The Stoic paradox: freedom of determined action

The work deals with the problem of freedom in the theory of the early Stoics (3. c. BC) which has been a controversial issue since antiquity up to this very day. In its three parts the author examines basic aspects of this problem in order to offer his own interpretation. The first part tackles the question of action and responsibility being thus an introduction to the whole problem which in this light reveals its paradoxical form: on the one hand, the Stoics teach "fatal" determination of all motion, on the other, they defend human responsibility pointing at the specific faculty of human soul - the assent. In the second part, the author offers an analysis of the Stoic notion of reason in the full scope of its different characterizations as collection of concepts, as inner language and as specific structure of the motion of human soul. On the basis of an attempt to bring these definition together as complementary perspectives, the interpretation of the Stoic assent is proposed showing that it is to be understood as reflective turn of the reason towards itself. This claim aims also at solving the paradox of the assent - determined and autonomous in the same time: the assent is autonomous only insofar as it represents reason giving approval to its own interpretation of the world; it is however not autonomous..