Analysis of Moral Luck Views of Aristotle and Epictetus Essay

Analysis of Moral Luck Views of Aristotle and Epictetus Aristotle, the founder of western science, and Epictetus, one of the greatest stoicists, both has their theories for the issue of Moral Luck. To have a basic idea about the topic, I believe we should describe it from a non-philosophical point of view. After doing that we can compare both Aristotles and Epictetus points of views and distinguish between them with examples from Into Thin Air(ITA), written by Jon Krakauer. Moral Luck, if described from general perspective, consists of the actions that happen by luck and result in moral ends. What I mean by moral ends is the situations that have something to do with moral or ethical†¦show more content†¦(ITA, pg47) This example illustrates what I am trying to say. Things that are not in our control are other peoples actions, and things that are not up to us are those actions consequences. Moreover, things can be in our control one minute and not the next. In a car accident, steering the wheel might save you from the accident in a specific time. After that time, no matter how much you steer the wheel you cant escape the unavoidable truth. This, as a matter of fact, concerns the issue of chance. However, since chance is related to luck, we are concerned with this as well. Lets concentrate on each philosopher more deeply now. First lets take a look at some of the issues that Aristotle points out in his book Nicomachean Ethics. He states that moral luck is concerned with situations that are not in our control. Moreover, if someone is virtuous he cannot escape from moral luck. However, you have to be virtuous to get away from it. That is to say, only the virtuous man has the greatest chance of dealing with moral luck since he will not need it. He also states that everything has a function. Human beings for instance have the function of reasoning. To define function of something we first need to find its genus, and then search for particular uniqueness that differ it from the others in the same genus. Lastly, he