Chrysippus's "Half-Free" Will

by JLS
for the GC

Oennomaus, whom S. Bobzien quotes in "Determinism and freedom in Stoic philosphy" (Clarendon) just follows Epicurus, that R. O. Doyle and others have studied so well. But still, his neologism, as he applied to Chrysippus made it to the Oxford Chichele chair (of the history of ideas) when I. Berlin misquoted him as Oenamaus.

Oenomaus.

Cynic philosopher. Defender of free-will against the determinism of
Democritus and Chrysippus. Oenomaus coined 'half-slavery' (hemidouleia) to refer
to Chrysippus's views, which he attacked. (Berlin mentions the source, but
the name is transliterated as "OenAmaus," rather -- Henry in Proc. American
Philological Society, 1927, had noted the neologism in her discussion of
Cicero, De Fato.

http://ucsd.academia.edu/MonteJohnson/Papers/118474/Spontaneity_Democritean_
Causality_and_Freedom

Oenomaus writes:

"For, so far as it depends on the philosophers, there has been
lost out of human life, whether one likes to call it a rudder,
a ballast, or foundation - there has been lost the governing
power of our life, which we suppose to be authoritative over
the highest necessity; but Democritus, unless I am
mistaken, and Chrysippus, think to prove the noblest
of man's faculties, according to the former a slave, and
according to the latter half-enslaved. Their argument,
however, is worth no more than a man can claim for the
things of man



--------------- Oenom. apud Eusep. praep. ev. 6.7.2.3-7.-- tr. Gifford,
"Preparation for the Gospel" (1903)



Cfr.

"ten humon auton antilepsin" ---

He refers to atoms as

"those minute bodies which are carried down,
and tossed up, and twirled around, and
broken up, and separated, and combined,
by necessity."

---- Johnson's bibliography includes books in Italian on "polemica
antifatalista di Enomao di Gadera"

The wiki ref. where he mentions "Apollo" and the oracle, seems pretty good,
too.