O Fortune like the moon you are changeable, ever waxing, ever waning; hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it; poverty and power it melts them like ice. [in the original Latin: O Fortuna velut luna statu variabilis semper crescis aut decrescis vita detestabilis nunc obdurat et tunc curat ludo mentis aciem, agestatem, protestatem dissolvit ut glaciem]
This is a passage from a poem in medieval Latin from the Carmina Burana collection, written in 13th-century Germany.
Part of this collection was made famous during the 20th century by the cantata ‘Carmina Burana’ by the composer Carl Orff. ‘O Fortuna’ is one of the work’s 25 movements.
The ‘Fortune’ (the famous Roman goddess of chance) addressed in Carmina Burana’s lyrics is not necessarily a fatalistic destiny, nor necessarily a negative one. The poem compares Fortune (‘Fortuna’) with the moon – ever-changing, ever waxing and waning.
Here lies the problematic side of Fortune: its mutability and unpredictability. Those are the things that make us all so fragile in the face of that powerful agent.
A couple of centuries after the writing of the Carmina Burana collection, Italian Renaissance political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli raised the same topic of Fortune in the 25th chapter of his famous work, The Prince.
His approach, interestingly, is both pragmatic and constructive. Contrary to Carmina Burana’s mere wailing, he diagnoses the problem and proposes a way to deal with it.
According to Machiavelli, Fortune is not the only factor to consider in dealing with the unpredictable aspects of life. The other is the Italian ‘Virtù’ (Virtue).
One should take into account that The Prince is something like a handbook giving pragmatic instructions on how to be a successful political leader (a good ‘prince’). These instructions, based on a highly realistic analysis of historical examples, state the principles that a good leader should follow when dealing with the affairs of the state and all the complex political machinery surrounding it.
Consequently, when he outlines the principles of his ‘Virtù’, Machiavelli has in mind the leader’s effective use of free will to achieve desirable outcomes and prepare himself, in his capacity as a public agent, for possible times of ‘bad Fortune’.
In Chapter 25 of The Prince, he disagrees with the fatalistic view of those who maintain that everything is decided by fortune or by God and that, therefore, the wisest approach is to let oneself be governed by luck.
Then, he counters: ‘Nonetheless, so that our free will is not eliminated, I judge that it might be true that fortune is arbiter of half of our actions but also that she leaves the other half, or close to it, for us to govern.’
Still, he compares Fortune ‘to one of these violent rivers which, when they become enraged, flood the plains, ruin the trees and the buildings.’ When that happens, the human will become virtually powerless.
Nonetheless, Machiavelli goes on: ‘And although they are like this, it is not as if men, when times are quiet, could not provide for them with dikes and dams so that when they rise later, either they go by a canal or their impetus is neither so wanton nor so damaging.’
Something similar, he suggests, happens with Fortune, ‘which demonstrates her power where virtue has not been put in order to resist her.’
What is written in The Prince is intended for use by a political agent and statesman and is not, therefore, a handbook for ordinary human beings. Even so, this same ‘Virtù’ versus ‘Fortuna’ concept can be extended to offer a philosophy of life for people in general.
There are occurrences in everyone’s lives that we cannot control. Little or nothing can be done in response when they happen. So, in a way, we are all in Fortune’s hands.
But there are also things we can control: it only remains for us to make the right decisions and actions to avoid (bad) Fortune one day attacking ‘where virtue has not been put in order to resist her.’
