Astrology and Free Will

The nature of free will is a philosophical, theological and scientific problem that has vexed humanity for thousands of years.

Note: I published this on my website back in 2021, removed it, and then lost the original publication date.

Do we have free will? If free will is defined as intentional agency and alternative possibilities between what we choose, and casual control of our actions then... yes. But here's the problem. My free will is interacting with hundreds, if not thousands of other free wills. And in some cases there are more free wills against me than for me. For example, if I was a woman in Victorian England, my free will is heavily constrained by others. Depending on whom I married and my social status, for all of my desire to express intentional agency and choose from alternative possibilities, I can't. If I'm African American, or a native American, or an indigenous person in a colonized country I'm faced with the same problem. We may all have free wills but to paraphrase George Orwells Animal Farm, "All free wills are equal, but some free wills are more equal than others."

When we get into the argument of free will in a religious context, we find that religion generally states that we all have the free will to choose our responses to our environment (that is, we can choose to be good or bad). However, religion still wrestles with how that environment is created. That is, the overall macro conditions are generally controlled by God and remain hidden and unfathomable to humans. The Book of Job (part of the Tanach / Old Testament) is a story around this issue. Job's life is going well until his macro environment falls to pieces around him, compliments of a bet between God and the Adversary. Faced with devastating loss Job understandably sinks into a deep depression. Job had no control over the events. How Job responds to these events is the only free will he has. Does he curse God, or does he accept the events happened and that he is powerless over them? Does he remain devastated, and rage against God, or does he (after a period of mourning), pick himself up and keep going? The Book of Job arrives at the conclusion that the only logical response (and perhaps the only available response) is for Job to mourn, and move on. To question the general unfairness of life is to disappear down a rabbit hole of frustration and anger.

Stoic philosophers arrived at the same conclusion. Events happen to us and we have little control over most of those events. However, our moral free will must be applied. That is, we cannot respond to those events by turning to crime, revenge, apathy, or partying ourselves into the grave.

Free will also has another inadvertent problem and that is the rise of the meritocracy. If we all have intentional agency and alternative possibilities to choose from, then there is no reason to be in the mess we're in. It is our own fault. Alain De Botton talks about how the most dominate view for centuries was that we were subject to the vagaries of Fortuna (Fortune). Fortuna shuffled the deck and dealt the cards and therefore a person's circumstances were not their fault. The shadow side of meritocracy (and free will) is that if a person rises to the top, they deserve it because they worked hard, and made the right moves. A person becomes responsible for the entire arc of their destiny, and a poor person did not work hard and therefore does not deserve our pity or empathy. Winners make their own luck!

Stoic philosophers such as Chrysippus and Marcus Aurelius, along with ancient astrologers, had a more neutral view. You do not have power over the life assigned to you at a larger, macro level. Things will happen that are out of your control, and you were also assigned certain traits in your psychological makeup at birth. Some of these traits are good, some are not so good. Your free will (much like Job's free will) is in how your respond. You exercise your moral responsibility within this environment.

Which is where astrology's strengths come into play. It remains popular because astrology can give you a 'heads up' about events that may happen to you in the future. Or talk about the cards that Fortuna dealt you at birth. In this way, you are prepared for what life throws at you. You may not be able to fully circumvent what Fortuna has in store for you, but you are less surprised by both the good and the bad. Astrology throws people a kind of psychological life line as most charts are neither wholly bad nor wholly good. You might not be rich, but you have many loved ones, and you will be okay. You might be rich but your personal life is a mess and no one will attend your funeral.

Here's a quote from the astrologer Vettius Valens, (120 – c. 175) that reflects the Stoic world view.

"But those who have trained themselves in the prognostic art and in the truth keep their minds free and out of bondage; they despise Fortune, do not persist in Hope, do not fear death and live undisturbed. They have trained their souls to be confident. They do not rejoice excessively at prosperity nor are they depressed by adversity, but they are satisfied with whatever happens. Since they do not have the habit of longing for the impossible, they bear steadfastly the decrees of Fate. They are alien to all pleasure or flattery and stand firm as soldiers of Fate."

Additionally, astrology and Stoic philosophers did not attach a specific causative agent per se to these events, except for Fate and Fortune. Yes, the alignment of the sun, moon and planets may either be signs of an event that could occur or actually causing the events themselves, but why it happened was largely outside of our understanding. No one was entirely sure what the Fates wanted, and why the Fates operated as it did. In Ancient Greece the Moirai or Fates would do what they would do. They could perhaps be placated, but even the gods were subject to their rule.

"Even the gods feared the Moirai or Fates, which according to Herodotus a god could not escape. The Pythian priestess at Delphi once admitted that Zeus was also subject to their power, though no recorded classical writing clarifies to what exact extent the lives of immortals were affected by the whims of the Fates. It is to be expected that the relationship of Zeus and the Moirai was not immutable over the centuries. In either case in antiquity we can see a feeling towards a notion of an order to which even the gods have to conform. Simonides names this power Ananke (necessity) (the mother of the Moirai in Orphic cosmogony) and says that even the gods don't fight against it. Aeschylus combines Fate and necessity in a scheme, and claims that even Zeus cannot alter which is ordained."(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moirai)

With the Moirai in play, we could slip into the shadow side again (that is, you are poor because the the Fates made it this way), but this should also (as per Alain de Botton's view) elicit are more empathetic response. In this world view, no one is in their current position due to their abilities alone. The Fates blessed them, or the Fates cursed them. And the Fates can flip your life in an instant so it makes no sense to crow about your good fortune when it could all be stripped away in the blink of an eye. The better response is to take good fortune in its stride and exercise the free will of moral responsibility (kindness and empathy to those less fortunate) so that the Fates are placated enough to not make your life too miserable should the astrology indicate a turn of events. Conversely, if experiencing bad fortune then depression is perfectly understandable (as per Job's response) but you must also exercise the free will of moral responsibility here too and ensure that your actions are kind to yourself and others until circumstances improve.

I doubt we puny humans will ever quite figure out why our lives play out the way they do, but perhaps we would be wise to acknowledge the Fates, the universe, or God's actions in our lives and take a more Stoic view. We might be slightly less miserable.