Eternal Recurrence and the Identity of Indiscernibles

Abstract

Three tenets of Stoic doctrine seem jointly incompatible: causal determinism, the identity of indiscernibles, and eternal recurrence, according to which every world- cycle ends in a return to the pure active principle and then develops again into the same qualified objects and sequence of events that comprise a world-order. On the strong version of recurrence, each event in a given period happens indiscernibly, so that the same individuals recur with no difference. Yet if counterpart cycles contain wholly identical events and properties, then time, as a mere measure of motion, adds no distinguishing feature, and the temporal qualities of identical changes will themselves be identical. The paper maintains all three commitments uncompromised by treating recurring world-orders in a higher-order timeline. A familiar alternative is to appeal to circular time. Yet a circular temporal structure threatens to collapse the basis for treating one cycle as succeeding another. I take a different route, in which a linear ordering avoids this difficulty while preserving the Stoic conception of time as dependent on change. The proposal assigns to the active rational principle an act of providential recognition at the point of transition between world-orders, which places the cycles in asymmetric succession and thereby secures token distinctness. The account serves as an interpretive supplementation within Stoic cosmology rather than as an explicitly stated doctrine in surviving Stoic texts.