Akrasia — the ancient Greek term for acting against one’s own better judgement, conventionally rendered as ‘weakness of will’ or ‘incontinence’ — occupies a structurally pivotal position in the depth-psychology corpus as the hinge between ancient moral psychology and modern accounts of self-division. The term’s genealogy runs from Socrates’ notorious denial of its very possibility, through Plato’s tripartite psychology that sought to explain it via conflicting soul-parts, to Aristotle’s celebrated discussion in Nicomachean Ethics VII, which attempts to account for akratic action without positing full-blown internal conflict. That Aristotelian account — analyzed with particular depth by Sorabji, Nussbaum, and Williams — centres on a subtle theory of inattention and the misfiring of practical syllogisms. The Stoics, as Sorabji and Inwood demonstrate, appropriated the term in an unexpected direction: by defining all emotion as disobedience to reason, they rendered akrasia co-extensive with passional life as such, thereby universalizing a condition Aristotle had treated as exceptional. Nussbaum’s readings situate akrasia within a broader inquiry into moral fragility and the role of non-rational desire in ethical life, while Cairns locates it in relation to enkrateia, aidos, and the Aristotelian topology of character. The term thus tracks a fault-line that runs through the entire tradition: whether the self is fundamentally unified or structurally susceptible to self-betrayal.
Aristotle’s most famous contribution to these topics is his discussion of akrasia — a term usually translated either as “weakness of the will” or “incontinence” (neither, for different reasons, very fortunate).
Williams introduces akrasia as Aristotle’s central contribution to the ethics of action, noting the inadequacy of standard English translations and the term’s deep entanglement with ethical rather than merely psychological categories.
, Shame and Necessity, 1993thesis
Aristotle’s main discussion of akrasia in book 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics starts from Socrates’ view… his strategy is to explain how akrasia can occur without the conflict of opposing attitudes that Plato ascribes to Leontius.
Sorabji argues that Aristotle’s distinctive contribution is to account for akrasia through a theory of inattention rather than through Plato’s model of warring soul-parts, reducing apparent cases of internal conflict to a single explanatory mechanism.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
Chrysippus describes emotion as involving akrasia… Zeno’s rather unexpected idea that all emotion does involve such disobedience to one’s own reason, and so Chrysippus is merely following him in making all emotion involve akrasia.
Sorabji shows how the Stoics radically extended the concept of akrasia by identifying it with emotion as such, transforming what Aristotle treated as an exceptional failure of self-governance into a universal feature of passional life.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
weak will in the strict sense does… Any psychology of action which postulates a close linkage between what may in general terms be called ‘practical decisions’ and the causes of actions… will have difficulties in the analysis of strictly construed cases of weak will.
Inwood argues that strict akrasia — exemplified by Leontius and Medea — poses a structural problem for any psychology of action that tightly couples practical judgement to motivation, making it a test case for Stoic action theory.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985thesis
she knows, then, let us say, that it is better all things considered not to eat the bagel now… And so (swayed by the desires it arouses) she eats it.
Nussbaum uses a vivid illustration to distinguish genuine akrasia — being swayed by desire despite knowledge of the better course — from cases where rational principles themselves are disordered, clarifying the phenomenological structure of the condition.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986thesis
A knows x is more good than j; A chooses j, because he is overcome by (desire for) the good in j. ‘What ridiculous nonsense’, Socrates now remarks, ‘for a person to do the bad, knowing it is bad… because he was overcome by good.’
Nussbaum reconstructs Socrates’ reductio argument in the Protagoras showing that, given hedonist premises, akrasia becomes logically incoherent — one cannot meaningfully be overcome by the lesser good.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting
if there is only one kind of value, the pleasant/good, then our wellbeing will depend solely on our ability to calculate which course of action will provide the greatest amount of it… hence no possibility of weakness of the will.
Hobbs explains how Socrates’ identification of the good with the pleasant in the Protagoras eliminates the conceptual space for akrasia by rendering value commensurable and removing the conditions for genuine desire-conflict.
, Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good, 2000supporting
modify the Protagoras account of how akrasia can be eliminated; it does not undercut it altogether… the desires for novelty and luxury that produce much actual akrasia are presumably still modifiable by teaching.
Nussbaum argues that Plato’s later recognition of the persistent animal nature of appetite complicates but does not wholly refute the Protagoras solution to akrasia, which remains partially viable for desires amenable to rational instruction.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting
enkrateia (continence, self-control) and akrasia (incontinence, weakness of will) which are intermediate between sophrosune (an excellence) and akolasia (licentiousness, a vice).
Cairns positions akrasia within Aristotle’s taxonomy of character-states, establishing it as an intermediate condition between virtue and vice that is morally deficient but distinguishable from licentiousness.
, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting
the enkrates is tempted by the course that his better judgement identifies as wrong, but manages to control himself; whereas the virtuous person… has succeeded in aligning his attitudes to the kalon, the good, and the pleasant.
Cairns distinguishes enkrateia from genuine virtue to illuminate the structure of akrasia, showing that self-control presupposes the temptation that true virtue has already dissolved through the alignment of desire and reason.
, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting
The science of measurement: what motivates it, what progress it could make. The akrasia argument: the role of pleasure as standard of choice. How commensurability of values works to eliminate akrasia.
Nussbaum’s chapter outline identifies the akrasia argument as integral to Plato’s Protagoras, connecting the project of value commensurability to the elimination of weakness of will through a science of measurement.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986aside
akolasia 420 akrasia 322-3 n.214, 338, 400 n.174, 420
The index entry for akrasia in Cairns’s study confirms its sustained co-presence alongside akolasia, aidos, and arete in the ethical psychology of ancient Greek literature.
, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993aside