Necessary chain of causes

Heimarmenē refers, in Stoicism, to the necessary chain of causes, in other words to fate understood as the rational order of the world. The term comes from the Greek εἱμαρμένη, derived from the verb meirein (“to assign,” “to allot”), and refers to what is “assigned” within the fabric of reality.

For the Stoics, heimarmenē is neither a blind force nor an irrational fatalism. It corresponds to the total causal structure of the universe, governed by the logos. Every event necessarily follows from prior causes, themselves embedded in the coherent order of nature. The world is thus intelligible because it is causally ordered.

It is essential to understand that heimarmenē does not abolish human action. The Stoics defend a form of compatibilism: our choices, judgments, and decisions are themselves part of the causal chain. When we act according to reason, our will is not externally constrained; it functions as an internal cause, fully integrated into the order of the world.

For this reason, heimarmenē must be distinguished from passive resignation. Stoic freedom does not consist in escaping fate, but in lucid consent to it. The free person is one who understands the necessity of events and adjusts judgments and desires to what happens, rather than resisting it inwardly.

This attitude takes the form of accepting what does not depend on us, without abandoning moral rigor. What is “fixed” by heimarmenē are events; what remains in our power is how we use our impressions—our assent and our moral intention.

Thus, heimarmenē is not the enemy of freedom, but its cosmic framework. It expresses the idea that to live according to reason is to live in agreement with the necessity of the world—not by submitting to it blindly, but by understanding it and inwardly affirming it.