The idea that there is some power or principle by which the future course of events is predetermined, or ‘mapped out’ in advance, has exercised a lasting hold on the human imagination. Often personified as some kind of divine or supernatural agency, fate or destiny is usually seen as an inexorable and inevitable force: ‘Fate leads the willing, but drags the unwilling’, according to the Greek Stoic philosopher Cleanthes. At the same time, it is a force that is indiscriminate and shows no respect for rank or position: ‘when fate summons,’ wrote the English poet John Dryden, ‘monarchs must obey’.
Although deeply ingrained in popular belief, the notion that our future is fixed on a predestined path from which there is no escape sits awkwardly with certain other presumptions of our everyday thought. We normally think that when we do something, we do it freely; my decision to do one thing rather than another is a real choice between genuinely available options. But if the course of my life is mapped out from birth, perhaps even from the beginning of time, how can anything I do be truly free? And if all my future choices are already set in stone, how can I be held accountable for them? If free will is an illusion, my status as a morally responsible agent seems to be in doubt. Credit and blame seem to have no place in a world governed by the iron hand of fate.
Greeks and Romans on fate From earliest times the idea that an individual’s destiny was determined at birth figured prominently in Greek popular and religious thought. The usual Greek word for fate, moira, meaning ‘share’ or ‘lot’, referred in particular to the most significant gift to be apportioned, the span of life itself.
The epic poet Hesiod, active around 700BC, was the first authority known to represent the Fates, or Moirai, as three aged women who determine a person’s fate at the time of his or her birth by spinning the thread of life. Clotho (the Spinner) holds the distaff; Lachesis (the Allotter) draws off the thread; and Atropos (the Inflexible) cuts it with her shears to set the moment of death. The Moirai were fully assimilated into Roman mythology as the three Parcae (Nona, Decuma and Morta), who were originally goddesses associated with childbirth. Their alternative name, Fata, derived from a Latin word meaning ‘to speak’, carried the implication that a person’s fate was the inexorable decree or pronouncement of the gods.
Among ancient thinkers the concept of fate was most central to the philosophy of the Stoics, whose founder Zeno established a school in Athens around 300BC. The basic doctrine around which Stoicism was built is the idea that nature – i.e. the whole universe – is under the control of logos, which was variously interpreted as ‘god’ (in the sense of cosmic force), divine reason, providence or fate. The fundamental task of the wise man is to distinguish what lies within his power, which can therefore be mastered; and what lies beyond it, which must be accepted with fortitude. The latter disposition, known as amor fati (literally ‘love of fate’), subsequently became the quintessential Stoic virtue. Epictetus, a Greek who came to Rome as a slave towards the end of the first century AD, memorably summed up the Stoic attitude towards fate:
‘Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a part as it may please the master to assign you, for a long time or for a little as he may choose. And if he will you to take the part of a poor man, or a cripple, or a ruler, or a private citizen, then may you act that part with grace! For to act well the part that is allotted to us, that indeed is ours to do, but to choose it is another’s.’
Free will and predestination The implications of the idea that future events are in some sense predetermined have caused serious controversies within various religions. In Christianity the omniscience that is usually ascribed to God means that he knows everything, including what is going to happen in the future, so from his perspective the history of the universe is set in advance. Yet how can God’s foreknowledge of events be reconciled with the free will that is supposedly a divine gift to humans that allows us to live lives of real moral worth? The capacity for moral goodness is the same capacity that opens the door to moral baseness – without free will, the concept of sin would be meaningless. And it is this potential for sin – something that God, being omnipotent, could have eliminated had he wished – that is usually invoked in order to explain the presence of evil in the world.
‘Destiny: a tyrant’s authority for crime and a fool’s excuse for failure.’
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911
Some Christian theologians have felt that mere foreknowledge of all that will happen is insufficient for a deity endowed with every perfection. His majesty requires not only that he sees in advance the destiny of all things but that he actually determines that destiny. According to the doctrine of predestination, associated in particular with St Augustine and John Calvin, God determined the fate of the universe, throughout all time and space, at or before the time he created it; and at the same time he decreed that certain souls would be saved, and (more controversially) others damned. This prescription ensures that every action and choice that people make is made according to God’s wishes, but it also means that these actions and choices can have no bearing on the destination of individual souls, whose fate has already been decided.
the condensed idea
The iron hand of destiny