 | This article possibly contains original research .(July 2023) |
Destiny, sometimes also called fate (from Latin fatum 'decree, prediction, destiny, fate'), is a predetermined course of events. [1] [2] It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual.
Although often used interchangeably, the words fate and destiny have distinct connotations.
Distinguished from fate and destiny, fortune can refer to chance, or luck, as in fortunate, or to an event or set of events positively or negatively affecting someone or a group, or in an idiom, to tell someone's fortune, or simply the result of chance and events. In Hellenistic civilization, the chaotic and unforeseeable turns of chance gave increasing prominence to a previously less notable goddess, Tyche (literally "Luck"), who embodied the good fortune of a city and all whose lives depended on its security and prosperity, two good qualities of life that appeared to be out of human reach. The Roman image of Fortuna, with the wheel she blindly turned, was retained by Christian writers including Boethius, revived strongly in the Renaissance, and survives in some forms today. [4]
Philosophy on the concepts of destiny and fate has existed since the Hellenistic period with groups such as the Stoics and the Epicureans.
The Stoics believed that human decisions and actions ultimately went according to a divine plan devised by a god.[ citation needed ] They claimed that although humans theoretically have free will, their souls and the circumstances under which they live are all part of the universal network of fate.
The Epicureans challenged the Stoic beliefs by denying the existence of this divine fate. They believed that a human's actions were voluntary so long as they were rational. [5]
In common usage, destiny and fate are synonymous, but with regard to 19th-century philosophy, the words gained inherently different meanings.
For Arthur Schopenhauer, destiny was just a manifestation of the Will to Live, which can be at the same time living fate and choice of overrunning fate, by means of the Art, of the Morality and of the Ascesis.
For Friedrich Nietzsche, destiny keeps the form of Amor fati (Love of Fate) through the important element of Nietzsche's philosophy, the "will to power" (der Wille zur Macht), the basis of human behavior, influenced by the Will to Live of Schopenhauer. But this concept may have even other senses, although he, in various places, saw the will to power as a strong element for adaptation or survival in a better way. [6] Nietzsche eventually transformed the idea of matter as centers of force into matter as centers of will to power as humanity's destiny to face with amor fati. The expression Amor fati is used repeatedly by Nietzsche as acceptation-choice of the fate, but in such way it becomes even another thing, precisely a "choice" destiny.
Determinism is a philosophical concept often confused with fate. It can be defined as the notion that all intents/actions are causally determined by the culminations of an agent's existing circumstances; simply put, everything that happens is determined by things that have already happened. [7] Determinism differs from fate in that it is never conceived as being a spiritual, religious, nor astrological notion; fate is typically thought of as being "given" or "decreed" while determinism is "caused." Influential philosophers like Robert Kane, Thomas Nagel, Roderick Chisholm, and A.J. Ayer have written about this notion.
Among the representatives of depth psychology school, the greatest contribution to the study of the notion such as "fate" was made by Carl Gustav Jung, Sigmund Freud and Leopold Szondi.[ citation needed ]
The concept of destiny, fate or causation is prominent in most religions –but takes different forms:
Metaphorical expressions of a predetermined destiny are commonly used by politicians to describe events not understood. Otto Von Bismarck said that the best a politician can do is to 'listen for God's footsteps and hang on to His coat tails'. [11]
In War and Peace , Leo Tolstoy wrote of the 'unconscious swarm-life of mankind', while Shakespeare spoke of a 'tide in the affairs of men' in his play Julius Caesar.
In ancient Greece, many legends and tales teach the futility of trying to outmaneuver an inexorable fate that has been correctly predicted. This portrayal of fate is present in works such as Oedipus Rex (427 BCE), [12] the Iliad, the Odyssey (800 BCE), and Theogony. Many ancient Chinese works have also portrayed the concept of fate, most notably the Liezi, Mengzi, and the Zhuangzi. Similarly, and in Italy, the Spanish Duque de Rivas' play that Verdi transformed into La Forza del Destino ("The Force of Destiny") includes notions of fate.
In England, fate has played a notable literary role in Shakespeare's Macbeth (1606), Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), Samuel Beckett's Endgame (1957), and W.W Jacobs' popular short story "The Monkey's Paw" (1902). In America, Thornton Wilder's book The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) portrays the conception of fate.
In Germany, fate is a recurring theme in the literature of Hermann Hesse (1877–1962), including Siddharta (1922) and his magnum opus, Das Glasperlenspiel, also published as The Glass Bead Game (1943). And by Hollywood through such characters as Neo in The Matrix . The common theme of these works involves a protagonist who cannot escape their destiny, however hard they try. In Neil Gaiman's graphic novel series The Sandman, destiny is one of the Endless, depicted as a blind man carrying a book that contains all the past and all the future. "Destiny is the oldest of the Endless; in the Beginning was the Word, and it was traced by hand on the first page of his book, before ever it was spoken aloud." [13]
Free will is the notional capacity or ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Determinism is the philosophical view that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. Like eternalism, determinism focuses on particular events rather than the future as a concept. The opposite of determinism is indeterminism, or the view that events are not deterministically caused but rather occur due to chance. Determinism is often contrasted with free will, although some philosophers claim that the two are compatible.
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Moirai often known in English as the Fates—were the personifications of destiny. They were three sisters: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Their Roman equivalent is the Parcae.
Predestination is a doctrine in Calvinism dealing with the question of the control that God exercises over the world. In the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith, God "freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass." The second use of the word "predestination" applies this to salvation, and refers to the belief that God appointed the eternal destiny of some to salvation by grace, while leaving the remainder to receive eternal damnation for all their sins, even their original sin. The former is called "unconditional election", and the latter "reprobation". In Calvinism, some people are predestined and effectually called in due time to faith by God, all others are reprobated.
Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, whose meaning has drifted towards an adjectival use with a more general sense of "supernatural" or "uncanny", or simply "unexpected".
Luck is the phenomenon and belief that defines the experience of improbable events, especially improbably positive or negative ones. The naturalistic interpretation is that positive and negative events may happen at any time, both due to random and non-random natural and artificial processes, and that even improbable events can happen by random chance. In this view, the epithet "lucky" or "unlucky" is a descriptive label that refers to an event's positivity, negativity, or improbability.
Fatalism is a family of related philosophical doctrines that stress the subjugation of all events or actions to fate or destiny, and is commonly associated with the consequent attitude of resignation in the face of future events which are thought to be inevitable.
In ancient Greek religion, Ananke, from the common noun ἀνάγκη, is the Orphic personification of inevitability, compulsion and necessity. She is customarily depicted as holding a spindle. One of the Greek primordial deities, the births of Ananke and her brother and consort, Chronos, were thought to mark the division between the eon of Chaos and the beginning of the cosmos. Ananke is considered the most powerful dictator of fate and circumstance. Mortals and gods alike respected her power and paid her homage. Sometimes considered the mother of the Fates, she is thought to be the only being to influence their decisions. According to Daniel Schowalter and Steven Friesen, she and the Fates "are all sufficiently tied to early Greek mythology to make their Greek origins likely."
Eternal return is a philosophical concept of predeterminism which hypothesizes that all events in the world repeat themselves in the same sequence through an eternal series of cycles.
Predeterminism is the philosophy that all events of history, past, present and future, have been already decided or are already known, including human actions.
Fate most commonly refers to destiny, a predetermined course of events.
Theological determinism is a form of predeterminism which states that all events that happen are pre-ordained, and/or predestined to happen, by one or more divine beings, or that they are destined to occur given the divine beings' omniscience. Theological determinism exists in a number of religions, including Jainism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is also supported by proponents of Classical pantheism such as the Stoics and by philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza.
Qadar is the concept of divine destiny in Islam. As God is all-knowing and all-powerful, everything that has happened and will happen in the universe is already known. At the same time, human beings are responsible for their actions, and will be rewarded or punished accordingly on Judgement Day.
Amor fati is a Latin phrase that may be translated as "love of fate" or "love of one's fate". It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary.
The Fates are a common motif in European polytheism, most frequently represented as a trio of goddesses. The Fates shape the destiny of each human, often expressed in textile metaphors such as spinning fibers into yarn, or weaving threads on a loom. The trio are generally conceived of as sisters and are often given the names Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, which are the names of the Moirai, the version of the Fates who appear in Greek mythology. These divine figures are often artistically depicted as beautiful maidens with consideration to their serious responsibility: the life of mortals. Poets, on the other hand, typically express the Fates as ugly and unwavering, representing the gravity of their role within the mythological and human worlds.
The 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is known as a critic of Judeo-Christian morality and religions in general. One of the arguments he raised against the truthfulness of these doctrines is that they are based upon the concept of free will, which, in his opinion, does not exist.
Stoic physics refers to the natural philosophy of the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome which they used to explain the natural processes at work in the universe.
Free will in antiquity is a philosophical and theological concept. Free will in antiquity was not discussed in the same terms as used in the modern free will debates, but historians of the problem have speculated who exactly was first to take positions as determinist, libertarian, and compatibilist in antiquity. There is wide agreement that these views were essentially fully formed over 2000 years ago. Candidates for the first thinkers to form these views, as well as the idea of a non-physical "agent-causal" libertarianism, include Democritus, Aristotle, Epicurus, Chrysippus, and Carneades.
Heimarmene or Himarmene is a goddess and being of fate/destiny in Greek mythology. She belongs to a family of similar beings of destiny and fate, which have given us various modern concepts.
Pepromene is a goddess and being of fate/destiny in Greek mythology. The ancient perception of her being gives the name as belonging within other Greek ideas for destiny and fate.
