Aristotle's Psychological Approach to the Idea of Luck

Schillinger, Daniel

doi:10.1353/rvm.2019.0009

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Daniel Schillinger, for example, contends that for Aristotle (as for Thucydides and Machiavelli) “the idea of luck [τύχη] is a piece of ‘folk wisdom’ that arises only because of the limitations of human agency: when agents prove incapable of foreseeing and controlling significant events, then luck is invoked in order to describe what has happened” (Schillinger 2018, ii.) Schillinger sets out to demonstrate—following a line of argument that derives from Julia Annas and others—that “for Aristotle, the idea of luck [τύχη] refers to an explanation or an interpretation as opposed to a cause” (Schillinger 2018, 43; see Annas 1982, 319). On this “fictional” view, luck is something we ourselves project onto what is really going on; it is, at best, an epistemological category without ontological reality.…”

Section: Aristotle On Particularsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aristotle's tyche (τύχη) and contemporary debates about luck

Groarke

2024

Metaphilosophy

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This paper proposes an interpretation of Aristotle's understanding of tyche (τύχη), a Greek term that can be alternatively translated as luck, fortune, or fate. The paper disentangles various threads of argument in the primary sources to argue for a realist understanding of what we moderns call “luck.” In short, it contends that Aristotle's account of these issues is mostly correct and merits close attention when canvassing recent philosophical debates about luckology. Aristotle argues that science pertains to the general rule; it is not about the particular. Particular events have contingent content that exceeds the scope of science. Even if we could predict all future events with ultimate accuracy, we would still be left wondering why good or bad things happen to specific people. Although luck is not a scientific category, it has an existential reality that leaves momentous events open to metaphysical and even religious interpretation.

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Section: Aristotle On Particularsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aristotle's tyche (τύχη) and contemporary debates about luck

Groarke

2024

Metaphilosophy

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The Political Significance of Luck: A Thucydidean Perspective

Schillinger

2020

Political Research Quarterly

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Contemporary authorities invoke luck to explain the arbitrariness of economic success, to emphasize our shared vulnerability to disaster, and to urge more generous policy, legislation, and governance. According to Robert Frank, Martha Nussbaum, and Ronald Dworkin, for example, extreme bad luck can befall individuals no matter what they know or do. By redefining luck as a psychological phenomenon (rather than as a constitutive principle of the world), this article challenges the contemporary consensus. My approach to luck arises out of my engagement with the political thought of Thucydides. Whereas influential interpreters present Thucydides as a witness to the crushing power of bad luck, and whereas they criticize Thucydides’ Pericles for being insufficiently deferential to luck, I revisit and defend Pericles’ skeptical and psychological approach to luck, and I argue that Thucydides shares this approach, at least in the main. The pathological intellectual and emotional responses to apparent good or bad luck diagnosed by Pericles in his final speech recur throughout the History and influence the evolution of the whole war. Going beyond Pericles, Thucydides shows that the appeal of luck arises out of a human need to explain, beautify, or lament what is merely natural necessity, haphazard coincidence, or awful suffering.

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Aristotle's Psychological Approach to the Idea of Luck

Cited by 2 publications

References 30 publications

Aristotle's tyche (τύχη) and contemporary debates about luck

Aristotle's tyche (τύχη) and contemporary debates about luck

The Political Significance of Luck: A Thucydidean Perspective

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