Tobias Hoffmann (ed). Weakness of Will
from Plato to the Present. Washington, DC,
CUA Press, 2008.
This volume contains 13 original essays on
weakness of will by scholars of contemporary philosophy and the
history of philosophy. It covers the major periods of Western philosophy.
Kenneth Dorter. “Weakness and Will in Plato’s Republic,”
Plato notes that self-mastery is
paradoxical because someone who is master of himself is equally subject to
himself. He resolves the paradox by dividing the self into better and worse
parts, and defining self-mastery as the rule of the better over the worse. But
Plato also recognizes the serious obstacles to demonstrating that our self is
composed of parts, or that one part is better than another, and shows the
limitations of his demonstrations and how to go beyond them. To appreciate his
full teaching we must go beyond Book 4 to the later books of the Republic.
Terence H. Irwin. “Aristotle Reads the Protagoras,”
When Aristotle attributes to Socrates the
denial of the possibility of incontinence, his account is based on the Protagoras. But Aristotle’s attitude toward the Protagoras is different in the
Magna Moralia and the later treatment of Nicomachean
Ethics 7. Only in EN 7
does Aristotle refer to Socrates’ view in the Protagoras that knowledge is not dragged around like a slave by passion. It is
argued that Aristotle adds this specific reference in his later treatment
because he now recognizes that Socrates says something true here. Only
perceptual knowledge, not knowledge in the full sense, is dragged around by
passion.
Lloyd Gerson.
“Plotinus on Akrasia: The Neoplatonic Synthesis,”
This paper argues that Plotinus
appropriates Peripatetic and Stoic insights into his expression of Platonic
moral psychology generally and into his analysis of akrasia in particular. Plotinus’s account focuses on the Platonic
distinction between the soul or true self and the embodied composite human
being. With the Stoics, Plotinus argues that the true self is the subject of
rational desire. Rational desire is here interpreted as a second-order desire
in relation to the first-order desires of the composite individual. Plotinus
argues along Platonic lines that vicious and akratic actions are involuntary
because they arise from desires involving embodiment.
James Wetzel.
“Body Double: Saint Augustine and the Sexualized Will,”
In Confessions 8, Augustine describes being unresolved between two wills: one
pulling him back to a discredited life of sexual habit, the other pushing him
forward to a resurrected life in Christ. Though his irresolution is taken to be
a classic illustration of weakness of will, I argue that Augustine’s inner
conflict is more likely the product of self-deception. Augustine has been
assuming that his carnal knowledge has been a form of mortal knowing, whereas
in fact his sexual habit has bound him to an illusion of immorality. He cannot
transcend his sexual habit until he is properly disillusioned.
Denis J. M. Bradley. “Thomas
Aquinas on Weakness of the Will,”
Aquinas
treats weakness of will in various contexts: the discussion of the conflict
between flesh and mind in chapter 7 of the Letter to the Romans, the treatment of “sin from weakness,” i.e. from passion, the
commentary on book 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics, and the account of original sin and the need for grace. Aquinas
differs from Aristotle in two important ways: he introduces the notion of the
will as a distinct power of the intellectual soul that mediates between reason
and the sense appetite; he considers human weakness to be innate due to
original sin.
Tobias Hoffmann. “Henry of Ghent’s Voluntarist Account of Weakness of Will,”
Giuseppe Mazzotta. “Dante: Healing the Wounded Will,”
The essential element of the Divine
Comedy is freedom, which is the foundation of existence and the power of
rational creatures to will or not to will what reason dictates. The poem’s
ethical system affirms God’s justice and depends on the fact that Dante imputes
to his characters the responsibility for their actions. The article showcases
characters crushed by the discovery of the powerlessness of the will, the links
between will and power in both private and political sphere, and the world of
blind necessity. It concludes by examining Dante’s view of poetry as
therapeutics of the soul.
Ann Hartle.
“Montaigne’s Marvelous Weakness,”
Montaigne describes himself as
“marvelously weak.” The metaphysical presuppositions and the moral and
political implications of his weakness are explored, especially in terms of his
rejection of Aristotle’s notion of form and perfection or final cause.
Montaigne’s invention, the essay, is a new mode of philosophy that permits the
emergence of possibility rather than actuality as the primary metaphysical
category. Rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics entails a reordering of the
virtues and vices and the rejection of the notion of the common good which had
guided classical-Christian political philosophy.
John C. McCarthy. “Descartes’s Feeble Spirits,”
In response to an objection from Mersenne
to his provisional morality, Descartes concedes that one can see and approve
the better and yet pursue the worse. He adds that esprits faibles are prone to this very failing. In truth, the performance of “feeble spirits” in the Discourse
on Method conforms neither to the pattern of
Aristotelian akrasia nor to St. Paul’s sinful
opposition of flesh to mind.
Just how revolutionary is Descartes’s moral typology becomes still
clearer in The Passions of the Soul, where
feeble spirits are contrasted with his own human type, the “strongest” and
“most generous” spirits.
Thomas E. Hill Jr. “Kant on Weakness of Will,”
For Kant moral weakness is not a physical
incapacity or weakness but contrasts with virtue
understood as developed strength of will to do right despite obstacles. The
will is not literally a force, strong or weak, but is conceived as either
law-giving practical reason (Wille) or choice to
act on a maxim (Willkür). Morally weak persons
choose to act on particular maxims in conflict with both practical reason and
their general maxim to act rightly. This maxim, like laws, may be weak in
content (vague and indeterminate) or willed weakly (without provision for
implementation). Moral weakness mitigates culpability without excusing.
Tracy B. Strong. “Nietzsche, the Will to Power, and the Weak Will,”
Nietzsche differs from most contemporary
discussions of weakness of will in three ways. He rejects the notion of the
will; he holds that “weak” wills always win out over “strong” wills; he argues
that rationality is the faculty that produces weak wills and thus cannot be
the cure for weakness of will. I find that contemporary discussion of weakness of will presume a
particular understanding of temporality, presuppose a particular conception of
character, and pay little attention to the idea of strength in relation to
will. I then explore these questions in Nietzsche’s texts with particular
attention to his account of promising.
Alfred R. Mele. “Akratic Action and Libertarianism,”
One defining feature of akratic actions,
according to a traditional conception, is that they are freely performed.
Elsewhere (Irrationality: Oxford University
Press, 1987), in arguing that akratic actions are conceptually possible and in
developing a view about how they are to be explained, this author assumed that
compatibilism is true – that is, that free action is compatible with
determinism. In this paper, for the sake of argument, it is assumed that
compatibilism is false and an incompatibilist position on how akratic actions
are possible is developed.
Alasdair MacIntyre. “Conflicts of Desire,”
Formulations of the problem of weakness of
will characteristically suggest that, when someone judges that it is best for
him or her to act in some particular way, but acts otherwise, there is a need for an
explanation, a need that has no counterpart when someone acts in accordance
with his or her principled convictions. The central thesis of this paper is that
this is a mistake. This mistake derives from an inadequate understanding of the
place that conflicts of desire have in our lives. Many cases described as due
to weakness of will would be better described as due to strength of desire.