Fate

Use in the book

Chapter 5 explicitly joins fate to the orderly arrangement of events. Other excerpts distinguish it from necessity, choice, chance, and spontaneous occurrence. The anthology preserves both poetic images of destiny and philosophical attempts to explain an order of causes.

Places to read

1. I.5.headingFate is paired with the orderly arrangement of what comes to pass.
2. I.7.9aFate stands among several reported explanations of events.
3. I.5.22aA series of divine and fatal names is explained through verbal associations.
4. I.1.35Correction and the preservation of fate are joined.
5. I.3.52Fate and Justice govern different aspects of human condition.

Translation in this edition

“Fate” usually renders heimarmenē. The names Moira, Aisa, Nemesis, and Adrasteia are kept distinguishable where their particular wording matters.

Correction and responsibility

Iamblichus argues that divine correction preserves fate by preventing disorder; the argument does not simply abolish fate whenever an evil is relieved. The Hermetic notice distinguishes subjection to fate through coming-to-be from subjection to Justice through wrongdoing. The distinction gives different explanations for embodied condition and moral recompense. Choice and what depends on us require their own passages rather than being inferred from the English associations of “fate.”

Use in the book

Plutarch identifies necessity, commonly called fate, with Love and Strife together in Empedocles. The relation is not that Fate is an additional third power placed beside Love and Strife. Rather, the paired powers are offered as an alternative naming or analysis of the necessity that others call fate.

Aëtius, printed immediately alongside, describes necessity as a cause using the principles and elements. This gives a different impression of causal hierarchy. The two statements may have originated in different interpretative projects, and their compressed wording is inadequate for a definitive reconciliation. Retaining Fate as its own small article helps prevent the familiar English word from obscuring that attribution structure: it is Plutarch’s comparative vocabulary, not a separately quoted Empedoclean goddess or an independently established law of predestination.

Places to read

1. A 45 (testimony)Plutarch, De animae procreatione. Uses fate as the common name for necessity before attributing the Love-and-Strife designation to Empedocles.
2. A 45 (testimony)Aëtius I 26,1. Provides a contrasting account in which necessity uses principles and elements.

Translation in this edition

The source supplies no fuller context or section number for Plutarch. Do not enlarge the one clause into a complete Stoic or Platonic theory of fate.

Use in the book

Ficino defines the law of fate within the serial actualization of a celestial soul's seeds. Its mind and reason apprehend a general design, but its motive power presents one kind of seed after another for imagination, desire, and production. Fate consists in that succession, while desire belongs to the corresponding thought. The definition therefore links law, cognition, and movement instead of making fate a bare external force. The Euclid-and-lantern analogy illustrates why a universal plan needs particular successive acts to become bodily action. IV.2.2 attributes an everlasting will and necessity to a traditional account of heaven, but IV.1.84 had already contrasted consistent cosmic order with lifeless necessity: unerring wisdom, rather than absence of life, explains regularity. This account explains celestial motion within the larger hierarchy of causes; it does not itself settle every question of human freedom.

The sequence also explains why a wholly general intention does not move a body one determinate step. A sphere's mind and reason intend to reproduce, as far as possible, the Ideas seen in angelic mind; one class of seeds must then prevail in the lower power before imagination and appetite produce its particular effect. Euclid's whole projected journey likewise remains different from the first step lit by his lantern. Fate is located in the order of successive particulars, rather than substituted for every level of planning and causation. The same architecture allows Ficino to speak of regular cosmic action through living agency while distinguishing the soul's changing acts from their stable higher sources.

Further passage references. IV.1.84; IV.2.1–IV.2.22; IV.2.12–IV.2.1723456

Places to read

1. IV.2.12The lowest cosmic power successively actualizes a finite stock of seeds.
2. IV.2.16Fate is located in the ordered series, desire in the associated thought.
3. IV.2.27The moved mover remains subordinate to the stable ultimate principle and end.

Translation in this edition

The phrase “law of fate” has an explicit local definition in IV.2.16. It should not become an unexplained external force or a complete theory of human moral responsibility. Successive actualization is distinguished from the higher simultaneous grasp of principles.

fatalis lex / innata cupiditas

fatalis lex / innata cupiditas. Printed forms: fatali; innata cupiditas; lege.

Fated law; an inborn desire. The opening formula is explained later through the ordered seed sequence and the thought directing each realization. References: IV.2.2. See Fate.

fatum

fatum. Printed forms: fatum.

Fate, in the gloss of the cited Orphic saying. The local sentence couples fate with Jove’s mind surveying everything, rather than developing a separate doctrine of fatalism. References: II.9.19. See Fate.

lex

lex. Printed forms: lege; lex.

A law or ordering rule. The immutable superior directs regular motion; the law of fate is located more specifically in the succession of productive seeds. References: IV.1.28, IV.2.16. See Fate.

series successionis

series successionis. Printed forms: serie successionis; seriem successionis.

An ordered succession or sequence. The law of fate consists in this ordering, whereas desire is assigned to the accompanying thought. References: IV.2.16. See Fate.

Everlasting will and the work of necessity (Greek quotation)

ἀϊδίῳ βουλῇ φέρεται, ἀεὶ τρέχει ἔργῳ ἀνάγκης

The saying attributed to Zoroaster is glossed as heaven’s being carried by everlasting will and continually running through necessity’s work. It follows the account of heavenly motion through appetite aroused by thought, with thought governed by a fatal law. Will and necessity therefore occur in a structured causal account rather than as mutually exclusive labels.

Place. IV.2.2. See Fate.

Euclid (authorities and cited works)

Euclid. In the lantern example, he plans to travel from Megara to Athens to hear Socrates; each step still requires a particular perception, desire, and action. The passage does not identify him as the geometer used in another analogy. IV.2.13–16234. See Fate; Sense and imagination.

Socrates (authorities and cited works)

Socrates. The figure Euclid wishes to hear in Athens in the stepwise-journey example. IV.2.13. See Fate.

Zoroaster (authorities and cited works)

Zoroaster. A recurrent ancient theological authority for intellectual rulers, the intelligible beyond mind, divine production and persuasion, cosmic principles, fate, recurrence, and the ethereal garment. Ficino's claims about this authority and the origin of ancient wisdom remain attributions within the work. I.5.19; I.6.9; II.12.8–11234; II.13.27; III.1.12; IV.2.2, IV.2.10–1223, IV.2.27. See Hermetic theologians and the Magi; Fate; Great year; Ethereal garment.

Statesman; Politicus; book on kingship (authorities and cited works)

Statesman; Politicus; book on kingship. Appears in arguments about ends and providence, the fated desire moving heaven, cosmic restoration, and circular motion's proximity to stability. II.11.26; II.13.24; IV.2.2, IV.2.12, IV.2.22–232. See Fate; Great year; Circularity and return.