ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to examine in a slightly different exercise. It discusses the Adam Smith’s discussion of luck in the context of his wider system of thought and understands it as a product of his particular methodological approach to doing philosophy. Smith’s discussion of the influence of fortune on assessments of merit and demerit immediately follows a discussion of justice and beneficence where Smith criticizes David Hume’s account of justice grounded in utility and Francis Hutcheson’s account which grounds it in benevolence. Smith’s discussion of luck is embedded in a systematic account of how actual elements of moral judgment are related to each other. For Smith, the notion that humanity will ever be able to provide the perfect response to every incidence of fortune is for the next life. Smith’s contribution to social theory, and in particular the oft-abused metaphor of the invisible hand, is shot through with explorations of social phenomena as the unintended outcomes of social interaction.
