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4 - Chance, fate, fortune and the self

William Desmond
William Desmond
Affiliation:
National University of Ireland, Maynooth
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Summary

When Diogenes was asked, “What have you learned from philosophy?”, he responded that it had taught him self-sufficiency and the ability to bear all the twists of fortune (DL 6.63). Lucian's, Demonax lived by the same creed: he made a cult of self-sufficiency, but as he grew older and more dependent on others he decided to end his life (Luc. Demon. 4). These two moments encapsulate concepts central to the Cynic philosophy: those of fortune, fate, chance and self-sufficiency. These ideas can easily become the stuff of cliché, but as with the notion of the life according to nature, terms such as Tychē and autarkeia arise from long cultural development and are rich with resonance. In exploring these, we shall again proceed from the abstract to the ethical, from the ideas of fate, fortune, chance and providence to the Cynic ethics of detachment and independence. The resulting Cynic synthesis was very influential, not least on Stoicism, but also in quarters as unexpected as Petronius' “Dinner of Trimalchio”.

Fate, fortune, chance, providence

The interrelated concepts of fate, fortune, chance and providence should be treated in themselves before we turn to some Greek sources, as the terms can be blended in a confusing variety of ways. There are two opposing views: either all things have a cause, or they do not. The first view that (i) all things that happen have a cause can be called causal determinism.

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Cynics , pp. 162 - 183
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2008

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