Contingent

(Lat. contingere, to happen)

Aside from its secondary and more obvious meaning (as, for instance, its

qualification of the predicable accident, of a class of modal propositions, and so

on), the primary and technically philosophical use of the term is for one of the

supreme divisions of being, that is, contingent being, as distinguished from

necessary being. In this connexion the meaning of the term may be considered

objectively, and the genesis of the idea subjectively.

Objectively

Objectively (ontologically) the contingent may be viewed:

(1) in the purely ideal or possible order, and it is then the conceptual note

or notes between which and existence in the actual order there is no

contradiction, and which consequently admits of, though it does not

demand, actualization. It is thus coextensive with possible being and is

called the absolutely contingent.

(2) Considered in the order of actual existence, the contingent is that

being whose essence, as such, does not include existence and which,

therefore, does not, as such, demand existence but is indifferent to be or

not to be. This is called relatively contingent and the term is usually

employed in this sense. Every finite existent being is thus contingent,

though likewise hypothetically necessary, in that having existence it

cannot at the same time and under the same aspect not have it;

inasmuch, too, as it is determined by proximately, and hence relatively,

necessitated antecedents.

(3) In regard to its subject — be this substance or accident —

contingency may relate to action as well as to existence, and it then

signifies that the subject (agent) is as yet undetermined, either

intrinsically, as in the free agent, or extrinsically, as are necessitated

causes.

(4) Since the essence of the contingent does not contain the reason of its

existence, that reason must be sought in an outside efficient cause,

which cause, if in turn contingent, must show reason for its existence in

some other antecedent cause, and so on until ultimately a being is

reached whose essence includes existence, a first cause whose

existence is underived, a being which is necessary and absolute.

This argument from contingent to the necessary being is not, as Kant

maintained, the well-known ontological argument formulated by St. Anselm and

others to prove the existence of God. The latter argument passes illogically from

the ideal concept of the infinite to the objective actual existence of the infinite,

while the argument from contingent (finite) to the necessary (infinite) being,

proceeds from the objective actual contingent (dependent, conditioned) to the

existence of an adequate cause thereof. The inference is based on an objective

application of the principle of causality and involves no leap from a subjective

phenomenon (idea) to an objective realized content. The argument supposes, it

is true, the real existence of contingent being and that existence is denied by

many thinkers, notably by pantheists. materialists, and determinists generally.

Kant reduces both contingency and necessity to mere mental forms or

categories under which the mind views the world of phenomena but which it has

no means of knowing to be objective. Necessary being, therefore, ontologically

and objectively precedes the contingent, since the latter has the sole ultimate

reason both of its intrinsic consistency (possibility) and of its actual existence in

the former — actus absolute prœcedit potentiam. In the order, however, of man's

knowledge, the contingent falls primarily under experience.

Subjectively

Like every other concept, that of the contingent is originally derived from external

and internal experience. Adverting to the changes occurring in the world of

sensuous phenomena and to the interdependencies thereof, the intellect easily,

almost intuitively, discerns that, while the given events are the necessitated

consequences of similarly necessitated antecedents, each number of the series,

by the very fact of its being thus conditioned, does not contain within itself the

adequate ground of its existence. The intellect having spontaneously abstracted

this note of dependence and ontologically reflecting thereon sees its application

to every finite subject not only existent but likewise possible; sees, at least by

an easy process of reasoning, that no such subject contains within itself the

reason why it exists, under the precise limitations of substance and accidents

which it actually possesses. However, to assure this concept and to discern

precisely and explicitly the contingency of the finite and the consequent

indifference of its essence to exist or not to exist, the sciences, physical and

biological, are called to testify; and each declares the dependence and

conditionality of its respective object-sphere and attests that all things observed

and searched into have a borrowed existence. This idea of contingency is then

further assured by the witness of consciousness to the conditioned, and hence

contingent, character of its own states, a testimony which is reconfirmed by the

facts of birth and death.

Against this statement of the genesis of the contingency-concept it may be

objected that experience does not extend beyond the field of sensuous

phenomena. On the other hand, however, the intellect, motived by the principle of

sufficient reason, discerns the underlying noumenon, or essence of things

material, Kant to the contrary notwithstanding, at least sufficiently to pronounce

with certitude on their essential conditionateness and contingency. But it is

urged by materialistic monists that the underlying substrate of the sensuous

world is one homogeneous, eternal, necessary being, essentially involving

existence. To this objection it may be answered that no finite thing, much less a

finite material being, can contain the ultimate reason of its existence. The definite

limitations, spatial, integral, positional, etc., and the inertia of the hypothetical

primordial matter shows that it is conditioned by some limiting and determining

cause, while its passage from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous state, into

which it is supposed to have evolved in the actual universe, equally demands an

extraneous active agency. It should, however, be noted that the argument from

contingent to necessary being does not explicitly prove the existence of God. A

further analysis of the objective concept is necessarily required in order to show

that the latter concept includes that of underivedness (aseitas) and that this in

turn includes completeness, absence of any potentiality for further perfection

(actus purus), hence infinitude. The failure to note this limitation of the argument

seems to have led Kant to deny its validity.

BALMES, Fundamental Philosophy (New York, 1864); DRISCOLL, Christian Philosophy — God

(New York, 1904); AVELING, The God of Philosophy (St. Louis and London, 1906); EISLER,

Würterbuch der phil. Begriffe (Berlin, 1904); BLANC, Dictionnaire de philosophie (Paris, 1906);

URRABURU, Institutiones Phil. (Valladolid, 1899).

F. P. Siegfried

Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter

Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IV

Nihil Obstat. Remy Lafort, Censor

Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.org