Awareness of failures on all levels is illustrated abundantly in religion, philosophy, literature and art. In this chapter I look at failure through the lens of many of our artistic and creative media, mainly poetry, drama, novels, visual art, film and comedy. Obviously this is a highly selective look. Interestingly, Plato was somewhat hostile to the arts, regarding them as glamorizing the illusory and impeding the search for truth. We know, however, from the Bible and many other sources that the arts in all their forms were always the chief means of reflecting on human misfortunes and provoking popular engagement with tragic themes.

In her extremely scholarly The Fragility of Goodness (2001), the philosopher Martha Nussbaum takes as her theme the “moral luck” that challenges the “aspiration to rational self-sufficiency” of so many early Greek philosophers and indeed poets. Greek tragedy, often differing sharply from contemporary philosophy, showed that bad things often happen to good people. Regardless of how good we strive to be, events outside our control can seriously knock us back. Even the most disciplined Stoics and others aspiring by the exercise of reason to be immune to adversity may be tested beyond their powers of endurance and brought low: this has often offended the sensibilities of philosophers such as Aristotle and Kant. However we arrange circumstances we cannot foresee all potential tests of fate, shocks and misfortunes, and this is the stuff of a great deal of literature and art.