270
Truth and Chance
elements go to make up our good, and my remarks have not been meant to deny that each of us lives, or ought to live, with an idea in mind of what it is to live well. The target of my criticism has been the view that any such idea must be of a life we have taken charge of and shaped so as to embody the purposes we can see reason to pursue, given who we are and where we find ourselves. The good life is not the life lived in accord with a rational plan. It embodies instead a sense of our dual nature as active and passive beings, bent on achieving the goals we espouse, but also bound to run into forms of self-fulfillment we could never have anticipated. A life lived in the light of this more complex ideal can accommodate, it will even welcome the way an unexpected good may challenge our existing projects. We will not thereby avoid being surprised (nor should we want to), but we will know enough not to be surprised at being surprised. Nothing I have said should suggest that planning is wrong or futile. Prudence is an undeniable virtue, and not solely in the handling of the little things of life. We cannot hope to live well if we do not direct ourselves to achieving goals that have a ramifying significance, that organize our various activities and give our lives meaning. But we err if we suppose that prudence is a supreme virtue and that the good life is one that unfolds in accord with a rational plan. Some may be tempted to reply that in constructing a life plan we could always set aside some room for the unexpected goods that may come our way. But this rejoinder misses the point. The sort of unexpected good whose importance I have been underscoring does not simply fill in a space left blank. It overthrows our existing expectations. No doubt we could plan for a bit of surprise, if that is what we wanted to do. But this plan, like any, would have to involve some scheme of ends and means. And such schemes may always be tripped up by the good that life has yet in store for us. The belief in the supremacy of prudence is mistaken for two reasons. The key reason is that, if we give life a chance, it always turns out to be richer in possibilities than any conception we could have at the time of what it would be to flourish. To make our life the object of a plan, however well-informed and carefully arranged the plan might be, means closing our minds to the lessons that future experience will impart. But, in addition, there is the fact that our lives would mean less if they did not contain moments of wonder and redirection, when we find that earlier actions or new conditions have led to a happiness we could never have imagined, or see our existing purposes thrown into disarray by the realization that our fulfillment lies elsewhere. We would live less well if our projects, however rational, were never tripped up by unforeseen goods that impel us to rethink the way we live. For not only do we then encounter a good we could not foresee, but such experiences are themselves of inestimable value. They drive home an important truth about what it is to be human.