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Mairon asked:

After we think, in a philosophy paper we only write one interesting question:

Does DESTINY exist?

We've been thinking, what is the thing that rules our lives and I didn't find a certain answer to that
question, but that doesn't mean there are not possible answers — it's just that I'm not sure about
them. One of those was that a God rules people but who can prove that he exists? Nobody, nobody
in the present time or 2000 years ago.

And Fernando asked:

I'm studying High School at ITESM and taking a course on philosophy and some questions came to
my mind:

Is everything in this life meant to be?

Does destiny control our lives or is there something that people can do to change what's happening to
them and, if they could, is it because they want or is it predestined? In the case that everything was
"written" before we came to Earth, does life then make sense?

And Homero asked:

Are we owners of our destiny? Does destiny exist?

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At the age of twenty-one I discovered philosophy. From that time, I have known, more or less
continuously and with only occasional lapses of doubt, that it was my destiny to be a philosopher. —
How can a philosopher believe in such an ambiguous, questionable and misleading concept?

I am not interested in the standard, question-begging explanations of where the alleged false beliefin
destiny comes from. Of how and why we fall under the illusion that there are things we are destined to
do, or the illusion that we possess a destiny. "There must be a reason why the world is the way it is, it
can't just be an accident." Or, "There must be a reason why Iam here, in the world, it can't just be an
accident." So the explanation proceeds, we are led to invent a reason that exists 'out there' —
perhaps a reason that God knows — all the while totally unaware that 'the reason out there' is merely
a creature of our own imagination.

A more contemporary, but no less question-begging explanation is the idea that we are story-telling
creatures, that we feel impelled to construct a coherent narrative that makes sense of the events and
the decisions in our lives. As in the previous explanation, the sense of destiny is supposedly revealed
as nothing but an illusion, an invention, a prop. The fact that you or I might find it difficult or
impossible to live without that prop does not make it any less an illusion.

Both styles of explanation may be described as reductive:There is no such thing, in reality, as
destiny. The beliefin destiny has a cause.But the description of that cause does not involve the
concept of destiny. In the same way, the belief, in the Middle Ages, that there were such things as
witches who possessed supernatural powers derived from the Devil had a cause. Understanding that
cause does not require that we believe in the actual existence of witches. The belief in destiny is
false,just as the belief in witches is false.

The common assumption behind reductive explanations of the notion of destiny, I would argue, is a
concept of beliefwhich is altogether too rigid and simplistic.

I have heard it said that the logical difference between the concept of belief and the concept of desire
is that in the case of belief, our intention and aim is to mirror the world. If the world is different from
the way our belief represents it as being, then the belief is wrong, not the world. By contrast, with
desire, our intention and aim is to change the world, to make it conform to our representation. If the
world does not conform to our representation, then it is the world that is wrong, not our desire.

The belief in destiny — or, better, the senseof destiny — is not a 'belief' in this sense. Nor, on the
other hand, is it a mere intention that I form, "I will act as ifthere were a destiny for me". Adopting the
language of existentialism, to live with a sense of destiny is a way of being in the world.Just as to live
without a sense of destiny is a way of being in the world. It is a choice that is 'mine' yet which I do not
make, nor is it made for me.

My destiny is a real, objective feature of my world — of theworld as it spreads out from thisunique
point in time and space — yet I did not find my destiny there, for nothing that can be found in the
world could ever justify the belief that it possesses that feature.

Geoffrey Klempner