Necessity and chance

Historically, the categories of necessity and chance emerged as a consequence of meditation on the human fate, on "divine providence", the freedom of the will, on the predestination or spontaneous character of human being. These categories became free of this primarily ethical interpretation mostly in connection with the achievements of natu­ral-scientific knowledge in the Modern Times.

Chance is a type of connection which is con­ditioned by inessential, external, and contingent (in relation to the given phenomenon) causes. As a rule, such a connection is unstable. In other words, chance is the subjectively unexpected, objectively unnecessary event which may or may not occur under given condi­tions, which may take any course in its development. Chance may be external or internal. External chance is beyond the power of a given necessity, and it is governed by some attendant circumstances. Internal chance follows from the object's nature: it is, as it were, a turbulence caused by necessity. Chance is regarded as internal if the situation of the birth of an accidental phenomenon is described from within a single causal series, while the total action of other causal sequences is described in terms of the objective conditions of the realization of the main causal series. Chance is also divided into subjective, that is, emerging from a display of the freedom of the will by an individual acting against ob­jective necessity (such is the nature of the historical voluntarism of some political figures) and objective (this will be considered in our treatment of the category of probability).

Like chance, necessity may be external and internal, i.e. pro­duced by the object's own nature or under the contingency. It may be characteristic of a great number of objects or of a single object. Necessity is an essential feature of law. Just as law, it may be dy­namic or statistical.

Necessity and chance figure as two correlative categories ex­pressing the philosophical interpretation of the interdependence between phenomena, the degree of the determination of their emer­gence and existence.

Ignoring of the dialectical understanding of the connection between such categories as necessity and chance leads to their absolutization: fatalism and voluntarism. Fatalism is the philosophical doctrine that all events are predetermined so that man is powerless to alter his destiny. It is quite a dangerous worldview principle as it forms some pessimistic points of view. Voluntarism on the contrary denies the existence of historical regularities, the theory that states the will rather than the intellect is the ultimate principle of reality.

The category of freedom is closely connected with such categories as necessity and chance. Freedom reflects man’s possibility to act according to his interests and aims, relying on his ability to cognize the objective reality. It is one of the basic categories in philosophy that is why it will be described more in detail in the next chapters of this textbook.

The dialectical interpretation of freedom consists in the fact that it is not abstract and absolute. It is always particular and relative. The level of it directly depends on man’s understanding of his abilities and responsibility for his made choice.

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