The Fragility of Goodness

A study, subtitled Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, of how far a good human life is exposed to luck. Nussbaum reads tragedy and philosophy side by side as answers to the same question. Part I, on tragedy, examines Aeschylus' Agamemnon and Sophocles' Antigone, where agents face conflicts between obligations that cannot all be met. Part II turns to Plato, who in her reading tries to make the good life safe from luck by making reason self-sufficient, as in the Protagoras and the Republic; she then reads the Symposium, with Alcibiades' speech, and the Phaedrus as Plato's own reckoning with the value of love. Part III argues that Aristotle returns to the "appearances" and accepts vulnerability: a good life includes friendship, political activity and other goods that can be lost. A closing chapter on Euripides' Hecuba shows a good character ruined by betrayal. Throughout, Nussbaum argues that literature is a form of ethical thought.

It shows why ancient tragedy matters to ethics and makes a powerful case that a good human life is valuable partly because it can be lost.