Outrageous fortune : gloomy reflections on luck and life / William Ian Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miller, William Ian, 1946- author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fortune.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 182 pages)

Other Title:

Gloomy reflections on luck and life

Place of Publication:

New York, New York : Oxford University Press, [2021]

Summary:

This text is a drolly pessimistic and vaguely misanthropic account that gives it a unity of voice, of view, and of several interlaced themes: the scarcity of good, that most of happiness comes in the morally questionable form of Schadenfreude, or is experienced mostly as relief that some expected bad thing did not materialize. It deals extensively with those tinges of ominousness that accompany good luck, and the related widespread belief, or feeling in the gut, that people's mere desires and wishes provoke the gods to thwart their wishes. Are good things subject to a law of conservation, so that they must always be paid for and sum out at just about zero or less?

Notes:

Also issued in print: 2021.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-19-753070-2

0-19-753088-5

0-19-753069-9