ABSTRACT
Hopes (elpis) and prayers (euchê) do not loom large among the topics that have attracted the attention of Aristotle scholars, although they concern what one nowadays calls “moral luck.” This chapter raises the following questions: What is a virtuous and what a vicious way to accommodate luck in our actions and plans? Are different aspects of our practical life (as individuals and as members of a political community) associated with different sorts of luck (for instance, constitutive and resultant luck)? Aristotle’s appealing answers emerge from his treatment of hoping-well and praying-well.
Aristotle’s allusions to hope in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Rhetoric allow us to explain how engagement with moral luck belongs to the core of practical life (3.1.2), what kind of fulfiment and motivational power are proper to hoping-well (3.1.3), and in which sense Aristotle’s account contributes to the contemporary discussion (3.1.4). Prayers are substantially different. In the Politics, their object is the material conditions of the city (3.2.1), which should not be identified with the “external goods” (3.2.2). Their peculiarity is due to their present perfect tense (3.2.3). The chapter closes by explaining the kind of political mistake that supervenes on any attempt to make prayers appear redundant (3.2.4–5).
