Fate, Fortune, Chance, and Luck in Chinese and Greek: A Comparative Semantic History (original) (raw)

2003, Philosophy East and West

In The Consequences of Modernity, sociologist Anthony Giddens suggests that new notions of risk and trust are distinctly modern developments that supplant earlier notions of fate, fortune, and fortuna; nowadays, the unexpected comes not from turns of fate or divine intervention but from risk. 1 From the ''Fei Ming'' chapters of the Mohist Canon to modern attacks on theological fatalism and scientific determinism, fatalism (as distinct from a belief in fate) has a long history of disrepute. As a modern critic puts it: If time confers respectability on philosophical problems, there are few issues in the history of philosophy with more right to be carefully and charitably considered than fatalism. Yet in the twentieth century, at least, this approach has certainly not been adopted. Contemporary discussions of fatalism have been scattered and perfunctory, almost always concluding with a summary dismissal of the fatalist's argument. Typically, the fatalist is seen as making some rather sophomoric blunder-mistaking a tautology for a substantive thesis about necessity, misunderstanding the scope of a 'model operator', misrepresenting facts about the future as facts about the past, and the like. 2

Sign up for access to the world's latest research.

checkGet notified about relevant papers

checkSave papers to use in your research

checkJoin the discussion with peers

checkTrack your impact