Thinking about determinism can get wishful sometimes:
A man lay in bed, half awake after a long night's restful sleep. The light slanted invitingly through the half-drawn curtains, not too bright but not too dreary. Early morning hunger rolled over the man, a consequence of an early dinner the night before. "Well," he thought, "if I'm fated to have eggs this morning, I'll get them whether I choose to get up now or not, so why bother."
He is still hungry today.
The Stoics and Sartre are on much more common ground than it would appear, for the Stoics did not believe in inaction because of fate. The fact of the matter is that at the moment of action, there is a necessary "illusion" of freedom, a choice that must be made, despite the fact that what that choice will be is predetermined by a prior cause. The Stoic Chryisippus offered the analogy of a cylinder pushed down a hill: the fact that it's rolling is caused not by the cylinder but by the initial push, but at each moment it rolls only because of its own (round) nature. And, it seems to me, similarly with Sartre: the situation one is in may be utterly out of one's control, but it is the choice to act therein that matters most. Sartre finds it of utmost importance to realize the uncontrollable nature of one's surroundings, and to act with that in mind. In the end, I think Sartre brings to the forefront of the definition of the human condition what the Stoics use as a backdrop to their own ethics: the thrownness of people into the world, the not-up-to-us nature of that world, and the need to act boldly anyhow.
A final word: jazz music strikes me as the perfect embodiment of this view of determinism and free will - a set of pre-determined rules, places that the notes should go and must go, and yet a culture of improvisation, a choice made at each moment as the musician plays, each performance unique and fleeting.
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I present to you Dallas:
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