I. Name

Pronoia, Latin Providentia, means in Homer anticipation or foreknowledge, but already by the 5th century bce often expressed intention, especially in a legal sense, and care, for one’s family and in military planning. An analogous care was ascribed to the gods; the early Stoa built on this traditional sense in developing its notion of providence, the divine governance of the world, equivalent of Zeus and Logos. This sense, more or less indebted to Stoic theory and always qualified by ‘div…