ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 is an attempt at reconstructing the general outline and partial content of Chrysippus’ treatise On Providence. Using most of the extant fragments about that text, it focuses on two books in particular. In book I, after having defended the view that the world is a rational and intelligent animal, Chrysippus then tackles the difficult question of the preservation of the world (during its conflagration) and argues that the world ‘shall not die’. As for book IV, it is concerned with the important question of theodicy and the compatibility between good and evil in the world. Chrysippus’ On Providence appears also to have touched on the compatibility between fate (understood in the popular sense of external misfortunes falling upon helpless people) and moral responsibility and showed that god provided human beings with a nature that helps them avoid the effects of external misfortunes.
