine took hold of him while acting he would be constantly perplexing himself; and that wherever the doctrine prevailed he would be falling into desperate calamities, while wherever it did not he would be filled with conflict because of the contradiction between his actions and his doctrine. It is because this is so that the need also arises to explain the matter which I was discussing when I first embarked on this digression, lest some similar evil befall us. (tr. Long & Sedley)
Moreover, if all motion is always linked, and new motion arises out of old in a fixed order, and atoms do not by swerving make some beginning motion to break the decrees of fate, so that cause should not follow cause from infinity, from where does this free volition exist for animals throughout the world? From where, I ask, comes this volition wrested away from the fates, through which we proceed wherever each of us is led by his pleasure, and likewise swerve off our motions at no fixed time or fixed region of space, but wherever the mind itself carries us? For without doubt it is volition that gives these things their beginning for each of us, and it is from volition that motions are spread through the limbs. Don't you see how also when at an instant the starting gates are opened the eager strength of horses can nevertheless not surge forward as suddenly as the mind itself wishes? For all the mass of matter has to be stirred up throughout the body, so that stirred up through ail the limbs it may in a concerted effort follow the mind's desire. Thus you may see that the beginning of motion is created from the heart and proceeds initially from the mind's volition, and from there is spread further through the entire body and limbs. Nor is it the same when we move forward impelled by a blow, through another person's great strength and great coercion. For then it is plain that all the matter of the whole body moves and is driven against our wish, until volition has reined it back throughout the limbs. So do you now see that, although external force propels many along and often obliges them to proceed against their wishes and to be driven headlong, nevertheless there is something in our chest capable of fighting and resisting, at whose decision the mass of matter is also forced at times to be turned throughout the limbs and frame, and, when hurled forward, is reined back and settles down? Therefore in the seeds too you must admit the same thing, that there is another cause of motion besides impacts and weight, from which this power is born in us, since we see that nothing can come into being out of nothing. For weight prevents all things from coming about by impacts, by a sort of external force. But that the mind should not itself possess an internal necessity in all its behaviour, and be overcome and, as it were, forced to suffer and to be acted upon - that is brought about by a tiny swerve of atoms at no fixed region of space or fixed time. (tr. Long & Sedley)
Once prophecy is eliminated, how can there be any other evidence for fate? For if someone uses Democritus' account, saying that because of their collisions with each other atoms have no free movement, and that as a result it appears that all motions are necessitated, we will reply to him: 'Don't you know, whoever you are, that there is also a free movement in atoms, which Democritus failed to discover but Epicurus brought to light, a swerving movement, as he demonstrates from evident facts?' But the chief point is this: if fate is believed in, that is the end of all censure and admonition, and even the wicked will not be open to blame. (tr. Long & Sedley)
At this initial stage, if I were disposed to agree with Epicurus and to deny that every proposition is either true or false, I would rather accept that blow than allow that all things happen through fate. For the former view is at least arguable, whereas the latter is truly intolerable. Chrysippus, then, strains every nerve to persuade us that every axioma (proposition) is either true or false. For just as Epicurus is afraid that if he admits this he will have to admit that all events happen through fate -- for if one of the two has been true from all eternity it is certain, and if certain then necessary too, which he considers enough to prove both necessity and fate - so too Chrysippus fears that if he fails to secure the result that every proposition is either true or false he cannot maintain that everything happens through fate and from eternal causes of future events. But Epicurus thinks that the necessity of fate is avoided by the swerve of atoms. Thus a third type of motion arises in addition to weight and impact, when the atom swerves by a minimal interval, or elachiston as he terms it. That this swerve occurs without a cause he is forced to admit in practice, even if not in so many words. For it is not through the impact of another atom that an atom swerves. How, after all, can one be struck by another if atomic bodies travel perpendicularly in straight lines through their own weight, as Epicurus holds? For it follows that one is never driven from its course by another, if one is not even touched by another. The consequence is that, even supposing that the atom does exist and that it swerves, it swerves without a cause. Epicurus' reason for introducing this theory was his fear that, if the atom's motion was always the result of natural and necessary weight, we would have no freedom, since the mind would be moved in whatever way it was compelled by the motion of atoms. Democritus, the originator of atoms, preferred to accept this consequence that everything happens through necessity than to rob the atomic bodies of their natural motions. A more penetrating line was taken by Carneades, who showed that the Epicureans could defend their case without this fictitious swerve. For since they taught that a certain voluntary motion of the mind was possible, a defence of that doctrine was preferable to introducing the swerve, especially as they could not discover its cause. And by defending it they could easily stand up to Chrysippus, for by conceding that there is no motion without cause they would not be conceding that all events were the result of antecedent causes. For our volition has no external antecedent causes. Hence when we say that someone wants or does not want something without a cause, we are taking advantage of a common linguistic convention: by 'without a cause' we mean without an external antecedent cause, not without some kind of cause, just as, when we call a jar 'empty', we are not speaking like natural philosophers who hold the empty (void) to be absolute nothing, but in such a way as to say that the jar is, for example, without water, without wine or without oil, so too when we say that the mind moves 'without a cause' we mean without an external antecedent cause, not entirely without a cause. Of the atom itself it can be said that, when it moves through the void as a result of its heaviness and weight, it moves without a cause, in as much as there is no additional cause from outside. But here too, if we don't all want to incur the scorn of the natural philosophers for saying that something happens without a cause, we must make a distinction and say as follows: that it is the atom's own nature to move as a result of weight and heaviness, and that that nature is itself the cause of its moving in that way. Similarly for voluntary motions of the mind there is no need to seek an external cause. For a voluntary motion itself has it as its own intrinsic nature that it should be in our power to obey us. And this fact is not without a cause: for the cause is that thing's own nature. (tr. Long & Sedley)
- Page scan: Cicero, On Fate 21-25 (tr. Long & Sedley)
For although Epicurus, who despises and ridicules the w hole of dialectic, cannot be got to admit that a proposition of the form 'Either Hermarchus will be alive tomorrow, or he will not be alive' is true despite the dialecticians' rule that all disjunctions of the form ' Either p or not - p ' are not only true but also necessary, notice how circumspect is this man whom your Stoics consider dull-witted. ' For if he says, 'I admit that one or the other is necessary,' it will be necessary either for Hermarchus to be alive tomorrow, or for him not to be alive. But there is no such necessity in the nature of things. (tr. Long & Sedley)
Of any two contradictories -- by contradictories here I mean a pair one of which asserts something while the other denies it -- it is necessary, following Epicurus, that one be true, the other false: for example, 'Philoctetes will be wounded' was true in all previous ages, and 'Philoctetes will not be wounded' false. Unless perhaps we are inclined to follow the opinion of the Epicureans, who say that such propositions are neither true nor false, or, when that shames them, say something still more shameless, namely that disjunctions of contradictories are true, but that of the original propositions contained in them neither is true. (tr. Long & Sedley)
[Above: Long & Sedley excerpt. Below: the same Philoctetes passage in full surrounding context, tr. Yonge (1853), On Fate, Bohn's Classical Library Chapter XVI (Yonge's own continuous chapter count -- the essay survives with major gaps, so his chapter numbers do not track the modern paragraph numbering used above).]
- Page scan: Cicero, On Fate 37 (tr. Yonge, 1853)
In but few things chance hinders a wise man, but the greatest and most important matters reason has ordained and throughout the whole period of life does and will ordain. (Bailey)
Seldom does the fortuitous, which we term chance, interfere with life, and usually it is we who are in control.
- Page scan: Diogenes of Oinoanda, NF 132 (tr. Smith)
But this is a view that you, Chrysippus, will not allow at all, and this is the very point about which you are specially at issue with Diodorus. He says that only what either is true or will be true is a possibility, and whatever will be, he says, must necessarily happen, and whatever will not be, according to him cannot possibly happen. You say that things which will not be are also 'possible' -- for instance it is possible for this jewel to be broken even if it never will be --, and that the reign of Cypselus at Corinth was not necessary although it had been announced by the oracle of Apollo a thousand years before. (Rackham)
For if the following is a true connection, 'If you were born at the rising of the dogstar you will not die at sea,' and if the first proposition in the connection, 'You were born at the rising of the dogstar,' is necessary (for all things true in the past are necessary, as Chrysippus holds, in disagreement with his master Cleanthes, because they are unchangeable and because what is past cannot turn from true into false) -- if therefore the first proposition in the connection is necessary, the proposition that follows also becomes necessary... but all the same, if there is a natural cause why Fabius should not die at sea, it is not possible for Fabius to die at sea. (Rackham)
Hence if, while it is consistent for the Stoics, who say that all things happen by fate, to accept oracles of this sort and all the other things connected with divination, yet the same position cannot be held by those who say that the things which are going to happen in the future have been true from all eternity, observe that their case is not the same as that of the Stoics; for their position is more limited and narrow, whereas the Stoic theory is untrammelled and free. (Rackham)
- Page scan: Cicero, On Fate 15 (tr. Yonge, 1853)
If the form of the statement had been 'Scipio will die by violence in his bedroom at night,' the statement in that form would have been a true one... nor, these things being so, is there any reason for Epicurus's standing in terror of fate and seeking protection against it from the atoms and making them swerve out of the perpendicular? and entertaining simultaneously two utterly inexplicable propositions, one that something takes place without a cause... the other that when two atoms are travelling through empty space one moves in a straight line and the other swerves. (Rackham)
- Page scan: Cicero, On Fate 18 (tr. Yonge, 1853)
For it is not necessary for Epicurus to fear lest, when he admits that every proposition is either true or false, all events must necessarily be caused by fate; for the truth of a proposition of the form 'Carneades will go down to the Academy' is not due to an eternal stream of natural and necessary causation, and yet nevertheless it is not uncaused, but there is a difference between causes accidentally precedent [by chance] and causes intrinsically containing a natural efficiency. (Rackham)
Moreover those who say that things that are going to be are immutable and that a true future event cannot be changed into a false one, are not asserting the necessity of fate but explaining the meaning of terms; whereas those who bring in an everlasting series of causes rob the human mind of freewill and fetter it in the chains of a fated necessity. (Rackham)