Sarah Broadie

(1941 - 2021)

In De Interpretatione 9 Aristotle considers the proposition that everything that is or comes to be, is or comes to be of necessity. From the supposition that this is so, he draws the following consequence: ‘[In that case] there would be no need to deliberate or take trouble, [saying] that if we do this there will be so and so, and if we do not do this there will not be so and so’. Finding this result absurd, he rejects the supposition and concludes that some events or states of affairs are contingent.