ABSTRACT
The present chapter deals with the thesis that causation is necessitating, the other constitutive premiss of Stoic determinism. This thesis follows from the combination of two ideas: (i) particular causal relations are subsumed under strict regularities and (ii) these regularities necessitate – in the same circumstances, the same effects have to obtain. On this view, for any causal relation r where a set of causal conditions c brings about an effect e, r is necessary in virtue of the impossibility of a situation in which c obtains, but e does not. Thus, e will be brought about in every possible situation where c obtains again. This ‘regularitybased’ account of causal necessitation is central to Stoic philosophy as it is a consequence of an essential part of Stoic physics, namely, the doctrine of everlasting recurrence. We may appreciate how, exactly, this doctrine implies regularity-based determinism if we look closely at the arguments the orthodox Stoics provided in favour of the doctrine itself. This question will occupy us in section 2.2. Section 2.1, where I present the main features of the orthodox version of the doctrine of everlasting recurrence, is a preamble to the argument in section 2.2. In section 2.3, I bring out the deterministic consequences of orthodox everlasting recurrence.
