Seeing with Different Eyes - Cosmology and Divination

10
Chapter One
divinities or to anyone else, and finally the very existence of the gods—but
he does not find fault with the logical thread. 15
IV. Argument from fate
Now to the argument from fate, but first a preliminary note. It was a
common trope among most ancient observers to think of divination in two
broad categories. Dreams and oracles resulting from mantic possession
have a unique character, they were thought to arise from direct inspiration,
and went under the heading of natural or non-technical practices. In the
“technical” varieties, by contrast, the divine communicated, through a nonhuman
medium, some outside portent that we might interpret, whether a
lightning bolt or a sneeze. The argument from god that we just looked at
seems equally relevant to both kinds. The two that follow, though, have
special relevance for one side.
The Stoics’ argument for divination based on fate is particularly
relevant to the technical variety of divination, the one which picks up
outside signals. This one is quite a bit more involved than the previous
one. Fate played a large role in Stoic thinking, but what exactly they meant
by it is worth dwelling on for just a moment (we will come to see that, in
fact, it looks a lot like sympathy). In the De divinatione, Cicero has his
brother make a distinction between a fate of superstition and a fate of
physics:
By “fate”, I mean what the Greeks call heimarmenê—an ordering and
sequence of causes (ordinem seriemque causarum), since it is the
connection of cause to cause which out of itself produces anything. It is
everlasting truth, flowing from all eternity. Consequently nothing has
happened which was not going to be, and likewise nothing is going to be of
which nature does not contain causes working to bring that very thing
about. This makes it intelligible that fate should be, not the fate of
superstition, but that of physics, an everlasting cause of things—why past
things happened, why present things are now happening, and why future
things will be. 16
Quintus’ distinction between the fate of superstition and that of
physics bears further consideration. The distinction between these two
views has only recently received much considered attention. And it plays a
crucial role in understanding how divination might be explained according
to fate.
The Stoics were unabashed determinists. As we have seen, the Stoic
universe is ultimately interconnected and materialist. There is no place in