Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

SUBSCRIBE NOW

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Tallis in Wonderland

Random Thoughts on Luck

Raymond Tallis finds he’s an improbably accidental being.

A few years ago, as I was setting out on holiday, I looked at the departure board and noticed a flight flagged up for Florence. This reminded me of something I had forgotten in the rush to tidy things up before my departure; namely, to refer a patient, whose first name was Florence, for a surgical opinion. I immediately phoned my place of work to ensure that Florence was seen by the relevant expert. Later that day, she had an emergency operation that saved her life.

I have often thought about this episode as an example of what philosophers, after Bernard Williams, call ‘moral luck’ (also the subject of a superb essay by Michael Philips in Philosophy Now Issue 32, ‘Moral Luck and Moral Theory’).

…