Chapter 3: What Does Categorical Contingency Feel Like?

Hello everyone. This is Akira.

Imagine this.

While casually scrolling on your phone, a single post or DM suddenly catches your eye. “Wait… these words feel as if they were meant for me right now.” In that moment, have you ever felt as if the frozen time of your life suddenly started moving again?

Or, when you dash into a café because of unexpected rain, a piece of music that happens to play makes your heart tremble, or the scenery outside the window makes you feel “I’m glad to be alive.”

These are “just by chance” moments that appear right in front of you with no reason and no conditions.

Kuki Shūzō called this the purest and most important of all contingencies — the “most simple ‘what a surprise!’” (categorical contingency).

There Is Really Nothing “Matter of Course” in This World

In the previous chapter, I said that this world has “rules (necessity).”

For example, “2 + 2 equals 4” or “human beings will eventually die without fail” —

these are the unchangeable rules that can never be moved (categorical necessity).

In daily life, these rules feel so natural that we start to think the world is moving like a “fixed calculator.”

But Kuki stops here.

“I understand the rules. But why, in the first place, does ‘I’ exist here right now? Can that also be explained by the rules alone?”

The answer is “No.” The fact that you are here right now, loving someone, worrying, reading this text —

there is actually no “absolute reason” like mathematics anywhere.

Kuki regarded this wonder of “there is no reason, yet it is certainly here (I am here)” as a “primitive surprise.”

This “what a surprise!” vividly breaks through the cold “unchangeable rules” and transforms your existence from “just one of the numbers” into “an irreplaceable unique being.” That is its magic.

The SNS Timeline Is a Treasure House of “What a Surprise!”

For us modern people, the most familiar “what a surprise!” may well be found inside social media.

A post that happened to flow by was exactly the answer to your current worry.
Words from someone you casually followed gave you the courage to live.
Your ordinary post received unexpected empathy from people you never imagined.

None of these can be caused by calculation.

They are pure sudden events that do not even have the condition of “if ~ then.”

In Kuki’s words, these are the moments that breathe “the radiance of life” into our existence.

Because There Is No Reason, You Can Be Free

“Someone like me — whether I exist or not, it’s the same.”

If you are blaming yourself like that, please believe in the power of this “most simple ‘what a surprise!’.”

Kuki Shūzō thought that the foundation of this world is not “rules,” but “just by chance.”

If the world moved only by perfect rules, we would become nothing more than robots running on a predetermined track.

But the world is overflowing with “what a surprise!”

You, who exist here with no reason, are not here to meet someone else’s expectations. The very fact that you “just by chance” exist here is a miracle that has broken the rules.

Having no reason means you can become anything.

Please take pride in the story of yourself that “just by chance” began today.

Please look back a little on your day today.

If there was a moment when you thought “Wait, why did this happen now?”, that is proof that the world winked at you saying “It’s okay to be free.”

Next time, I will talk about the more concrete “if ~ then…” kind of “just by chance” that concerns our efforts and choices. Please look forward to it!

Akira

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