Copious amounts of moral theorists have typically ignored the relationship between luck and morality. The conflict is that luck can completely impair moral judgment. Most importantly, I shall begin with a concise definition of luck. Luck has been known to contain four primary concepts or the "Four Faces of Luck"": a lack of control, some sort of value, subjectivity, and an element of chance. For an example, Henry stumbles upon a fifty dollar bill while walking out of the library which creates a winning sensation throughout his body. This scenario is completely out of his control. Henry coming across this is normally considered to be a good thing. On the other hand, Henry could still view this as a negative feeling. Essentially, Henry interprets his luck as good or bad as it occurs in the heat of the moment to him. Finally, the principle of chance. Henry happened to be at the correct place at the correct time once he discovered this money. That's almost a 1 in 50 billion chances of him coming upon such a specific setting. .
Thomas Nagel addresses this issue in his essay, "Moral Luck." Nagel defines moral luck as ".where a significant aspect of what someone does depends on factors beyond his control, yet we continue to treat him in that respect as an object of moral judgment." (Nagel, 720). He asserts that there are essentially four different kinds of moral luck that affect the moral judgment of people. He outlines resultant luck, circumstantial luck, causal luck, and constitutive luck. He explains and provides examples for each kind of luck, which I will now summarize and evaluate. The important thing to keep in mind is that one's actions are not being assessed in these cases, one is being critiqued and judged as a person. It is not whether murder is bad, but whether the murderer is bad. The first type of moral luck he covers is resultant luck. The result of a certain intent or action involves outside factors which are not under one's control.
