Fatalism

I.  What is Fatalism?

At some point in your life, in the midst of great trial or adversity, you probably thought to yourself:  "What's the point of doing anything; the decks are stacked against me; nothing I do will make a difference anyway."  After listening to you kvetch long enough, a friend or family member might intervene saying something like:  "Stop acting like such a damn fatalist."  But what do they mean when they call you a fatalist?

Fatalism is the system of belief that holds that the universe and everything in it is governed by destiny or fate (moira).  A fatalist would hold that even the lives of human beings are determined by fate.  

In the earliest strands of Greek thought, fate is often portrayed as an impersonal force to which even the  gods are subject. This force became personified in Greek religion in the form of the three goddesses of fate (the Moirai):  Clotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis determines the length of a person's life, and  Atropos determines when that life should end.

In general, though, the gods are portrayed in Greek literature as the agents of fate.  Although Homer might make the Zeus appear doubtful about the outcome of an event in the Illiad or the Odyssey, this is usually just a dramatic device.  There is really never any doubt that Troy will be destroyed or that Odysseus will eventually make it back to faithful Penelope.   

But how can the idea of fate be reconciled with human freedom?  The answer is:  not very easily.  In ancient Greek thought it was often held that the life of an individual is so rigorously predetermined by fate that he or she has no power to affect the course of events that will inevitably be played out.  We are passive pawns in life, completely subject to the whims of fate, and nothing that we do, or try to do, can change the course that has already been mapped out for us.  At best all we can do is try to act "kata moiran" (in accordance with fate), since any attempt to disrupt the natural course of things will usually spell disaster for ourselves and our loved ones.

II.   A Text on Fatalism

Lucian of Samosata (born c. 120 A.D.) was one of the famous satirists of the ancient world.  We still possess more than eighty of his works, including several dialogues that give an interesting perspective into the moral and religious climate in which he lived.  Many of these are Dialogues Against the Gods, works in which Lucian mocks the popular pagan religious beliefs of his times.  In the following dialogue, Lucian takes on the idea that fate governs all aspects of the lives of human beings:  

	Lucian of Samosata Zeus Cross-Examined   The Debate Begins:  What is Fate?       Cyn.  Zeus, I am not going to trouble you with the requests for a fortune or a throne; you get prayers enough of that sort from other people, and from your habit of convenient deafness I gather that you experience a difficulty in answering them.  But there is one thing that I should like, which would cost you no trouble to grant.     Zeus.  Well, Cyniscus? You shall not be disappointed, if your expectations are as reasonable as you say.     Cyn.  I want to ask you a plain question.     Zeus.  Such a modest petition is soon granted; ask what you will.     Cyn.  Well then: you know your Homer and Hesiod, of course? Is it all true that they sing of Destiny and the Fates- that whatever they spin for a man at his birth must inevitably come about?     Zeus.  Unquestionably. Nothing is independent of their control. From their spindle hangs the life of all created things, whose destiny is predetermined even from the moment of their birth; and that law knows no change.       Cyn.  Then when Homer says, for instance, in another place, "Lest unto Hell thou go, outstripping fate," he is talking nonsense, of course?        Zeus.  Absolute nonsense.  Such a thing is impossible: the law of the Fates, the thread of Destiny, is over all.  No; so long as the poets are under the inspiration of the Muses, they speak truth:  but once let those Goddesses leave them to their own devices, and they make blunders and contradict themselves.  Nor can we blame them:  they are but men; how should they know truth, when the divinity whose mouthpieces they were is departed from them?       Cyn.  That point is settled, then.  But there is another thing I want to know.  There are three fates, are there not,--Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropus?        Zeus.  Quite so.        Cyn.   But one also hears a great deal about Destiny and Fortune.  Who are they, and what is the extent of their power?  Is it equal to that of the Fates?  Or greater perhaps?  People are always talking  about the insuperable might of Fortune and Destiny.         Zeus.  It is not proper, Cyniscus, that you should know all.  But what made you ask me about the Fates?   The Futility of Religious Sacrifice and Prayer           Cyn.  Ah, you must tell one thing more first.  Do the Fates also control you Gods?  Do you depend from their thread?           Zeus.  We do.  Why do you smile?         Cyn.  I was thinking of that bit in Homer, where he makes you address the Gods in council, and all the Gods together, if they liked, might take hold of it and try to pull you down, and they would never do it: whereas you, if you had a mind to it, could easily pull them up, "and Earth and Sea withal."  I listened to that passage with shuddering reverence; I was much impressed with the idea of your strength.  Yet now I understand that you and your cord and your threats all depend from a mere cobweb.  It seems to me Clotho should be the one to boast:  she has you dangling from her distaff, like a sprat at the end of a fishing-line.      Zeus.  I do not catch the drift of your questions.      Cyn.  Come, I will speak my mind; and in the name of Destiny and the Fates take not my candor amiss. If the case is unalterable, then why do men sacrifice to you, and bring hecatombs, and pray for good at your hands?  If our prayers can neither save us from evil nor procure us any boon from Heaven, I fail to see what we get for our trouble.      Zeus:  These are nice questions!  I see how it is,---you have been with the sophists; accursed race! who would deny us all concern in human affairs.  Yes, these are just the points they raise, impiously seeking to pervert mankind from the way of sacrifice and prayer:  it is all thrown away, forsooth! The Gods take no though for mankind; they have no power on the earth.  Ah well; they will be sorry for it some day.      Cyn.  Now, by Clotho's own spindle, my questions are free from all sophistic taint.  How it has come about, I know not; but one word has brought up another, and the end of it is-there is no use in sacrifice.  Let us begin again.  I will put you a few more questions; answer me frankly, but think before you speak, this time.     Zeus.  Well; if you have the time to waste on such tomfoolery.   Even the God's Are Pawns of Fate       Cyn.  Everything proceeds from the Fates, you say?    Zeus.  Yes.     Cyn.  And is it in your power to unspin what they have spun?    Zeus.  It is not.    Cyn.  Shall I proceed, or is the inference clear?    Zeus.  Oh, clear enough.  But you seem to think that people sacrifice to us from ulterior motives; that they are driving a bargain with us, buying blessings, as it were: not at all; it is a disinterested testimony to our superior merit.      Cyn.  There you are, then.  As you say, sacrifice answers no useful purpose; it is just our good-natured way of acknowledging your superiority.  And mind you, if we had a sophist here, he would want to know all about that superiority.  You are our fellow slaves, he would say; if the Fates are our mistresses, they are also yours.  Your immortality will not serve you; that only makes things worse.  We mortals, after all, are liberated by death; but for you there is no end to end to the evil; that long thread of yours mean eternal servitude.     Zeus.  But this eternity is an eternity of happiness; the life of Gods is one round of blessings.      Cyn.  Not all Gods' lives.  Even in Heaven there are distinctions, not to say mismanagement.  You  are happy, of course: you are king, and you can haul up earth and sea as it were a bucket from the well.  But look at Hephaestus: a cripple; a common blacksmith.  Look at Prometheus: he gets nailed up on Caucasus.  And I need not remind you that your own father lies fettered in Tartarus at this hour.  It seems, too, that Gods are liable to fall in love; and to receive wounds; nay, they may even have to take service with mortal men;  witness your brother Poseidon, and Apollo, servants to Laomedon and to Admetus.  I see no great happiness in all this; some of you I dare say have a very pleasant time of it, but not so others.  I might have added, that you are subject to robbery like the rest of us; your temples get plundered, and the richest of you becomes a pauper in the twinkling of an eye.  To more than one of you it has even happened to be melted down, if he was a gold or a silver God.  All destiny, of course.      Zeus.  Take care, Cyniscus; you are going too far.  You will repent of this one day.      Cyn.  Spare your threats: you know that nothing can happen to me, except what Fate has settled first.  I notice, for instance, that even temple-robbers do not always get punished; most of them, indeed slip through your hands.  Not destined to be caught, I suppose.     Zeus.  I knew it! you are one of those who would abolish Providence.     Cyn.  You seem to be very much afraid of these gentlemen,  for some reason.  Not one word can I say, but you must think I picked it up from them.  Oblige me by answering another question;  I could desire no better authority than yours.  What is this Providence?  Is she a Fate too?  or something greater, a mistress of the Fates?      Zeus.  I have already told you that there are things which it is not proper for you to know.  You said you were only going to ask me one question, instead of which you go on quibbling without end.  I see what it is you are at: you want to make out that we Gods take no thought for human affairs.     Cyn.  It is nothing to do with me: it was you who said just now that the Fates ordained everything.  Have you thought better of it?  Are you going to retract what you said? Are the Gods going to push Destiny aside and make a bid for government?     Zeus.  Not at all; but the Fates work through us.      Cyn.  I suppose it is pretty much the same as with a carpenter's adze and drill:  they do assist him in his work, but no one would describe them as the workmen: we do not say that a ship has been turned out by such and such an adze, or by such and such a drill; we name the shipwright.  In the same way, Destiny and the Fates are the universal shipwrights, and you are their drills and adzes; and it seems to me that instead of paying their respects and their sacrifices to you, men ought to sacrifice to Destiny, and implore her favors; though even that would not meet the case, because I take it that things are settled once and for all, and that the Fates themselves are not at liberty to chop and change.  If some one gave the spindle a turn in the wrong direction, and undid all Clotho's work, Atropus would have something to say on the subject.        Zeus.  So!  You would deprive even the Fates of honour?  You seem determined to reduce all to one level.  Well, we Gods have at least one claim on you: we do prophesy and foretell what the Fates have disposed.        Cyn.  Now even granting that you do, what is the use of knowing what one has to expect, when one can by no possibility take any precautions?  Are you going to tell me that a man who finds out that he is to die by a steel point can escape the doom by shutting himself up?  Not he.  Fate will take him out hunting, and there will be his steel:  Adrastus will  hurl his spear at the boar, miss the brute, and get Croesus's son;  Fate's inflexible law directs his aim.  The full absurdity of the thing is seen in the case of Laius: Seek not for offspring in the Gods' despite: Beget a child, and you beget your slayer. Was not this advice superfluous, seeing that the end must come?  Accordingly we find that the oracle does not deter Laius from begetting a son, nor that son from being his slayer.  On the whole, I cannot see that your prophecies entitle you to reward, even setting aside the obscurity of the oracles, which are generally contrived to cut both ways.  You omitted to mention, for instance, whether Croesus-" the Halys crossed' -should destroy his own or Cyrus's "mighty realm.'  It might be either, so far as the oracle goes.       Zeus.  Apollo was angry with Croesus.  When Croesus boiled that lamb and tortoise together in the cauldron, he was making trial of Apollo.       Cyn.  Gods ought not to be angry.  After all, I suppose it was fated that the Lydian should misinterpret that oracle;  his case only serves to illustrate that general ignorance of the future, which Destiny has appointed for mankind.  At that rate, your prophetic power too seems to be in her hands.   The Problem of Reward and Punishment         Zeus.  You leave us nothing, then?  We exercise no control, we are not entitled to sacrifice, we are very drills and adzes.  But you may well despise me: why do I sit here listening to all this, with my thunderbolt beneath my arm?        Cyn.  No, strike me, if the thunder-bolt is my destiny.  I shall think none the worse of you;  I shall know it is all Clotho's  doing; I will not even blame the bolt that wounds me.  And by the way-talking of thunder-bolts- there is one thing I will ask you and Destiny to explain; you can answer for her.  Why is it that you leave all the pirates and temple-robbers and ruffians and perjurers to themselves, and direct your shafts (as you are always doing) against an oak tree or a stone or a harmless mast, or even an honest, God-fearing traveler?... No answer?  Is this one of the things it is not proper for me to know?         Zeus.  It is, Cyniscus.  You are a meddlesome fellow; I don't know where you picked up all these ideas.             Cyn.  Well, I suppose I must not ask you all (Providence and Destiny and you) why honest Phocion died in utter poverty and destitution, like Aristides before him, while those two unwhipped puppies, Callias and Alcibiades, and the ruffian Midias, and that Aeginetan libertine Charops, who starved his own mother to death, were all rolling in money? nor again why Socrates was handed over to the Eleven instead of Meletus?  nor yet why the effeminate Sardanapalus was a king, and one high-minded Persian after another went to the cross for refusing to countenance his doings?  I say nothing of our own days, in which villains and money-grubbers prosper, and honest men are oppressed with want and sickness and a thousand distresses, and can hardly call their souls their own.        Zeus.  Surely you know, Cyniscus, what punishments await the evil-doers after death, and how happy will be the lot of the righteous?        Cyn.  Ah, to be sure:  Hades-Tityus-Tantalus. Whether there is such a place as Hades, I shall be able to satisfy myself when I die.  In the meantime, I had rather live a pleasant life here, and have a score or so of vultures at my liver when I am dead, than thirst like Tantalus in this world, on the chance of drinking with the heroes in the Isles of the Blest, and reclining in the fields of Elysium.        Zeus.  What!  you doubt that there are punishments and rewards to come?  You doubt of that judgement-seat before which every soul is arraigned?        Cyn.  I have  heard mention of a judge in that connection;  one Minos, a Cretan.  Ah, yes, tell me about him:  they say he is your son?        Zeus.  And what of him?        Cyn.  Whom does he punish in particular?         Zeus.  Whom but the wicked?  Murderers, for instance, and temple-robbers.        Cyn.  And whom does he send to dwell with the heroes?         Zeus.  Good men and God-fearing, who have led virtuous lives.        Cyn.  Why?       Zeus.  Because they deserve punishment and reward respectively.       Cyn.  Suppose a man commits a crime accidentally:  does he punish him just the same?        Zeus.  Certainly not.        Cyn.  Similarly, if a man involuntarily performed a good action, he would not reward him?        Zeus.  No.        Cyn.  Then there is no one for him to reward or punish.        Zeus.  How so?        Cyn.  Why, we men do nothing of our own free will: we are obeying an irresistible impulse,-that is, if there is any truth in what we settled just now, about Fate's being the cause of everything.  Does a man commit a murder?  Fate is the murderess.  Does he rob a temple?  He has her instructions for it.  So if there is going to be any justice in Minos's sentences, he will punish Destiny, not Sisyphus; Fate, not Tantalus.  What harm did these men do?  They only obeyed orders.         Zeus.  I am not going to speak to you any more.  You are an unscrupulous man; a sophist.  I shall go away and leave you to yourself.         Cyn.  I wanted to ask you where the Fates lived; and how they managed to attend to all the details of such a vast mass of business, just those three.  I do not envy them their lot; they must have a busy time of it, with so much on their hands.  Their destiny, apparently, is no better than other people's.  I would not exchange with them, if I had a choice; I had rather be poorer than I am, than sit before such a spindleful, watching every thread.  But never mind, if you would rather not answer.  Your previous replies have quite cleared up my doubts about Destiny and Providence, and for the rest, I expect I was not destined to hear it.

III.  Critique of Fatalism

One problem with the fatalist position is that if a person's entire life and actions are determined by fate, then how can that person be considered responsible for any actions, positive or negative, that he performs.  One of the greatest philosophers of the ancient world, Aristotle, believed that far from being a passive tool of fate, a human being possesses free will which makes him responsible for the actions that he performs:

	Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics III   Human Beings as Responsible Agents   5.  The end, then, being what we wish for, the means what we deliberate about and choose, actions concerning means must be according to choice and voluntary. Now the exercise of the virtues is concerned with means. Therefore virtue also is in our own power, and so too vice. For where it is in our power to act it is also in our power not to act, and vice versa; so that, if to act, where this is noble, is in our power, not to act, which will be base, will also be in our power, and if not to act, where this is noble, is in our power, to act, which will be base, will also be in our power. Now if it is in our power to do noble or base acts, and likewise in our power not to do them, and this was what being good or bad meant, then it is in our power to be virtuous or vicious.     The saying that 'no one is voluntarily wicked nor involuntarily happy' seems to be partly false and partly true; for no one is involuntarily happy, but wickedness is voluntary. Or else we shall have to dispute what has just been said, at any rate, and deny that man is a moving principle or begetter of his actions as of children. But if these facts are evident and we cannot refer actions to moving principles other than those in ourselves, the acts whose moving principles are in us must themselves also be in our power and voluntary.   Reward and Punishment as Indicators of Human Freedom       Witness seems to be borne to this both by individuals in their private capacity and by legislators themselves; for these punish and take vengeance on those who do wicked acts (unless they have acted under compulsion or as a result of ignorance for which they are not themselves responsible), while they honor those who do noble acts, as though they meant to encourage the latter and deter the former. But no one is encouraged to do the things that are neither in our power nor voluntary; it is assumed that there is no gain in being persuaded not to be hot or in pain or hungry or the like, since we shall experience these feelings none the less. Indeed, we punish a man for his very ignorance, if he is thought responsible for the ignorance, as when penalties are doubled in the case of drunkenness; for the moving principle is in the man himself, since he had the power of not getting drunk and his getting drunk was the cause of his ignorance. And we punish those who are ignorant of anything in the laws that they ought to know and that is not difficult, and so too in the case of anything else that they are thought to be ignorant of through carelessness; we assume that it is in their power not to be ignorant, since they have the power of taking care.   Our Characters Are Our Responsibilities       But perhaps a man is the kind of man not to take care. Still they are themselves by their slack lives responsible for becoming men of that kind, and men make themselves responsible for being unjust or self-indulgent, in the one case by cheating and in the other by spending their time in drinking bouts and the like; for it is activities exercised on particular objects that make the corresponding character. This is plain from the case of people training for any contest or action; they practice the activity the whole time. Now not to know that it is from the exercise of activities on particular objects that states of character are produced is the mark of a thoroughly senseless person.      Again, it is irrational to suppose that a man who acts unjustly does not wish to be unjust or a man who acts self-indulgently to be self-indulgent. But if without being ignorant a man does the things which will make him unjust, he will be unjust voluntarily. Yet it does not follow that if he wishes he will cease to be unjust and will be just. For neither does the man who is ill become well on those terms. We may suppose a case in which he is ill voluntarily, through living incontinently and disobeying his doctors. In that case it was then open to him not to be ill, but not now, when he has thrown away his chance, just as when you have let a stone go it is too late to recover it; but yet it was in your power to throw it, since the moving principle was in you. So, too, to the unjust and to the self-indulgent man it was open at the beginning not to become men of this kind, and so they are unjust and self-indulgent voluntarily; but now that they have become so it is not possible for them not to be so.     But not only are the vices of the soul voluntary, but those of the body also for some men, whom we accordingly blame; while no one blames those who are ugly by nature, we blame those who are so owing to want of exercise and care. So it is, too, with respect to weakness and infirmity; no one would reproach a man blind from birth or by disease or from a blow, but rather pity him, while every one would blame a man who was blind from drunkenness or some other form of self-indulgence. Of vices of the body, then, those in our own power are blamed, those not in our power are not. And if this be so, in the other cases also the vices that are blamed must be in our own power.     Now some one may say that all men desire the apparent good, but have no control over the appearance, but the end appears to each man in a form answering to his character. We reply that if each man is somehow responsible for his state of mind, he will also be himself somehow responsible for the appearance; but if not, no one is responsible for his own evildoing, but every one does evil acts through ignorance of the end, thinking that by these he will get what is best, and the aiming at the end is not self-chosen but one must be born with an eye, as it were, by which to judge rightly and choose what is truly good, and he is well endowed by nature who is well endowed with this. For it is what is greatest and most noble, and what we cannot get or learn from another, but must have just such as it was when given us at birth, and to be well and nobly endowed with this will be perfect and true excellence of natural endowment. If this is true, then, how will virtue be more voluntary than vice? To both men alike, the good and the bad, the end appears and is fixed by nature or however it may be, and it is by referring everything else to this that men do whatever they do.     Whether, then, it is not by nature that the end appears to each man such as it does appear, but something also depends on him, or the end is natural but because the good man adopts the means voluntarily virtue is voluntary, vice also will be none the less voluntary; for in the case of the bad man there is equally present that which depends on himself in his actions even if not in his end. If, then, as is asserted, the virtues are voluntary (for we are ourselves somehow partly responsible for our states of character, and it is by being persons of a certain kind that we assume the end to be so and so), the vices also will be voluntary; for the same is true of them.

Aristotle's point here is a significant one.  If we are indeed responsible for our actions, then the implication is that fate holds no real power over us.  We are completely free to become whatever kind of person we choose to be---vicious or virtuous.  We should, therefore not blame fate, genetics our environment or anything else  for the kind of people that we have become.  Our faults lie not in our stars, but in ourselves (to steal a line from Hamlet).

What do you think about Aristotle's argument here?  Do you think that what he is saying is true or is his view overly simplistic?