Of Becoming, Fate, and Destiny

Abstract

Central to the thought of Max Scheler is his contemplation on the play of finite becoming and infinite wholeness, destiny and fate in the human person. His philosophical explorations, from the Catholic to the metaanthropological writings, are informed by his desire to understand the meaning of the finite becoming of the person who is faced with the paradox of finitude and the call of the infinite. This essay seeks to explore Scheler's thought in order to articulate his conception of finite, personal becoming in the face of the eternal. Although this discourse may seem archaic in contemporary discourse, Scheler's conception of finite personal becoming can show how the respect for the plurality of personal becoming need not demand the rejection of the idea of the eternal or universal order of values. The mode of being in the world of the human person is the mode of finitude. In finitude, the human person exists in time because she experiences being as unfolding. She experiences being as what was, what is, and what will be because she does not hold the whole of what is as wholly present to her. All being is, for the limited human person, an unfolding of that which is. Thus, her experience of being is an experience of that which is a becoming. Philosophers have speculated that for the Divine Person, with its all-encompassing consciousness, there is no time. There never is a past or future for the omniscient one for all that is is present to the divine mind. For the person that is in the fullness of being, there is no time or unfolding. There is no history. However to the human person, all is unfolding. To her, being is ever in the process of becoming for the human person cannot encompass with the comprehension of the will or the mind the presence of what is in its fullness. Even to herself she is an unfolding, for the eternal mystery of the self is not wholly present to one's comprehension. Surely one is present as who one is to one's self, but only as the person becoming in time. The finite person experiences this becoming in time in freedom. Capable of comprehending that which is and the finite self as presence, the human person understands that one's becoming is something one can craft. The finite person is not merely being-here. The human person is a being that can understand that one's being here and one's coming to fullness is a decision. Although the philosophers of facticity, such as Sartre and Heidegger, have understood that the finite person is thrown in the world, they have equally understood that what that person does with this facticity is not determined. The finite person has been thrown in the world without one's having decided one's being here, but the shape that will unfold with this being here and its meaning is dependent on how one decides to be, how one defines one's unfolding. Certainly, there are defined realms of possibility. Facticity means that one's being here is defined by limitation. One is thrown into the world as embodied, as being in the world, as being with others, as having an environment that defines the finite person, as moving in time and space, as being in a physical and spiritual community, and as being shaped by one's past and one's future. This is the structure of being human. No matter how one understands one's existence, one is already defined by a human condition.1 It is the a priori that defines one's possibilities. However, beyond the frame of one's universal condition, one's possibilities are defined by the particularities of one's thrownness. Her particular circumstances, the past from whence one comes to be what one is and the particular future that is opened to that person, the historical circumstances that have shaped one's condition, all these particularities define in a very specific way what is opened to the finite person as the possibility of her becoming. Max Scheler understands this particularity to be one's fate.2 Facticity and Fate Fate defines the limits of possibility. …