Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Tempting Fate: A Philosophical Guide to Risk, Luck, and a Meaningful Life

Tempting Fate: A Philosophical Guide to Risk, Luck, and a Meaningful Life

Pritchard, Duncan

Hardcover

PhilosophyGeneral PsychologySelf-Help

ISBN10: 0691259518
ISBN13: 9780691259512
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Aug 25 2026
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.97
Height: 1.00 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.60
Language: English

A leading philosopher explains how risk-taking can help us live authentic and flourishing lives

We take risks every day--perhaps not the extreme, dangling-off-the-side-of-a-mountain kind of risks, but risks nonetheless, in decisions about careers, marriage, children, moving house, and other matters. Tempting fate is simply what we have to do from time to time in life. But how we should go about tempting fate in a reasonable way? In this illuminating book, philosopher Duncan Pritchard explains why risk-taking, even extreme risk-taking, can sometimes be both reasonable and admirable, and how it can play a crucial role in living an authentic life.

Using Alex Honnold's famous free solo climb of El Capitan as a paradigm example of admirable risk-taking, Pritchard offers a completely new theory of risk, one that explains it in terms of fragility rather than probability. He shows how fragility can explain why skill and preparation are crucial to sensible risk-taking, even when the activity is unavoidably high risk. Fragility also makes clear that taking risks means riding one's luck and why both risk and luck are vital to living an authentic and meaningful existence. Pritchard shows that his fragility theory of risk has practical implications for making sense of risk in law, arts, sports, and other domains. Tempting fate, in other words, is not merely thrill-seeking but essential for human flourishing.

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