A philosophy of risk from Duncan Pritchard: 'not probability but fragility'

Tempting Fate: A Philosophical Guide to Risk, Luck, and a Meaningful Life, the new book by the epistemologist Duncan Pritchard, has been published by Princeton University Press. The 216-page book appeared in the United States on 25 August 2026 and reaches the United Kingdom on 20 October 2026.

The thesis: risk is not a matter of probability#

The theory Pritchard proposes explains risk through fragility rather than probability. What makes an action risky is not how likely the bad outcome is but how easily the good outcome could be undone.

The distinction makes a practical difference: the fragility framework can explain why skill and preparation are decisive even in an activity that is unavoidably high-risk.

The example: El Capitan#

The book's central example is the climber Alex Honnold's free solo ascent of El Capitan. Pritchard treats it as the exemplary case of "admirable risk-taking": years of preparation, repetition and mastery do not remove the risk, but they make it meaningful.

Luck and meaning#

The book's second line concerns luck. Taking a risk, on Pritchard's account, involves trusting to your luck; risk and luck are constitutive of an authentic and meaningful life. He also discusses what the framework implies for law, art and sport.

A counter-reading#

Any approach that separates risk from probability faces an obvious objection: in decision theory and in the practice of risk management, the calculus of probability is indispensable. Whether the fragility framework replaces those tools or answers a different question alongside them is one of the things the book will be argued over.