Does Fate Exist?

One of my favorite topics

It was 2022 summer and I had just finished my last year of high school. At this point I did not know what was gonna happen in the future, with the only thing certain is that I would attend university. I applied for an introductory course in practical philosophy. Throughout the summer, I looked up some examples of philosophical questions and answered them with my thoughts. One of them stood out, does fate exist? Such a question has been answered many times and has been explored in several TV shows. Determinism or Fatalism are names for such wonderings around fate. Determinism contains the thought that our lives and everyone's lives were determined from the start, all the way to the start of the universe. While fatalism has a similar idea it contains more than our end such as our “fate” is determined no matter what we choose we will always arrive at the same fate.

Now such thoughts also contain the question of free will. Now the question of free will might end up in a circular structure where the question answers itself. But to explore some ideas we have to find an answer to what free will entails. One might have free choice but not have free will. Or someone might not have free choice but have free will. In such situations, we would look at a person locked in a prison cell. This person cannot act in some ways because the prison forbids it. But even if the person can't act in a certain way she can still have free will. She can decide to sit down, to sleep, to do XYZ even if she is technically locked inside a prison cell. To make this paper less complicated I'll wait to dive deeper into the question of free will and will solely focus on the question of fate. 

Fate is a question concerning where we will end up as our “fate”. Most people would use it in certain contexts such as their “duty” is their fate or them meeting the love of their life as a fate. I would say that fate is a very vague term and its meaning derives from the individual who uses it. For me personally, I see fate as what I want to accomplish in life such as studying philosophy is something in my head I see as a sort of fate. But I do not see fate as the end, or that fate can be the singular thing that determines the course of our lives. Now I also want to claim what the individual sees as fate or more specifically the feeling of fate. Such a feeling would be a deep-rooted feeling of a sort of gut feeling. Sometimes when I am met with two different kinds of choices I will always choose the one where I have the best “gut” feeling. Some things in my life I do perceive as fate and when I'm occupied with those parts of my life I do feel a strong sense of security and I worry less than usual. So for me, fate is a strongly positive feeling that I have a sort of control over. 

To evaluate the question if our lives have been determined from the start or not. This is a huge question which I won't answer, I’ll just give a couple of theories. The first one is that everything is determined by the power of the individual. What this means is that every choice the individual makes is determined by her former choice and what kind of person she is. Thus all choices we make are determined by the person we are and want to be. But such an argument can be quite circular because it will always be answered by itself. 

X will choose Y because X has Z traits. 

Say if I love cats and I'm presented with a choice if I want a cat or a dog. I'll always choose to have a cat instead of a dog. Because of this such a question is quite useless. If we know that I have a strong and REAL preference for cats, it implies that I will choose cats over dogs. Now there might be cases where someone has a preference for cats but still chooses to have a dog but then we might question if her preference was legitimate or if she chose to have a dog because of other reasons outside of her control. 

Now the second option is to reject the one I just presented, to reject that life is determined and we have free will to act as we want. This one is a lot more positive because we will be able to enjoy things without knowing if it was already determined I would be in this situation. It would also give us more hope that we can accomplish things and that failure was not pre-determined. Such a position rejects the notion that our former decisions determine our future decisions on the basis that we are fully capable of thoroughly evaluating both decisions and choosing the one based on our own will. 

The discussion around free will is one of my favorite ones and I will go more in-depth about it in the next post.