Because we are rational creatures, we are born with the task of trying to understand the world—Nature as a whole—along with our own human natures, and the relationships that exist between the greater world and our inner selves. And since rationality is the defining characteristic of human nature for the Stoics, we are born to develop our rational capabilities; this will allow us to live peacefully and thoughtfully, develop good inner characters, and contribute to society.
There’s nothing unscientific about the fundamental Stoic belief in Logos, and there’s nothing irrational about the Stoic belief in Fate either. While “Fate” might sound spooky or superstitious at first, it merely refers to the chains of cause and effect that exist in nature, which modern scientists also believe in. In fact, most of classical physics in Newton’s time was based on the idea of “Fate”: cause, effect, and deterministic relationships. The Stoic belief in Fate simply means that we must acknowledge and honor the laws of nature, which are unavoidable.
While Logos and Fate are uncontroversial, the final Stoic idea that some modern readers (and modern Stoics) have difficulty with is Providence, because they see it as being a religious idea, which is a misinterpretation. Importantly, the Stoic concept of Providence had nothing to do with the Christian idea of providence, and the Stoics didn’t believe in a kind of Christian God that exists outside of nature. For the Stoics, “God” was Nature.
The Greek word for “providence” is pronoia, which means “foreknowledge,” and I personally think that the Stoic idea of providence came from the study of living organisms. For example, as we can still see today, living organisms are repositories of biological intelligence and possess the ability to heal themselves, which implies a kind of knowledge. For instance, if I cut my hand, my hand “knows” how to heal itself. If you cut the head off a flatworm, the flatworm knows how to grow a new head. There is also an incredible amount of biological intelligence embodied in the development of a human embryo into a full-grown person. Today, we understand this intelligence to be a by-product of biological evolution, which makes it no less astonishing or worthy of admiration.
From the perspective of the earliest Greek Stoics, however, we modern people would be mistaken to treat Logos, Fate, and Providence as different concepts. For the earliest Stoics, these terms were just different, interchangeable terms for the same thing. According to ancient sources, “Nature,” “Logos,” “Fate,” and “Providence” were seen as being identical.8
While modern Stoics sometimes reject these terms, which they mistakenly see as being antiscientific, if they do so they’re often overlooking something vital. One significant dimension is the kind of attitude that these ancient concepts led to—a rational yet inspired way of seeing and valuing the world—which has stimulated the development of science for centuries. For the Stoics and some other Greek philosophers, we live in an incredibly beautiful tapestry of a cosmos, governed by universal laws and harmonies, which we ourselves have emerged from, and to which we ourselves are inextricably bound. Moreover, through rationality, we’re able to understand the universe from which we’ve emerged. Importantly, this ancient philosophical attitude is not in conflict with modern science—science itself is an outgrowth of it.
Albert Einstein, in his famous essay on “Religion and Science,” referred to this as “the cosmic religious feeling,” which he found to be “the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research,” and the Stoics would have agreed with him.9 Regardless of the terminology the Stoics used, their overall way of looking at the cosmos and our place in it remains significant today. Einstein himself rejected belief in a personal God (as did the Stoics), and he was not religious in a traditional sense. Despite that, he noted that everyone who has made genuine advances in science “is moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence”—a very Stoic observation indeed.10
Ultimately, we can see that the Stoics valued nature highly. They believed that nature does nothing in vain, that a kind of rationality is expressed in the laws of nature, and, because of that rationality, nature is wholly good. In other words, if we could see and understand how the universe operates as a whole, from a cosmic vantage point, we would see it as a perfect and beautiful model of excellence.
AT THIS POINT, we can fully grasp what the Stoics meant by “Follow nature.” In order to live a happy human life, we must align our minds and wills with nature. In that way, we will strive to be perfectly rational and virtuous, just as nature was, in their view. We will accept Fate, and honor all of nature’s laws without complaint. And once we do so, life will flow smoothly, because we’ll be living in harmony with reality, in the deepest possible way, and living as rational human beings.
Even though we are mortal and fragile beings, and although we live in a world where pain and suffering are destined to strike our individual lives, there is also something perfect about the workings of nature, taken as a whole. Therefore, when we complain, we are expressing disappointment with nature’s perfect order.
This is why the Stoics were so opposed to complaining. Since everything in nature follows a rational pattern, even if we can’t see its totality at once, complaining about some trivial event is an insult to the goodness of the universe itself.
As if offering an explanation of Zeno’s command to “follow nature,” Epictetus wrote: “Don’t wish things to happen as you desire, but wish them to happen as they do. Then your life will flow smoothly.”11 That is an essential part of his Stoic formula for happiness, freedom, and peace of mind. Put another way, we need to accept Fate and whatever the laws of nature are destined to bring. If not, we will never experience peace of mind.
Going back to the earliest days of the school, the Stoics used a story to illustrate the nature of Fate. This story involves a dog tied to a cart with a leash. As the cart rolls down the road, the dog can happily run alongside the cart, smiling and panting as they move forward together. Alternatively, if the dog fails to keep up with the cart, it will get dragged down the road instead, which would be a painful experience.12 This is a metaphor about following nature and accepting Fate. It is possible to resist Fate, but not successfully: you’ll get dragged along to the same destination, even if you struggle against it. In the words of Cleanthes (c. 330–c. 230 BC), the second head of the Stoic school in Athens, “Fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling.”13
That said, the Stoics were not “fatalists” who believed that we couldn’t change the world. Because we are part of the web of Fate, our own actions and decisions, through cause and effect, will influence the future and the Fate of others. The important thing to remember, though, is that fate and the workings of nature will place us in certain situations beyond our control. But we need to accept or respond to these things gracefully rather than complain because they are mandated by nature, which is beyond reproach.