Susanne Bobzien presents the definitive study of one of the most important intellectual legacies of the ancient Greeks: the Stoic theory of causal determinism. She reconstructs the theory and discusses how the Stoics (third century BC to second century AD) justified it, and how it relates to their views on possibility, action, freedom, moral responsibility, and many other topics. She demonstrates the considerable philosophical richness and power that these ideas retain today.

Determinism, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility brings together nine essays on determinism, freedom and moral responsibility in antiquity by Susanne Bobzien. The essays present the main ancient theories of determinism, freedom, and moral responsibility ranging from Aristotle via Epicureans and Stoics to Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century CE. The author discusses questions about rational and autonomous human agency and their compatibility with preceding causes, external or internal; with external impediments; with divine predetermination and theological questions; with physical theories like atomism and continuum theory, and with the sciences more generally; with elements that determine character development from childhood, such as nature and nurture; with epistemic features such as ignorance of circumstances; with necessity and modal theories generally; with folk theories of fatalism; and also with questions of how human autonomous agency is related to moral development, virtue and wisdom, blame and praise. Historically unified, philosophically profound, and methodologically rigorous, Bobzien's discussions show that in classical and Hellenistic philosophy these topics were all debated without reference to freedom to do otherwise or to free will, and that the latter two notions were fully developed only later.

Susanne Bobzien presents the definitive study of one of the most important intellectual legacies of the ancient Greeks: the Stoic theory of causal determinism. She reconstructs the theory and discusses how the Stoics (third century BC to second century AD) justified it, and how it relates to their views on possibility, action, freedom, moral responsibility, and many other topics. She demonstrates the considerable philosophical richness and power that these ideas retain today.

Alexander of Aphrodisias, who flourished c. 200AD, was the leading Peripatetic philosopher of his age. Most of his philosophical energies were spent in commenting upon Aristotle: his commentary on the Prior Analytics remains one of the most thorough and helpful guides to this difficult work; in addition, the commentary preserves invaluable information about various aspects of Stoic logic, and it also presents a picture of categorical syllogistic at a turning point in its historical development. This volume contains a translation of the first third of the commentary - the part dealing with non-modal syllogistic. The translation is preceded by a substantial introduction which discusses Alexander's place in the commentatorial tradition and his use of logical terminology. The book is completed by a translation of the pertinent part of the Prior Analytics, a summary account of categorical syllogistic, and a set of indexes.