Both science and conspiracy theories look for necessities in a world where a necessary order that had once been guaranteed by religion has largely disappeared, and where life and the entire world can easily appear as contingent. Warranted conspiracy theories find such necessities; unwarranted ones don’t, but they believe that they have found them. When viewed through the optics of these “contingency versus necessity” relationships, the conspiratorial mindset turns out to be inscribed not only in a Western metaphysical tradition but in an even broader civilizational development.

Contingency has been on the minds of thinkers throughout the ages, but within various phases of Western civilization, its position has changed multiple times. In Antiquity, historians would attribute unexpected events to the goddess Fortuna (Tyche) or to divine Providence and thus turn the coincidence into a necessity by tracing it to a pseudo-cause (see the Greek historian Polybius [in Polybius: 29]). When no pertinent cause could be found for events such as floods or droughts, such fortuities could be connected to Tyche or divine providence, which became very important in late antiquity. This technique could even be used for events in politics. Dylan Burns shows in his Did God Care? Providence, Dualism, and Will in Later Greek and Early Christian Philosophy how in the first centuries CE, Hellenic and Christian philosophers elaborated notions about providence, divine care, and fate that would shape the European mindset. Today such devices are less available, and as a result, conspiracy theorists invent new pseudo-causes. This chapter will provide a rough historical sketch of how contingency has been dealt with by thinkers throughout history.

Antiquity

In Antiquity, almost everything was perceived to be necessary, and, compared with today, contingency could not cause existential problems for the Greek or Roman individual. It is true that the ancient world did have unwarranted conspiracy theories, for example, about “bad” emperors such as Nero, malevolent Christians, immigrants, or slaves. The existence of secret societies in Athens already spurred some conspiratorial thinking. Greek plays tell us much about conspiracies “that involve almost every facet of Athenian life.” According to Daniel Pipes, a conspiracy mentality can “be traced back to the dualist religions of Iran or the mystery religions that swept the Roman Empire” (1997: 53). Secret societies were often built around mystery cults such as the cult of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis (the Eleusinian Cult), the cult of the Great Gods at Samothrace, and the cult of Isis.