Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Final Report -Installment 2 - Fate and Free Will


Fatalists, like Descartes and Spinoza, reason that, because a perfect being must exist, it is as responsible for our actions as it is for our creation. This leaves us with a problem. Why would a perfect God allow evil to happen in the universe? During the 4th century A.D., St. Augustine attempted to solve this problem of evil. He determined that, because God is the sovereign good, his creations and nature are good. God created man freely and, because he made man in his image, man is also free. God gave us the gift of existence and we commit evil when we abuse our existence. The original sin was the result of man’s freedom, but evil is necessary for there to be a reward for wise choices.




Nearly a century later, Boethius encountered a similar problem. If God knows every choice we will make, how can he be all good if he punishes us for the decisions we did not make? He claimed that all creatures have free will but they “do not have any freedom when they, of their own accord, subject themselves to vices.” In this way, everything connected and directed by the chains of God’s goodness. Because of this, all fortunes are good whether or not they seem evil. Voltaire shared this belief, however good people with bad fortunes would definitely disagree. Boethius and St. Augustines’ version of free will doesn’t seem completely free. Even though we have freedom, there is a path we must not stray from. Despite this, both philosophers raised important questions.





The end of World War 2 was the beginning of existentialism and the rise of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. Existential philosophers would say that, unlike the way that a knife is made to cut, humans were not made to perform any specific task. When people are thought of as objects that were created by a higher life form, it is easy to assume that we have a set purpose and a destination. Sartre believed that each individual’s existence is defined by what we choose to make of our existence. Sartre’s version of free will may seem more convincing than those presented by other philosophers, but it does not disprove the theory that we are heavily influenced by the world around us and our unconscious mind as psychologists and scientists have nearly proven. Unless there were a man who was immune to the influence of society, as Nietzsche had hoped there would be, we are all, to some extent, susceptible to outside influence. Lacking a moral compass, however, does not sound like an improvement to the human mind. Pragmatic philosophers such as William James would argue that, because there is no scientific way to prove or disprove fate or free will, you might as well believe in whichever one works for you. In that case, an individual’s first act of free will is believing in free will.




Philosophers like Hobbes and Rousseau believed humanity, left uncontained, would be chaotic and must relinquish their freedom to a higher power to ensure safety. The majority of the population, given the choice between choosing their own destiny or having it planned for them, prefer the security of fate. In their times of trial, my close friends, my close relatives, and my mother especially have turned to fortune tellers and preachers to give them the order that is missing in their lives. I, like many others, have chosen free will over fate for the same reason; to organize the chaos in my world. It seems that, whether or not we are in control of our actions, the world around us is always out of our hands. Maybe William James was right and it does not matter which philosophy we choose as long as it works. Regardless, it is undeniable that humans are choosers. Our lives are full of difficult decisions and it is up to us to make the wise choice.

Works Cited

Gilson, Etienne, et al. “Evil and Free Choice.” The Christian Philosophy of St. Augustine, Victor Gollancz, 1961, pp. 143–148.

Alfred, and Boethius. King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Version of Boethius: De Consolations Philosophiae. H.G. Bohn, 1864.

Warburton, Nigel. A Little History of Philosophy. Yale University Press, 2011.

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