Fate and Free Will

Fate, destiny, Necessity, the will of the gods are all the driving forces in Greek tragedy. The idea of Free Will, in its modern sense, comes from the Protestant Reformation and the 18^th century enlightenment. It is an anachronistic concept we shouldn’t apply to the Classical texts. Free Will in a modern sense is the opposite of Predestination – the idea that we can change nothing by our actions or that even those actions we believe to be free are in fact predestined. In Greek thought these two opposites don’t exist in the same way – Fate is real; but so is human choice within that. Our fate, and the choices we make on the way towards it are able to exist together.

The gods may know the fate of humans and we may not be able to avoid that fate; but that doesn’t mean that human characters in the tragedies don’t have choices available to them. In fact human choice is central – we may not be able to avoid our fate, but we can make a choice about how we face it.

Classical tragedy can appear deterministic – in other words – what will happen is laid out beforehand and the human characters are simply towed along by Necessity or Fate. This is simplistic. Certainly by the time Plato is writing, at the end of the Fifth century; there is much debate about human choice; about good and bad choices and what drives us to make them. This philosophical debate finds expression in tragedy too.

Let’s look at an example. Oedipus is fated to kill his father and marry his mother. His father before him has been given this oracle and now so has he. Fearing he can avoid it no other way; he runs away from it. Literally, running in the opposite direction to the city he believes is his home. This is a choice he makes. He chooses also to kill an old man on the road. And he chooses to fight the Sphinx and accept the prize for doing this – a woman as wife, old enough to be his mother…

He then chooses to get to the bottom of why there is a plague in Thebes – even though his wife and the wise seer Tiresias counsel him against these actions. His choices all lead him to one place – the unavoidable knowledge that in running from Fate, he ran straight into it. He has killed his father and been awarded his own mother as wife. He has walked with eyes open into his crime and now he faces another choice. His choice is to punish himself with blindness and in so doing to become the fully self-actualised man. He encapsulates one of the two important aphorisms of the Delphic oracle – Know Thyself. (The other is Everything in Moderation – something Oedipus could have done with emulating!).

When Oedipus appears on stage having blinded himself; he says “I am Oedipus”. In this moment he accepts himself, faces his Fate and acknowledges it is his own choices that have brought him there. Oedipus can’t escape Fate but he chooses to face it on his feet, bravely and ironically with his eyes fully open to the truth for the first time.

Agamemnon is our other example. He has a stark choice presented to him. Sacrifice his daughter at Aulis; or not be able to lead the Achaean troops to Troy. Its worth noting that one way or another the Greek gods would have got the Trojan War that they seem so urgently to want. Agamemnon can’t stop the war – he certainly doesn’t want to. All he can do is make a choice about his role in it.

Later when he chooses to burn the city to the ground and not prevent the descecration of the altars or when he strides to his death across the blood red tapestries laid out for him by Clytemnestra; he is also making choices. He cannot avoid his Fate (and at this point despite warnings he doesn’t even know what it is!)  – the avenging Fury will succeed in killing him once he enters her domain – he can though choose how he meets that fate. Like everything else in his life Agamemnon chooses arrogance and hubris.

In both cases the characters are Fated – but the playwrights have been able to introduce the idea of human choice; agency. Its not free will, Oedipus and Agamemnon cannot avoid what will be – but they can choose how they face it.

Were Free Will in the modern sense be an idea available to the tragedians, then human choices would change the outcome. But Free Will is not a concept the ancient Greeks use – so instead human choice only changes whether the characters are able to face their inevitable fates with dignity and grace (or in Agamemnon’s case – without it!).

That seems to me to be a very powerful and human message. And probably much more useful than any ideas about free will anyways!