The Introduction identifies the 1976 symposium between Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel as the key moment in the development of the contemporary wide-ranging debate on moral luck. Despite Nagel’s proposal to proceed with an account of luck that can straddle the gap between ethics and epistemology, it is argued that the sort of luck relevant to moral and political philosophy need not be identical with the sort of luck pressed into service by epistemologists. The ‘Lack of Control Account’ of luck will serve adequately for normative issues, even if it leaves theoretical philosophers dissatisfied. Nagel’s familiar taxonomy of types of moral luck is outlined: resultant luck, circumstantial luck, constitutive luck, and causal luck. The treatment of moral luck in this book prescinds from any detailed engagement with issues of free will and responsibility, and also issues of blameworthiness and responsibility. Different views can be taken about these various issues, but the specific challenge of moral luck will still await resolution. That challenge is fundamentally distributive in character, and is typically focused on the apparatus of the pairwise comparison. The anti-luckist programme in normative ethics objects to different assignments of blameworthiness to agents whose acts turn out differently due to luck. The problem here lies with that prior investment in the pairwise comparison. That contention will be pursued across the early chapters of the book.
No best world: creaturely freedom
