For some reason, the words destiny and fate have always seemed to me to be connotatively opposed. Now one way to oppose their intensions would be to say that a person's destiny was a good, transcendent plan for them, whereas fate is something bad but similarly imposed on us.

If the world was created intentionally, and humanity with it, then it may very well be that there is some divine ambition for us. But drop that conjecture for a moment. As individuals, if our parents created us to do something, wouldn't a life spent on trying to do that serve for our destiny (or fate)? Now consider if the act of our conception is routinely minus any goal for our parents besides our sheer existence at best, at worst just their physical pleasure. (Could some subconscious recognition of this potential underwrite some vectors of ethical hostility towards casual sex?)

From the point of view of autonomy-cum-ethical constructivism, the ultimate source of any value in the world is agents' willpower. The moral law, or the first principles of normativity, or whatever, are functions of our ability to freely act/make choices. (Voluntarists say that this function is one open to us not to exercise; people like Allen Wood on the other hand would say that our will automatically encodes the standards of right and wrong into itself, regardless of our actual exercise of its power.)

Assuming, then, that the world was not created for a reason, that our parents didn't create us for a reason, that even if either of those assumptions is false, agency outside of our own is, on the autonomic conception of justification, incapable of directly standardizing right and wrong for us: doesn't the fact that we can devise life-long goals with global scope mean that we can make our own destinies for ourselves? That this might even be the highest value we can sanctify our lives with (to exercise our intentionality on a universal level)?

Then destiny could mean, as a good thing, that plan which expresses our autonomy, while our fate would be any heteronomous plan instead.

I always think about Kant when he calls fate and luck usurpatory concepts. These words undermine our thinking ourselves as free. If all we do is play out our destiny, how can we say that we have acted freely?

However, we can't deny that we do feel fated at times, and lucky. These ways of thinking do not cancel out our thoughts of ourselves as free, however, so we know that there isn't a contradiction between these feelings and feelings of our freedom.

When we hear about something and then later it happens to us, there is the appearance of a connection between the events. Or when something fortunate and unexpected happens we feel as if we are favored by something that recognizes us as what we are: things that do not possess free will never suffer fate or luck.

Because there is a relationship between these concepts and our free will (which inevitably gives them their meaning) there is certainly a relationship between these concepts and the moral judgments we make. We have trouble finding fault in somebody who was fated to do something, we have trouble not being upset when we see somebody is lucky and favored more than us without necessarily deserving it. We can certainly be critical of these attitudes, but to what extent can we? Aren't there some times when we really can't think of something in any other terms than having happened for a larger purpose, and aren't these times important for us? This is difficult, really, because this is where we start stepping into the territory of religion.

I don't have any issue with religion in general, however, it is an area that is difficult to work in precisely because it is such a highly developed sentiment riding on top of our moral being. How much of our being fated, destined, lucky, &c should we just call superstition? All of it? Should all religious practice that employ such concepts be rejected? We do think of ourselves as fated, so what reality does this have?

Is not fate, destiny and reality interchangeable?

Can not fate or destiny be reality which also takes in man his creations, ideals and concepts? Does not reality exist in the continuum of time/space of the past, present and future? Is it possible that destiny not only encompass casualty but is effected by randomness as well? Is it not true that unpredictability makes conditions and events predestined an impossibility? Can we then assume that the label of predestined is essentially an unreasonable concept of the beholders? Even being Unreasonable, is it not ironic that the concept of predestined too is part of fate, destiny or reality?

Destiny cannot be properly comprehended by looking at this physical plane alone.

In addition, one must consider the Law of Karma, reincarnation, and Fate Karma.

Consider upon death, ones Soul goes before a "judge" and both evaluate how well one did on working through ones Fate Karma for ones last life. Of course this only makes sense when one understands that there is a Purpose for Life.

What many refer to as "destiny" is ones Fate Karma unfolding itself, with a host of players that are also part of ones Fate Karma for this life.

Excellent resource: The Path of the Masters, by Julian P. Johnson.

Peace

RE:unclejh

It seems that we can dissolve any sense of destiny when we reflect on it, but to think ourselves as destined is certainly a way we actually think isn't it?

Even if we can't predict things we still seem to think of things in terms of a purpose, and this may be important to consider.

RE: docjp

Fate comes in more importantly during life it seems. Considerations of other-worldly destination is an important concept for sure, but often clouds the importance of fate here.

Consider this:
If nothing HAPPENED to us, we would have no story. Who would "I" be? Things merely happening to us form something essential to an "I" that is more than a pure concept.

docjp wrote:
Destiny cannot be properly comprehended by looking at this physical plane alone.

My theory(?) as presented in this thread is that the concept of destiny can be analyzed in part as that of intentionality with universal dimensions. So a life goal that involved the entire planet*, say, would count as something a person is destined to do, but only by setting that goal itself. The transcendence involved in this goal-setting would depend on the morality of the relevant aspiration: if a person aims for something say, supererogatory and global, then whatever grace we feel accorded to us if we imagine that "God has a plan for us" or something can instead be grounded in something evidentially stronger than faith in God (or karma).

* Granted, one planet does not make an entire universe. But for members of a civilization like Earth's (or a range of civilizations like on Earth), the greatest extent to which they can extend their capacity to intend things is, except ideally, only the atmosphere and surface of the planet and some of its caves/submarine domains (yeah?).