On fate and fatalism

Philosophy East and West

Volumn 53, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 435-454

  Solomon, Robert C ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 35748954959     PISSN: 00318221     EISSN: 15291898     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2003.0047     Document Type: Review

References (24)

1. Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984), p. 104
2. Maureen Dowd, New York Times, 23 September 2001
3. Dennett, Elbow Room, p. 104
4. What Will Be Will Be, sung by Doris Day in Alfred Hitchcock's second version of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
5. Mark H. Bernstein, Fatalism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992)
6. Lisa Raphals, "Fate and Stratagem in Ancient Greece and China," in Shankman and Durrant, eds., Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons in Chinese Philosophy and Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001). There is at least some question as to whether karma ought to be treated as a version of fate and fatalism. Karma is the "residue" of action and thus determines (in part) future benefits and punishments (whether in this life or the next). But insofar as it determines the future on the basis of the past rather than simply specifies the future, one might instead consider it a peculiar version of determinism
7. Raphals, "Fate and Strategem in Ancient Greece and China," p. 208
8. See, for example, Robert Kane The Significance of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
9. See Robin Small, "Fatalism and Deliberation," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18, no. 1 (March 1988): 13-30
10. The Iliad, 16:470-496, in Stanley Lombardo, trans., (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), p. 318
11. Fragment #104, in Charles Kahn, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)
12. See Cecil M. Bowra, Sophoclean Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1945)
13. Marjorie Barstow, "Oedipus Rex as the Ideal Tragic Hero of Aristotle," Classical Weekly 6, no. 1 (5 October 1912)
14. and Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)
15. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 2d ed., ed. L. A. Sleby-Biggee (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902)
16. John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, 8th ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1874)
17. Out of fairness, I should say that the notion of character has also come under fire, first in the area of psychology, in particular by those social psychologists who identify themselves as "situationists," and more recently in philosophy. For the "situationist" view, see J. M. Darley and C. D. Batson, "From Jerusalem to Jericho: A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 27 (1973)
18. For philosophy, see Gilbert Harman, "Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1998-1999): 315-331
19. (revised version in G. Harman, Explaining Value and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000], pp. 165-178)
20. See also Harman's "The Nonexistence of Character Traits," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (1999-2000): 223-226
21. and John Doris, Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
22. On the other side, defending the ordinary notion of character, see D. T. Kenrick and D. C. Funder, "Profiting from Controversy: Lessons from the Person-Situation Debate," American Psychologist 43 (1988): 23-34
23. and David C. Funder, "Personality," Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001): 197-221
24. Bernd Magnus, Nietzsche's Existential Imperative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978)