Diogenes Laërtius · fl. 3rd century CE
Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.149 — Diogenes Laërtius on the Stoics
Translation by R. D. Hicks (1925)
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.149
Reported speech · Diogenes Laërtius on the Stoics
Nature, they hold, aims both at utility and at pleasure, as is clear from the analogy of human craftsmanship. That all things happen by fate or destiny is maintained by Chrysippus in his treatise De fato, by Posidonius in his De fato, book ii., by Zeno and by Boëthus in his De fato, book i. Fate is defined as an endless chain of causation, whereby things are, or as the reason or formula by which the world goes on. What is more, they say that divination in all its forms is a real and substantial fact, if there is really Providence. And they prove it to be actually a science on the evidence of certain results: so Zeno, Chrysippus in the second book of his De divinatione, Athenodorus, and Posidonius in the second book of his Physical Discourse and the fifth book of his De divinatione. But Panaetius denies that divination has any real existence.
Cite this passage
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.149 (on the Stoics), tr. R. D. Hicks (1925)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/lives-of-the-stoics/7.149
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VII, tr. R. D. Hicks (Loeb, 1925). Text: Perseus Digital Library (CC BY-SA 4.0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesNature aims at both usefulness and pleasure, as human craftsmanship does. Everything happens by fate, defined as an endless chain of causes or the formula by which the world runs. If providence exists, divination is real, a view one later Stoic rejected.
Older wording
- “divination”
- — foretelling the future by signs and omens
- “destiny”
- — the course of events fixed in advance
Themes and situations
- Acceptance and fate
- Nature and the cosmos
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