溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
In a World Fixed by Causes, Does Anything Remain "Up to Us"?
If the Stoics are right that all events are fixed by a chain of prior causes, does any place truly remain to call "what is up to us"?
What is up to us — without it, deliberation, praise, and regret all become empty shells.
This question split ancient philosophy over whether fate swallows responsibility. The Stoic Chrysippus saw the world as seamless causation yet tried to guard the human portion with the cylinder image; Alexander refuted that compromise as sleight of hand — in a world of one continuous chain, any "what is up to us" is finally just a product of prior causes. Reviving Aristotle's "what is up to us" (to eph' hēmin), he argued that only real chance and an open future can uphold freedom and responsibility. This dispute carried across a thousand years into the modern clash of determinism and free will, where Hume's compatibilism and Kant's noumenal freedom stood again like heirs of the Stoics and of Alexander. Is there a gap of freedom in a fixed world — Alexander stood most firmly on "there must be."
The more common it grows to hear that the causality of brain and gene explains every choice in advance, the more urgent Alexander's question becomes outside the lab: does anything remain up to us?
Alexander, Aristotle's most faithful commentator, stood squarely against the tight Stoic fatalism.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Alexander, Aristotle's most faithful commentator, stood squarely against the tight Stoic fatalism. If all is already fixed by prior causes, he argued, then deliberating and regretting become a meaningless play. To keep "what is up to us," he held, the world must contain genuinely open possibilities. I sense this question is an ancient shield defending the dignity of regret, for regret is not in vain only if another choice was truly open then. I stand before it too, asking whether my regret rests on real possibility, or is an empty gesture upon a fixed script.
✍️Your Answer
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