Abstract

One of the most contentious issues in contemporary philosophy of luck is the account of the so-called significance condition. Reflection on this condition ends to pull in two opposite directions: either toward subjectivism and relativism, which threaten to undermine the philosophical utility of the concept of luck, or toward eliminativism regarding the significance condition, which risks detaching the concept from ordinary usage. This paper explores whether contemporary philosophers of luck can gain from reconsidering Aristotle’s account of luck (tyche) and offers a cautiously affirmative answer. Aristotle develops an objective conception of luck that avoids some of the major difficulties vexing contemporary theories—particularly with respect to the significance condition. Nonetheless, the applicability of Aristotle’s analysis to current debates is limited for at least three reasons: (1) it depends on his peculiar understanding of teleology, which presupposes a nowadays controversial conception of the good; (2) it requires unexpected and sometimes strained explanations of everyday attributions of luck; and (3) it does not treat cases of good luck and bad luck symmetrically.