What about luck? (Bernard Williams, Moral Luck)

Question 1

What is moral luck?

Answer 1

It is luck that pertains to the morality of an action. William describes situations where people are considered worthy of praise/blame from a moral perspective, even when it is apparent that the success/failure of their action was due to luck.

Question 2

What is the difference between extrinsic luck and intrinsic luck?

Answer 2

Extrinsic luck: arising from the ‘outside’ the project

Intrinsic luck: arising from the elements of the project or action under consideration

Question 3

What is an agent-regret, as opposed to regret?

Answer 3

Agent-regret: a person can only feel towards his/her own past actions.

Regret: a person can feel about anything in the past.

Question 4

For extrinsic luck and intrinsic luck, the two cases that were discussed were Paul Gauguin and Anna Karenina.
How does luck affect the assessment of the moral worth of their actions?

Answer 4

Paul Gauguin
Extrinsic luck: A freak accident causes him to sustain an injury that prevents him from ever painting again, he will be neither justified nor unjustified since his project is never really carried out.
Intrinsic luck: Luck arising from Gauguin himself, since he is the only one involved in his project. (Being a failure as an artist would make his decision unjustified)

Anna Karenina
Extrinsic luck: It would have been a misfortune if Vronsky had been accidentally killed.
Intrinsic luck: It would have been a failure if she wasn’t nice to him thus he didn’t get married