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.

RECASTING THE PROBLEM OF RESULTANT LUCK

Legal Theory ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 267-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Ferrante
Keyword(s):  
Moral Luck ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Orthodox View ◽  
Moral Philosophers

I offer in this paper an argument in support of the orthodox view that resultant luck should not affect judgments of blameworthiness—and so, for example, that we should not blame the successful assassin more than the attempted assassin who equally tries but fails. This view, though widely held among moral philosophers and legal scholars, has been severely challenged as implying either the implausible rejection of moral luck or an equally implausible theory of wrongness according to which actual consequences may play no wrong-making role. The argument I offer, however, assumes both challenges to be true and shows that the orthodox view is consistent with holding them. Indeed, I argue that all other things being equal, successful offenders are no more to blame than their unsuccessful counterparts, even though agents are responsible for what they actually do (and therefore are subject to moral luck), and successful offenders do more wrong than their unsuccessful counterparts do (and therefore consequences do play a wrong-making role). The reason is that the difference in the amount of wrong done by one and the other offender, I show, is counterbalanced by a difference in the degree to which the successful offense and the unsuccessful one are attributable to their respective agents—blameworthiness being a function of both amount of wrong done and degree of attributability.

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).

Bernard Williams and the Nature of Moral Reflection

Dialogue ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-364
Author(s):  
A. W. Cragg
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
Moral Reflection ◽  
Practical Concern ◽  
Living Together ◽  
One Step ◽  
Classical Philosophy ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Philosophers

In Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Bernard Williams offers an unsettling critique of modern moral philosophy, a critique that calls for a radical reorientation that would have us start again leaving behind much or most or what has been done from the time of the flowering of classical philosophy. However, like moral philosophy itself, Williams' critique reaches beyond the theoretical to matters of practical concern. Moral philosophy since the time of Socrates has endeavoured to answer the question, “How should one live?” (1). Williams' critique is unsettling not simply or primarily because it implies that philosophy has much less to contribute to answering this question than Socrates and most philosophers since his time have thought. Rather, it is unsettling because it implies that Socrates' view that an unexamined life is not worth living, together with his assumption, shared by most moral philosophers since his time, that determining how one should live requires that one step back and reflect on the values governing one's life (19ff.), is either seriously misleading (110 and 116) or mistaken (168).

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
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