The Seba library treats Kakia in 8 passages, across 4 authors (including Plato, Arthur W.H. Adkins, Douglas L. Cairns).
kakia appears to mean kakos ienai, or going badly, or limping and halting; of which the consequence is, that the soul becomes filled with vice
Plato’s Socrates derives kakia etymologically as ‘going badly,’ establishing it as the soul’s impediment to motion and the direct antithesis of arete’s ever-flowing excellence.
, Cratylus, -388thesis
men are termed kakoi, or said to possess kakia or ponerta, for different reasons… one may insist that these new instances of kakia can be characterized in the same manner as the old as both more kakon and more aischron for their possessor
Adkins maps the contested extension of kakia beyond Homeric warrior-failure into Socratic moral psychology, identifying the logical impasse between the Socratic and immoralist positions.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
there are two types of kakia in the soul. ‘These prove to be the conflict between reason and the passions, characterized as cowardice and incontinence and injustice’
Drawing on Plato’s Sophist, Adkins identifies kakia as a dual psychic disorder — the tyranny of passion over reason — which grounds the ethical distinction between just and unjust acts.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960thesis
kakia: (n.) ‘badness’, cowardice, baseness, defect, vice
Cairns’ glossary situates kakia within the honour-shame lexical system of ancient Greek ethics, defining its semantic range from cowardice through baseness to general moral defect.
, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting
enkrateia and akrasia areté and kakia respectively (1200b37~2), albeit areté and [kakia in a qualified sense]
Cairns notes that Aristotle’s Magna Moralia maps enkrateia and akrasia onto the arete/kakia axis, though in a qualified register, revealing the conceptual complexity of intermediary states.
, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting
Crito fears that others may believe that this was the result of some cowardice and unmanliness, kakia and anandria, on the part of Crito and Socrates’ other friends; which would of course be aischron for them
Adkins demonstrates that in ordinary Athenian usage kakia remained synonymous with cowardice and unmanliness, carrying the aischron of public dishonour within the competitive value-system.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
anger, punishment, and admonition are directed. These include injustice, impiety, and in short everything which is opposed to political arete
Adkins shows how Protagoras uses kaka as the collective term for all that opposes political arete, thereby locating kakia within the sociopolitical fabric as that which merits collective punishment.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
virtue is an utterly self-sufficient art of living… the good itself was characterized as agreement or consistency
Long and Sedley’s account of Stoic virtue as self-sufficient consistency implies that kakia, its negation, constitutes radical inner incoherence and the collapse of the soul’s rational agency.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987aside