Sometimes during an argument or a heated discussion, we hear: “You are a fatalist!” For some people, this looks like an accusation, many even get offended. But let's figure it out, fatalist - who is this?
From a philological point of view, we are talking about a predestined fate, prescribed from above and which a person is not able to change, no matter how much he wants to. According to the logic of a fatalist, any of us is just a toy in the hands of higher powers, a passive observer who only has to continue to live and take the events for granted. However, the passivity of observation does not mean that nothing needs to be done. All vital activity and all aspirations fit into a certain outline, which will lead somewhere.
In this respect it is interesting to know what the fatalist believes in. First of all, in the predestination of fate. With this, everything is clear. But the main thing here is faith in regularity and a certain logic.(sequence) of ongoing events. For a fatalist, there are no accidents, everything that happens to him is the links of one chain, where people's actions occur with 100% probability. For him, the question does not arise: “A fatalist - who is this?” The question is meaningless, because in this way it determines both the philosophical understanding of the essence of man and the metaphysical transcription of being.
However, when looking for an answer to the question posed, one cannot bypass the topic of free will. For a fatalist who burns time, there is no past or present. For him there is only the future and the expectation of this very future. Personal choice is reduced to only a minimal awareness of what is happening, which in a particular situation can be constructed depending on personal interests. Therefore, the answer to the question "fatalist - who is this" should be sought both in personal egoism and in the denial of the very principle of choice. Or even more precisely - in the relative acceptance of the possibility of choice with its ideological denial. Life is a choice without a choice. Like Vladimir Vysotsky: “The track is only mine, get out on your track!”
The hero of our time is a fatalist. At least, this is how critics habitually characterize the main character of the novel of the same name by M. Yu. Lermontov. At the same time, Pechorin himself, experiencing his own fate three times in the course of the plot, never thinks about the consequences. He goes ahead like a battering ram, proving to himself and others that no one dares to determine how he should live and what to do. In a certain sense, of course, this is fatalism. But on the otherOn the other hand, he plays not so much with his own, but with other people's destinies, testing the strength of fate. A person becomes similar to God, he does not take on faith everything that happens to him, does not seriously try to change anything, but makes the outside world and the people who surround him change. And if we remain within the framework of the concept of "Pechorin is a fatalist", then it should be clarified that fate in Lermontov's understanding is the outside world, the surrounding reality, a certain "order of things", unchanging and absolute in its existential essence. But not the human soul.
That's why, when answering the question "who is a fatalist", one must proceed from the Catholic understanding of free will. Yes, a person has the right to choose, but this choice is already predetermined in itself. We do not know our fate and therefore are free to do what we want. But this does not mean a denial of fate and the will of God. The fatalist simply trusts in his own destiny. As do many of us.
