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Chapter 1 6 virtuous activity and external goods. 23 These external goods (e.g. good birth, beauty, health) are largely beyond the agent’s control, i.e. are subject to luck. 24 An eudaimon life refers to both a successful and morally good life, which is topped off with subjective happiness. Its success is partly dependent on one’s own effort, and partly on being lucky in life. 1.2 U NDERLYING PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS , OR THE QUESTION OF HOW MUCH LUCK A GOOD HUMAN LIFE NEEDS Human efforts to create a flourishing life for themselves or others can be undone by bad luck, as we all know. The question of how much self-sufficiency - how much control over luck - and how much openness to the unpredictability of life a good human life needs has been a central debate in Greek ethical thinking. 25 According to Kristjánsson the current flourishing paradigm ‘takes a strength-based approach to student well-being’, furthering students’ talents and helping them to develop the character qualities that we deem important for living a good life. 26 As such, this flourishing paradigm thus has a strong focus on the ‘effort-side’ of flourishing, as opposed to on the ‘luck-side’. Throughout this dissertation I aim to show the importance of paying attention to the fragility of flourishing - both flourishing in itself and the process of aiming for a flourishing life for one’s children. Focusing on the things that we are able to cultivate takes the spotlight away from the fact that we as human beings also are actually pretty vulnerable, dependent creatures. And in my own experience, raising children, becoming a parent, is the one thing that instantly makes me aware of my vulnerability. 27 The relationship that I have with my children is one of the most important, complex and intimate relationships that I have. True, intimate relationships (such as, but not limited to, the parent-child relationship) require of human beings that they depend on and trust each other, because it is not possible to ‘secure’ such relations. These relationships can come to an end and this is painful. Furthermore, when we really engage with other humans, the suffering of the other becomes our suffering. So, to me it felt uncomfortable to write about fostering children’s development , striving for flourishing, cultivating children’s skills and talents, without searching for a way to put weight on the other side of the scale; namely fragility, vulnerability, dependence, the existential risk of raising a child, and luck. 23 ‘It needs the external goods as well; for it is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without the proper equipment’ Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, 2009, book I.8. 24 Kristjánsson 2017, p. 91. 25 See Nussbaum 1986. 26 Kristjánsson 2017, p. 88. 27 And to a lesser extent also being a teacher.