Meditations quote

One of my favorite quotes from Meditations

“Everything suits me that suits you, O my universe. Nothing is too early or too late that is in your own good time. All is fruit for me that your seasons bring, O nature. All proceeds from you, all subsists in you, and to you all things return.”

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.23

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

This quote from Meditations has grown on me. It makes me ponder many things: fate and accepting it as it comes, determinism, and Stoic theology. I was hesitant to accept Stoic physics, namely their theology because I took myself to be an atheist. I have an aversion to religion because of my past experiences with religion. I was brainwashed and taken advantage of by a cultlike church society.

I am more inclined to agree with the Stoics and their view on the divine. Stoics are pantheists, they believe that Nature is sacred and synonymous with God. To the Stoics, the cosmos is a single pantheistic god that is rational, creative, and the basis of everything that exists. Nothing incorporeal exists. The nature of the world is one of unceasing change, driven by the active part or reason, logos, of God, which pervades all things.

Fate — accepting Fate, loving it — Amor fati — and determinism were hard to swallow. Believing that one should take whatever is dealt one’s way with resignation was difficult. Now I understand more of what this means. To the Stoics, nothing passes unexplained; there is a reason, Logos, for everything in nature. Because of the Stoics' commitment to the unity and cohesion of the cosmos and its all-encompassing reason, they fully embraced determinism. However, instead of a single chain of causal events, there is a many-dimensional network of events interacting within the framework of fate. Out of this swarm of causes, the course of events is fully realized. Humans appear to have free will because personal actions participate in the determined chain of events independently of external conditions. This "soft determinism" allows humans to be responsible for their actions, alleviating the apparent arbitrariness of fate.

Now, I suppose you could say that I am following the path of the Traditional Stoics, those who believe that the Universe is conscious and benevolent; more on that in a future post. For now, I am continuing to learn more about this philosophy that has aided me so much already.

What are your thoughts on Fate, determinism, and theology? Let me know in the comments below.