Gómez Espíndola, Laura Liliana. Moral responsibility and destiny in early Stoicism

Abstract

It is said that in response to the political, economic and social cataclysms after the death of the one who wanted to be Diogenes the Cynic but, unable to, he had to resign himself to being Alexander the Great, the Stoic school arises. They exhorted them, almost to nausea, to concentrate on the eph 'hēmîn ("what depends on us"), among other reasons because there lie all human freedom and happiness: among the billions of things that exist and happen in the cosmos , the great majority is out of our power, only a handful depends on us, a handful in which resides our possibility of acting freely and, in doing so as we should, our possibility of being happy. It is stoic mantra: if you choose to dedicate yourself to what does not depend on you, or if you choose to dedicate yourself to what depends on you but badly, and then your unhappiness is guaranteed.