Chance and ethics: responsibility and moral luck

Abstract

In 1976, Nagel and Williams presented —at the congress of the Aristotelian Society— two famous texts aimed at exposing the challenge that chance and fortune represent for moral thought. Since then, hundreds of articles have proliferated in the literature focused on analyzing this dilemma. This debate, however, is rarely situated within the analysis of the implausible and false premises that give rise to it. In this paper I reconstruct the central coordinates in which this philosophical problem originates. Later, I show that imputation of ethical responsibility to an agent not only does not exclude, but even presupposes, what I will call an impure capacity for agency where luck occupies a central place.

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Author Biography

Felipe Curcó Cobos, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM)
FELIPE CURCÓ es doctor en filosofía política por la Universidad de Barcelona. Fue becario  Fulbright de ciencias sociales e investigador y profesor asociado en dicha Universidad. Merecedor de la Medalla Gabino Barreda al mérito universitario por parte de la UNAM. Actualmente es investigador titular "C" de tiempo completo en el Departamento de Ciencia Política del ITAM. Es autor de los libros “Ironía y Democracia Liberal” y “La guerra perdida”. Desde 2008 ha sido miembro ininterrumpido del SNI. Ha escrito más de 30  artículos en revistas arbitradas, entre las cuales destacan: Latin American Research Review, Canadian Journal of Latin American Studies o Kulturforschung de la Universidad de Frankfurt. 

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Published
10-06-2021
Issue
Vol. 23 No. 46 (2021)
Section
Artículos