It might seem quite random that you have found this bottle. It has drifted across seas, only for you to have now discovered it. How fortunate!

What appears to be random, instead occurs ... via causes we do not comprehend

Stoic philosophy argues against interpretations of randomness in our world, though. What appears to be random, instead occurs for the Stoics via causes we do not comprehend. The Stoics conceive of these causes, such as what brought you and this bottle together, in terms of what exists. Understanding Stoic causation and existence can assist with how we mentally manage what occurs to us (including finding this bottle.) 

Before the Stoics, Plato contested materialist beliefs that only physical things and their movements exist. One reason this concerned Plato was that it denied the existence of the immaterial soul. Instead Plato held that what exists is what can act or be acted upon, which includes the soul. 

The first head of the Stoic school, Zeno of Citium, agreed with Plato’s correlation of existence with acting. Zeno however further posits that all existing things are bodied. This includes souls. Even the Stoic God is bodied. Comprehending God’s embodiment will assist in appreciating why what occurs to us is not random for Stoicism. 

Diogenes Laërtius and Cicero are two sources of the information that for the earliest Stoics, a singular substance comprises the whole world. This substance, this body, is passive matter, activated by God’s reason. A ramification of God’s material immanence and omnipresence is the world’s physical orderings. We cannot, for Epictetus, otherwise explain the world’s reliable material designs. Marcus Aurelius likewise recognizes a divine rationality that underpins the ordered patterns of flowers blooming or fruits ripening. 

The world does not move randomly

If you are uncomfortable attributing nature’s orderings to something called God, simply focus on the world’s regular physical cycles. The world does not move randomly. In observing and recording these movements, Stoic theology manifests as an ancient empirical science. 

This reliable ordering means the causes that brought this bottle across the ocean at this precise moment are not random for Stoicism. Modern science would agree, in calculating ocean movements, the bottle’s weight, etc. 

But was it random for the Stoics that you found this bottle? 

In much of Stoicism, our actions such as taking the walk that coincides with the bottle’s journey, are predetermined. Marcus Aurelius proclaims that what occurs to us has been designed since the beginning of time. 

Stoicism also demands we take personal responsibility for our actions

Despite this deterministic view, Stoicism also demands we take personal responsibility for our actions, and recognize our freedom to make decisions in accordance with our reason. How does Stoicism co-accommodate physical determinism and rational freedom? 

When Epictetus tackles this kind of question, what concerns him is not whether our will is freely outside the world’s rationally ordered, material causes. Our freedom rather consists in being able to conform our mind to the existence the material universe has assigned us. 

Only your rational response to finding it can make it fortunate.

Perhaps you cannot commit to the belief in a predetermined world? The insight Stoic perspectives on randomness nevertheless offer is that what occurs to you is an ordered result of preceding influences. You have control over mentally accepting those occurrences, by rationalizing their interconnections with the rest of the universe. Finding the bottle was not random. Neither was it inherently fortunate. Only your rational response to finding it can make it fortunate. 

Will Johncock 

---

Will Johncock researches and writes about our individual and collective relations with time in the fields of continental philosophy, ancient and modern Stoic philosophy, social theory, and sociology. His latest book is Stoic Philosophy and Social Theory 

 

---