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Luck and Identity

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between moral luck and personal identity. Focusing on the notion of constitutive luck, I argue that although fortuitous circumstances often define our identity, our identity is nonetheless immune to luck. The argument revolves around the notion of regret. Bad luck is regrettable. But one cannot coherently regret the occurrence of constitutive circumstances and wish them to be otherwise, because this would amount to wishing to be someone else: conditions of personal identity set the limits on the counter-factuals about ourselves that we can intelligibly entertain.

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