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160-428: In ancient Greece , the concept of eternal return was most prominently associated with Stoicism , the school of philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium . The Stoics believed that the universe is periodically destroyed and reborn, and that each universe is exactly the same as the one before. This doctrine was fiercely criticised by Christian authors such as Augustine , who saw in it a fundamental denial of free will and of

320-551: A karmic force that attaches to the individual's consciousness , which will manifest through reincarnation and results in future lives. In other words, righteous or unrighteous actions in one life will necessarily cause good or bad responses in another future life or more lives. The early Buddhist texts and later Tibetan Buddhist scriptures associate dependent arising with the fundamental Buddhist doctrines of emptiness ( śūnyatā ) and non-self ( anattā ). Another Buddhist concept which many scholars perceive to be deterministic

480-546: A 'strongman' was often the best solution. Athens fell under a tyranny in the second half of the 6th century BC. When this tyranny was ended, the Athenians founded the world's first democracy as a radical solution to prevent the aristocracy regaining power. A citizens' assembly (the Ecclesia ), for the discussion of city policy, had existed since the reforms of Draco in 621 BC; all citizens were permitted to attend after

640-417: A century into the past, discussing 6th century BC historical figures such as Darius I of Persia , Cambyses II and Psamtik III , and alluding to some 8th century BC persons such as Candaules . The accuracy of Herodotus' works is debated. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides , Xenophon , Demosthenes , Plato and Aristotle . Most were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which

800-470: A chance of making better decisions next time around. The earliest version of the novel, however, did not include the magician, and ended on "a totally pessimistic note". The revolution in Ouspensky's thoughts on recurrence – the idea that change is possible – took place after he became a disciple of the mystic George Gurdjieff , who taught that a person could achieve a higher state of consciousness through

960-500: A coalition of 31 Greek city states, including Athens and Sparta, determined to resist the Persian invaders. At the same time, Greek Sicily was invaded by a Carthaginian force. In 480 BC, the first major battle of the invasion was fought at Thermopylae , where a small rearguard of Greeks, led by three hundred Spartans, held a crucial pass guarding the heart of Greece for several days; at the same time Gelon , tyrant of Syracuse, defeated

1120-609: A council of elders (the Gerousia ) and magistrates specifically appointed to watch over the kings (the Ephors ). Only free, land-owning, native born men could be citizens entitled to the full protection of the law in a city-state. In most city-states, unlike the situation in Rome , social prominence did not allow special rights. Sometimes families controlled public religious functions, but this ordinarily did not give any extra power in

1280-528: A decisive victory, and in 447 lost Boeotia again. Athens and Sparta signed the Thirty Years' Peace in the winter of 446/5, ending the conflict. Despite the treaty, Athenian relations with Sparta declined again in the 430s, and in 431 BC the Peloponnesian War began. The first phase of the war saw a series of fruitless annual invasions of Attica by Sparta, while Athens successfully fought

1440-433: A fearful consideration for the sky and the stars as divine beings , which they held to be ultimately responsible for every phenomena that occurs on Earth and for the destiny of humankind. Accordingly, they shaped their entire lives in accordance with their interpretations of astral configurations and phenomena . In the I Ching and philosophical Taoism , the ebb and flow of favorable and unfavorable conditions suggests

1600-415: A finite number of combinations, and each series of combinations must eventually repeat in the same order, thereby creating "a circular movement of absolutely identical series". However, scholars such as Neil Sinhababu and Kuong Un Teng have suggested that the reason this material remained unpublished was because Nietzsche himself was unconvinced that his argument would hold up to scrutiny. A third possibility

1760-445: A form of biological determinism , sometimes called genetic determinism . Biological determinism is the idea that all human behaviors, beliefs, and desires are fixed by human genetic nature. Friedrich Nietzsche explained that human beings are "determined" by their bodies and are subject to its passions, impulses, and instincts. Fatalism is normally distinguished from determinism, as a form of teleological determinism. Fatalism

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1920-438: A form of causal determinism, in which the antecedent conditions are the nature and will of God. Some have asserted that Augustine of Hippo introduced theological determinism into Christianity in 412 CE, whereas all prior Christian authors supported free will against Stoic and Gnostic determinism. However, there are many Biblical passages that seem to support the idea of some kind of theological determinism. Adequate determinism

2080-436: A group of city-states allied themselves to defend Greece, the vast majority of poleis remained neutral, and after the Persian defeat, the allies quickly returned to infighting. Thus, the major peculiarities of the ancient Greek political system were its fragmented nature (and that this does not particularly seem to have tribal origin), and the particular focus on urban centers within otherwise tiny states. The peculiarities of

2240-432: A heterodox version of the doctrine, noting that some Stoics suggest that "there is a slight and very minute difference between one period and the events in the period before it". This was probably not a widely-held belief, as it represents a denial of the deterministic viewpoint which stands at the heart of Stoic philosophy. Christian authors attacked the doctrine of eternal recurrence on various grounds. Origen argued that

2400-403: A hypothetical question rather than postulating it as a fact. Many readings argue that Nietzsche was not attempting to make a cosmological or theoretical claim i.e. saying that eternal recurrence is a true statement about how the world works. Instead, the emotional reaction to the thought experiment serves to reveal whether one is living life to the best. According to Heidegger, the significant point

2560-573: A job but to become an effective citizen. Girls also learned to read, write and do simple arithmetic so they could manage the household. They almost never received education after childhood. Determinism Determinism is the philosophical view that all events in the universe , including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. Like eternalism , determinism focuses on particular events rather than

2720-465: A large enough quantity of matter would be capable of an infinite number of possible combinations. According to Ouspensky, everyone is reborn again into the same life at the moment of their death, and many people will indeed continue to live the exact same lives for eternity, but it is also possible to break the cycle and enter into a new plane of existence. The Poincaré recurrence theorem states that certain dynamical systems , such as particles of gas in

2880-655: A loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and other territories. Prior to the Roman period , most of these regions were officially unified once under the Kingdom of Macedon from 338 to 323 BC. In Western history , the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period. Three centuries after the decline of Mycenaean Greece during

3040-450: A massive, never-ending chain; the basic principle is that all things (dharmas, phenomena, principles) arise in dependence upon other things, which means that they are fundamentally "empty" or devoid of any intrinsic, eternal essence and therefore are impermanent . In traditional Buddhist philosophy, this concept is used to explain the functioning of the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth ( saṃsāra ); all thoughts and actions exert

3200-515: A much broader societal level, structural determinists believe that larger issues in the society—especially those pertaining to minorities and subjugated communities—are predominantly assessed through existing structural conditions, making change of prevailing conditions difficult, and sometimes outright impossible. For example, the concept has been applied to the politics of race in the United States of America and other Western countries such as

3360-452: A number of sources in developing his own formulation of the theory. He had studied Pythagorean and Stoic philosophy, was familiar with the works of contemporary philosophers such as Dühring and Vogt, and may have encountered references to Blanqui in a book by Friedrich Albert Lange . He was also a fan of the author Heinrich Heine , one of whose books contains a passage discussing the theory of eternal return. Nevertheless, Nietzsche claimed that

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3520-475: A reason and by necessity. Predeterminism is the idea that all events are determined in advance. The concept is often argued by invoking causal determinism, implying that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of the universe. In the case of predeterminism, this chain of events has been pre-established, and human actions cannot interfere with the outcomes of this pre-established chain. Predeterminism can be categorized as

3680-760: A result of Epaminondas ' liberation of Messenia from Spartan rule, the helot system there came to an end and the helots won their freedom. However, it did continue to persist in Laconia until the 2nd century BC. For most of Greek history, education was private, except in Sparta. During the Hellenistic period, some city-states established public schools . Only wealthy families could afford a teacher. Boys learned how to read, write and quote literature. They also learned to sing and play one musical instrument and were trained as athletes for military service. They studied not for

3840-409: A sealed container, will return infinitely often to a state arbitrarily close to their original state. The theorem, first advanced by Henri Poincaré in 1890, remains influential, and is today the basis of ergodic theory . Attempts have been made to prove or disprove the possibility of Poincaré recurrence in a system the size of a galaxy or a universe. Philosopher Michael Huemer has argued that if this

4000-479: A set of parallel universe time streams that split off when the action occurred. This theory is sometimes described with the example of agent based choices but more involved models argue that recursive causal splitting occurs with all wave functions at play. This model is highly contested with multiple objections from the scientific community. Although some of the above forms of determinism concern human behaviors and cognition , others frame themselves as an answer to

4160-523: A special type of slaves called helots . Helots were Messenians enslaved en masse during the Messenian Wars by the state and assigned to families where they were forced to stay. Helots raised food and did household chores so that women could concentrate on raising strong children while men could devote their time to training as hoplites . Their masters treated them harshly, and helots revolted against their masters several times. In 370/69 BC, as

4320-417: A specific type of determinism when it is used to mean pre-established causal determinism. It can also be used interchangeably with causal determinism—in the context of its capacity to determine future events. However, predeterminism is often considered as independent of causal determinism. The term predeterminism is also frequently used in the context of biology and heredity, in which case it represents

4480-446: A system of strict self-discipline. When Ouspensky asked about eternal recurrence, Gurdjieff told him: This idea of repetition ... is not the full and absolute truth, but it is the nearest possible approximation of the truth ... And if you understand why I do not speak of this, you will be still nearer to it. What is the use of a man knowing about recurrence if he is not conscious of it and if he himself does not change? ... Knowledge about

4640-511: A tolerance. However, old western scientists believed if there are any logical connections found between an observed cause and effect, there must be also some absolute natural laws behind. Belief in perfect natural laws driving everything, instead of just describing what we should expect, led to searching for a set of universal simple laws that rule the world. This movement significantly encouraged deterministic views in Western philosophy, as well as

4800-722: A war with the Roman Republic in the late 3rd century. Although the First Macedonian War was inconclusive, the Romans, in typical fashion, continued to fight Macedon until it was completely absorbed into the Roman Republic (by 149 BC). In the east, the unwieldy Seleucid Empire gradually disintegrated, although a rump survived until 64 BC, whilst the Ptolemaic Kingdom continued in Egypt until 30 BC when it too

4960-684: A year, the Thirty had been overthrown. The first half of the fourth century saw the major Greek states attempt to dominate the mainland; none were successful, and their resulting weakness led to a power vacuum which would eventually be filled by Macedon under Philip II and then Alexander the Great. In the immediate aftermath of the Peloponnesian war, Sparta attempted to extend their own power, leading Argos, Athens, Corinth, and Thebes to join against them. Aiming to prevent any single Greek state gaining

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5120-570: Is a concept that emphasizes rational and predictable outcomes. Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela popularized the notion, writing that a living system's general order is maintained via a circular process of ongoing self-referral, and thus its organization and structure defines the changes it undergoes. According to the authors, a system can undergo changes of state (alteration of structure without loss of identity) or disintegrations (alteration of structure with loss of identity). Such changes or disintegrations are not ascertained by

5280-541: Is a form of determinism that holds that all events that happen are either preordained (i.e., predestined ) to happen by a monotheistic deity , or are destined to occur given its omniscience. Two forms of theological determinism exist, referred to as strong and weak theological determinism. Strong theological determinism is based on the concept of a creator deity dictating all events in history: "everything that happens has been predestined to happen by an omniscient, omnipotent divinity." Weak theological determinism

5440-550: Is a middle way between different sets of "extreme" views (such as " monist " and " pluralist " ontologies or materialist and dualist views of mind-body relation). In the Kaccānagotta Sutta of the Pāli Canon ( SN 12.15, parallel at SA 301), the historical Buddha stated that "this world mostly relies on the dual notions of existence and non-existence" and then explains the right view as follows: But when you truly see

5600-516: Is about interactions which affect cognitive processes in people's lives. It is about the cause and the result of what people have done. Cause and result are always bound together in cognitive processes. It assumes that if an observer has sufficient information about an object or human being, that such an observer might be able to predict every consequent move of that object or human being. Determinism rarely requires that perfect prediction be practically possible. Determinism may commonly refer to any of

5760-409: Is based on the concept of divine foreknowledge—"because God's omniscience is perfect, what God knows about the future will inevitably happen, which means, consequently, that the future is already fixed." There exist slight variations on this categorization, however. Some claim either that theological determinism requires predestination of all events and outcomes by the divinity—i.e., they do not classify

5920-477: Is compelled to act as God knew beforehand he would act, otherwise God's knowledge would be imperfect." Determinism in the West is often associated with Newtonian mechanics/physics , which depicts the physical matter of the universe as operating according to a set of fixed laws. The "billiard ball" hypothesis, a product of Newtonian physics, argues that once the initial conditions of the universe have been established,

6080-492: Is denied whether determinism is true or not. He says that if determinism is true, all actions are predicted and no one is assumed to be free; however, if determinism is false, all actions are presumed to be random and as such no one seems free because they have no part in controlling what happens. Some determinists argue that materialism does not present a complete understanding of the universe, because while it can describe determinate interactions among material things, it ignores

6240-558: Is generally considered the cradle of Western civilization , the seminal culture from which the modern West derives many of its founding archetypes and ideas in politics, philosophy, science, and art. Classical antiquity in the Mediterranean region is commonly considered to have begun in the 8th century BC (around the time of the earliest recorded poetry of Homer) and ended in the 6th century AD. Classical antiquity in Greece

6400-430: Is known in theology as the paradox of free will . The writings of Epictetus as well as middle Platonist and early Christian thought were instrumental in this development. Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides said of the deterministic implications of an omniscient god: "Does God know or does He not know that a certain individual will be good or bad? If thou sayest 'He knows', then it necessarily follows that [that] man

6560-458: Is mountainous, and as a result, ancient Greece consisted of many smaller regions, each with its own dialect, cultural peculiarities, and identity. Regionalism and regional conflicts were prominent features of ancient Greece. Cities tended to be located in valleys between mountains, or on coastal plains, and dominated a certain area around them. In the south lay the Peloponnese , consisting of

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6720-400: Is nothing in the universe that has no cause or is self-caused . Causal determinism has also been considered more generally as the idea that everything that happens or exists is caused by antecedent conditions. In the case of nomological determinism, these conditions are considered events also, implying that the future is determined completely by preceding events—a combination of prior states of

6880-494: Is so, then reincarnation can be proved by a person's current existence, using Bayesian probability theory . Further reading Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( Ancient Greek : Ἑλλάς , romanized :  Hellás ) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( c.  600 AD ), that comprised

7040-415: Is sometimes illustrated by the thought experiment of Laplace's demon . Although sometimes called scientific determinism, the term is a misnomer for nomological determinism. Necessitarianism is a metaphysical principle that denies all mere possibility and maintains that there is only one possible way for the world to exist. Leucippus claimed there are no uncaused events and that everything occurs for

7200-422: Is still the case, according to causal determinism, that the occurrence or existence of yet other things depends upon our deliberating, choosing and acting in a certain way. Causal determinism proposes that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of the universe. The relation between events and the origin of the universe may not be specified. Causal determinists believe that there

7360-406: Is that Nietzsche was attempting to create a new ethical standard by which people should judge their own behaviour. In one of his unpublished notes, Nietzsche writes: "The question which thou wilt have to answer before every deed that thou doest: 'is this such a deed as I am prepared to perform an incalculable number of times?' is the best ballast." Taken in this sense, the doctrine has been compared to

7520-540: Is that which hath been? It is that which shall be. And what is that which is done? It is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Who can speak and say, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us." Augustine denies that this has reference to the recurrence of specific people, objects, and events, instead interpreting the passage in a more general sense. In support of his argument, he appeals to scriptural passages such as Romans 6:9, which affirms that Christ "being raised from

7680-513: Is the burden imposed by the question of eternal recurrence, regardless of whether or not such a thing could possibly be true. The idea is similar to Nietzsche's concept of amor fati , which he describes in Ecce Homo : "My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati : that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear what is necessary, still less conceal it ... but love it." On

7840-488: Is the doctrine of non-self ( anattā ). In Buddhism, attaining enlightenment involves one realizing that neither in humans nor any other sentient beings there is a fundamental core of permanent being, identity, or personality which can be called the "soul", and that all sentient beings (including humans) are instead made of several, constantly changing factors which bind them to the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth ( saṃsāra ). Sentient beings are composed of

8000-523: Is the idea that everything is fated to happen, resulting in humans having no control over their future. Fate has arbitrary power, and does not necessarily follow any causal or deterministic laws . Types of fatalism include hard theological determinism and the idea of predestination , where there is a God who determines all that humans will do. This may be accomplished through either foreknowledge of their actions, achieved through omniscience or by predetermining their actions. Theological determinism

8160-471: Is the idea, because of quantum decoherence , that quantum indeterminacy can be ignored for most macroscopic events. Random quantum events "average out" in the limit of large numbers of particles (where the laws of quantum mechanics asymptotically approach the laws of classical mechanics). Stephen Hawking explains a similar idea: he says that the microscopic world of quantum mechanics is one of determined probabilities. That is, quantum effects rarely alter

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8320-479: Is unclear exactly how this change occurred. For instance, in Athens, the kingship had been reduced to a hereditary, lifelong chief magistracy ( archon ) by c. 1050 BC; by 753 BC this had become a decennial, elected archonship; and finally by 683 BC an annually elected archonship. Through each stage, more power would have been transferred to the aristocracy as a whole, and away from a single individual. Inevitably,

8480-440: Is unique in world history as the first period attested directly in comprehensive, narrative historiography , while earlier ancient history or protohistory is known from much more fragmentary documents such as annals, king lists, and pragmatic epigraphy . Herodotus is widely known as the "father of history": his Histories are eponymous of the entire field . Written between the 450s and 420s BC, Herodotus' work reaches about

8640-723: Is usually counted from the Roman victory over the Corinthians at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC to the establishment of Byzantium by Constantine as the capital of the Roman Empire in 330 AD. Finally, Late Antiquity refers to the period of Christianization during the later 4th to early 6th centuries AD, consummated by the closure of the Academy of Athens by Justinian I in 529. The historical period of ancient Greece

8800-471: Is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than of many other cities. Their scope is further limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, ignoring economic and social history. The archaic period, lasting from approximately 800 to 500 BC, saw the culmination of political and social developments which had begun in the Greek dark age, with the polis (city-state) becoming

8960-655: The Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great spread Hellenistic civilization across the Middle East. The Hellenistic Period is considered to have ended in 30 BC, when the last Hellenistic kingdom, Ptolemaic Egypt , was annexed by the Roman Republic . Classical Greek culture , especially philosophy, had a powerful influence on ancient Rome , which carried a version of it throughout the Mediterranean and much of Europe. For this reason, Classical Greece

9120-710: The Archaic period , the Greek population grew beyond the capacity of the limited arable land of Greece proper, resulting in the large-scale establishment of colonies elsewhere: according to one estimate, the population of the widening area of Greek settlement increased roughly tenfold from 800 BC to 400 BC, from 800,000 to as many as 7 + 1 ⁄ 2 -10 million. This was not simply for trade, but also to found settlements. These Greek colonies were not, as Roman colonies were, dependent on their mother-city, but were independent city-states in their own right. Greeks settled outside of Greece in two distinct ways. The first

9280-647: The Battle of Aegospotami , and began to blockade Athens' harbour; driven by hunger, Athens sued for peace, agreeing to surrender their fleet and join the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League. Following the Athenian surrender, Sparta installed an oligarchic regime, the Thirty Tyrants , in Athens, one of a number of Spartan-backed oligarchies which rose to power after the Peloponnesian war. Spartan predominance did not last: after only

9440-745: The Boeotian League and finally to the League of Corinth led by Macedon . This period was shaped by the Greco-Persian Wars , the Peloponnesian War , and the Rise of Macedon . Following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period (323–146 BC), during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East from the death of Alexander until the Roman conquest. Roman Greece

9600-655: The Bronze Age Collapse , Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical Greece , from the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and which included the Golden Age of Athens and the Peloponnesian War . The unification of Greece by Macedon under Philip II and subsequent conquest of

9760-576: The Delian League gradually transformed from a defensive alliance of Greek states into an Athenian empire, as Athens' growing naval power intimidated the other league states. Athens ended its campaigns against Persia in 450, after a disastrous defeat in Egypt in 454, and the death of Cimon in action against the Persians on Cyprus in 450. As the Athenian fight against the Persian empire waned, conflict grew between Athens and Sparta. Suspicious of

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9920-543: The Niyati (" Fate ") doctrine of absolute fatalism or determinism, which negates the existence of free will and karma , and is therefore considered one of the nāstika or "heterodox" schools of Indian philosophy . The oldest descriptions of the Ājīvika fatalists and their founder Gosāla can be found both in the Buddhist and Jaina scriptures of ancient India. The predetermined fate of all sentient beings and

10080-740: The Paeonians due north, the Thracians to the northeast, and the Illyrians , with whom the Macedonians were frequently in conflict, to the northwest. Chalcidice was settled early on by southern Greek colonists and was considered part of the Greek world, while from the late 2nd millennium BC substantial Greek settlement also occurred on the eastern shores of the Aegean , in Anatolia . During

10240-676: The Pre-socratic philosophers Heraclitus and Leucippus , later Aristotle , and mainly by the Stoics . Some of the main philosophers who have dealt with this issue are Marcus Aurelius , Omar Khayyam , Thomas Hobbes , Baruch Spinoza , Gottfried Leibniz , David Hume , Baron d'Holbach (Paul Heinrich Dietrich), Pierre-Simon Laplace , Arthur Schopenhauer , William James , Friedrich Nietzsche , Albert Einstein , Niels Bohr , Ralph Waldo Emerson and, more recently, John Searle , Ted Honderich , and Daniel Dennett . Mecca Chiesa notes that

10400-538: The Presocratics Heraclitus and Leucippus . The first notions of determinism appears to originate with the Stoics , as part of their theory of universal causal determinism. The resulting philosophical debates, which involved the confluence of elements of Aristotelian Ethics with Stoic psychology, led in the 1st–3rd centuries CE in the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias to the first recorded Western debate over determinism and freedom, an issue that

10560-475: The United Kingdom and Australia , with structural determinists lamenting structural factors for the prevalence of racism in these countries. Additionally, Marxists have conceptualized the writings of Karl Marx within the context of structural determinism as well. For example, Louis Althusser , a structural Marxist , argues that the state, in its political, economic, and legal structures, reproduces

10720-441: The categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant . Once again, however, the objection is raised that no such ethical imperative appears in any of Nietzsche's published writings, and this interpretation is therefore rejected by most modern scholars. Russian esotericist P. D. Ouspensky (1878–1947) believed in the literal truth of eternal recurrence. As a child, he had been prone to vivid sensations of déjà vu , and when he encountered

10880-510: The five aggregates of existence ( skandha ): matter, sensation, perception, mental formations , and consciousness. In the Saṃyutta Nikāya of the Pāli Canon , the historical Buddha is recorded as saying that "just as the word 'chariot' exists on the basis of the aggregation of parts, even so the concept of 'being' exists when the five aggregates are available." The early Buddhist texts outline different ways in which dependent origination

11040-418: The minds or souls of conscious beings. A number of positions can be delineated: Another topic of debate is the implication that determinism has on morality . Philosopher and incompatibilist Peter van Inwagen introduced this thesis, when arguments that free will is required for moral judgments, as such: Determinism was developed by the Greek philosophers during the 7th and 6th centuries BCE by

11200-449: The poleis grouped themselves into leagues, membership of which was in a constant state of flux. Later in the Classical period, the leagues would become fewer and larger, be dominated by one city (particularly Athens , Sparta and Thebes ); and often poleis would be compelled to join under threat of war (or as part of a peace treaty). Even after Philip II of Macedon conquered the heartlands of ancient Greece, he did not attempt to annex

11360-408: The probabilistic or selectionistic determinism of B. F. Skinner comprised a wholly separate conception of determinism that was not mechanistic at all. Mechanistic determinism assumes that every event has an unbroken chain of prior occurrences, but a selectionistic or probabilistic model does not. In the West, some elements of determinism have been expressed in Greece from the 6th century BCE by

11520-471: The speed of light and when interactions at the atomic scale are studied. Before the discovery of quantum effects and other challenges to Newtonian physics, "uncertainty" was always a term that applied to the accuracy of human knowledge about causes and effects, and not to the causes and effects themselves. Newtonian mechanics, as well as any following physical theories, are results of observations and experiments, and so they describe "how it all works" within

11680-464: The 146 BC conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. Macedonia became a Roman province while southern Greece came under the surveillance of Macedonia's prefect ; however, some Greek poleis managed to maintain a partial independence and avoid taxation. The Aegean Islands were added to this territory in 133 BC. Athens and other Greek cities revolted in 88 BC, and the peninsula was crushed by

11840-437: The 19th century restarted the debate among scientists and philosophers about the ultimate fate of the universe, which brought in its train many questions about the nature of time. Eduard von Hartmann argued that the universe's final state would be identical to the state in which it had begun; Eugen Dühring rejected this idea, claiming that it carried with it the necessary consequence that the universe would begin again, and that

12000-583: The Carthaginian invasion at the Battle of Himera . The Persians were decisively defeated at sea by a primarily Athenian naval force at the Battle of Salamis , and on land in 479 BC at the Battle of Plataea . The alliance against Persia continued, initially led by the Spartan Pausanias but from 477 by Athens, and by 460 Persia had been driven out of the Aegean. During this long campaign,

12160-525: The Corinthian empire in northwest Greece and defended its own empire, despite a plague which killed the leading Athenian statesman Pericles . The war turned after Athenian victories led by Cleon at Pylos and Sphakteria , and Sparta sued for peace, but the Athenians rejected the proposal. The Athenian failure to regain control of Boeotia at Delium and Brasidas ' successes in northern Greece in 424 improved Sparta's position after Sphakteria. After

12320-505: The Dutch philosopher, acting out of one's own internal necessity is genuine freedom while being driven by exterior determinations is akin to bondage. Spinoza's thoughts on human servitude and liberty are respectively detailed in the fourth and fifth volumes of his work Ethics . The standard argument against free will, according to philosopher J. J. C. Smart , focuses on the implications of determinism for free will. He suggests free will

12480-668: The Greek city-states. It greatly widened the horizons of the Greeks and led to a steady emigration of the young and ambitious to the new Greek empires in the east. Many Greeks migrated to Alexandria, Antioch and the many other new Hellenistic cities founded in Alexander's wake, as far away as present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan , where the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and the Indo-Greek Kingdom survived until

12640-460: The Greek colonies Syracusae ( Συράκουσαι ), Neapolis ( Νεάπολις ), Massalia ( Μασσαλία ) and Byzantion ( Βυζάντιον ). These colonies played an important role in the spread of Greek influence throughout Europe and also aided in the establishment of long-distance trading networks between the Greek city-states, boosting the economy of ancient Greece . Ancient Greece consisted of several hundred relatively independent city-states ( poleis ). This

12800-578: The Greek colony Sybaris in southern Italy, its allies, and the Serdaioi. In 499 BC, the Ionian city states under Persian rule rebelled against their Persian-supported tyrant rulers. Supported by troops sent from Athens and Eretria , they advanced as far as Sardis and burnt the city before being driven back by a Persian counterattack. The revolt continued until 494, when the rebelling Ionians were defeated. Darius did not forget that Athens had assisted

12960-420: The Greek system are further evidenced by the colonies that they set up throughout the Mediterranean , which, though they might count a certain Greek polis as their 'mother' (and remain sympathetic to her), were completely independent of the founding city. Inevitably smaller poleis might be dominated by larger neighbors, but conquest or direct rule by another city-state appears to have been quite rare. Instead

13120-815: The Greeks began 250 years of expansion, settling colonies in all directions. To the east, the Aegean coast of Asia Minor was colonized first, followed by Cyprus and the coasts of Thrace , the Sea of Marmara and south coast of the Black Sea . Eventually, Greek colonization reached as far northeast as present-day Ukraine and Russia ( Taganrog ). To the west the coasts of Illyria , Southern Italy (called " Magna Graecia ") were settled, followed by Southern France , Corsica , and even eastern Spain . Greek colonies were also founded in Egypt and Libya . Modern Syracuse , Naples , Marseille and Istanbul had their beginnings as

13280-423: The Greeks were very aware of their tribal origins; Herodotus was able to extensively categorise the city-states by tribe. Yet, although these higher-level relationships existed, they seem to have rarely had a major role in Greek politics. The independence of the poleis was fiercely defended; unification was something rarely contemplated by the ancient Greeks. Even when, during the second Persian invasion of Greece,

13440-535: The Ionian revolt, and in 490 he assembled an armada to retaliate. Though heavily outnumbered, the Athenians—supported by their Plataean allies—defeated the Persian hordes at the Battle of Marathon , and the Persian fleet turned tail. Ten years later, a second invasion was launched by Darius' son Xerxes . The city-states of northern and central Greece submitted to the Persian forces without resistance, but

13600-483: The League of Corinth following the death of Philip, Alexander began his campaign against Persia in 334 BC. He conquered Persia, defeating Darius III at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC, and after the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC proclaimed himself king of Asia. From 329 BC he led expeditions to Bactria and then India; further plans to invade Arabia and North Africa were halted by his death in 323 BC. The period from

13760-583: The Newtonians argue, one must question one's measurements of the original position of the object, the exact direction of the striking object, gravitational or other fields that were inadvertently ignored, etc. Then, they maintain, repeated experiments and improvements in accuracy will always bring one's observations closer to the theoretically predicted results. When dealing with situations on an ordinary human scale, Newtonian physics has been successful. But it fails as velocities become some substantial fraction of

13920-634: The Roman general Sulla . The Roman civil wars devastated the land even further, until Augustus organized the peninsula as the province of Achaea in 27 BC. Greece was a key eastern province of the Roman Empire, as the Roman culture had long been in fact Greco-Roman . The Greek language served as a lingua franca in the East and in Italy , and many Greek intellectuals such as Galen would perform most of their work in Rome . The territory of Greece

14080-534: The Stoics believed that the contents of each new universe would be one and the same with those of the previous universe, or only so similar as to be indistinguishable. The former point of view was attributed to the Stoic Chrysippus (c. 279 – c. 206 BC) by Alexander of Aphrodisias , who wrote: They hold that after the conflagration all the same things come to be again in the world numerically, so that even

14240-579: The ancient Greeks did not think in terms of race . Most families owned slaves as household servants and laborers, and even poor families might have owned a few slaves. Owners were not allowed to beat or kill their slaves. Owners often promised to free slaves in the future to encourage slaves to work hard. Unlike in Rome, freedmen did not become citizens. Instead, they were mixed into the population of metics , which included people from foreign countries or other city-states who were officially allowed to live in

14400-403: The case; although Ivan always knows in advance what the outcome of his actions will be, he is unable to keep himself from repeating those actions. Having re-lived his life up to the point of his conversation with the magician, Ivan asks in despair whether there is any way of changing the past. The magician answers that he must first change himself; if he works on improving his character, he may have

14560-494: The causal set of events leading to the present are all valid yet appear as a singular linear time stream within a much broader unseen conic probability field of other outcomes that "split off" from the locally observed timeline. Under this model causal sets are still "consistent" yet not exclusive to singular iterated outcomes. The interpretation sidesteps the exclusive retrospective causal chain problem of "could not have done otherwise" by suggesting "the other outcome does exist" in

14720-666: The center, while in the east lay Boeotia , Attica , and Megaris . Northeast lay Thessaly , while Epirus lay to the northwest. Epirus stretched from the Ambracian Gulf in the south to the Ceraunian Mountains and the Aoos river in the north, and consisted of Chaonia (north), Molossia (center), and Thesprotia (south). In the northeast corner was Macedonia , originally consisting Lower Macedonia and its regions, such as Elimeia , Pieria , and Orestis . Around

14880-455: The course of the archaic period. Already in the seventh century, the right of all citizen men to attend the assembly appears to have been established. After a failed coup led by Cylon of Athens around 636 BC, Draco was appointed to establish a code of laws in 621. This failed to reduce the political tension between the poor and the elites, and in 594 Solon was given the authority to enact another set of reforms, which attempted to balance

15040-473: The course of the eighth and seventh century. According to Spartan tradition, this constitution was established by the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus . Over the course of the first and second Messenian wars , Sparta subjugated the neighbouring region of Messenia , enserfing the population. In the sixth century, Greek city-states began to develop formal relationships with one another, where previously individual rulers had relied on personal relationships with

15200-420: The dead dieth no more". Eternal recurrence ( German : Ewige Wiederkunft ) is one of the central concepts of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). While the idea itself is not original to Nietzsche, his unique response to it gave new life to the theory, and speculation as to the correct interpretation of Nietzsche's doctrine continues to this day. The discovery of the laws of thermodynamics in

15360-461: The death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC until the death of Cleopatra , the last Macedonian ruler of Egypt, is known as the Hellenistic period. In the early part of this period, a new form of kingship developed based on Macedonian and Near Eastern traditions. The first Hellenistic kings were previously Alexander's generals, and took power in the period following his death, though they were not part of existing royal lineages and lacked historic claims to

15520-552: The death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. The Classical Period is characterized by a "classical" style, i.e. one which was considered exemplary by later observers, most famously in the Parthenon of Athens. Politically, the Classical Period was dominated by Athens and the Delian League during the 5th century, but displaced by Spartan hegemony during the early 4th century BC, before power shifted to Thebes and

15680-423: The deaths of Cleon and Brasidas, the strongest proponents of war on each side, a peace treaty was negoitiated in 421 by the Athenian general Nicias . The peace did not last, however. In 418 BC allied forces of Athens and Argos were defeated by Sparta at Mantinea . In 415 Athens launched an ambitious naval expedition to dominate Sicily; the expedition ended in disaster at the harbor of Syracuse , with almost

15840-532: The debate on nature and nurture . They will suggest that one factor will entirely determine behavior. As scientific understanding has grown, however, the strongest versions of these theories have been widely rejected as a single-cause fallacy . In other words, the modern deterministic theories attempt to explain how the interaction of both nature and nurture is entirely predictable. The concept of heritability has been helpful in making this distinction. Other "deterministic" theories actually seek only to highlight

16000-473: The direct analysis of Buddhist metaphysics through the lens of determinism is difficult, due to the differences between European and Buddhist traditions of thought. One concept which is argued to support a hard determinism is the doctrine of dependent origination ( pratītyasamutpāda ) in the early Buddhist texts , which states that all phenomena ( dharma ) are necessarily caused by some other phenomenon, which it can be said to be dependent on, like links in

16160-400: The discourse of capitalism, in turn, allowing for the burgeoning of capitalistic structures. Proponents of the notion highlight the usefulness of structural determinism to study complicated issues related to race and gender, as it highlights often gilded structural conditions that block meaningful change. Critics call it too rigid, reductionist and inflexible. Additionally, they also criticize

16320-812: The doctrine struck him one day as a sudden revelation, while walking beside Lake Silvaplana in Switzerland. The first published presentation of Nietzsche's version of the theory appears in The Gay Science , section 341, where it is proposed to the reader as a thought experiment . What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness, and say to you, "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in

16480-674: The dominance that would allow it to challenge Persia, the Persian king initially joined the alliance against Sparta, before imposing the Peace of Antalcidas ("King's Peace") which restored Persia's control over the Anatolian Greeks. By 371 BC, Thebes was in the ascendancy, defeating Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra , killing the Spartan king Cleombrotus I , and invading Laconia. Further Theban successes against Sparta in 369 led to Messenia gaining independence; Sparta never recovered from

16640-409: The domination of politics and concomitant aggregation of wealth by small groups of families was apt to cause social unrest in many poleis . In many cities a tyrant (not in the modern sense of repressive autocracies), would at some point seize control and govern according to their own will; often a populist agenda would help sustain them in power. In a system wracked with class conflict , government by

16800-726: The east to the Indian king Chandragupta Maurya in exchange for war elephants, and later lost large parts of Persia to the Parthian Empire . By the mid-third century, the kingdoms of Alexander's successors was mostly stable, though there continued to be disputes over border areas. The great capitals of Hellenistic culture were Alexandria in the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Antioch in the Seleucid Empire . The conquests of Alexander had numerous consequences for

16960-472: The elements of the disturbing agent, as each disturbance will only trigger responses in the respective system, which in turn, are determined by each system's own structure. On an individualistic level, what this means is that human beings as free and independent entities are triggered to react by external stimuli or change in circumstance. However, their own internal state and existing physical and mental capacities determine their responses to those triggers. On

17120-552: The elites of other cities. Towards the end of the archaic period, Sparta began to build a series of alliances, the Peloponnesian League , with cities including Corinth , Elis , and Megara , isolating Messenia and reinforcing Sparta's position against Argos , the other major power in the Peloponnese. Other alliances in the sixth century included those between Elis and Heraea in the Peloponnese; and between

17280-619: The end of the first century BC. The city-states within Greece formed themselves into two leagues; the Achaean League (including Corinth and Argos) and the Aetolian League (including Sparta and Athens). For much of the period until the Roman conquest, these leagues were at war, often participating in the conflicts between the Diadochi (the successor states to Alexander's empire). The Antigonid Kingdom became involved in

17440-609: The entire army killed, and the ships destroyed. Soon after the Athenian defeat in Syracuse, Athens' Ionian allies began to rebel against the Delian league, while Persia began to once again involve itself in Greek affairs on the Spartan side. Initially the Athenian position continued relatively strong, with important victories at Cyzicus in 410 and Arginusae in 406. However, in 405 the Spartan Lysander defeated Athens in

17600-540: The exact borders of the Hellenistic kingdoms were not settled. Antigonus attempted to expand his territory by attacking the other successor kingdoms until they joined against him, and he was killed at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC. His son Demetrius spent many years in Seleucid captivity, and his son, Antigonus II , only reclaimed the Macedonian throne around 276. Meanwhile, the Seleucid kingdom gave up territory in

17760-546: The following viewpoints. Causal determinism, sometimes synonymous with historical determinism (a sort of path dependence ), is "the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature." However, it is a broad enough term to consider that: ...One's deliberations, choices, and actions will often be necessary links in the causal chain that brings something about. In other words, even though our deliberations, choices, and actions are themselves determined like everything else, it

17920-469: The founding of Greek colonies around the Mediterranean, with Euboean settlements at Al-Mina in the east as early as 800 BC, and Ischia in the west by 775. Increasing contact with non-Greek peoples in this period, especially in the Near East, inspired developments in art and architecture, the adoption of coinage, and the development of the Greek alphabet. Athens developed its democratic system over

18080-509: The four possible positions in the figure. Compatibilism refers to the view that free will is, in some sense, compatible with determinism. The three incompatibilist positions deny this possibility. The hard incompatibilists hold that free will is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism, the libertarians that determinism does not hold, and free will might exist, and the hard determinists that determinism does hold and free will does not exist. The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza

18240-463: The future as a concept. The opposite of determinism is indeterminism , or the view that events are not deterministically caused but rather occur due to chance. Determinism is often contrasted with free will , although some philosophers claim that the two are compatible . Historically, debates about determinism have involved many philosophical positions and given rise to multiple varieties or interpretations of determinism. One topic of debate concerns

18400-576: The government. In Athens, the population was divided into four social classes based on wealth. People could change classes if they made more money. In Sparta, all male citizens were called homoioi , meaning "peers". However, Spartan kings, who served as the city-state's dual military and religious leaders, came from two families. Women in Ancient Greece appear to have primarily performed domestic tasks, managed households, and borne and reared children. Slaves had no power or status. Slaves had

18560-469: The importance of a particular factor in predicting the future. These theories often use the factor as a sort of guide or constraint on the future. They need not suppose that complete knowledge of that one factor would allow the making of perfect predictions. Structural determinism is the philosophical view that actions, events, and processes are predicated on and determined by structural factors. Given any particular structure or set of estimable components, it

18720-626: The impossibility to achieve liberation ( mokṣa ) from the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth ( saṃsāra ) was the major distinctive philosophical and metaphysical doctrine of this heterodox school of Indian philosophy, annoverated among the other Śramaṇa movements that emerged in India during the Second urbanization (600–200 BCE). [REDACTED] Religion portal Buddhist philosophy contains several concepts which some scholars describe as deterministic to various levels. However,

18880-547: The increasing Athenian power funded by the Delian League, Sparta offered aid to reluctant members of the League to rebel against Athenian domination. These tensions were exacerbated in 462 BC when Athens sent a force to aid Sparta in overcoming a helot revolt, but this aid was rejected by the Spartans. In the 450s, Athens took control of Boeotia, and won victories over Aegina and Corinth. However, Athens failed to win

19040-514: The loss of Messenia's fertile land and the helot workforce it provided. The rising power of Thebes led Sparta and Athens to join forces; in 362 they were defeated by Thebes at the Battle of Mantinea . In the aftermath of Mantinea, none of the major Greek states were able to dominate. Though Thebes had won the battle, their general Epaminondas was killed, and they spent the following decades embroiled in wars with their neighbours; Athens, meanwhile, saw its second naval alliance, formed in 377, collapse in

19200-495: The mid-350s. The power vacuum in Greece after the Battle of Mantinea was filled by Macedon, under Philip II . In 338 BC, he defeated a Greek alliance at the Battle of Chaeronea , and subsequently formed the League of Corinth . Philip planned to lead the League to invade Persia, but was murdered in 336 BC. His son Alexander the Great was left to fulfil his father's ambitions. After campaigns against Macedon's western and northern enemies, and those Greek states that had broken from

19360-443: The most important unit of political organisation in Greece. The absence of powerful states in Greece after the collapse of Mycenaean power, and the geography of Greece, where many settlements were separated from their neighbours by mountainous terrain, encouraged the development of small independent city-states. Several Greek states saw tyrants rise to power in this period, most famously at Corinth from 657 BC. The period also saw

19520-467: The nature of their next life in the cycle of Saṃsāra. Most major religions originating in India hold this belief to some degree, most notably Hinduism , Jainism , Sikhism , and Buddhism . The views on the interaction of karma and free will are numerous, and diverge from each other. For example, in Sikhism , god's grace, gained through worship, can erase one's karmic debts, a belief which reconciles

19680-402: The notion for overemphasizing deterministic forces such as structure over the role of human agency and the ability of the people to act. These critics argue that politicians, academics, and social activists have the capability to bring about significant change despite stringent structural conditions. Philosophers have debated both the truth of determinism, and the truth of free will. This creates

19840-412: The other hand, Nietzsche's posthumously published notebooks contain an attempt at a logical proof of eternal return, which is often adduced in support of the claim that Nietzsche believed in the theory as a real possibility. The proof is based upon the premise that the universe is infinite in duration, but contains a finite quantity of energy. This being the case, all matter in the universe must pass through

20000-554: The path of least resistance is effortless ( see : Wu wei ). In the philosophical schools of the Indian Subcontinent , the concept of karma deals with similar philosophical issues to the Western concept of determinism. Karma is understood as a spiritual mechanism which causes the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth ( saṃsāra ). Karma, either positive or negative, accumulates according to an individual's actions throughout their life, and at their death determines

20160-434: The possibility of salvation. The global spread of Christianity therefore brought an end to classical theories of eternal return. The concept was revived in the 19th century by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche . Having briefly presented the idea as a thought experiment in The Gay Science , he explored it more thoroughly in his novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra , in which the protagonist learns to overcome his horror of

20320-410: The power of the rich and the poor. In the middle of the sixth century, Pisistratus established himself as a tyrant, and after his death in 527 his son Hippias inherited his position; by the end of the sixth century he had been overthrown and Cleisthenes carried out further democratising reforms. In Sparta, a political system with two kings, a council of elders , and five ephors developed over

20480-503: The predictions of classical mechanics , which are quite accurate (albeit still not perfectly certain ) at larger scales. Something as large as an animal cell , then, would be "adequately determined" (even in light of quantum indeterminacy). The many-worlds interpretation accepts the linear causal sets of sequential events with adequate consistency yet also suggests constant forking of causal chains creating "multiple universes" to account for multiple outcomes from single events. Meaning

20640-598: The principle of karma with a monotheistic god one must freely choose to worship. Jainists believe in compatibilism , in which the cycle of Saṃsara is a completely mechanistic process, occurring without any divine intervention. The Jains hold an atomic view of reality, in which particles of karma form the fundamental microscopic building material of the universe. In ancient India , the Ājīvika school of philosophy founded by Makkhali Gosāla (around 500 BCE), otherwise referred to as "Ājīvikism" in Western scholarship , upheld

20800-540: The problem whether the same time recurs, as some say, or not. "The same" has many senses: the same in form seems to occur as do spring and winter and the other seasons and periods; similarly the same changes occur in form, for the sun performs its solstices and equinoxes and its other journeys. But if someone were to believe the Pythagoreans that numerically the same things recur, then I also will romance, holding my staff, while you sit there, and everything else will be

20960-617: The reforms of Solon (early 6th century), but the poorest citizens could not address the assembly or run for office. With the establishment of the democracy, the assembly became the de jure mechanism of government; all citizens had equal privileges in the assembly. However, non-citizens, such as metics (foreigners living in Athens) or slaves , had no political rights at all. After the rise of democracy in Athens, other city-states founded democracies. However, many retained more traditional forms of government. As so often in other matters, Sparta

21120-420: The regions of Laconia (southeast), Messenia (southwest), Elis (west), Achaia (north), Korinthia (northeast), Argolis (east), and Arcadia (center). These names survive to the present day as regional units of modern Greece , though with somewhat different boundaries. Mainland Greece to the north, nowadays known as Central Greece , consisted of Aetolia and Acarnania in the west, Locris , Doris , and Phocis in

21280-517: The related theological views of classical pantheism . Throughout history, the belief that the entire universe is a deterministic system subject to the will of fate or destiny has been articulated in both Eastern and Western religions, philosophy, music, and literature. The ancient Arabs that inhabited the Arabian Peninsula before the advent of Islam used to profess a widespread belief in fatalism ( ḳadar ) alongside

21440-487: The repetition of lives will add nothing for a man ... if he does not strive to change himself in order to escape this repetition. But if he changes something essential in himself, that is, if he attains something, this cannot be lost. Ouspensky incorporated this idea into his later writings. In A New Model of the Universe , he argued against Nietzsche's proof of the mathematical necessity of eternal repetition, claiming that

21600-404: The rest of the history of the universe follows inevitably. If it were actually possible to have complete knowledge of physical matter and all of the laws governing that matter at any one time, then it would be theoretically possible to compute the time and place of every event that will ever occur ( Laplace's demon ). In this sense, the basic particles of the universe operate in the same fashion as

21760-518: The right to have a family and own property, subject to their master's goodwill and permission, but they had no political rights. By 600 BC, chattel slavery had spread in Greece. By the 5th century BC, slaves made up one-third of the total population in some city-states. Between 40–80% of the population of Classical Athens were slaves. Slaves outside of Sparta almost never revolted because they were made up of too many nationalities and were too scattered to organize. However, unlike later Western culture ,

21920-429: The rolling balls on a billiard table, moving and striking each other in predictable ways to produce predictable results. Whether or not it is all-encompassing in so doing, Newtonian mechanics deals only with caused events; for example, if an object begins in a known position and is hit dead on by an object with some known velocity, then it will be pushed straight toward another predictable point. If it goes somewhere else,

22080-532: The same events are exactly repeated in every cycle. The Stoics may have found support for this doctrine in the concept of the Great Year , the oldest known expression of which is found in Plato 's Timaeus . Plato hypothesised that one complete cycle of time would be fulfilled when the sun, moon and planets all completed their various circuits and returned to their original positions. Sources differ as to whether

22240-498: The same forms would repeat themselves eternally, a doctrine which Dühring viewed as dangerously pessimistic. Johann Gustav Vogt  [ de ] , on the other hand, argued in favour of a cyclical system, additionally positing the spatial co-existence of an infinite number of identical worlds. Louis Auguste Blanqui similarly claimed that in an infinite universe, every possible combination of forms must repeat itself eternally across both time and space. Nietzsche may have drawn upon

22400-632: The same peculiarly qualified individual as before exists and comes to be again in that world, as Chrysippus says in his books On the World . On the other hand, Origen (c. 185 – c. 253 AD) characterises the Stoics as claiming that the contents of each cycle will not be identical, but only indistinguishable: To avoid supposing that Socrates will live again, they say that it will be some one indistinguishable from Socrates, who will marry some one indistinguishable from Xanthippe, and will be accused by men indistinguishable from Anytus and Meletus. Origen also records

22560-399: The same succession and sequence" ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." Nietzsche expanded upon this concept in the philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra , later writing that eternal return

22720-402: The same, and it is plausible to say that the time will be the same. The Stoics, possibly inspired by the Pythagoreans, incorporated the theory of eternal recurrence into their natural philosophy. According to Stoic physics , the universe is periodically destroyed in an immense conflagration ( ekpyrosis ), and then experiences a rebirth ( palingenesis ). These cycles continue for eternity, and

22880-470: The scope of determined systems. Some philosophers have maintained that the entire universe is a single determinate system, while others identify more limited determinate systems. Another common debate topic is whether determinism and free will can coexist; compatibilism and incompatibilism represent the opposing sides of this debate. Determinism should not be confused with the self-determination of human actions by reasons, motives, and desires. Determinism

23040-448: The state. City-states legally owned slaves. These public slaves had a larger measure of independence than slaves owned by families, living on their own and performing specialized tasks. In Athens, public slaves were trained to look out for counterfeit coinage , while temple slaves acted as servants of the temple's deity and Scythian slaves were employed in Athens as a police force corralling citizens to political functions. Sparta had

23200-695: The territories they controlled. The most important of these rulers in the decades after Alexander's death were Antigonus I and his son Demetrius in Macedonia and the rest of Greece, Ptolemy in Egypt, and Seleucus I in Syria and the former Persian empire; smaller Hellenistic kingdoms included the Attalids in Anatolia and the Greco-Bactrian kingdom . In the early part of the Hellenistic period,

23360-515: The territory or unify it into a new province, but compelled most of the poleis to join his own Corinthian League . Initially many Greek city-states seem to have been petty kingdoms; there was often a city official carrying some residual, ceremonial functions of the king ( basileus ), e.g., the archon basileus in Athens. However, by the Archaic period and the first historical consciousness, most had already become aristocratic oligarchies . It

23520-487: The theory of eternal return in the writings of Nietzsche, it occurred to him that this was a possible explanation for his experiences. He subsequently explored the idea in his semi-autobiographical novel, Strange Life of Ivan Osokin . In this story, Ivan Osokin implores a magician to send him back to his childhood and give him the chance to live his life over again. The magician obliges, but warns Ivan that he will be unable to correct any of his mistakes. This turns out to be

23680-446: The theory of eternal return may have originated with Pythagoras (c. 570 – c. 495 BC). According to Porphyry , it was one of the teachings of Pythagoras that "after certain specified periods, the same events occur again" and that "nothing was entirely new". Eudemus of Rhodes also references this Pythagorean doctrine in his commentary on Aristotle 's Physics . In a fragment preserved by Simplicius , Eudemus writes: One might raise

23840-533: The theory was incompatible with free will (although he did allow the possibility of diverse and non-identical cycles). Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430) objected to the fact that salvation was not possible in the Stoic scheme, arguing that even if a temporary happiness was attained, a soul could not be truly blessed if it was doomed to return again to misery. Augustine also mentions "certain philosophers" who cite Ecclesiastes 1:9–10 as evidence of eternal return: "What

24000-409: The thought of eternal return. It is not known whether Nietzsche believed in the literal truth of eternal return, or, if he did not, what he intended to demonstrate by it. Nietzsche's ideas were subsequently taken up and re-interpreted by other writers, such as Russian esotericist P. D. Ouspensky , who argued that it was possible to break the cycle of return. There are hints in ancient writings that

24160-626: The time of Alexander I of Macedon , the Argead kings of Macedon started to expand into Upper Macedonia , lands inhabited by independent Macedonian tribes like the Lyncestae , Orestae and the Elimiotae and to the west, beyond the Axius river , into Eordaia , Bottiaea , Mygdonia , and Almopia , regions settled by Thracian tribes. To the north of Macedonia lay various non-Greek peoples such as

24320-480: The universe and the laws of nature. These conditions can also be considered metaphysical in origin (such as in the case of theological determinism). Nomological determinism is the most common form of causal determinism and is generally synonymous with physical determinism. This is the notion that the past and the present dictate the future entirely and necessarily by rigid natural laws and that every occurrence inevitably results from prior events. Nomological determinism

24480-518: The weaker version as theological determinism unless libertarian free will is assumed to be denied as a consequence—or that the weaker version does not constitute theological determinism at all. With respect to free will, "theological determinism is the thesis that God exists and has infallible knowledge of all true propositions including propositions about our future actions," more minimal criteria designed to encapsulate all forms of theological determinism. Theological determinism can also be seen as

24640-813: Was "the fundamental idea of the work". In this novel, the titular Zarathustra is initially struck with horror at the thought that all things must recur eternally; ultimately, however, he overcomes his aversion to eternal return and embraces it as his most fervent desire. In the penultimate chapter of the work ("The Drunken Song"), Zarathustra declares: "All things are entangled, ensnared, enamored; if you ever wanted one thing twice, if you ever said, 'You please me, happiness! Abide, moment!' then you wanted all back ... For all joy wants—eternity ." Martin Heidegger points out that Nietzsche's first mention of eternal recurrence in The Gay Science presents this concept as

24800-434: Was a determinist thinker, and argued that human freedom can be achieved through knowledge of the causes that determine desire and affections. He defined human servitude as the state of bondage of anyone who is aware of their own desires, but ignorant of the causes that determined them. However, the free or virtuous person becomes capable, through reason and knowledge, to be genuinely free, even as they are being "determined". For

24960-539: Was a notable exception to the rest of Greece, ruled through the whole period by not one, but two hereditary monarchs. This was a form of diarchy . The Kings of Sparta belonged to the Agiads and the Eurypontids, descendants respectively of Eurysthenes and Procles . Both dynasties' founders were believed to be twin sons of Aristodemus , a Heraclid ruler. However, the powers of these kings were held in check by both

25120-460: Was a situation unlike that in most other contemporary societies, which were either tribal or kingdoms ruling over relatively large territories. Undoubtedly, the geography of Greece —divided and sub-divided by hills, mountains, and rivers—contributed to the fragmentary nature of ancient Greece. On the one hand, the ancient Greeks had no doubt that they were "one people"; they had the same religion , same basic culture, and same language. Furthermore,

25280-752: Was conquered by the Romans. The Aetolian league grew wary of Roman involvement in Greece, and sided with the Seleucids in the Roman–Seleucid War ; when the Romans were victorious, the league was effectively absorbed into the Republic. Although the Achaean league outlasted both the Aetolian league and Macedon, it was also soon defeated and absorbed by the Romans in 146 BC, bringing Greek independence to an end. The Greek peninsula came under Roman rule during

25440-417: Was in permanent settlements founded by Greeks, which formed as independent poleis. The second form was in what historians refer to as emporia ; trading posts which were occupied by both Greeks and non-Greeks and which were primarily concerned with the manufacture and sale of goods. Examples of this latter type of settlement are found at Al Mina in the east and Pithekoussai in the west. From about 750 BC

25600-610: Was preceded by the Greek Dark Ages ( c.  1200 – c.  800 BC ), archaeologically characterised by the protogeometric and geometric styles of designs on pottery. Following the Dark Ages was the Archaic Period , beginning around the 8th century BC, which saw early developments in Greek culture and society leading to the Classical Period from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC until

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