By depending on fortune we hypostatize a future that takes over the present. Desire takes over our thoughts, which now solely focus on the future. This, in turn, eliminates the present of thought (and of free will). This way we always already live in our future and abolish our present. In more precise terms, we can claim that even the concept of the future, as the time in which the arbitrary outcome of things will become manifest, is a weak one. It somehow “annihilates . . . the future. Not . . . some abstract future, but the future of the very present, the future of its proper present.” When desiring external things, not only is the will not truly present as what it is (as something free), but it also believes that only the future is worth desiring and that thoughts about the past are meaningless. Even worse, through the very act of desiring the future the will abolishes its own present as well as the very future of this present. Time collapses, as it is emptied out of its dimensions. Desiring exter-nal things that depend on fortune is literally time-consuming. What Cartesian fatalism opposes is therefore this problematic conception of externality, of contingency, of action, and ulti-mately of temporality. Fatalism opposes hope just as much as it opposes fear, since they inevitably lead to these problematic consequences.
Frank Ruda - Abolishing Freedom: A Plea For A Contemporary Use Of Fatalism (Chapter; Rene Descartes The Fatalist)
