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彼らはみんな死ぬ運命にある。
They are all destined to die.

Also a similar sentence from this post:

2人は戦う宿命にある

The meanings are clear but I can't quite understand how the grammar is working here. How should I understand 運命にある? The closest I can get is "to exist in a destiny" i.e. "They all exist in a destiny which is to die".

I'm not sure if the solution is grammatical or cultural. In English we 'have' a destiny so I would maybe have expected something like 彼らにはみんな死ぬ運命がある. Would this be wrong? When Japanese people think of destiny do they think of living in/through it, rather than having it as an attribute?

user3856370
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1 Answers1

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I think 運命 is treated as an (abstract) place here. We can safely say ～という状況にある ("to be in a situation where ～") or ～という状態にある ("to be in a state where ～"), so 運命にある and 宿命にある should not be that illogical.

This ある is a literary version of "(for a human) to be/stay (for some time)":

We rarely say 運命にいる because 運命にある is almost a set phrase.

naruto
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