Lucky Idiots and Incompetent Villains: Luck and Responsibility in Meaningful Lives

Philosophia:1-17 (forthcoming)
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Abstract

What is the relationship between meaning in life and luck? One popular view within the literature is that resultant luck vitiates meaning; that if the relevant state-of-affairs is primarily the result of luck, chance, or happenstance, rather than the person’s actions, then no meaning is conferred. Call this the anti-luck constraint. In this article it is argued that we should reject the anti-luck constraint. Two types of cases, often cited as examples in favour of the anti-luck constraint, are examined: the lucky idiot and the incompetent villain. Such lives, it is contended, can be meaningful even when the relevant states-of-affairs are primarily the product of resultant luck.

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Chad Stevenson
Australian National University

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References found in this work

Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology.Duncan Pritchard - 2012 - Journal of Philosophy 109 (3):247-279.
Alienation, consequentialism, and the demands of morality.Peter Railton - 1984 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (2):134-171.
Meaning in Life and Why It Matters.Susan Wolf - 2010 - Princeton University Press.
Moral Luck.B. A. O. Williams & T. Nagel - 1976 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 50:115 - 151.
Meaningfulness and Time.Antti Kauppinen - 2011 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84 (2):345-377.

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