published in Midwestern Studies in Philosophy XXII (1998) pp. 120-134
FULL TEXT of penultimate pre-publication draft (no footnotes or corrections)
ABSTRACT:
Serendipity is the finding of something that was not looked for,
perhaps in the context of a search for something else, or even for just
that. In this paper, I explore the place of serendipity in the sources,
in the modes of operation, as well as the a ttainment of the objects of
desire. Luck pervades them all, in a diversity of ways. An important source
of serendipity is the particularity of the events that fulfil our desires:
since that particularity is inexhaustible, it cannot have been fully specified
by any statement of our desired end. If so, then in every case involving
a particular thing or event, even getting what you wanted involves getting
something that you didn't know you wanted. Knowledge and happiness provide
broad classes of examples: in the search for knowledge, as in the search
for happiness, serendipity is "built in". There would be no point in discovering
something that you already fully knew, and none of the delights of true
happiness are compatible with the full predictability of their content.
BACK to Ronnie's HOME PAGE