Destiny

Fate (from Old Dutch schicksel "fact") or lot (from ahd., mhd. (h)lôჳ "omen, oracle"), (Latin fatum, Greek μοίρα moira), in Islam kismet (Arabic قسمة, DMG qisma(t)) is the course of events in the life of man, which are perceived as predetermined (sent) by higher powers or caused by coincidences, thus removed from the freedom of choice of man.

Imágenes principales

The term fate has no underlying unambiguously evaluative meaning. The word fate is used synonymously. For the most part, fate is understood to be some kind of higher power that decisively influences a person's life without direct human intervention. Examples: "Fate means well for her", "He was destined by fate", "Fate took its course", "One cannot escape one's fate" or the stroke of fate. In this sense it is the epitome of impersonal powers. However, the view that one can influence one's fate is particularly widespread; hence it is also spoken of "mastering one's fate" or "taking one's fate into one's own hands". Also that "one should not challenge one's fate" refers to the possibility of circumventing fateful events or courses.

The attitude towards fate is enough

• from complete surrender (fatalism) over the
• belief in its surmountability (never bend down/ show yourself strong/ summon the arms/ of the deity - Goethe) up to the
• complete freedom of will of the individual (voluntarism).

Background

In most cultures, fate is considered an inevitable destiny:

In mythology, the idea of fate developed as a personified power (the deities of fate Fortuna, Norns, Tyche, Moirs, Parcen, Namtaru), which governs both individual life and the course of the world, and "sends" fate to man.

The idea that fate is predetermined, led to the attempt to get at least hints of it in advance. This concept is the basis of mantic (divination).

The belief in fate is often religiously embedded or shaped. The assumption that man's fate lies in the hands of God or a superior divine being and is determined or at least guided by him is found in the belief in divine providence, which plays an important role in Islam and Christianity, for example. Depending on how much scope for decision is granted to the free will of man in relation to the predetermined or intended fate, these ideas diverge quite widely and reach from explicit rejection of the concept of fate in many Christian directions over a fateful belief in determination, as it is for example emphasized in Islam, up to the idea of a predestination of the soul's salvation, i.e. the predetermination of a person's future fate after his death, as it was also taught in Christian theology following Augustine, for example, by Martin Luther, who connected with it the doctrine of the sole effectiveness of divine grace and of man's inability to earn salvation by good works. In their radical form, which deprives man of any possibility to influence his fate and to participate in his salvation, these ideas are rejected, however, as well as a philosophical determinism (which postulates the uninfluenceability of earthly events including human actions by the will and is in this respect related to the belief in fate) both in Christianity and in Islam.

Philosophically, the position and evaluation of chance is of importance, which in the belief in fate and providence is often understood or interpreted as divine or fateful providence and partly - as in consistent determinism - rejected as non-existent ("there are no coincidences"). In contrast to deterministic ideas, however, the belief in fate emphasizes the inevitability only of the result (the "destiny") of a process or a biography, but sometimes grants the individual the possibility of free decisions of will, with which he can certainly not influence the occurrence of the predetermined result, at least not prevent it. Classic examples of this paradoxical moment in the fate-believing conception of the world can be found in the ancient sagas, for example in the stories of Oedipus or Odysseus, whose protagonists are free in their actions and do everything to escape their fateful destiny (prophesied by oracles), but in the end realize their predetermined fate themselves. In contrast, strict determinism excludes from the outset the existence of free will decisions and thereby determined actions, insofar as it assumes a mechanistic predetermination of all contingent events - thus also of human will and action - by known and unknown causal factors and is accordingly less interested in the result of the determination (the fate), but rather in taking into account the strict dependence of all phenomena, including all apparently self-determined life processes, on predetermined causes. However, the fate-believing and the deterministic worldview are united in their emphasis on the inevitability and the lack of alternatives in reality. This can lead to a rather passive, fatalistic, sometimes indifferent or - also ethically - indifferent attitude to life, and the striving for self-determination and world change can be seen as an illusion.