Necessity and Contingency
The difference between what must be and what might have been otherwise.
Works to read
- On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Topics and Sophistical Refutations by Aristotle, c. 350 BC · Great Books
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1387-1400 · Great Books
- Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, 1265-1274
- De Monarchia (with R. W. Church's essay on Dante) by Dante Alighieri; R. W. Church, c. 1312-1318
- The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio) by Martin Luther, 1525
- A History of Philosophy, Vol. IV: Descartes to Leibniz by Frederick Copleston, 1958
Passages
To make a virtue of necessity
— Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
they hold that to love God is not necessary to salvation
— Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters
And of necessity, man must be the best known to us of all animals
— Aristotle, History of Animals
To teach is a necessity, to delight is a beauty, to persuade is a triumph
— Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Doctrine
it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves
— Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her
— Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
Passages are verified quotations from the library that use one of these words: necessity, necessary, contingent. Sentences under “From the texts” are copied word for word from the full texts in this library. Read each in its context on the work's page.