Sometimes during an argument or heated discussion, we hear: “You are a fatalist!” For some people this sounds like a blame, many are even offended. But let's see, fatalist - who is it?
From a philological point of view, this is a predestined fate, registered from above and which a person is not able to change, no matter how much he wants. According to the logic of the fatalist, any of us is just a toy in the hands of higher forces, a passive observer who only needs to continue to live and take the events for granted. However, passivity of observation does not mean that nothing needs to be done. All life activity and all aspirations fit into a certain outline that will lead somewhere.
In this regard, it is interesting to know what the fatalist believes. First of all, in the predestination of fate. With this, everything is clear. But the main thing here is faith in the law and a certain logic (sequence) of events. For a fatalist, there are no accidents, everything that happens to him is links in one chain, where people’s actions take place with one hundred percent probability. For him, the question does not arise: "Fatalist - who is it?" 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 searching for an answer to the question posed, the topic of free will cannot be ignored. For the fatalist who burns time, neither the past nor the present exists. For him, there is only the future and the expectation of this very future. Personal choice is reduced only to a minimum awareness of what is happening, which can be designed in a specific situation depending on personal interests. Therefore, the answer to the question “fatalist - who is it” should be sought both in personal egoism and in denying the very principle of choice. Or even more precisely - in the relative acceptance of the possibility of choice with ideological denial. Life is a choice without a choice. Like Vladimir Vysotsky’s: “The track is only mine, get out with your own track!”
The hero of our time is a fatalist. At least, critics of the main character of the novel of the same name by M.Yu. Lermontov so characteristically habitually characterize. At the same time, Pechorin himself, having experienced his own fate three times in the course of the plot, never thinks about the consequences. He goes ahead like a ram, proving to himself and others that no one dares to determine how he lives and what to do. In a certain sense, of course, this is fatalism. But on the other hand, he plays not so much with his own as with other people's destinies, testing the strength of Fatum. A person becomes like God, he does not take on faith everything that happens to him, does not try to seriously change anything, but makes the outside world and the people around him change. And if we remain within the framework of the concept “Pechorin is a fatalist,” then it should be clarified that Fatum in the Lermontian sense is the external world, surrounding reality, a kind of “order of things”, unchanging and absolute in its existential essence. But not the human soul.
That is why, in answering the question “fatalist - who is this”, one must proceed from the Catholic understanding of free will. Yes, a person has the right to choose, but this choice is itself predetermined. We do not know our fate and therefore are free to do what we want. But this does not mean the denial of Fatum and the will of God. The fatalist simply relies on his own fate. Like many of us.