I am not familiar with what you mean by agency, can you be alittle more specific for my behalf?

This is a good example to discuss. The whole issue lies in determining what event is ended by this one mistake. My whole point is that endings imply unity or wholeness in a duration of time that can only be achieved by some agency. If I say the words “Merry Christmas” I have organized a moment of time around the saying of this word with a beginning and an ending. When I get to the end of “Christmas,” I have not only made an ending of that word, but also of the entire phrase. My agency in this case unifies the entire duration. If I flubbed the ending it would have ruined the entire phrase. When a person makes a mistake at the end of my life the question is what exactly is ending: Is it simply the bad action they have just completed, or have they made a mistake that affects the act whereby their entire life exists as a wholeness or unity. Are they writing the end of merely that day, or of their entire life? If I flub “Merry Christmas,” I have not ruined my whole day, since there is no single act of agency which ties together the meaningful events of the day with that enunciation. My main point was that to end a duration requires an agency that extends over that duration. To the extent that our agency operates in a coherent way to unify the moments of our lives into a meaningful whole, to precisely that extent, we persist in time. Most of us tie our lives together into a whole only fitfully and incompletely, and only those happenings that we can so integrate into our story have meaning for us, only they define us. Most of us won’t write the ends of our stories. They will be imposed upon us by outside forces in a way we cannot fully choose or make meaningful to ourselves. Only the endings we make fully for ourselves define us. If we fail to fully make an end of each of the episodes of our life, to integrate those endings into our story, then they will fail to define us.

I think I agree with you here. There might be entities whose beginnings and endings are beyond our ability to comprehend. What seems to us to be an unending series might be something whose limits are defined by some principle of which we cannot even conceive.

My point here, though, was that things don’t have beginnings and ending merely in virtue of existing in time, through some inherent demarcations within the structure of time itself. Beginnings and endings come from agency of some substance. (Or substances are the result of acts of beginning and ending, if you prefer process terminology)

Man can most certainly shape the course of an ending. Just as a single pebble thrown into a pond creates a series of ripples, so to man leaves his mark on the world. A bad example, but at least one example, is Hitler. His actions consequently shaped a portion of human history. We still feel the effects of the Holocaust today. The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was the result of a man-made choice. People in that region still have risk issues with radio-activity and the generations being born in that area were deformed and mutilated. In this sense, man makes the ending.

Of course these effects are limited to the realm of human history and interpretation. It is also crucial to note that in terms of on-going time, these events did not make an ending. Humanity still continues and makes advancements. Man could come to a much different ending.

Conversely, a man can lead a virtuous life, even be mostly perfect at this goal for his entire life. For the these purposes let’s assume he was perfect at achieving a moral life up until his death. yet upon his death he is faced with a certain choice. he makes a mistake that is contradictory to his virtuous lifestyle and dies. Is that end shape who he was. he had acquired a fully virtuous life and was perfect at it his entire life except for that last decision. Does the end make the man? I would argue no, simply because of the entirety of his virtuous life and how long he was virtuous outweighs his one mistake. So in this case the end does not make the man. Yet in some instances people could argue that that last decsion was the true test of character and the end determined the man. But is man not allowed at least one mistake, even if it was the last?

Obviously there are many factors that contribute to this debate that would clarify both positions. If the man’s intention was good, but made a mistake, then i would say the end does not determine who the man was. yet if he completely rejected his supposed ideals then yes, the end determined who he was. Intent and action play a significant role in this istance. Does man’s shaping of an end or an end’s shaping of a man reduce to morality or is there something deeper or more plain and emirical?