Aztec philosophy: How lucky you are to not be in prison right now
Why Read This
What Makes This Article Worth Your Time
Summary
What This Article Is About
Jonny Thomson opens with a personal anecdote about a school acquaintance, Nick, who received a ten-year prison sentence for manslaughter after a single punch went fatally wrong. Thomson uses this story to introduce the concept of moral luck—the idea, formulated by British philosopher Bernard Williams in 1976, that our moral standing is not sealed off from circumstance. Williams challenged the Kantian view that only intentions determine moral worth, arguing instead that outcomes shaped by sheer chance are inseparable from how we judge an act.
Thomson then draws on his interview with Sebastian Purcell, author of The Outward Path: The Wisdom of the Aztecs, to reveal that Aztec philosophy independently reached the same conclusion centuries earlier, as recorded in the Florentine Codex. The Aztecs were honest pessimists who accepted the world as inherently messy and unpredictable. Their answer was not fatalism but community: building decision circles—trusted relationships that root you in shared life—because no inner mental fortress can protect you from a chaotic world.
Key Points
Main Takeaways
Luck Shapes Moral Judgment
Two people can act with identical intentions and character; whether one becomes a killer depends entirely on chance—the physics of a falling body, a shattering window.
Williams vs. Kant
Kant held that good intentions alone determine morality; Bernard Williams argued this was a philosophical fantasy that ignored how outcomes and circumstance inevitably shape moral reality.
Aztecs Reached the Same Conclusion
Independently of Williams, Aztec philosophy—recorded in the Florentine Codex—acknowledged that moral outcomes shift depending on luck, not just character or virtue.
Honest Pessimism, Not Despair
The Aztecs were pessimists in the honest sense: they accepted that good and bad things do not arrive in proportion to how virtuous or wicked people actually are.
The Outward Path Over Stoic Retreat
Rather than building an inner Stoic fortress, the Aztec response was to turn outward—to root oneself in community, family, and trusted decision circles that provide shared meaning.
No Luck-Proof Life Exists
Community and decision circles cannot eliminate bad luck, but they offer a way to live meaningfully and well within a world that remains irreducibly vulnerable to chance.
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Article Analysis
Breaking Down the Elements
Main Idea
Luck Is Inseparable from Morality
Both Western philosophy and Aztec thought independently concluded that chance plays an irreducible role in moral outcomes. The article argues this insight should make us more humble about judgment and more intentional about community—because no amount of virtue or good intention can fully insulate a person from the chaos of circumstance.
Purpose
To Provoke Reflection & Offer Wisdom
Thomson’s purpose is to disturb the reader’s comfortable assumptions about personal responsibility and justice, then offer something constructive in place of helplessness. By bridging Western analytic philosophy and pre-Columbian Aztec ethics, he makes the case that turning outward—toward community—is the wisest response to an unjust world.
Structure
Narrative Hook → Philosophical Exposition → Cross-Cultural Bridge
Anecdotal → Analytical → Comparative → Prescriptive. Thomson opens with Nick’s story to hook the reader emotionally, explains Williams’ theory analytically, then bridges to Aztec philosophy through the Purcell interview, before closing with a practical prescription: root yourself in community and decision circles as the wisest response to moral luck.
Tone
Personal, Reflective & Philosophically Rigorous
Thomson writes with unusual intimacy for a philosophy column—grounding abstract ideas in a real acquaintance’s tragedy—while maintaining intellectual precision when handling Kant, Williams, and Aztec cosmology. The tone is warm and conversational yet never sacrifices conceptual accuracy, making it accessible without being condescending to curious, non-specialist readers.
Key Terms
Vocabulary from the Article
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Tough Words
Challenging Vocabulary
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Relating to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, particularly his view that morality is grounded in reason and good intentions alone, independent of consequences or outcomes.
“The standard view — a view inherited from Immanuel Kant — was that if you tried your best, you should be judged on that.”
A 16th-century encyclopaedic work compiled by Spanish friar Bernardino de Sahagún documenting Aztec culture, history, beliefs, and philosophy in twelve volumes.
“There’s a passage recorded in the Florentine Codex that reads almost like Bernard Williams.”
British informal term for someone who is aggressively boisterous, loudly confrontational, or prone to rowdy and threatening behaviour, especially in social situations.
“Nick has always been a little bit lairy — a shouty, bargy, aggressive sort of boy.”
To attempt to explain or justify events, behaviour, or beliefs through logical reasoning, even when the underlying reality resists such neat explanation.
“Try as we might to rationalize things, those things will resist rationalization.”
Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers who taught that virtue and inner reason are sufficient for happiness, and that one should remain emotionally resilient by focusing only on what is within one’s control.
“You can’t control the chaos of the world by retreating inward, as the Stoics counseled.”
One of the two major blood vessels in the neck that supply blood to the brain, face, and neck; a wound to this artery is rapidly fatal due to severe blood loss.
“The shards sliced into this man’s carotid artery. He was dead before the ambulance arrived.”
Reading Comprehension
Test Your Understanding
5 questions covering different RC question types
1According to the article, Bernard Williams agreed with Kant that a person’s moral worth should be judged solely on the quality of their intentions.
2According to Sebastian Purcell, how did the Aztecs respond to the reality of moral luck?
3Which sentence best captures the Aztec philosophical response to a world governed by moral luck?
4Evaluate whether the following statements are supported by the article.
Bernard Williams first introduced the term “moral luck” in a paper published in 1976.
The article suggests that the Aztec concept of decision circles is identical to the Stoic practice of inner mental fortitude.
The passage from the Florentine Codex described by Purcell involves a man striking another man, with the moral weight of the act depending on what happens next.
Select True or False for all three statements, then click “Check Answers”
5What does the author most likely intend when he says Nick “was unlucky as well” alongside being an angry boy?
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Moral luck is the idea that a person’s moral standing is partly determined by factors beyond their control—such as chance, timing, or circumstance. The term was introduced in a 1976 paper by British philosopher Bernard Williams. He challenged the Kantian position that only intentions matter, arguing that the same act, with the same intention, can make one person a killer and another walk free, depending purely on what happens next.
Kant held that moral worth is determined solely by the quality of one’s intentions and good will, entirely independent of outcomes. The article challenges this by presenting Williams’ view that real-world consequences—shaped by luck and circumstance—are inseparable from moral judgment. Thomson describes the Kantian ideal as a ‘philosophical fantasy’ that fails to account for how deeply tangled our moral lives are with physics, timing, and the unpredictability of the world.
Decision circles are a key concept in Aztec philosophy, as described by Sebastian Purcell in his book The Outward Path. They refer to trusted networks of people—friends, family, community members—whose honest counsel and shared presence help anchor an individual within a chaotic and unpredictable world. Rather than building inner mental resilience alone, the Aztecs believed meaningful and well-lived lives are constructed outwardly, through genuine relationships and shared purpose.
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This article is rated Intermediate. While Thomson writes in an accessible, personal voice, the piece requires readers to follow abstract philosophical arguments—particularly the contrast between Kantian ethics and moral luck—and to track a cross-cultural comparison between 20th-century Western philosophy and pre-Columbian Aztec thought. Inference skills are especially important, as the opening anecdote is used to illustrate a philosophical position rather than to tell a complete story in its own right.
Sebastian Purcell is a philosopher and author of The Outward Path: The Wisdom of the Aztecs, a scholarly work that recovers and interprets Aztec philosophical traditions for contemporary readers. His significance in the article lies in providing the cross-cultural bridge: he demonstrates that Aztec thinkers independently arrived at conclusions about moral luck that parallel Bernard Williams, lending the article’s central argument the weight of a cross-civilisational philosophical consensus rather than a single Western perspective.
The Ultimate Reading Course covers 9 RC question types: Multiple Choice, True/False, Multi-Statement T/F, Text Highlight, Fill in the Blanks, Matching, Sequencing, Error Spotting, and Short Answer. This comprehensive coverage prepares you for any reading comprehension format you might encounter.
