BERNARD WILLIAMS AND THE MORAL LUCK
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7443/problemata.v17i3.79306Keywords:
Moral luck, contingency, agent regret, Bernard Williams, ethicsAbstract
The text addresses the concept of moral luck theorized by Bernard Williams, contrasting it with the philosophical tradition that seeks to eliminate contingency to guarantee the subject's control over their own destiny. Examples such as Oedipus Rex and Machiavelli illustrate the weight of fortune, while Kant tried to extirpate chance to ground a universal practical reason. Williams criticizes the illusion of moral immunity to luck, arguing that moral dispositions and motives of actions are conditioned by unforeseen factors beyond the agent's control. He introduces the notion of "regret" as a first-person retrospective evaluation that acknowledges the success or failure of a choice after the facts are consolidated. Through the "artist paradigm" with Gauguin, the author discusses the dimensions of intrinsic and extrinsic luck in the search for justification. Thus, Williams' thought exposes the precariousness and limits of human rationality when faced with an unpredictable world. Finally, it highlights the vast distance that exists between fact and value, as well as between the agent and universal value. This perspective in Williams adopts a non-objectivist path that recognizes the radical contingency present in ethics. In this way, ethics ceases to be a field of mere anticipation of action to become a knowledge that assumes the fragility of human evaluations.
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