Fragility is fifteen years old this year. During these years, a lot has changed, both in my thinking and in the larger philosophical world. With regard to my own thought, my increasing engagement with Stoic ethics and my growing preoccupation with issues of political philosophy have given me a new perspective on some of the ethical topics discussed here. Meanwhile, work on ancient Greek ethical thought, once the province of a small group of specialists, has increasingly taken center stage in Anglo-American and continental European moral philosophy. This work is heterogeneous, invoking Greek models to support a number of different positions, with some of which I strongly disagree. Thus, although in this edition the text appears unchanged, this new Preface gives me a welcome opportunity to supplement Fragility with my reflections on these developments and the ways in which they affect my current view of the book.

Fragility examined the role of human exposure to luck in the ethical thought of the tragic poets, Plato, and Aristotle. Although the text devoted some attention to the role of luck in the formation of virtue or good character, it primarily focused on the gap between being a good person and managing to live a flourishing human life, a life prominently including virtuous activity. (Thus the “goodness” of the tide should be understood as “the human good” or eudaimonia, rather than as “goodness of character.”) Socrates famously said that a good person cannot be harmed – meaning that everything of relevance to living a flourishing life is safe so long as virtue is safe.