Akrasia
The Greek term for weakness of will — acting against one's better judgment — and the central problem of moral psychology since Plato's Protagoras.
Akrasia, usually translated as weakness of will or incontinence, names the puzzle of why human beings sometimes act against what they themselves take to be the best course of action. The phenomenon is familiar from ordinary life — knowing you should not have a second drink and having one anyway — but its philosophical interpretation is contested.
Socrates, in Plato's Protagoras, denied that akrasia is genuinely possible: no one knowingly does what is worse, and what looks like weakness of will is really a failure of knowledge about what is actually best. Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics VII, took akrasia seriously as a real phenomenon and analyzed it as the temporary overriding of practical knowledge by appetite. The Aristotelian akratic agent knows what is right but is overcome by passion in the moment of action.
The Aristotelian analysis distinguishes degrees of akrasia. The mere akratic acts against her better judgment but feels regret afterward and does not reject the better judgment as such. The vicious agent acts wrongly but takes the wrong action to be right and feels no regret. The continent person experiences appetites contrary to her judgment but masters them. The truly virtuous person has trained her appetites to align with practical wisdom so that no internal conflict arises.
Contemporary moral psychology — Donald Davidson, Alfred Mele, Harry Frankfurt — has revived the philosophical analysis of weakness of will under the label of akrasia. Davidson's How Is Weakness of the Will Possible? argues that the phenomenon is real and requires distinguishing between conditional and unconditional judgments about the better course of action. Frankfurt's hierarchical analysis of desire treats weakness of will as a failure of higher-order desires to govern lower-order ones.
How philosophers have framed akrasia
| Philosopher | Position |
|---|---|
| Socrates | Impossible: no one knowingly acts against the good; akrasia is failure of knowledge. |
| Plato | Real, due to internal conflict among parts of the soul. |
| Aristotle | Real: practical knowledge can be temporarily overridden by appetite. |
| Donald Davidson | Real and requires distinguishing conditional from unconditional better-course judgments. |
| Harry Frankfurt | Failure of higher-order desires to govern lower-order ones. |
Representative quotes
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Socrates
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“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
Variant: The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. | Socrates II: xxxi . Original Greek: ἓν μόνον ἀγαθὸν εἶναι, τὴν ἐπιστήμην, καὶ ἓν μόνον κακόν, τὴν ἀμαθίαν
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Plato
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“If the very essence of knowledge changes, at the moment of the change to another essence of knowledge there would be no knowledge, and if it is always changing, there will always be no knowledge, and by this reasoning there will be neither anyone to know nor anything to be known. But if there is always that which knows and that which is known —if the beautiful, the good, and all the other verities exist— I do not see how there is any likeness between these conditions of which I am now speaking and flux or motion.”
440a–b
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Aristotle
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“Anyone can become angry — that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”
οὕτω δὲ καὶ τὸ μὲν ὀργισθῆναι παντὸς καὶ ῥᾴδιον, καὶ τὸ δοῦναι ἀργύριον καὶ δαπανῆσαι· τὸ δ᾽ ᾧ καὶ ὅσον καὶ ὅτε καὶ οὗ ἕνεκα καὶ ὥς, οὐκέτι παντὸς οὐδὲ ῥᾴδιον
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Donald Davidson
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Attributed to Donald Davidson:
“Reasons are causes.”
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Harry Frankfurt
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Attributed to Harry Frankfurt:
“A person is one who can will to will differently than she does.”
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