We're Fated to Have Free Will?

Friday’s somewhat circular discussion concerning the guiding elements of fate and free will in Oedipus Rex prompted me to reflect upon these two fundamental aspects of Greek mythology and tragedy. The underlying theme behind the back-story of Oedipus Rex is the attempt to escape one’s fate. The Oracle tells Oedipus that he will kill his father and sleep with his mother, prompting him to flee Corinth under the pretext that the King and Queen are his actual parents. Despite his efforts, the Oracle’s prophecy invariably and tragically holds true. Similarly, the Oracle tells Laius, Oedipus’s real father, that his son will kill him, thus provoking Laius to attempt to preemptively kill his son. And yet, his son does not die and in turn, Laius does not live. This all raises a simply worded, yet complex question: what is an individual fated to do and what is an individual free to do?
For the sake of simplicity and non-historical truth, let us assume that the Oracle is never wrong. Such infallibility implies that whatever is spoken by the Python—the priestess of Apollo who spews out prophecies—will eventually occur. Thus, it is impossible for Oedipus, nor anyone who receives a future-indicating statement from the Oracle for that matter, to prevent the realization of such statement. Unfortunately, Oedipus, and everybody else, is condemned to commit patricide and incest, a combination of one or the other, or their equivalents. Taking Oedipus’s story as a case study, one does not have choice whether he or she wants to kill his father and copulate with his mother; it is predetermined. The only scenarios in which Oedipus avoids his fate are those in which the Oracle is wrong, but (1) that violates our above assumption and (2) the Oracle is never wrong; therefore, no such scenarios exist. And yet, even though each of these scenarios ends with the same aforementioned outcome, an infinite number of scenarios exist.
What is the reason for such variation? The answer is rather simple: it is free will. Although it may seem like a contradiction, Oedipus’s story is riddled with examples of fate’s polar opposite twin. Let “Point A” denote where Oedipus is at in terms of space and time immediately after he hears the Oracle speak and let “Point B” denote where Oedipus is at, again in terms of space and time, where Oedipus is at after he kills Laius in the first recorded instance of road rage. Going even further, let “Point C” denote Oedipus’s spatial and temporal location after he first engages in intercourse with Jocasta. There exist an infinite number of paths varying in the distance and the time between Points A and B, Points B and C, and Points A, B and C. Obviously, the distance and time differences are metaphorical; but the point—no pun intended— is that Oedipus can choose any one of these pathways. That, precisely, is a demonstration of free will. The Oracle, a very ends-focused entity, merely tells him what he will unquestionably and inevitably do, not the nature in which he will do it.
Fueling the hopes of those who like to believe in human agency, individuals are not forced to consult to the Oracle; knowing one’s fate is entirely the decision of the individual. Although this assertion may seem irrelevant since, arguably, it is characteristic human behavior to be curious about the future, it nonetheless is incontrovertible that neither Oedipus nor Laius was commanded to know his fate. This fact, though, raises an interesting backward-looking question: would Oedipus’s life have occurred in the same manner had neither he nor his father ever scratched the itch of curiosity? The answer is no, but that is only because the way the question is worded. If Laius did not know that his son would eventually kill him, he would not have killed Oedipus. Furthermore, Oedipus would never have consulted the Oracle because he would not have been at the court of Corinth where a drunken man questioned his legitimacy. However, none of that is a definitive guarantee that Oedipus would not have killed his father and had sex with his mother. This, in turn, raises another, even more confusing question: would a prophecy be realized even though no one knew it existed?
It is this author’s strong conviction that this question cannot be answered. Attempting to answer the above question requires the individual to be aware of the prophecy, which violates the condition that no one know of its existence. The easiest and the most logical—even though the notion of pre-determined events may seem illogical—way to resolve this dilemma of fate and free will is to accept the following position: an individual is free to choose how he or she meets his or her fate; but meet his or her fate, he or she will. One might argue that “self-fulfilling prophecy” describes Oedipus’s course of action, but that assertion falls into a destructive double-bind: either (A) there exists a probability that the Oracle’s words will not compel the hearer to realize his or her fate, in which case there exist scenarios in which the Oracle is wrong—the Oracle is never wrong; or (B) there exists no probability that Oracle’s words will not compel the hearer to realize his fate, in which case the Oracle’s words are always true, which in turn means that the hearer still does as he or she is fated to do. In the end, it is impossible to prove categorically that all of our actions are not predetermined and cannot be correctly divined, since we can never prove that there does not exist such a diviner. Such rationale has ensured the continuance of the profitability of the prophecy industry. (956)

The Insufferable Loneliness of Dying

Lev Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan llyich conveys the unique experience of dying through the narration of the eponymous protagonist’s descent into abyss of the death. Described by Ronald Blythe as evoking “the sheer desolating aloneness of dying,” Tolstoy’s novella paints a grim and unfortunate picture of a man who is alone not only in terms of physical experience from which he suffers but also in terms of the inner agony that accompanies the waiting for the termination of one’s existence.

Following his unexpected fall while decorating his house to look like that of every other man’s of his class, Ivan, or Jean if were Francophiles, begins his dark period of aloneness. He understands his condition, or at least the symptoms of it, while all who surround him are without a modicum of knowledge as to cause of his suffering. One doctor thinks the malady is a “floating kidney”—and Russians wondered why western Europeans thought them backward—another thinks his illness is “something…in the vermiform appendix.” But in reality, none of them are certain to any significant degree. All the while Ivan suffers “with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others.” Furthermore, his wife, a constant thorn in his side whose pain occasionally goes into remission, thinks Ivan’s illness is his own fault. These attitudes exhibited by those around him all contribute to his feeling he is “all alone on the brink of an abyss, with no one who understood or pitied him.” Tolstoy conveys the classic emotion almost every individual experiences at one point in time: the feeling that nobody understands what one is going through. In Ivan’s case, this sentiment his exponentially heightened with his impending demise.

Moreover, though, Ivan is suffering from an existential crisis that 1) is primarily irrelevant to people who are not about to die and 2) only he can resolve for himself. Ivan wrestles with the fear of what he will be, when he is not, while the others—family and friends—are unfazed by such mysteries. Ivan, and in turn Tolstoy, conveys the universal qualm when he says “Death. Yes, death. And none of them knows or wishes to know it, and they have no pity for me.” When his wife comes in after he has had a bout with this plaguing question, Ivan immediately assumes that she will not understand. It is as though Ivan has become an inconvenience to those around him. The people who would have been regarded as being close to him now await his passing so that this unpleasant period may quickly fade. Ivan is left alone to painfully “sweat out” this final chapter in his life without any for company, with Gerasim as a possible exception. This unfortunate reality compels Ivan to feel that he is and will be all alone throughout this tortuous experience; a sentiment that seems to be reasonably true, considering the strikingly absent mentioning of his family or friends tending to him.

While it may not be difficult to describe the “aloneness of death” for a man with a family like Ivan’s, Tolstoy’s attempt to depict Ivan’s situation raises a broader question: how can something so personal and intimate as the process of dying be adequately conveyed by an external observer? This question is not intended to be a criticism of the masterful Tolstoy. Rather, it reveals that the assumption that has been made in affirming Blythe’s aforementioned statement is that one can truly understand this experience. While I have no intention of resolving the question posed, I will readily concede that at the very least, Tolstoy displays a profoundly convincing conjecture in The Death of Ivan Iliych. (614)