Luck and its relationship with the book 50 Things to know about Philosophy
Introduction
In this essay I will deepen the subject of whether it is bad or not to have bad luck. This topic comes from the book "50 things to know about philosophy" written by Ben Dupré. I will talk about how our lives are governed by a force outside us as "luck" and how this means that people lack freedom that we have always believed to have. I will also talk about why we should be tried for our actions that are outside our control.
Developing
In chapter 23 of the book "50 things to know about philosophy", which was written by Ben Dupré, he presents us with the theme of luck. Dupré deepens about how luck has influence on our personal lives and also on how it affects our decisions, character and actions. He presents several examples of situations in which, despite the fact that the conditions were the same, the results were different, since they were affected by a force known as "moral luck". Moral fate is divided into several subtypes, among them is the circumstantial moral luck that involves the circumstances of the situation in which we find ourselves and the constitutive moral luck which involves the variables and the factors that affect us and define our character. Our lives, our decisions and their results are affected by circumstantial luck and constitutive fate and therefore we lack freedom.
The circumstantial luck is defined as the fate that you have in terms of the circumstances in which each person is through the various situations he faces in her life, and how this fate affects the result of our actions. One of the examples presented is the case of Bell and Haig, who go out to drink and already drunk, decide to drive back to their homes. Bell managed to get to his house without problems, but Haig, he crossed a pedestrian without giving him time to stop his vehicle and the pedestrian died hit and Haig ended up serving a sentence in prison. Both made the irresponsible decision to drive drunk, but only one of them ended up serving a prison sentence for their actions. Dupré alleges that this is due to circumstantial luck. From this he asks if we should judge Bell more severely because his action was just as irresponsible, only without the consequences, or if “we should be more indulgent when judging Haig, since he was not doing anything worse than many other people and simply had bad luck?”(Dupré, 2007, P. 96), hinting that he did not intend to kill anyone and simply had the "bad luck" that someone crossed their way to the wrong time. This generates the question of to what extent we control our intentions, which leads us to the next type of luck.
We can define constitutive luck as the luck that each person has to be oneself. This refers to the fate of having all the factors that have been forming a unique and own character of each person. Because a person’s character is "in [his] nature" (Dupré, 2007, p. 97), Dupré asks if we should judge a person due to the different actions and intentions that they can have due to their character, which was created by factors on which the individual has no control. He presents us with the example of a person who is selfish and a person who is coward Therefore none of them can be judged for acting in this way that they have no control over that. But the important question of this is to what extent a person can be responsible for their decisions, since although they can be influenced by their character, the person also has the ability to analyze the situations in which he is and the possible consequences that these may have.
If a person has no influence on the factors that make it make certain decisions and act in a certain way, then that means that we have no real freedom, since to be truly free, we should be able to have control over all these factors. This leads us to the question that it creates the justification of human issues such as guilt and punishment. Since if we have no freedom about our actions, then we should not suffer the consequences of these, but, to what extent a person can claim that an action was caused by "their nature" and not by a conscious decision taken with specific intentions. While it is true that to some extent these factors affect us, we also have the ability to think and we can analyze situations and even act against our instincts and ways of thinking if necessary to do what is considered "correct". This generates a dilemma, since it is practically impossible to be able to define the intentions that a person has when doing something.
conclusion
People like to have control of situations and their environment, but the truth is that controlling these factors is impossible. This is because our lives, our actions and our decisions are very influenced by factors outside us that are impossible to control. Factors such as the place where we are born and the circumstances of the same. Although we do not always notice it, this and other factors have great influence on our lives and in the creation of our character and therefore our way of thinking and acting. Some philosophers deny the existence of this force, but personally I consider that there are many factors which are simply left to uncertainty to deny the existence of a force that we cannot control and that regularly affects the course of our lives. If the existence of moral luck is real, then we have been wrong about the thought of freedom that we have had all this time that we are not really free and we are at the mercy of what decides the "luck" of each person.
Bibliography
- Sergi Rosell. (2006). Nagel and Williams about moral luck. 02/11/2019, from UCM magazines, website: file: /// c:/users/ezava.EDUARDO/DOWNLOADS/10256-TEXT%20DEL%20Art%C3%ADULO-10337-1-10-20110601%20 (1).PDF
- Mario Elkin Ramirez. (2010). Luck and fortune in Aristotle. 02/11/2019, from El Sigma Website: https: // www.The Sigma.com/philosophy/la-sort-and-la-fortuna-en-aristoteles/12151
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