Akrasia (ἀκρασία) — Weakness of will: the condition of acting against what one oneself judges to be the best thing to do. The Greek word is formed from the privative prefix a- (“without”) and kratos (“power,” “mastery”), and literally means “lack of self-mastery.” The problem is central to ancient ethics. In the Protagoras (352b–358d), Socrates denies that akrasia exists: whoever knows what is best does not act otherwise, so that apparently being “overcome by pleasure” is in fact ignorance, a miscalculation of pleasures and pains. Aristotle takes up the question in Book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics, starting from common opinions (endoxa) and the observed phenomena, and he accepts that people do act against what they know. He distinguishes the akratic (akratēs), who acts against his own deliberate choice because of passion, from the self-controlled person (enkratēs) and from the intemperate person (akolastos), who acts on a vicious choice. He also separates two forms of akrasia: weakness (astheneia) and impetuosity (propeteia). To explain the phenomenon, he argues that the akratic possesses knowledge in one sense but does not exercise it at the moment of action, being gripped by desire. In modern philosophy the debate was reopened by R. M. Hare in Freedom and Reason (1963) and by Donald Davidson in his essay “How Is Weakness of the Will Possible?” (1970). See also phronesis, ethics and free will; the central thinkers are Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
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