Fate Vs Free Will

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Destiny can be defined as the events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or thing in the future. Free will is an interpretation held by a person that defines their destiny. Free will is defined as the power of acting without the constraint of necessity of fate, the ability to act at one’s own discretion (O’Connor, 2002). An idea that is held by most philosophers is that the concept of free will is very closely connected to the concept of moral responsibility (O’Connor, 2002). In counter argument to free will as being responsible for a person destiny, some philosopher’s believe that destiny comes down to fate. Fatalism has been philosophical defined as an attitude of acknowledgement regarding the future event or events, which …show more content…
Living by the theory of fatalism, individuals have no control on their future, as everything is predetermined for them. Take the screenplay, which came to be in around 430 BC as an example of fatalism. The story goes that Oedipus learnt from oracle in his life that he was destined to kill his father, and marry his mother (Destiny of Oedipus, n.d.) Oedipus tried to change his fate by marrying another women and stay away from his father and mother, although at the end of the story it is revealed that the events that were predetermined to happen eventually happened. The moral behind the story is that one cannot escape their fate and there is no control over destiny. Even though Oedipus was aware of his fate, it does not impact on the theory of fatalism as fate happens whether one is aware of it or not (Holton, n.d.). Juxtaposition to this example, the screenplay written by Shakespeare, Macbeth, illustrated an example that displays free will. The story goes that the main character was prophesised by three witches that he would become the King of Scotland, after he committed the sin of killing the current king, which did eventually did occur (Shakespeare, 2014). Even though the witches had the ability to predict this event happening in future, they had no control over what Macbeth’s choice of action was going to be. In saying this, it displays the free will as Macbeth’s committed certain actions that resulted in him to become the King of

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