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ABSTRACT
The paper offers an account of luck, fate, and fortune. It begins by showing that extant accounts of luck are deficient because they do not identify the genus of which luck is a species. That genus of properties, the tychic, alert an agent to occasions on which the external world cooperates with or frustrates their goal-achievement. An agent’s sphere of competence is the set of goals that it is possible for them to reliably achieve. Luck concerns occasions on which there is a mismatch between attempt and result; in bad luck the external world thwarts goal-achievement within the agent’s sphere of competence, in good luck the external world assists goal-achievement beyond the agent’s sphere of competence. Fateful events are those where, more passively, the agent finds the external world achieving or frustrating their goals. Fortune concerns the contraction and expansion of the agent’s sphere of competence. Eight reasons are given for accepting the account; its theoretical virtues and various things it explains. Lastly, three objections are answered; that the tychic properties relate to well-being rather than agency, that there are alternative theories of fortune available in the contemporary literature, that the account draws arbitrary distinctions between synonyms.
Acknowledgements
For their helpful comments, thanks to reviewers at Philosophical Psychology, Metaphilosophy, and Philosophical Explorations.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The contemporary philosophical literature on luck and moral luck mentions fate in passing in a few places (Nagel Citation1993, 63; Thomson Citation1993, 204; Rescher Citation2001, 28) but does not offer an account of it. The Myth of Luck: Philosophy, Fate & Fortune (Hales Citation2020) offers no theory of fate, though does imply some claims about fate, e.g. that what is fateful cannot be lucky (Hales Citation2020, 16–19, 21, 39). Luck, Fate & Fortune: Antiquity & its Legacy (Eidinow Citation2011) unpacks classical conceptions of luck, fate, and fortune as expressed in Herodotus, Thucydides, etc. The literature contains more substantive accounts of fortune, stated and evaluated in the final section. One might pick ‘chance,’ to which tyche is also commonly translated, as the genus term. However, in the contemporary usage of the moral luck literature ‘chance’ and ‘chancy’ are used to indicate improbability or modal fragility – e.g. Neil Levy can say that fortune is ‘non-chancy’ (Levy Citation2009, 496). One might also pick ‘accidental’ or ‘coincidental.’ Leaving the genus term untranslated seems best.
2 A reviewer expresses the wish that these empirical studies had been done better – e.g. not allowing for possible biases in the researcher’s coding, or using a Likert scale, or not presenting luck as a ‘non-material belief.’ I share this wish. I am constrained to work with the best available empirical studies. A reviewer expresses doubt about the weight of folk intuitions. After all, most people do think of fate as a mysterious causal-efficient force, so we can’t take their judgments about it too seriously. In response, consider the analogy with ethics. Ordinary people accurately sort right-actions from wrong-actions (‘killing wrong, feeding the hungry right’), even if they have wildly mistaken views of ethical ontology (‘we evolved to,’ ‘society agrees that’).
3 The distinction between the subjective and objective sphere of competence gives rise to a corresponding distinction between a subjective and an objective sense of luck, fate, and fortune. The latter is normative for the former, since our feelings about how things are should correspond to how things are. The cocky first-timer at bowling fails to feel lucky about getting a strike even though he is lucky, the insensible teenager living in peace and plenty fails to feel fortunate even though she is fortunate. If to have control over X just is to have the reliable ability to achieve or prevent X, then my ‘sphere of competence’ is a ‘sphere of control,’ and my accounts of luck, fate, and fortune are ‘control accounts.’ However, control is defined in a number of different ways in the luck literature (Coffman Citation2009, 500; Riggs Citation2009; Levy Citation2011, 19), and more often left undefined. In some cases, we use ‘control’ where an agent has a very unreliable ability to achieve or prevent X, but actually achieves or prevents X: e.g. a rodeo newbie controls the bull, an event I would call lucky.
4 Which allows that they hope for or foresee such participation. What an agent can sensibly intend is circumscribed by their subjective sphere of competence, e.g. I can hope, but not intend, to win the lottery.
5 Nothing in the discussion requires that all action-types can be participated in accidentally, that all action-types can involve tyche. For example, if an accidental jostle pushes my pen upon the signature-line, I have not contracted accidentally or by luck. Some goals can only be expressed in, can only enform, the rational mind.
6 Other tychic terms include destiny and doom. These might be defined as types of fate. Destiny seems to have a purely positive valence and to intimate our cooperation in achieving a goal, whereas doom has a purely negative valence and intimates our total passivity. Boethius and Aquinas say that fate is providence considered as working through second causes (Aquinas Citation1947, ST I Q116 A1 co., Boethius Citation2008, IV.VI 131). Providence is not a tychic idea, as tychic properties pertain to limited agents constrained by an external world. Ideas such as dharma, maat, tao, like providence, enfold our microcosmic agency into a macrocosmic agency, rather than leaving the external world somewhat indifferent, capricious, opaque, or chaotic. These ideas have a more ethical, juridical, and order-bringing focus than luck, fate, and fortune. So far as the spatial metaphor can take us – passing out, passing in, expanding and contracting and moving – luck, fate, and fortune are the only tychic properties. Spatial metaphor seems prominent in talk about agency; ‘within her power’, ‘beyond his control.’
7 Duncan Pritchard expresses sympathy with this view in passing (Pritchard Citation2005, 144).
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Marcus William Hunt
Marcus William Hunt lectures at Concordia University Chicago and writes on a variety of topics, especially the philosophy of the family. He has a PhD in philosophy from Tulane University.