Fortunate Misfortune Revisited: Further Reflections

Saul Smilansky

doi:10.18290/rf237102.6

Published : 2023-06-28

Vol. 71 No. 2 (2023)

Fortunate Misfortune Revisited: Further Reflections

Saul Smilansky

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7503-7607

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rf237102.6

Abstract

In a previous work I considered the philosophically neglected phenomenon of “Fortunate Misfortune” (or FM). This follows from the way in which sometimes what seems an obvious misfortune turns out, in fact, to be actually good fortune. The paradox, in a certain class of cases, is this: if a seemingly unfortunate aspect of a life has proven to be beneficial overall, then it has not been a real misfortune. However, certain aspects of actual lives seem to be obvious misfortunes, irrespective of what follows. Often, saying both that the life-aspects under consideration are misfortunes and denying that they are, seem unacceptable. In the present paper I aim to survey some of the conceptual, moral and social implications of cases of Fortunate Misfortune. This will be mostly done in the form of questions, exploring the perplexities FM brings up and the challenges it hence poses for further work.

Keywords:

misfortune, fortunate misfortune, disadvantage, rationality, moral paradoxes, Smilansky

Details

References

Statistics

Authors

Download files

pdf

Altmetric indicators

Cited by / Share

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

References

Harman, Elizabeth. 2009. “‘I’ll be Glad I Did It’ Reasoning and the Significance of Future Desires.” Philosophical Perspectives 23:177–99.

Murphy, Jeffrie G. 1988. “Forgiveness and Resentment.” In Forgiveness and Mercy, edited by Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Hampton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sainsbury, R. M. 2009. Paradoxes. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Smilansky, Saul. 1994. “Fortunate Misfortune.” Ratio 7:153–63.

Smilansky, Saul. 2007a. 10 Moral Paradoxes. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Smilansky, Saul. 2007b. “Fortunate Misfortune.” In 10 Moral Paradoxes, 11–22. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Smilansky, Saul. 2013. “Why Moral Paradoxes Matter: ‘Teflon Immorality’ and the perversity of life.” Philosophical Studies 165:229–43.

Smilansky, Saul. 2021. “The Idea of Moral Duties to History.” Philosophy 96:155–79.

Smilansky, Saul. 2022. “Paradoxes and Meaning in Life.” In Oxford Handbook for Meaning in Life, edited by Iddo Landau. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sneddon, Andrew. 2012. “Recipes for Moral Paradox.” American Philosophical Quarterly 49:43–54.

Statman, Daniel, ed. 1993. Moral Dilemmas. Albany: SUNY Press.