Today the air seems more pure, the sky more blue, and the sun more pleasantly bright. It is because of necessity- such a liberating and empowering word!
All that exists is the product of necessity and is itself necessary.
That which was paved the way for what is even as what is paves the way for what will be. In this we see that there is ultimately no waste, nothing that is ultimately superfluous in the process of time.
Necessity, to those who have knowledge of it and meditate upon it, banishes regret over the past, lamentation over the present, and dread over the future.
That which was had to be by virtue of necessity and was necessary in order for what is now to be. By extension, what is today is necessary for what will come tomorrow and cannot be other than it is in order for tomorrow to become what it will be.
Even opposition to the idea of necessity is necessary in order for the process of time to bring to bear that which such opposition will produce. Indeed the entire process of time and the development history produces all that is necessary for their continuation.
Do you rail against the conditions of the present? You do so by virtue of necessity in order to produce something greater than what you rail against and what you press towards. Love your enemies, as it is through your enemies that you grow and cause growth. Without their opposition your development, your becoming would cease. Oppose them (as you must according to necessity) but do not hate them. However, even if you hate them, know that this too is according to necessity, for it may be by your hate that you are propelled toward that which is necessary inn thought or action.
How freeing, how empowering, how uplifting, to know that what was must have been, that what is must be, and that what will be through us, must be! Through time and history you are born and through you time and history are born. Choose according to that which you will and know that even as today is yesterday’s necessity, tomorrow will be according to todays.
Why assert this? Causality doesn’t demonstrate necessity. I get you ethical point about not regretting the past, but there’s no reason to assert that it was necessary that the past occurred the way it did, or that it’s necessary that the present moment is exactly the way it is, and furthermore, there’s no evidence (whatsoever) to imply that it’s necessary for the future to be exactly the way it’s going to be.
The best we’ll get here on this necessity point is a tautology. That is: “What exists is necessary because it could not have been any other way.” We could just as well say NOTHING is necessary. You’re confusing knowledge with truth: the present moment might very well have been quite different, and we have no knowledge about what the future is actually going to be–only predictions based on probability judgments.
What is necessary, at any rate, seems to be chance. We must accept what we cannot change, of course, but on those which we may, we must wager-- and we may very well wager on the ontological hypothesis that everything is necessary. But we might just as well have taken the opposite point of view (that nothing is necessary) and the truth is that neither perspective really tells us anything ELSE about existence besides whether it is logically necessary that it be such as it is, or merely contingently obligatory…
All that exists is the product of necessity, as the existences of all things presuppose a necessary process. Ergo, that which exists is necessary and the product of necessity. It was Plato who stated in ‘The Republic’ that necessity is the mother of invention. It is necessity which provides the impetus toward existence. ‘Something’ exists rather than ‘Nothing’ by virtue of necessity. All the laws of nature conspire to create and recreate. In nothingness there is no potential for flux. In “something-ness†there is unlimited potential for flux.
Also, I disagree that causality doesn’t demonstrate necessity. Causality is the manifestation of necessity. When a necessary event or process begins, it begins by a cause does it not? What event or process begins without cause and what cause is manifest without it’s necessarily being so? The question lies not in necessity or cause but in intention or the lack thereof and purpose. Is all that exists the product of intention or accident? Is it purposeful or purposeless? Here our argument becomes one of theology and teleology, neither of which can be empirically and objectively proven indisputably in the phenomenal world.
To state that “the present moment might very well have been quite different†is to indulge in fantasy and make believe. If it had been possible that the present moment be different, then the antecedent conditions leading up to this moment would have, according to necessity, provided for such a divergent moment and the moment, as it is now, would have never been. Also, what prevents us from a full and accurate map of the future is nothing more than a lack of information on variables and the calculating power to be able to quantify those variables and shape them into some kind of meaningful description of what necessity will produce. There is no “chanceâ€, no “accidentâ€, no “coincidenceâ€; all these are illusions propped up by ignorance, the unfortunate consequences of a lack of information.
True we must accept what we cannot change but we must also change that which we cannot accept, for to accept it betrays any suggestion that we could do otherwise-such is necessity. If we accept, it is necessary that we accept, just as if we cannot accept it is necessary that we cannot accept. If we could accept, un-acceptance would not be necessary, and if we could not accept, acceptance would not be necessary.
To the idea that, “we might just as well have taken the opposite point of view (that nothing is necessary)â€, I would respond that the very universe we live in refutes such a notion. The universe itself demonstrates necessity (of which order is a sign) in manifold places and in manifold ways. As I stated earlier, Causality is the manifestation of necessity, and causality is found everywhere. What you posit is a world of chaos which simply doesn’t exist.
Your demands upon the statement “All that exists is the product of necessity and is itself necessaryâ€, goes beyond that limits of the statement. Such a statement has no other purpose than to communicate that which it communicates, that all is logically necessary; it is not meant to “tell us anything ELSE about existenceâ€, as the relation of any other information through it would be unnecessary.
Nice! Let me apologize if my first response sounded overly critical. I loved your response here so much I almost didn’t want to try to work against it, man! Maybe this was exactly the kind of response I was hoping for. At any rate your analysis is so discerning I have very little to reproach you for, but I’ll go ahead and respond to your points directly anyway:
Sure, but you seem to be taking up basically the same point earlier that necessity is truly predicated of existence… because existence presupposes necessity. It doesn’t make it less of a tautology just because we introduce this second term “existence.” The truth may be that existence is necessary; what we know is that it may or may not be, depending on our initial assumptions, which may themselves be a product of necessity–but then again, why is it true that your initial assumption differs from mine in this instance?
And as to the deeper metaphysical issue at work here, I’m not sure I really want to touch it–in the sense that I’d rather not label the “big machinery” (Being, Nothingness) of the greater Universe with either of our “earth-centric” human terms, “necessity” or “contingency.” If we do presume a disjunctive logic on this point, it does follow that one and not both must be true for Being taken as a totality. But all this framework falls apart if don’t take Being as a totality, that is, if we consider Being to be infinite (and thus allow for infinite possibilities for the future as well as the present,) or alternatively if we abandon the premise of a mutually-exclusive logic (and assert the possibility that some things are necessary, while some things are contingent, and perhaps some things are neither!)
In other words, if we stick to what we know (and not to what we presume is true,) then I think the most rational perspective on this necessity/contingency question is an agnostic one: since we can’t assert the necessity of Being without precisely bringing in a teleogical and theological perspective, we should rather assert that it is precisely these “priestly” perspectives on human life which have imagined certain principles or conditions to be universal, have imagined the arbitrary divisions in society to refer to some absolute necessity of existence, in other words, instead of using necessity to create solutions, have rather used the ontological apparatus of “necessity” to squash the capacity for critical thought and squelch the potential for radical change. Quite the opposite of a Hermiclitean flux, right?
How can we tell empirically that necessity manifests itself as cause? No, events don’t have causes that we can see, you’re mistaking inference for vision; for example, a candle burning down: we would like to say the fire is the cause of the chemical transformation, but again, the fire has a cause–and if it is a human being who is causing it, we can no longer resort to causes we can “see,” it is at this point we have to go to motivation. And we cannot continue our search here for necessity: the unconscious may have a structure, but it is certainly not a visible structure, or one we can investigate empirically! So either the chain of causes is unstable because it can be traced back forever through a purely physical sequents of events, or the chain encounters a different kind of strange disruption if it leads to a human subject. Either way, we’ve not empirically demonstrated the existence of anything remotely looking like a “cause.”
I believe that existence is not only necessary, I believe all there is is existence in varying degrees and forms and I would (obviously) agree that our initial assumptions are (as all else) a product of necessity.
However, Being is a totality, though it can be subdivided.
I would posit that Necessity is every contingecy played out to its end. Also, if we must abandon logic to slay necessity, doesnt that bolster necessities claims?
Well, we could (though I personally do not) assert the necessity of being without bringing in (positive) teleological and/or theological perspectives. Perhaps necessity is simply that which must be according to the unintentional process of perpetual becoming, a kind of eventuality, without willed origin (theism) or foreknown end (teleology). However, a true telos (end) is a bit misleading as every end is simply a new beginning, an effect of current causes, and is foreknowable provided the potential knower have every variable accounted for and the ability to process them.
Actually, I would posit that the dialectic between dictated answers and creative answers (subjection vs. freedom) is an instrument of necessity and helps to move the universal process along; such is the hereclitean flux of which the dialectic is a type.
What you are dealing with is our limited knowledge, not a lack of cause. Our problem is that we can only “see†down to a certain point (the quantum physics issue) or calculate up to a certain point (the super computing issue). Logic dictates that the causal agents are there, and that once all causal agents (variables) are accounted for calculating them is simply a matter of ability, not logical possibility.
I suppose it could be viewed that way. However, my position is that rather than submitting passively to an unpleasant situation, necessity demands that you confront it, hence your inner urge to affect change. If you cannot accept a circumstance, necessity demands that you not accept it, and if you can, necessity demands that you do; in this way each age produces its heroes, villains, leaders, and followers. Accept the things you cannot change and change the things you cannot accept.
