The word chance is one of the most used, and one of the least defined, whenever it comes to avoiding metaphysical conclusions. It is invoked as an ultimate explanation, when in reality it is never an explanation. To understand why, we must start by doing what is too rarely done: defining what we are talking about.

For the term chance actually covers several distinct notions, which do not have the same ontological status. To confuse them is to condemn oneself to talking nonsense with aplomb.

1. Chance as ignorance (epistemic chance)

This is the most banal sense—and the most legitimate.

To say that an event is due to chance here means: we do not know the causes that led to this event.

The throw of a die is the canonical example. The result is unpredictable for us, but it depends on perfectly real causes: angle of throw, force, friction, shape of the die, etc. Chance produces nothing; it designates our ignorance.

In this sense, chance is not in reality, but in our relation to reality. It has no ontological import.

Confusing this chance with a real absence of cause is an elementary error.

2. Chance as meeting of independent causalities

There is a second sense, more technical, already identified by Aristotle.

An event is said to be "random" when it results from the meeting of independent causal series, without intentional coordination.

Trivial example: I go out to buy bread. A friend goes out to take out the trash. We meet in the street.

This meeting is "due to chance"—not because it is without cause, but because it was aimed at by none of the causes involved.

Chance, here, is a deficit of finality, not a deficit of causality.

This sense is perfectly compatible with strong realism: causes exist, they act, but their convergence was not ordered to this precise effect.

3. Chance as real contingency

Chance is sometimes used to designate the fact that an event could have not occurred, without contradiction.

This is the register of contingency.

To say that an event is contingent means:

• it is not necessary,
• it depends on conditions,
• it is not required by the essence of things.

This sense is ontologically serious, but it denies nothing: the contingent is real, but not necessary.

To say that an event is contingent is never to say it is without cause. It is to say it is not imposed by an internal necessity.

The confusion begins when one slides from contingent to absurd.

4. Chance as non-determined potency

Here is where realist metaphysics brings a decisive clarification.

Certain events are not univocally determined, but they nevertheless proceed from real potencies. The passage to act is not triggered by a determining mechanical cause, but it is not for all that a springing from nothing.

This is exactly what is at play in quantum phenomena.

Chance, here, designates:

• not an absence of being,
• but an indetermination in the mode of actualization.

There is real potency, grounded in what is, which can be actualized according to several modalities, without being strictly determined to one of them.

This chance is not a causal void. It is an excess of reality over our determinist models.

5. What chance never is

It is crucial to say this explicitly.

Chance is never:

• a cause,
• a principle,
• an ontological source,
• a substitute for reality.

To say "it's chance" is not to explain. It is to renounce explaining while giving the opposite illusion.

As soon as one asks: "Why is there this chance rather than nothing?"—the word collapses.

For chance never exists by itself. It is always:

• relative to an ignorance,
• relative to a structure,
• relative to a potency,
• relative to real causes.

6. Why chance is often invoked abusively

Chance has become a refuge-word. It allows one to:

• refuse causality without analyzing it,
• avoid the question of foundation,
• give a scientific veneer to a lazy metaphysical position.

But this strategy does not hold.

Chance does not suppress the question of being. It displaces it, clumsily.

Conclusion: chance explains nothing, it requires an explanation

Chance is not a rival of causality. It is a symptom: either of our ignorance, or of contingency, or of the ontological richness of reality.

In no case does it allow dispensing with being, cause, or act.

When chance is invoked to close a metaphysical question, it is always a sign that the question has just been opened.