A brief introduction to the Philosophy of Happenstance

Abstract

Philosophy always starts from the evidence of a fact: the fact that there is something and not nothing, that the world has order, that phenomena appear to me, that I am conscious of myself, that subjects communicate with each other, that subjects are aware of obligations to each other, and much more. Regarding such primary evidence, philosophy, since its beginnings, has sought to answer two fundamental questions, which were already formulated by Aristotle. In the face of the affirmation of the factual, philosophy asks: “what is this?”, and it asks: “why is this (so)?”. It is easy to see that both questions lead to an aporia when they are put in a global sense, in search of a universal and definitive answer. This has been observed many times. What still remains to be done is to draw the consequence of these aporias, which is: everything is occurring or happening that is incompletely determined, or, in other words, that is conditioned originating, or, in a single word, happenstance. From there, other questions such as those of being, consciousness, knowledge, action, morality and intersubjectivity may be solved, in the elaboration of a philosophical project that may be called “Philosophy of Happenstance” or also “of Conditioned Originating”. This article develops two initial arguments of this project, in addition to outlining some of its theoretical consequences.