Chapter 8: Does Contingency Really Lead to “Freedom”?

Suppose you are now standing at a major fork in your life.

Your company has approached you: “There’s talk of a transfer to the Tokyo headquarters. What do you think?”

Your current department is comfortable, and the team is good.

But it is also a chance to leap into a new place.

Or you have been invited by someone you met on a matching app: “Shall we meet this weekend?”

Somewhere in your heart, a small hesitation remains: “If it weren’t this person…”

In such moments, a phrase suddenly floats up in your mind.

**“If I had given a different answer at that time, what would my life have become?”

“If I had chosen that other path, life would be…”**

This “what if…” sensation that tightens deep in the chest.

This is the strongest evidence that contingency is deeply connected to your “freedom.”

Up to the previous chapters, we have learned together about the three forms of contingency and how the emotion of surprise receives contingency.

But what Kuki Shūzō truly wanted to convey is that contingency itself is what makes our “freedom” possible.

If this world had been completely determined from the beginning — “it will absolutely turn out this way” —

If the world were filled only with necessity of “it was supposed to be this way,” how much meaning or value would remain in the choices we make?

No matter how proudly we think “I chose A!”, if in reality “choosing B was impossible from the start (it was already decided)” —

The joy toward our own decision and the responsibility toward the future would somehow fade and feel thin, wouldn’t they?

We would become like robots simply running on a rail that had been laid out from the beginning.

But precisely because there is “contingency” in this world, we can embrace the beautiful “room for possibility” of “I chose A, yet I could have chosen B as well.”

That faint gap is what liberates you from “a puppet on the rails” into the true “protagonist of your life.”

Especially in the scenes of “A or B — the fateful choice of only one (disjunctive contingency)” that we discussed in Chapter 5, this freedom appears most vividly.

The moment you decide “I will choose this path,” the other path you did not choose is closed forever.

Yet precisely because that “closed path (the possibility you could have chosen)” exists in the background, the decision you made becomes a “special decision that belongs only to you.”

“If at that time I had given a different answer…”

This sense of regret or “what if” may at first glance seem a little lonely and poignant.

But this itself is the very proof that you have lived freely.

Because if the world had been completely fixed, such an endearing “what if” would not even exist in this world from the beginning.

Let us think a little more concretely about modern life.

For example, the few seconds when you stare at your phone, hesitating whether to send a “Like” on a matching app.

If you send it, a new possibility of life with someone you have not yet met suddenly opens.

If you do not send it, the usual calm and safe everyday life continues.

In that slight “which one should I…?” time when your heart beats a little faster, your “freedom” is quietly breathing.

Or when you hesitate whether to post your important true feelings on SNS, or “maybe I should stop.”

**“If I post it and hurt someone or am misunderstood, what then…?”

“But ending without conveying this important feeling is also painful…”**

That conflict, that hesitation itself is the beautiful proof that you are a “free being” controlled by nothing.

Kuki Shūzō regarded contingency as the “absolute condition” of freedom.

Freedom is by no means “being able to do anything as one pleases, selfishly.”

It is, in an uncertain world where other possibilities truly exist, to gently stake one’s heart and future and take a step forward.

That choice may sometimes be accompanied by regret or pain.

Yet even that pain of regret and hesitation becomes your precious pride: “I am living a free path that I myself chose, not a path decided by someone else.”

The “surprise” we discussed in the previous chapter is also deeply connected to this freedom.

Surprise is a gentle sign from the universe that tells you “The world is not according to your predetermined harmony!”

That sign gently opens the closed heart of us who are wounded and standing still, saying “Look, you still have room to choose something new.”

Have you not had such mysterious experiences in your life so far?

“At that time I was heartbroken and in despair after being rejected by someone I loved, yet thanks to that I encountered my true happiness and new values.”

“My head went blank from a sudden layoff or transfer talk, yet thanks to that happening I looked back on my past self and realized what I truly wanted to do.”

“While sheltering from the rain in a café I happened to enter, I overheard a conversation next to me that saved my life.”

All of these are miraculous moments when the storm named unexpected “contingency” broke the rails of necessity that bound you and led you out into true “freedom.”

This part is actually the most important of today.

If there were no contingency in this world, we would be nothing more than “programmed robots.”

Every day would simply pass as scheduled, as decided, and even the blood-filled real feeling of “I chose” would be lost.

The contingencies that come cannot be controlled by our power.

Sometimes they attack us as cold, sometimes unreasonable happenings.

Yet at the end of the book, Kuki left the highest conclusion that shakes our souls, in these exact words:

“By embracing contingency just as it is as fate, we can escape the domination of contingency and leap into the realm of freedom. When we encompass contingency as fate, we overcome contingency.”

— The Problem of Contingency

Not cursing that contingency with “Why me…?” but

strongly accepting it with both hands as “This is the one-and-only, lovable fate given to me. From here I will begin my new story” — when we do so, we gain true freedom that even turns unreasonable fate into an ally.

Contingency is not something frightening that threatens you.

It is the gentlest partner that leads you off the rails and gently pushes your back, saying “Go create your own beautiful life.”

In the next chapter, let us think together with Kuki’s specialty of “aesthetics” about how this freedom and contingency sparkle within the “art” and “aesthetic sense” that color our daily lives. Please look forward to it!

Akira

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