Morality as Cultivating Luck: A Confucian Approach to Moral Luck

Following Bernard Williams, many take ‘moral luck’ to be an oxymoron. From a Confucian perspective we can say that taking moral luck as an oxymoron impoverishes our appreciation of the complexity and nuances of human life. ‘Luck’ or contingencies are the concrete particulars which make us who we are and provide meaning to our interactions. Bracketing these aspects asks us to divorce our notions of morality and persons from their particular encumberdness. It depreciates the value of others, community, environments, and most significantly, moral self-cultivation. Thus, far from being a problem, for Confucians cultivating luck is exactly what it means to be moral.