The fates of human societies: caught between causality, chance and agency

In this critical note, I address two issues arising from the latest book by Simone Sarti “Il caso e la società”: the nexus between causality and chance, and the role of individual agency. I argue that the widely accepted notion of counterfactual causality cannot be applied to unique and unrepeatable events. Consequently, even the role of chance is not easily detectable in individual instances because an appropriate counterfactual is very difficult to identify. The role of individual agency is discussed with respect to two components of “merit”: talent and effort. While accepting the former as largely determined by chance is unproblematic, the latter cannot easily be considered as beyond individual control.