Fortune

Fortune
Title	Fortune
Category	Business magazine
Frequency	Monthly
Founded	1929
Country	United States
Based	New York City
Language	English

Fortune Fortune is a multifaceted term with roots in antiquity and wide currency across history, philosophy, religion, literature, art, commerce, and popular idiom. It names a magazine, a mythic force, and a locus for debate about chance, providence, and material success, connecting figures as diverse as Marcus Aurelius, Niccolò Machiavelli, Adam Smith, Mary Shelley, and institutions such as Harvard University, The Economist Group, and Time Inc.. Its meanings range from personified deity to market indicator to metaphor in poetry and drama, intersecting with events like the Black Death, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of Silicon Valley firms.

Etymology and Definitions

The English term derives from Old French fortuna and Latin fortuna, a lineage tied to Roman personifications and legal usages that influenced texts from Julius Caesar through St. Augustine. Classical Latin uses appear alongside mentions of the Roman deity Fortuna in works by Virgil, Ovid, and Tacitus, while medieval transmission involved scholars such as Boethius and Thomas Aquinas. Modern dictionaries reflect semantic splits: luck as chance in Everyday life, prosperity as wealth in contexts like Wall Street reporting, and fate as determinism in philosophical treatises linked to Baruch Spinoza and David Hume.

Historical Concepts and Mythology

Ancient Mediterranean cultures personified chance: Roman Fortuna and Greek Tyche feature in monumental art, coins of the Roman Empire, and inscriptions across Pompeii. During the Late Antiquity and medieval periods, Fortuna appears in narratives about rulers—Charlemagne, William the Conqueror—and in chronicles of events such as the Battle of Hastings and the Fourth Crusade. Renaissance humanists including Petrarch and Baldassare Castiglione revived classical motifs, while early modern commentators like Giovanni Boccaccio and Niccolò Machiavelli reinterpreted Fortuna in histories of principalities and republican institutions, often contrasting Fortune with prudence or virtue exemplified by figures such as Cincinnatus.

Fortune in Philosophy and Religion

Philosophers debated whether Fortune is blind chance or ordered providence. Stoics such as Seneca the Younger and Marcus Aurelius counselled indifference to Fortune, while Christian theologians like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas subordinated Fortune to divine will in exegesis of biblical narratives involving King David and the Babylonian captivity. Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers—Machiavelli, Blaise Pascal, Locke, and David Hume—developed secular analyses linking Fortune to human agency, probability theory, and the emergence of actuarial sciences associated with insurers such as Lloyd's of London and statisticians like Thomas Bayes. In Eastern traditions, comparable concepts appear in discussions of karma found in texts associated with Gautama Buddha and in cosmic cycles referenced in Mahabharata manuscripts.

Fortune in Literature and Arts

Writers and artists deploy Fortune as motif and structural device. In medieval and Renaissance literature, Fortune's Wheel frames narratives by Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Alessandro Manzoni. Elizabethan dramatists—William Shakespeare and contemporaries such as Christopher Marlowe—use Fortune to complicate tragic arcs like those in King Lear and Hamlet. Romantic and Gothic authors including Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, and Percy Bysshe Shelley explore Fortune amid themes of sublime catastrophe and social transformation tied to events like the French Revolution. Visual artists from Sandro Botticelli to Pieter Bruegel the Elder depict Fortuna or Wheel imagery; modern and contemporary creators such as Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol reference commercial success and chance in works influenced by advertising from corporations like General Electric and Coca-Cola.

Economic and Business Uses

Commercially, Fortune names influential business reporting embodied by the magazine founded in 1929, known for lists like the Fortune 500 that rank corporations such as General Motors, ExxonMobil, Apple Inc., and Walmart. Economists and policymakers including John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and contemporary analysts at Harvard Business School and The Brookings Institution discuss Fortune in relation to wealth distribution, market volatility during episodes like the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis, and entrepreneurial success stories from Silicon Valley firms like Google and Facebook. Actuarial practice and insurance underwriting—institutions such as MetLife and regulatory frameworks like the Securities Exchange Act of 1934—translate normative and probabilistic senses of Fortune into measurable risk metrics and corporate governance debates.

Cultural Expressions and Idioms

Fortune permeates idioms, proverbs, and popular culture: phrases tied to "Wheel of Fortune" motifs appear in folk sayings collected by scholars of Folklore and in game shows and television formats popularized in United States broadcast media. Literary idioms referencing Fortune influence political rhetoric in speeches by figures like Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt during crises such as World War II and the Great Depression. Musical traditions, from sea shanties to modern pop songwriting by artists associated with labels like Columbia Records and Universal Music Group, use Fortune imagery to frame narratives of rise and decline. Museums, archives, and cultural institutions including the Library of Congress and the British Museum preserve artworks and manuscripts that chart Fortune's evolving symbolic repertoire.

Category:Luck Category:Mythology Category:Business