Philosophy › Hellenistic, Roman & Han thought › Stoicism (founded by Zeno of Citium)
Do we have free will?
debated since c. 300 BC; revived by Frankfurt (1969) and Libet (1983)· Big question· Reality, mind & God
Mostly agreedGood evidence; some details uncertain.
Whether our choices are truly up to us, or fixed in advance by fate, physics or our brains.
See it on the Philosophy map →The idea
Three main answers. Determinists say every event, including each choice, follows from prior causes, so free will is an illusion. Libertarians (no link to the politics) say some choices are genuinely open. Compatibilists, starting with the Stoics, say freedom means acting on your own reasons without coercion, even in a caused world. Frankfurt (1969) argued responsibility does not require being able to do otherwise. Libet (1983) found brain activity building before people felt they had decided to move, though what that shows is disputed.
Why it matters
Praise, blame, punishment and contracts all assume people could choose; if no one could have done otherwise, criminal justice needs rethinking.
Where it comes from
Mostly a debate of arguments: Chrysippus via Cicero's On Fate, Augustine, Hume, Frankfurt's 1969 paper, and Libet's 1983 brain-timing experiments, which found a lead of about a third of a second.
Still debated
In a 2020 survey most philosophers favoured compatibilism, yet no side has a decisive argument, and neuroscience has not settled it.
Connections (4)
▸Stoicism (founded by Zeno of Citium) gave an early compatibilist answer to Do we have free will?Mostly agreed
The connection
The Stoics believed everything happens by fate, yet held people responsible. Chrysippus explained with a cylinder: someone pushes it, but it rolls because of its own round shape. Events trigger our choices, but our character shapes how we respond. That is the core of compatibilism: freedom and determinism can coexist.
When and how
Athens, 3rd century BC; Chrysippus (c. 279–206 BC), the school's third head, set out the argument in his now-lost work On Fate.
How sure are we?
Cicero's On Fate and Aulus Gellius preserve the cylinder analogy and Chrysippus's replies to critics.
Debates and open questions
Whether 'compatibilist' is the right modern label for the Stoics, and whether the cylinder really answers the charge that fate excuses everything.
▸Epicurus and Epicureanism proposed the atomic "swerve" to address Do we have free will?Mostly agreed
The connection
Democritus's atomism seemed to make every motion, and so every choice, mechanically fixed. Epicurus rejected that 'fate of the physicists'. The swerve, a tiny, uncaused sideways movement of atoms, was meant to break the chain of causes and leave room for choices that are genuinely up to us.
When and how
Athens, c. 300–270 BC; the fullest account is in Lucretius's Latin poem On the Nature of Things, written around 55 BC.
How sure are we?
Lucretius (Book II) and Cicero both attribute the swerve to Epicurus, though it appears nowhere in his own surviving writings.
Debates and open questions
How random swerves could yield responsible choice rather than mere chance; Cicero mocked the idea, and modern quantum-randomness arguments face the same objection.
▸Do we have free will? was central to the theology of Augustine of HippoWell documented
The connection
Augustine first defended free will to place the blame for evil on creatures, not God. Then, fighting the monk Pelagius, who held that people can choose good unaided, he argued that sin has bound the will so only grace frees it. That tension framed Western debates on freedom and predestination.
When and how
Rome and North Africa, 388–430: On Free Choice of the Will (388–395) and the anti-Pelagian writings (411–430).
How we know
His treatises, his Retractations (c. 427) reviewing his own earlier views, and church council rulings on Pelagianism document the debate.
Debates and open questions
Whether his late views on grace leave any real room for free will is still argued by historians and by Catholic and Protestant theologians.
▸Jean-Paul Sartre answered "radically free" to Do we have free will?Well documented
The connection
Sartre gave the strongest yes: humans are 'condemned to be free'. We cannot escape choosing, since refusing to choose is itself a choice, and we cannot blame nature, upbringing or God. He even wrote that the French were never freer than under German occupation. Pretending otherwise is 'bad faith'.
When and how
Being and Nothingness (Paris, 1943) and Existentialism Is a Humanism (1945), written during and just after the German occupation of France.
How we know
These claims are stated explicitly in his texts.
Debates and open questions
Determinists and neuroscientists question whether such freedom exists at all; Sartre himself later stressed social and economic limits in his Marxist work.