Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams on Moral Luck

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-112
Author(s):  
Andrew Latus
Keyword(s):  
Moral Luck ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
Thomas Nagel

Happiness and Luckiness

1998 ◽  
pp. 207-214
Author(s):  
Paul Schollmeier
Keyword(s):  
Moral Luck ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
Thomas Nagel ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Moral Philosophers

Moral philosophers, beginning with Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel, have recently broached the topic of moral luck in the philosophical literature. They limit their discussion however to considerations of how luck affects our ability to carry out actions or how it affects the consequences of our actions. I wish to suggest that luck is also an important factor in determining our actions as ends in themselves. What actions we may choose to perform for their own sake in a given situation depends much more than we might care to think on causes beyond our control. Our happiness rests ultimately on our luckiness.

Moral luck

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Statman
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
Thomas Nagel ◽  
Moral Accountability ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Stark Contrast

The term ‘moral luck’ was introduced by Bernard Williams in 1976 to convey the idea that moral status is, to a large extent, a matter of luck. For example, that Bob grows up to be vicious and Tom to be virtuous depends very much on their different family conditions and educational background. Following Williams, Thomas Nagel widened the scope of moral luck. The position taken by both stands in stark contrast to the widely-held view, influenced by Kant, that one is morally accountable only for what is under one’s control, so that moral accountability is not a matter of luck. This idea is so deeply entrenched in our modern concept of morality that rejecting it would call for a rethinking and reformulation of the most basic notions of morality. Some have argued that the paradox of moral luck provides a strong reason to abandon traditional moral theories, and lends support to virtue ethics.

GOALS, LUCK, AND MORAL OBLIGATION

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-316
Author(s):  
R. G. Frey
Keyword(s):  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
Moral Experience ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
Moral Obligations

AbstractIn Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Bernard Williams is rather severe on what he thinks of as an ethics of obligation. He has in mind by this Kant and W. D. Ross. For many, obligation seems the very core of ethics and the moral realm, and lives more generally are seen through the prism of this notion. This, according to Williams, flattens out our lives and moral experience and fails to take into account things which are obviously important to our lives. Once we take these things into account, what do we do if they come into conflict with some of our moral obligations, as Williams, in his earlier writings on moral luck, thought to be the case. I want here to explore some of these ideas, in a way that I think harmonious with Williams's general bent though not one that I intend as in any way detailed exegesis of Williams's work.

Morality and Luck

Philosophy ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 59 (229) ◽  
pp. 323-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
Thomas Nagel ◽  
Significant Aspect

Thomas Nagel recognizes that it is commonly believed that people can neither be held morally responsible nor morally assessed for what is beyond their control. Yet he is convinced that although such a belief may be intuitively plausible, upon reflection we find that we do make moral assessments of persons in a large number of cases in which such assessments depend on factors not under their control. Of such factors he says: ‘Wherea significant aspect of what someone does depends on factors beyond his control, yet we continue to treat him in that respect as an object of moral judgment, itcan be called moral luck’ (p. 26).

The Magic in the Pronoun "My"Moral Luck. Bernard Williams

Ethics ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair MacIntyre
Keyword(s):  
Moral Luck ◽  
Bernard Williams

Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers by Bernard Williams

1984 ◽  
Vol 81 (6) ◽  
pp. 333-336
Author(s):  
Harry G. Frankfurt ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Luck ◽  
Bernard Williams

Virtue Epistemology and Moral Luck

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Silcox
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
Alternative Strategy ◽  
Virtue Theory ◽  
Epistemic Virtue ◽  
Thomas Nagel ◽  
General Attitude ◽  
Epistemic Obligation

AbstractThomas Nagel has proposed that the existence of moral luck mandates a general attitude of skepticism in ethics. One popular way of arguing against Nagel’s claim is to insist that the phenomenon of moral luck itself is an illusion , in the sense that situations in which it seems to occur may be plausibly re-described so as to show that agents need not be held responsible for the unlucky outcomes of their actions. Here I argue that this strategy for explaining away moral luck fails because it does not take account of the fact that agents in morally unlucky circumstances are uniformly subject to a very specific type of epistemic obligation. I then proceed to sketch out an alternative strategy for blocking the inference to skepticism, one that makes use of the distinctive explanatory resources provided by epistemic virtue theory.

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