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The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy.

1989; Wiley; Volume: 50; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2108121

1933-1592

Paul Woodruff, Martha C. Nussbaum,

Classical Philosophy and Thought

Luck and ethics' But human excellence grows like a vine tree, fed by the green dew, raised up, among wise men and just, to the liquid sky.' 1 So Pindar displays a problem that lies at the heart of Greek thought about the good life for a human being.He is a poet who has dedicated his career to writing lyric odes in praise of human excellence.This career presupposes, on the part of both poet and audience, the belief that the excellence of a good person is something of that person's own, for whose possession and exercise that person can appropriately be held accountable. 2 He has just been praying to die as he had lived, as one 'who praised what deserves praise and sowed blame for wrong-doers'.His 'but', which might equally well be translated 'and', both continues and qualifies that prayer.The excellence of the good person, he writes, is like a young plant: something growing in the world, slender, fragile, in constant need of food from without. 3 A vine tree must be of good stock if it is to grow well.And even if it has a good heritage, it needs fostering weather (gentle dew and rain, the absence of sudden frosts and harsh winds), as well as the care of concerned and intelligent keepers, for its continued health and full perfection.So, the poet suggests, do we.We need to be born with adequate capacities, to live in fostering natural and social circumstances, to stay clear of abrupt catastrophe, to develop confirming associations with other human beings.The poem's next lines are, 'We have all kinds of needs for those we love: most of all in hardships, but joy, too, strains to track down eyes that it can trust.'Our openness to fortune and our sense of value, here again, both render us dependent on what is outside of us: our openness to fortune, because we encounter hardships and can come to need something that only another can provide; our sense of value, because even when we do not need the help of friends and loved ones, love and friendship still matter to us for their own sake.Even the poet's joy is incomplete without the tenuous luck of seeing it confirmed by eyes on whose understanding, good will, and truthfulness he can rely.His joy is like a hunter, straining on the track of an elusive quarry. 4Much of the poem has been about envy, the way lies can make the world rotten.The one trusted friend invoked by the poet is dead, beyond the reach even of his poetic words.And all these needs for all these things that we do not humanly control are pertinent, clearly, not only to feelings of contentment or happiness.What the external nourishes, and even helps to constitute, is excellence or human worth itself.