determinism and free will 3

Fate could not operate without that choice, which is part of the web of fate itself, part of its colour.

Did not Odysseus reach Ithaka as he was fated to do all along? And did not that arrival require strenuous efforts and choices, the choice to leave the nymph Calypso for example?

To say that determinism and free will contradict each other is to confuse two things on very different scales.

The sense of choice, of decision and effort, are woven into the very fabric of fate. Free will is necessary for fate to unfold as it must.

determinism and free will 2

Now we descend from Parmenides's vantage point on Mount Olympus.

From there we could see the whole world laid out, not only in space but also in time: everything that was is and will be as a single unimaginably complex intertwining of threads of existence. For each object and being we see that coming into existence, being and going out of existence are just one thread.

Thus the Fates weave. There seemed from there no possibility of anything ever being any different, since we see all changes as one thing.

From the point of view of the being whose thin thread of life we observed from Olympus, things look very different. The twists and turns of fate do not entirely feel to us like being pushed and pulled helplessly, but require decisions and action.

Saxon King Harold Godwinson, standing on the battlefield not far from York in 1066, is faced by his brother Tostig and Harald Sigurdson, King of Norway at the head of a large Norwegian army. Harold sends a messenger to the Norwegian camp and offers a third of his kingdom to his brother Tostig. Tostig asks what Harold will give to Harald of Norway. Harold replies that he will give him six feet of English earth, but because Harald is such a tall man, seven feet.

Battle commences and the invading Norwegians are defeated and Harald and Tostig slain. Harold Godwinson returns to fight William of Normandy at Hastings, the outcome of which we all know.

What if Harold, knowing that he had two battles on his hands and weary troops, had made a pact with Harald and gone on to victory at Hastings? Probably the inhabitants of Newcastle would speak Norwegian to this day, and English history would have been very different.

Perhaps the choice Harold made was determined by Fate. But from Harold's point of view he was making a decision, in those few minutes.

determinism and free will

We are with Parmenides, standing on Mount Olympus, looking down on the whole universe in time and space. From our god-like perspective the universe is a four-dimensional space-time solid, in which all our heres and nows that were and are and shall be are but specks.

We can perhaps distinguish a line connecting all the moments of the life of one being, this being the thread spun by the Fates. Everything is fixed.

Omar Khayyam wrote:

With Earth's first Clay They did the Last man's knead,
And then of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:
Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.


However, from the point of view of this being, whose thread of life we observe from Olympus, things look very different.

In my next post I propose to challenge the idea that determinism and free will are irreconcilable.