Contingency and Providence: Aristotle and Augustine

This article examines the transformation of the concepts of contingency and providence from Aristotle to Augustine. For Aristotle, contingency defines the sublunary world: singular future events are neither determined nor already true, as he argues in De Interpretatione 9, 19a7–19b4, and action takes place among particulars that could be otherwise, τὸ ἐνδεχόμενον ἄλλως ἔχειν (“that which could be otherwise”). Φρόνησις (“practical wisdom”) enables deliberation in this realm by discerning the means to εὐδαιμονία (“happiness,” “the good life”), where rules do not exhaust judgment and outcomes remain exposed to risk. For Augustine, apparent contingency is encompassed within divine providence; casus (“chance,” “case”) or fortuitum (“the fortuitous”) expresses human ignorance, not the absence of an ordo causarum (“order of causes”). In De Civitate Dei V.9, nothing occurs without a cause known to God, and chance occurs occulto quodam ordine (“by a certain hidden order”). The relationship between the two is not one of direct influence, given that Augustine had limited and indirect access to Aristotle. The comparison is thematic: it analyzes how problems initially formulated by Aristotle—the open future, deliberation, particulars—are reconfigured through creatio ex nihilo (“creation out of nothing”), praescientia (“foreknowledge”), and gratia (“grace”). Both affirm human responsibility, though within distinct horizons: Aristotle, in an open field measured ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ (“for the most part”); Augustine, in a created order in which the will itself is foreknown and sustained by God. Prudence thus becomes twofold: navigating what might be otherwise without a guarantee of success and ordering temporal goods toward the unchanging Good, trusting that no risk escapes providence.