Contingency and Necessity

A Necessary Illusion

The Contingent, the Accidental, the Possible

To philosophise is to universalise a spiritual experience by translating it into intellectual terms valid for all. J. Lacroix

Contingency: from the Latin contingere, to happen by chance.
Necessity: from the Latin necessitas, the inescapable — everything that happens, had to happen exactly as it happens.

In philosophy, an event is called contingent when it may or may not occur — when it may be the fruit of chance or accident. If for metaphysics the contradictory does not exist, if it is, as Louis Millet writes in his book on metaphysics, nothing, then universal contingency does not exist either.

Toward the Past

According to our philosophy, nothing in our world is contingent. Everything that occurs was bound to occur. Nothing is accidental, in the sense that everything that happens could not have failed to happen. Of all the events that have taken place, not one can be added or removed. Not even a grain of dust can be taken from the past.

Toward the Future

According to Simone Weil: "The future brings us nothing, gives us nothing; it is we who, in order to build it, must give it everything, give it our life itself." I would rather say: the future brings everything — we cannot help but give it every second of our entire life, there is no other way out, and no will plays any part in this obligatory gift.

The smallest thing that will take place in the future cannot be excluded from it. Of all the events destined to make up that future, not one can be added or removed. No thing, no action, no being can insert itself in addition to what will actually happen tomorrow.

Of Necessity

In summary, it is impossible to add or subtract the slightest thing from what has flowed by. Impossible to add or subtract the slightest thing from what is flowing now. And impossible to add or subtract the slightest thing from what will flow. In other words, everything that occurs is necessary.

Absolute, Certain, Necessary

If Only I Had Known…

… I wouldn't have come

What is, is the only possible reality.
It might not have happened, it should have happened, I could have succeeded, etc. — these are mere suppositions, chimeras, implausibilities.

There is therefore no contingency in the world.

We cannot say either: since anything can happen, anything might not happen — for only what does happen can happen. Therefore not everything can happen.

Only what had to happen has happened…
Only what must happen is happening…
And only what will have to happen will happen…

Year 2000
chance