Luck, Fate and Fortune
Esther Eidinow, author of Luck, Fate and Fortune: Antiquity and Its Legacy examines concepts of fate, luck and fortune, and their enduring power over our thought and actions.
Do you believe in Fate? Do you think you're particularly lucky or unlucky? Do you ever feel that someone or something is directing events in your life…perhaps towards a particular goal, or a special person that you’re destined to meet?
My interest in how we think about the future began when I worked in the field of strategy and planning – when I noticed how inconsistent people’s approaches can be. We are meant to have progressed beyond ideas, of fate, luck and fortune. The language of risk – and its management – is a language of power: identify, assess, prioritise, monitor and manage! It suggests that we can and should take control of the unknown future. And yet…from crossing fingers and 'knocking on wood, from buying a lottery ticket to checking our horoscope to see 'what's in store', the concepts of fate, luck and fortune linger on, quietly undermining the idea that we’re in charge. They continue to evoke for us that pervasive sense that, whatever we may do, the outcome of events actually lies in the hands of unseen powers: we are not in control of our destinies.
Of course, these concepts are not new or unique to us: many cultures have similar concepts of fate, luck and fortune, and many of these have shaped our own notions. The ancient Greeks for example, may seem at first sight to be very different in their approach to us (after all, they worshipped personifications of fate and fortune – Moira, 'Fate', and Tyche, 'Luck' – as goddesses) but, in fact, many of their ideas about luck, fate and fortune appear to have been very influential on our own. Above all, they used the language of fate luck and fortune to answer that most inexplicable question that has haunted and continues to haunt mortals faced with suffering across cultures and down through time: Why me?
Because we can’t talk to the ancient Greeks themselves to find out more about they thought, Luck, Fate and Fortune explores ideas about the future presented in some of their writings. These include the works of seventh and sixth century poets, such as Theocritus and Solon; the fifth-century historians Herodotus and Thucydides; and the fourth-century politicians Aeschines and Demosthenes. In addition, it provides a detailed analysis of the changing representations of the future in Sophocles’ famous play, Oedipus, the King.
As well as the overt statements these authors make, we can also delve into the unspoken ideas that shaped their approaches, looking for implicit patterns and models that evoke how they imagined fate, luck and fortune operated in people’s lives – as abstract concepts, and as powerful divinities. This is an approach used by cognitive anthropologists as they try to understand how members of a culture communicate complex ideas quickly and easily.
The 'cultural models' of the future that appear from these authors allow us to appreciate the richness and intricacy of ancient concepts of fate, luck and fortune – but also to see how they changed over time. It also shows us the range of ways in which these ancient writers and speakers used these concepts themselves as part of their way of making sense of experiences and events – to explain, console, exhort, and cajole their audiences. We see that concepts of fate, luck and fortune were used to evaluate people’s behaviour and character, to compete with others for advancement, even to gain political support.
And, as for the Greeks, so also for us: as the book demonstrates, modern manipulation of these ideas of fate, luck and fortune remain powerful weapons of persuasion. The book follows the examples of the ancient orators, Demosthenes and Aeschines, with an analysis of two modern political speeches: the implicit manipulation of cultural models of fate, luck and fortune is alive and well, and potent, in the political rhetoric of our own day.
Find out more about Luck, Fate and Fortune: Antiquity and Its Legacy and other books in the Ancients and Moderns series.
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