Jerold C. Frakes

Analysis of the fates of the goddess Fortuna in a brief historical overview, from a relatively late concept in ancient Rome to the Stoic Boetian and Christian traditions that sought to place fortune under the rule of a Levantine god. The naive structure of the Christian world order always denied the bestiality and idyll of nature both in the generative world and in the world of human beings. Perhaps this project was intended to create a hierarchical structure on earth that was a "law that tried to work against the reign of life." In this way, it failed completely, because metaphysically, the religious projections of humans onto deities are doxological at best. There are numerous approaches to the semantic field of fortune, some gave it priority over men and the gods, others thought it could be overcome to achieve eudaimonia (true happiness), still others that it should be rejected altogether (Stoic worldview, which is nobler from the perspective of taking responsibility for wrestling with life than clamoring over fortuna, bona, or mala). Trivia: For the first time I came across a nice definition of Germanic and Scandinavian "wyrd", a strictly heathen idea and totally incompatible with Abrahamic beliefs, far reaching in insight but totally fatalistic in terms of a single lifetime, it cannot be broken down to "fortuna", two definitions are as follows: Fortune is the all-powerful Das Schicksal ist das Allmächtige, das Unveränderliche, aber auch allen Gedanken und Gefühlen Unzugängliche, es ist die absolut überlegene Macht ( Destiny is the all-powerful, the unalterable, but also the inaccessible to all thoughts and feelings, it is the absolutely superior power. Es ist das unbestechliche, tödliche, feindliche Schicksal, das geheimnisvoll, rücksichtslos und unerbittlich über den Menschen herrscht. It is the incorruptible, deadly fatal, hostile destiny that mysteriously, ruthlessly, and unrelentingly rules over man. It is of great importance that Boethius in the Consolatio Philosophia preserved the concept of fortunae in the Middle Ages, they were transferred into the "wheel of fortune" invented by him.… (mehr)