Is failure a character flaw or a historical invention?
In short: We often treat failure as a personal moral failing, but history suggests it might be a relatively modern social construct. From the way we grade students to how we define medical emergencies, the definition of what it means to fail is constantly shifting between individual character and external circumstances.
Cultural historian Scott Sandage argues that our modern perception of 'being' a failure is a historical novelty in the United States. Before the eve of the Civil War, financial bankruptcy was viewed primarily as an event—an occurrence in one's life rather than a reflection of their internal character. It was only by the late 19th century that the concept underwent a metamorphosis, acquiring moralistic and individualistic connotations where insolvency became synonymous with a deficient character.
This subjectivity extends to how we measure success in institutions. For example, Mount Holyoke College began evaluating students on a 100-point scale in 1884, eventually adopting an A–E system where 'E' designated failure for performance below 75%. This system spread to Harvard by 1890. By the 1930s, the letter E was dropped for unclear reasons, illustrating how even standardized metrics of failure can be fluid and subject to institutional change.
In philosophy, failure is often linked to 'omission'—the act of not doing something when a norm demands it. Patricia G. Smith distinguishes between conscious and unconscious omissions, suggesting that failure occurs when it is reasonable to expect an action but the agent does not perform it. This perspective shifts the focus from intent to the gap between social expectations and actual behavior.
In high-stakes environments like medicine, failure has concrete biological definitions. In studies of COPD patients with acute hypercapnic respiratory failure, medical professionals use tools like the 1-h HACOR score to predict 'NIV failure'—defined specifically as death or the need for intubation. Here, failure isn't a moral judgment but a critical clinical threshold that dictates immediate life-saving intervention.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Failure
- Also: Predictive Accuracy of the 1-h HACOR Score for Identifying Non-Invasive Ventilation Failure in COPD Patients With Acute Hypercapnic Respiratory Failure: A Prospective Observational Study.
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