We take risks every day鈥攑erhaps not the extreme, dangling-off-the-side-of-a-mountain kind of risks, but risks nonetheless, in decisions about careers, marriage, children, moving house, and other matters. Tempting fate is simply what we have to do from time to time in life. But how we should go about tempting fate in a reasonable way? In this illuminating book, philosopher Duncan Pritchard explains why risk-taking, even extreme risk-taking, can sometimes be both reasonable and admirable, and how it can play a crucial role in living an authentic life.
Using Alex Honnold鈥檚 famous free solo climb of El Capitan as a paradigm example of admirable risk-taking, Pritchard offers a completely new theory of risk, one that explains it in terms of fragility rather than probability. He shows how fragility can explain why skill and preparation are crucial to sensible risk-taking, even when the activity is unavoidably high risk. Fragility also makes clear that taking risks means riding one鈥檚 luck and why both risk and luck are vital to living an authentic and meaningful existence. Pritchard shows that his fragility theory of risk has practical implications for making sense of risk in law, arts, sports, and other domains. Tempting fate, in other words, is not merely thrill-seeking but essential for human flourishing.
Duncan Pritchard is distinguished professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Knowledge, Technology, and Society at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Epistemic Luck; Epistemological Disjunctivism; Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing (快色直播); and Scepticism: A Very Short Introduction.
"Illuminating. . . . Pritchard’s theory is thorough and thought-provoking, with intriguing implications on everything from breakups to ‘existential’ events like nuclear war. Readers will be edified and inspired."鈥�Publishers Weekly
“Pritchard’s lucid book tells us how to find meaning by embracing risk. What could easily be is not necessarily what’s likely, and we can tame chance as skill and circumstance coalesce.”—Aaron James, author of Assholes: A Theory
“An important and wonderfully accessible book by one of our best philosophers, Tempting Fate gives us a new way to think about risk that helps us understand when it can be good, as well as bad. Take a good risk and buy this book.”—Michael Patrick Lynch, author of On Truth in Politics: Why Democracy Demands It
“Impressively original and a pleasure to read, Tempting Fate shows us how we should deal with risky actions if we are to lead a good life. This ambitious book draws from an impressive breadth of philosophical thought and is full of ingenious arguments and novel insights.”—Mona Simion, author of Resistance to Evidence
“Risk-taking is not a marginal feature of our lives, but a fundamental one. To truly understand what is at stake, we must consider how risk relates to our abilities and competences, how close we stand to possible failure, and how far our successes can genuinely be credited to us rather than to luck. In this profoundly illuminating book, Pritchard boldly reshapes how we think about responsibility, achievement, and the enduring human aspiration to live a meaningful life.”—Jes煤s Navarro, University of Seville
