Up to Us: Stoic Views on Fate, Freedom, and Moral Autonomy - 2PM

How do the Stoics reconcile fate with freedom? For the early Stoics, like Chrysippus, the cosmos is a web of causes where everything unfolds according to a rational order, leaving no event outside the chain of necessity. Yet they did not see this as erasing responsibility. They taught that what is “up to us” are those actions that flow through us as agents, shaping our role in the cosmopolis, a view that threads freedom into determinism. Later Stoics like Epictetus shifted the focus inward. For him, only our judgments and the assent we give to impressions are truly “up to us.” This reframing moves the question of freedom away from the metaphysical realm toward practical moral autonomy. Freedom becomes the work of mastering one’s inner life in order to live a life of virtue.

This meeting will be held at 2 p.m. instead of the usual 3 p.m. start time. We will return to the regular schedule on Sunday, August 17th.