Philosophical reflection upon history has always been impressed by the limited extent to which individuals and groups seem to be able to mold events to their purposes. In the case of some events at least, there seems to be an inexorable necessity—an inevitability or unavoidability—about what happens. The "necessity" of historical events, however, has been asserted by historians and philosophers of history in at least three fundamentally different senses.

Senses of Determinism

Fate and Providence

The first sense is the notion that events are "fated" to occur, a notion familiar to Greek as well as Oriental thought. The central concept is of an agency external to the historical process itself, sometimes, but not always, personified, determining events somewhat in the way a human agent may be said to determine, through his will, what happens in a process he monitors and manipulates. It...