Abstract

This essay examines the concept of fate, exploring the causal-normative constraint problem in the existential phenomenology of humanity in _A Dream of Red Mansions_. It studies the structure, content, and origin of the consciousness and experience of fate, as it is illustrated in the phenomenology in the novel, exploring the causal and normative challenges that fate poses to the reality, value, authenticity, happiness, and freedom of a person. Doing so, the essay also demonstrates both the difference and affinity between the Chinese concept of fate and Hindu concept of _karma_, as well as existentialist (Heideggeran) concepts of 'thrownness' and 'existentiality.'