La. What precisely is the phenomenon of akrasia?
Akrasia, according to Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics, Book VII) is the
phenomenon commonly called 'moral weakness' which is frequently observed in moral life and our beliefs about it. This is distinct from 'moral strength', which follows the conclusions of reason and is said to deserve praise for this, akrasia abandons the conclusions of reason, and is, accordingly, said to deserve blame for following base appetites and emotions. In this way, passion is said to be capable of overpowering reason and directing action, which is to say that one can 'know' what is right, but voluntarily act contrary to that knowledge nonetheless by following other desires. Such would be the case, for instance, if one were to betray a trusting friend or lover for the sake of immediate sexual or emotional gratification.
Aristotle distinguishes moral strengt and moral weakness from similar characteristics. They are, for example, distinct from self-control and self-indulgence in several ways. To begin with, those who exhibit self-control are not subject to strong appetites, he explains, whereas a morally strong person is. For some appetites are good, after all, and thus ought to be followed.[EN1146al3] What's more, if there are no strong and base emotions, then there is no challenge in resisting them.[EN1146al5] Therefore, a morally strong person has and enjoys pleasures, but is simply not driven by them,[EN1152a4] unlike the self-indulgent person who "pursues the pleasure of the moment. "[EN1146b24]
Likewise, moral weakness differs from self-indulgence, not by the act, but by the manner in which the agent yields to temptation. [EN1146b20-25] The self-indulgent person pursues pleasure because he thinks he should, whereas the morally weak person does not think he should pursue pleasure, but does it anyway. [EN1146b24] Both pursue what is pleasant, but here again, "they are different in that a self-indulgent man thinks he ought to pursue them, while the morally weak thinks he should not. "[EN1152a5]
Aristotle takes the question of whether moral strength should be distinguished from moral weakness by the situations they face, by the manner of reacting to these situations, or both, as the starting point of his inquiry.[EN1146bl5-17] He asks in Chap. 4 whether one can be morally weak in an unqualified sense, or whether akrasia is concerned with particular situations only, and concludes at length that it is limited to the sphere of human pleasures ...natural in kind as well as degree. [EN1149b29] People are not blamed for having and enjoying pleasures, he explains at 1148a27, but "only for the manner in which they do so, if they do so to excess." Whereas "moral weakness is not only something to be avoided, but it is also something that deserves blame. "[1148b5]
Thus, key to this distinction and to Aristotle's conception of akrasia is the conclusion that moral weakness is unlike self-indulgence in this way--they "are, in a way, concerned with the same pleasures and pains...but not in the same way. Self-indulgent men pursue the excess by choice [prohairesis], but the morally weak do not exercise choice,"[EN1148a9-16, 115lall-13] (which is not to say he acts involuntarily). As Wiggins notes and I will later discuss at length, this prohairesis is what troubled Aristotle. The self-indulgent and the self-controlled person pursues and avoids the excess of pleasures and pains by choice (and, feeling no regret, is incorrigible).[EN1149a] On the
other hand, we are reminded at EN115lb2 that choice alone only makes for self-control or indulgence, not in itself for moral strength--it is not choice, per se, but right choice which is praiseworthy and makes for moral strength.
Having distinguished these then, Aristotle explains that tenacity is then to moral strength what softness is to moral weakness, i.e reaction to situations of pain as opposed to pleasure. [EN1149all-14] Moral strength is better than tenacity, he says, in the same way that victory is better than not being defeated--for while tenacity offers resistance, moral strength involves mastery.[1149a35]
Thus, he concludes in Chap. 5 that "moral weakness and moral strength operate only in the same sphere as do self-indulgence and self-control, and that the moral weakness which operates in any other sphere is different in kind, and is called 'moral weakness' only by extension, not in an unqualified sense. "[EN1149b23] Actual moral weakness, according to Aristotle, operates in the sphere of bodily pleasures, the same sphere as that in which temperance operates. [3.c.] His argument asserts that there are two sources of pleasure [those which are necessary and concerned with the body (e.g. food, drink, sex), and those which are desirable in themselves but which admit of excess (e.g. victory, honor, wealth)] Aristotle claims that the latter are not called morally weak, except with qualification, and that we do not blame them as viscous. On the other hand, the former,
i.e. those bodily pleasures which are "assigned to the sphere of self-indulgence and self control," [EN1147b29, 1148a7] are such that, when one pursues and avoids the excesses of pleasure and pains, "and does so not by choice but against his choice and thinking," he is called "morally weak without qualification." [EN1148all] Whereas we qualify our use of moral weakness regarding naturally desirable pleasures of the second kind. Such "badness is not vice but only something similar to vice by analogy," which is to say, it operates in the same sphere as self-control and self-indulgence.[EN1148bl0-12]
We might rightly question this limitation of moral weakness to the sphere of physical pleasures, and the support he gives it in the claim that "we do not blame as vicious those who are morally weak in matters of material goods, profit, ambition, anger, and so forth." [EN1148a5] These are only moral weaknesses in a qualified sense, he says.
Aristotle may indeed be right that we don't blame these as we do the moral weaknesses which involve bodily pleasures, and he may also be right that we don't talk of self indulgence and self-control in this sphere--but there is still a serious question as to whether we should. So perhaps he is not right to restrict his analysis to this sphere. [3.d]
There are two kinds of moral weakness, he says, i.e. impetuosity, in which one is "driven on be emotion because they do not deliberate, and simple lack of strength, in which one does deliberate, but simply "does not abide by the results."[EN1150b20] In the end, the impetuously morally weak are better than those who lack strength, for they yield to stronger emotion and without deliberation.[EN1151a] And what's more, "a self-indulgent man is worse than one who is morally weak", which is to say, he is "less pardonable" who acts under weak emotion than one who "is overcome while offering resistance. "[EN1150b7] In this, moral weakness is not a vice in the strict sense, for akrasia violates choice, and vice is a choice. Neither is moral weakness unjust. While the morally weak will act as the unjust do,[EN115la5-10] they do not plot and deliberate underhandedly [as at 1149bl3], and so are not themselves unjust. The morally weak person is also more curable, that is, more easily persuaded to change his mind than the self indulgent, for he at least has good intentions. [En1151a26] By analogy, "A morally weak person is like a state which enacts all the right decrees and has laws of a high moral standard, but does not apply them ...a wicked man, on the other hand, resembles a state which does apply its laws, but the laws are bad."[EN1152a20-24] And unlike the self indulgent person, who feels no regret, and thus cannot be easily cured, the morally weak person does feel regret, and is thus more curable [EN1150b30](as against the conclusion which appeared true at 1146a31-b2). While he acts voluntarily, he is only half wicked, "because his moral choice is good." [EN1152al6]
What does it mean then, he asks, to be morally weak in an unqualified sense? Do morally weak people act knowingly? If so, what sense of 'knowing' is at work?
10
l.b. According to Aristotle, Socrates denies the possibility of moral weakness, which is to say, the possibility that one can know what is right, but follow other desires nonetheless. Aristotle takes Socrates to hold that one cannot do "on the basis of emotion, what he knows to be base."[EN1145b25]
It is, I think, Socrates actual view that only through ignorance of what is good and bad does one act contrary to good. Everyone desires what is good for them, according to
Socrates, and so, if a person acts contrary to that good, it is because they are confused about what actually is good, and thus did not have knowledge to begin with. Socrates is perfectly willing to admit that a person may think something is best and be wrong about it, in which case, she has only opinions or beliefs, which certainly can be overcome by pleasure. For Socrates, actual knowledge and desire go hand in hand, and thus to know what is good is to desire to act toward it, and to desire to act otherwise is to fail to actually 'know' what is good. By this view, passion and reason simply cannot conflict, for both are engaged in the search for the good.
Aristotle claims that this theory is disproved by the observable facts, and that we need to better understand the emotion involved in moral weakness. [EN1145b27] If it is ignorance, what kind? Given how we blame it, it must be more than mere weak conviction about one's knowledge/beliefs/opinions.
Aristotle dismisses, too quickly perhaps, the contention held by Plato's followers at
the Academy that it is true belief, not knowledge, which a morally weak person goes against. He claims this has no bearing on the argument because some people think they have knowledge even when all they have are beliefs and opinions. In fact, he says, "some people are no less firmly convinced of what they believe than others are of what they know," and so "if weakness of their belief is the reason why those who hold opinions will be more liable to act against their conviction than those who have knowledge, we shall find that there is no difference between knowledge and opinion." [EN1146b30]
Aristotle then distinguishes two forms of the verb 'to know', claiming that one may be said 'to know' both when he is and when he is not exercising the knowledge he has. However, it seems to me that one who is said to have knowledge which he conveniently fails to use when it comes into conflict with passion at the point of action does not really have 'knowledge' at all--at least not in the sense that Socrates was attempting to qualify the term [Meno]
In fact, if such a person exists, she might be said to be 'ignoring' her own so-called knowledge, and since 'ignore' is the root verb of the noun 'ignorance,' it seems to me that
what Aristotle is postulating, i.e. an active or voluntary form of ignorance, even temporary ignorance, only affirms Socrates'.
Not even by Aristotle's own account of the knowledge which is necessary for practical wisdom [phronesis] is such a thing possible. Phronesis requires both correct reason and correct desire, i.e. both knowledge and virtue, making akrasia, not a weakness of knowledge, but a simple lack of virtue. This seems to be a fair account of what would have to be true for one to actively ignore or, at any rate, fail to attend to the good one is assumed to 'know.' He himself claims that, when people are considered both practically wise and morally weak, it is cleverness they have, not phronesis. These differ in that, while both follow reason, only practical wisdom involves moral choice. Practical wisdom involves good character in which one both has and exercises knowledge, not like the morally weak, who may have knowledge, in a sense, but, as if drunk or asleep, ignore what they are said to know. This is the complaint Socrates had with the Sophists, who made claims to knowledge which was not, by the standards of practical wisdom, really knowledge at all, but mere opinion and cleverness of rhetoric. If practical reason is deliberating properly, then knowledge and desire will coincide in the way Socrates would predict. Thus, [l.c.] akrasia is prima facie impossible, even by Aristotle's own account.
But Aristotle has the learning process as his concern. He contends that the correct desire which must accompany correct reason and correct will to lead to correct action, must
thus be cultivated in children. He takes care to consider how children's development is all important in this respect, as did Plato, arguing that, since it is pleasure that makes us do wrong things, and pain that keeps us from doing right things, children's education should be such that they learn to feel pain and pleasure at the proper things. Thus they will learn to give and take honestly and justly, relative to their own resource, and it will give them pleasure to do so.
To understand this process better, consider a scenario that is, unfortunately, more common than we like to admit, i.e. the child who is enticed into sexual activity at a very young age by the manipulation of his or her natural pleasures, is made to feel responsible
for the abuse by reference to that pleasure, and has pain, often well-remembered, held out as the alternative to cooperating in those pleasures. This cycle, once in motion, intensifies the pleasure experienced by the child by contrasting it with the ever-present possibility of pain, and thus gratitude is thus likely to be the emotional reaction to sexual attention that is pleasurable, and self-disgust to be the reaction to that which is painful, as it is held out as one's own fault, the result of non-cooperation with one's abuser. The self that would be most desirable would be the tenacious/enduring one then, and the reward for this strength would be that the experience would seem pleasurable rather than painful. In a sense, the possibility of pain has amplified the pleasure for this person. Plato describes the experience of pleasure in the Republic, where he explains that those experienced in pain, moving toward comfort, think they're moving toward pleasure, when really they're only moving away from pain toward center, which is the state of rest, and the absence of either pleasure or pain. Only those who begin on balance are actually moving toward pleasure and not just away from pain.l This shows the relative nature of pleasure and pain, hence
1Republic--What does it mean to say "that only the pleasures of intelligence are entirely true and pure; all the others are illusory. "[Republic, tr. Coruford; p.309] "We speak of pain as the contrary of pleasure. Is there not also a neutral state between the two, in wltich the mind feels neither pleasure nor pain, but is as it were at rest from both?...youmust have heard people say, when they are ill, that nothing is pleasauter than to be well, though they never knew it until they were ill; and people in great pain will tell you that relief from paiu is the greatest pleasure in the world. There are many such cases in wltich you find the sufferer saying that the height of pleasure is not positive enjoyment, but the peace wltich comes with the absence of pain. ..in the same way, then, when enjoyment comes to an end, the cessation of pleasure will be paiufnl ...If so, that state of rest wltich, we said, lies between pleasure and pain, will be sometimes one, sometimes the other...both pleasure and pain are processes of change which take place in the mind ....whereas the neutral condition appeared to be a state of rest between the two ...it [cannot] be right to regard the absence of pain as pleasant or the absence of enjoyment as paiufui ...If follows, then, that the state of rest is not really either pleasant or painful, but only appears so in these cases by contrast. There is no soundness in these appearances; by the standard of true pleasure they are a sort of imposture. "[Republic, tr. Coruford; p.310] But relief from pain cannot be the same thing as pure pleasure, or cessation of pleasure the same as pure pain, for "consider pleasures wltich do not follow on pain. There are plenty of them; the best example is the pleasures of smell. These occur suddenly with extraordinary intensity; they are not preceded by any pain and they leave no pain beltind when they cease. "[Republic, tr. Cornford; p.310] And yet, "the great majority and the most intense of all the pleasures, so called, wltich reach the mind by way of the body ...and the pleasures and pains of anticipation wltich precede them ..." are of "the class of pleasures which do involve some sort of relief from pain. "[Reonblic, tr. Coruford pp.310-311]
"Here is an aualogy ...You think of the world as divided into au upper region and a lower, with a centre between them. Now if a person were transported from below to the centre, he would be sure to think he was moving 'upwards'; and when he was stationed at the centre and looking in the direction he had come from, he would imagine he was in the upper region, if he had never seen the part which is really above the centre. And supposing he were transported back again, he wonld think he was traveling 'downwards,' and this time he would be right. His mistake wonld be due to !tis ignorance of the real distinctions between the upper and lower regions and the centre. "[Republic, tr. Coruford; p.311] "You will not be surprised, then, if people whose ignorance of truth and reality gives them many unsound ideas, are similarly confused about pleasure and pain and the intermediate state. When the movement is towards a painful condition, they are right in believing that the pain is real; but when they are passing from a state of pain to the neutral point, they are the difficulty of discerning which pleasures and pains are absolute and objective among so many diverse appearances. Such conditioning forces are very strong. A child with such experience, turned adult, is certain to have a very hard time discerning true pleasures from false ones.
This also shows, I think, another way in which Socrates and Plato recognized that the process of learning about the proper weight of goods and bads is necessary to truly knowing anything. Despite Socrates, who might rightly claim that this person does not have true knowledge of pleasure if that so-called knowledge is not binding in action, Aristotle is also right, I think, to emphasize that experiential and emotional realignment is required for such knowledge, in the strong sense, as it is for full virtue.
In the end, even for Aristotle, it is only knowledge in the very weak sense which is ever overcome by passion. A morally weak person engages in a kind of reasoning in which the appetite for pleasure transforms the opinions, which cannot be called knowledge in any meaningful sense if so easily untethered. It is such untethered knowledge which Socrates called true belief, and that it can be so easily forgotten is the reason he insisted on the process of tethering in order for belief to qualify as knowledge. I think Aristotle's discussion of steadfastness bares this out. [EN115la25] The morally strong person "remains steadfast" to "true reason and right choice." Not as the obstinate, who only resemble moral strength for their resistance to change, but are not persuaded by argument, as the morally strong are, and are sometimes even persuaded, without argument, by emotion or pleasure.[ll51b12] The morally strong has knowledge which is stable, and does not give out to persuasion by emotion for having been convinced by rational argument which has been supported by experience.
I think that it is important to remember the sensitivity to change which Aristotle holds key when comparing his view of akrasia to that of Socrates. While Socrates seems fully aware of the need for tethering our opinions to tum them into knowledge, Aristotle examines the process of this moral development itself, interested as he is in 'becoming' one's best self. In this process of moral learning, only the already good person will always get it right. As Aristotle emphasizes, it is far too easy to fail to navigate through change, to fall into mistake with regard to pleasures and pains, and thus to miss the target of one's best and proper function, for the process to go unexamined. As Rorty notes, "the object of inquiry in the Ethics is, as [Aristotle] says, to determine how to become good and not merely to know, theoretically, what virtue is."[EN 1103b27-31][p.282, Rorty] Indeed, given Socrates' argument regarding the significance of the knowledge of goodness to an understanding of the forms in Republic Book VI, and his discussion of pleasure and happiness in Protagoras, and his discussion of virtue in Meno, I think Socrates would have encouraged this examination into the processes of practical reason.
2.a. Aristotle's account of akrasia.
According to Aristotle, a person can act against knowledge by failing to apply
knowledge of the universal premise to actions, which are particular. He claims that "the
final concrete term of his reasoning is not a universal, and does not seem to be an object of scientific knowledge in the same way that s universal is. "[EN1147b12] In such a case as firmly convinced that they are approaching the pleasure of complete satisfaction. In their ignorance of true pleasure, they are deceived by the contrast between pain and the absence of pain, just as one who had never seen white ntight be deceived between the contrast between black and gray...look at it this way. As hunger and thirst are states of bodily iruinition, which can be replenished by good, so ignorance and unwisdom in the son! are an emptiness to be filled by gaining understanding ...."fReoublic, tr. Cornford; p.311] Asks what has more reality, that which is connected with "the unchanging and immortal world of truth", or that of the world of "mortality and perpetual change?"
Rorty notes, one's "knowledge of general principles is at a different level of actualization from his habits of perception and his habits of action." [p.283, Rorty] Knowledge in the true sense is always universal, and cannot be overpowered by appetite, but can be misapplied to a particular case by the mistakes of sense perception.[footnote, p.l85, tr. Ostwald] Itis the final premise which determines action, so the morally weak person either does not have this premise, or has it "not in the sense of knowing it, but in the sense of uttering it as a drunken man may."[EN1147b10] Thus, a morally weak person can have 'knowledge' with one term nonspecific, but does not 'know' in the strong sense, i.e. with both terms fully understood.[EN1147al-10] And thus we are led to Socrates' own conclusion, but with a twist, that "moral weakness does not occur in the presence of knowledge in the strict sense, and it is sensory knowledge, not science, which is dragged about by emotion." [EN1147bl5]
By contrast with a practical syllogism in which moral knowledge is binding and thus realized in action (e.g. everything sweet ought to be tasted [uni versa! belief], and this thing before me is sweet [sense perception]), there is "the case we have been looking for, the defeat of reason in moral weakness."[EN1147a36] In this case, (according to some translations) a universal opinion [e.g. "forbidding us to taste things of this kind"] comes into conflict with another opinion (by Ostwald's translation, though apparently not in other's) [e.g. that everything sweet is pleasant], and a concrete perception [e.g. that this thing before me is sweet], and these, with an appetite for pleasure. Now we have a conflict of opinion and appetite, says Aristotle. But Socrates would have to say we still do not have a conflict between knowledge and desire, for the universal here is a true belief, at best.
In addition, the term 'having' has different senses, such that one can both have and not have knowledge, again, as one who is sleeping or drunk. The morally weak, according to Aristotle, are in the latter state. They can utter words that spring from knowledge of the good, and yet not really understand what they are saying, such as students who only yet know the words about a subject, but not its full meaning, or actors who can only speak the lines, but could not speak them from heart. "The subject must grow to be part of them, and that takes time."[EN1147a23] Again, this indicates the importance of tethering, a press which Socrates was all too aware of the need for...that is, if true knowledge was our en
3.a. Does Aristotle successfully show akrasia to be possible?
Yes, I think he does, though he is somewhat too unclear on how different premises
function in our process of acquiring knowledge, and perhaps this is for the best. Consider how his account applies to the example of the unfaithful lover, one who 'knows' that breaking trust is bad, that sex is often good, that some apparent bads outweigh some apparent goods, and that this is an opportunity for sex. One is tempted to conclude that the uncertain premise is both the universal and the premise, as it is their congruence which is being tested, since as it is as of yet uncertain which is true and which is untrue Such a onw doesn't seem to really know, in the strong sense, either the good of trust or the bad of broken trust, nor to know whether the good of this part encounter would outweigh the bad that is risked, nor even whether there is risk at all. Perhaps such a person also holds the premise that unfaithful encounters sometimes go undetected, and perhaps this weighs heavily in his or her reasoning. Or perhaps it is even this premise which is being tested, oft' repeated as it is in a culture which holds appearances of justice to be enough. There is thus some question of whether s/he actually has or 'knows' any of these premises. And so s/he may act in favor of the lesser good, not yet knowing, in the strong sense, that it actually is the lesser rather than the higher good. As both Socrates and Aristotle note, things appearing as relative as they do, it is often very difficult to tell exactly what is up and what is down, and the proper weights of goods. [Protagoras] The learning is the process of coming to 'have' these premises in a stable way, that is, to tether them. If knowledge were full, people would have less reason to test the premises they hold. But moral growth is a learning process, and moral certainty is the outcome of the diverse experience which tethers our beliefs and makes them knowledge. And in this process, we sometimes make mistakes about the proper weights of goods and bads, perhaps even voluntarily, if only to learn from them. One can be sure that the unfaithful lover would not forget so easily the next time, having learned from the mistake made once.
The thing is, this being deliberate, it is not moral weakness in the sense described at EN1151a-52a, where the acratic person's moral choice is said to be good...but then he acts against choice, "enacts all the right decrees and has laws of a high moral standard, but does not apply them,"[EN1152a20-24] which makes no choice in the sense of deliberation [prohairesis], but does make a choice in the sense of voluntary action [hekousia], such as one who merely lacks strength, that is, deliberates but "does not abide by the results.[EN1150b20]2 This is the one then who knows better, so to speak, and acts "against his choice and thinking" when he does not think he should pursue pleasure, but does it anyway. [EN1146b24] It is thus called "morally weak without qualification,"[EN1148all] i.e. vice, which Socrates and Aristotle would agree is a choice. The difference, as noted at EN1146b20, is not in the act, but in the manner in which the agent yeilds to temptation.
Thus, Aristotle can affirm Socrates at ENVII 3 1147b15, [3.c.] because his defense of akrasia does not violate the essence of Socrates' point, but only qualifies the forms that choice can take. I would be the first to defend Socrates in the claim that we always do what we know is best, but the 'learner' is not yet the 'knower', and so I think we and Aristotle have good reason to want to examine the possibility of akrasia in the process of tethering by which we learn our moral lessons, and thus turn true beliefs to knowledge. Socrates would say, I think, that this is all part of the measuring art, which is the proper function of both reason and passion.
Akrasia is a force at work in our reasoning, as it represents that state of doubt or uncertainty about the good by which we fall short of true understanding, 'knowledge,'in the strict sense. The pretense of knowledge by intellect alone is one I think neither, even Socrates, would ever make, as it discredits knowledge in the soul of human experience. It's true that Aristotle said that theoretical wisdom is the most high, but he also said and showed that it alone isn't enough. As Socrates emphasized, one has to have seen the good from enough views that it is stable, i.e. unforgettable, to be able to claim to 'know' it (and even then there is some question as to whether this is sufficiently humble for a good person to do). This is why dialogue is imperative in Socrates', and deliberation in Aristotle, i.e. because the objective world is considerably complex, and thus seen from an infinity of subjective perspectives. Thus, Socrates message has great import in this rich and diverse world which Aristotle undertook to appreciate and examine. I think perhaps he, like Socrates and Plato before him, saw himself as teaching the teachers how to teach, reminding them of the humility which is imperative if the complexity of appearances is to be taken seriously, and if we are to learn from all there is to study, and perhaps to 'know' what, among appearances, is untimately real. The claim that all we really know is how much we don't know [Apology] challenged Aristotle to discover how much of the rich subject matter of the world can indeed be 'known'...without arrogance, but with full appreciation and even--once tethered--objectively.
2 Moral weakness is unlike self-indulgence in this way--they 11are, in a way, concerned with the same pleasures and pains ...but not in the same way. Self-indulgent men pursue the excess by choice [prohairesis], but the morally weak do not exercise choice,"[EN1148a9-16, llSlall-13] However, remember, choice alone only makes for self-control or indulgence, not in itself for moral strength--it is not choice, per se, but right choice which is praiseworthy and makes for moral strength. When one pursues and avoids the excesses of pleasure and pains, "and does so not by choice but against his choice and thinking," he is called "morally weak without qualification. "[EN1148all]
There seems no reason to think that Socrates would not have applauded Aristotle's considerable efforts. Yet Aristotle himself wants to refute the idea, held by some interpretations of Socratic doctrine, that intellectual understanding alone is enough to change behavior--a position he attributes to those Socratics, rightly or wrongly--and wants to assert the role of emotion and habituation in learning and relearning. There can be no denying this role, I think. But it seems important to note that this does not seem to be what Socrates had in mind when he asserted that real 'knowledge' entails action. Rather, I think Socrates would have been in full agreement with Aristotle on the point that true understanding requires this alignment of different ways of knowing, different points of view come of different experience in tethering. Socrates point is not, I think, as Aristotle argues against, that intellectual understanding alone will change behavior, but only that intellectual understanding which does not change behavior is not true understanding at all- not knowledge, but only true belief. He was trying to show the Sophists how it followed that they did not really know what they pretended to know if it did not change their behavior.. .if there was this tension between reason and emotion. Indeed, truly knowing integrates these, such that one desires what one knows to be good, and if one does not desire it enought to keep from being swayed by passion or emotion from this good, then one does not actually 'know' its true good, i.e. one does not 'know' what one claims to 'know,' though one may clearly have a belief--and it may even be a true belief--but again, knowledge, in the strong sense, requires that true belief be tethered, i.e..[Meno] And it could be argued that this is just what is accomplished by Aristotle's process of habituation, i.e. the acquiring of perspective by the lessons of experience which can give us insight into our beliefs and thus prove them to be or not to be knowledge.
This is similar in a significant way to Aristotle's conception of habituation, which does not deny the importance of intellectual understanding, certainly, but only adds to it explicitly what Socrates implicitly assumed--that experience, including key intellectual experiences, give us reasons to believe, rightly or wrongly, truly or falsely, and this is a significant part of learning, the part which makes action automatically virtuous, as opposed to having to work against desire, which can go against our best interest when confused about the good, but never when the good is truly known. Only such a one really gets it right.
Thus, Aristotle is absolutely right, I think Socrates would have to say, to note that
character change needs more than mere intellectual understanding, for the emotions and desires follow experience which tethers, or proves a true belief to be knowledge, and a
false belief to be ignorance. And both are key to happiness, which is, they agree, dependent on genuine virtue, i.e. having one's emotions in line w/right reason, and thus desiring to do what is right. If one truly knows, that is, understands, that some action would be good for him or her, then they will truly desire to act in accordance with this knowledge. When one understands that only being good leads to being happy (again, in the truest sense of the word), then there is no reason for doing otherwise. Weakness of will is, I think, only misunderstanding, and understanding does require tethering along with intellectual understanding.
A Zen Buddhist might say that knowing intellectually without the right desire is
really only taking someone else's word for it, and not learning it first hand, experiencing it fully. We can see the difference in Aristotle's discussion of the difference between the mere appearance of virtue vs. full virtue, as (kataton orthon logon differs from metaton orthon logon). While the former produces the right actions, actions in keeping with virtuous ends, it does so for reasons that don't necessarily correspond with the reasons of a fully virtuous person, who, in Aristotle's terms, has both the practical and theoretical knowledge, both the desire and the rational understanding. For Socrates, both intellectual and experiential evidence affords new insight, new perspective. Doing the right thing for the right reason automatically involves having the right desire for both Aristotle and Socrates.
So, if Aristotle thinks he's arguing against Socrates, taking Socrates to be claiming intellectual knowing is enough to change behavior, again, I think Socrates is not, and
claiming only that knowledge so-called as that which does not bind behavior (e.g. 'wisdom' that does not lead to 'courage') is not really 'knowledge' at all, even if we call it that. We may 'believe' something, and it may be true, but true knowledge is tethered, and thus stable, unforgettable, and trustworthy, and thus binding in practical reason on behavior, and in this different than true belief, which is uncertain. Hence, the unity of the virtues, as ail virtues are the same in that they involve this knowledge of goods and bads, and thus, having any one of them entails having ail the others in the proper time and place. Such that the truly wise cannot help but be truly brave when the opportunity for courage presents itself, and those who are less than courageous when the times comes to prove it are, admit it our not, less than wise. It stands to reason. If we can agree that everyone does desire what is good for themselves, whatever that means, then it would follow that everyone thus desires to understand what is good for them, and thus 'know' why one does as one does. To reach understanding, and then to deny it is, we must admit, to fail to actual!y understand.
True wisdom regarding the proper weights of goods and bads would bind us to the good course, and desire would see to it once true understanding is tethered. In other words,
really knowing something, i.e. "having" it in the strong sense of attending to it when it is relevant, entails behaving according to it, and anything less is pretending to 'know' what one does not actually 'understand'. If one really understood, one would follow the right desires for the right reasons, i.e. because it is good. And yes, in one's self-interest too, if only serendipitously. Hence, Socratic egoism.
I think Socrates is right then to claim that to 'know' is to 'desire' and to fail to desire is to not really 'know'. What value is there in blurring this distinction which he tried
so hard to observe? And I can't help but think that Aristotle, were he to have thought it through further than to settle for the lesser sense of 'to know', would have agreed that knowledge so easily forgotten or voluntarily ignored is not really knowledge in a meaningful sense. Despite what one calls the state of such understanding, it is not 'understanding' in the full sense, and Socrates would have us reserve the term 'knowledge' to express this ail-things-considered form, and call lesser forms 'beliefs' and 'opinions'. Because we can be wrong about what is good, and even when we are right about it, we can forget, sometimes voluntarily. Everyone desires the good, but it appears differently to each of us, and it is up to us to reconcile our perspective with others in order that reason can tether our beliefs and thus turn them into the kind of knowledge which holds in action, i.e. are not so easily forgotten or ignored when it comes time to act. As Aristotle rightly notes, many people who are clearly wrong in their beliefs nonetheless insist that what they have is knowledge--and yet, this obstinance does not make it the case. We can call it whatever we like, but anyone who thinks it all the way through would agree that, while such untethered belief may be true, it is not yet true 'knowledge', that is, not fully understood if it is not fully examined. In fact, in Socratic terms, should we ever be so arrogant as to claim to actually have knowledge, as if forgetting how much there is to the whole of truth and how little of it we actually can have, even in principle, we would inhibit the ongoing proces of learning in assuming we've already reached the end.
In the end, it seems to me quite right that it is our actions which prove what we actually know. And whatever we call it, such wisdom is courage is temperance is justice when it comes down to testing the stability of our so-called knowledge.
Akrasia, according to Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics, Book VII) is the
phenomenon commonly called 'moral weakness' which is frequently observed in moral life and our beliefs about it. This is distinct from 'moral strength', which follows the conclusions of reason and is said to deserve praise for this, akrasia abandons the conclusions of reason, and is, accordingly, said to deserve blame for following base appetites and emotions. In this way, passion is said to be capable of overpowering reason and directing action, which is to say that one can 'know' what is right, but voluntarily act contrary to that knowledge nonetheless by following other desires. Such would be the case, for instance, if one were to betray a trusting friend or lover for the sake of immediate sexual or emotional gratification.
Aristotle distinguishes moral strengt and moral weakness from similar characteristics. They are, for example, distinct from self-control and self-indulgence in several ways. To begin with, those who exhibit self-control are not subject to strong appetites, he explains, whereas a morally strong person is. For some appetites are good, after all, and thus ought to be followed.[EN1146al3] What's more, if there are no strong and base emotions, then there is no challenge in resisting them.[EN1146al5] Therefore, a morally strong person has and enjoys pleasures, but is simply not driven by them,[EN1152a4] unlike the self-indulgent person who "pursues the pleasure of the moment. "[EN1146b24]
Likewise, moral weakness differs from self-indulgence, not by the act, but by the manner in which the agent yields to temptation. [EN1146b20-25] The self-indulgent person pursues pleasure because he thinks he should, whereas the morally weak person does not think he should pursue pleasure, but does it anyway. [EN1146b24] Both pursue what is pleasant, but here again, "they are different in that a self-indulgent man thinks he ought to pursue them, while the morally weak thinks he should not. "[EN1152a5]
Aristotle takes the question of whether moral strength should be distinguished from moral weakness by the situations they face, by the manner of reacting to these situations, or both, as the starting point of his inquiry.[EN1146bl5-17] He asks in Chap. 4 whether one can be morally weak in an unqualified sense, or whether akrasia is concerned with particular situations only, and concludes at length that it is limited to the sphere of human pleasures ...natural in kind as well as degree. [EN1149b29] People are not blamed for having and enjoying pleasures, he explains at 1148a27, but "only for the manner in which they do so, if they do so to excess." Whereas "moral weakness is not only something to be avoided, but it is also something that deserves blame. "[1148b5]
Thus, key to this distinction and to Aristotle's conception of akrasia is the conclusion that moral weakness is unlike self-indulgence in this way--they "are, in a way, concerned with the same pleasures and pains...but not in the same way. Self-indulgent men pursue the excess by choice [prohairesis], but the morally weak do not exercise choice,"[EN1148a9-16, 115lall-13] (which is not to say he acts involuntarily). As Wiggins notes and I will later discuss at length, this prohairesis is what troubled Aristotle. The self-indulgent and the self-controlled person pursues and avoids the excess of pleasures and pains by choice (and, feeling no regret, is incorrigible).[EN1149a] On the
other hand, we are reminded at EN115lb2 that choice alone only makes for self-control or indulgence, not in itself for moral strength--it is not choice, per se, but right choice which is praiseworthy and makes for moral strength.
Having distinguished these then, Aristotle explains that tenacity is then to moral strength what softness is to moral weakness, i.e reaction to situations of pain as opposed to pleasure. [EN1149all-14] Moral strength is better than tenacity, he says, in the same way that victory is better than not being defeated--for while tenacity offers resistance, moral strength involves mastery.[1149a35]
Thus, he concludes in Chap. 5 that "moral weakness and moral strength operate only in the same sphere as do self-indulgence and self-control, and that the moral weakness which operates in any other sphere is different in kind, and is called 'moral weakness' only by extension, not in an unqualified sense. "[EN1149b23] Actual moral weakness, according to Aristotle, operates in the sphere of bodily pleasures, the same sphere as that in which temperance operates. [3.c.] His argument asserts that there are two sources of pleasure [those which are necessary and concerned with the body (e.g. food, drink, sex), and those which are desirable in themselves but which admit of excess (e.g. victory, honor, wealth)] Aristotle claims that the latter are not called morally weak, except with qualification, and that we do not blame them as viscous. On the other hand, the former,
i.e. those bodily pleasures which are "assigned to the sphere of self-indulgence and self control," [EN1147b29, 1148a7] are such that, when one pursues and avoids the excesses of pleasure and pains, "and does so not by choice but against his choice and thinking," he is called "morally weak without qualification." [EN1148all] Whereas we qualify our use of moral weakness regarding naturally desirable pleasures of the second kind. Such "badness is not vice but only something similar to vice by analogy," which is to say, it operates in the same sphere as self-control and self-indulgence.[EN1148bl0-12]
We might rightly question this limitation of moral weakness to the sphere of physical pleasures, and the support he gives it in the claim that "we do not blame as vicious those who are morally weak in matters of material goods, profit, ambition, anger, and so forth." [EN1148a5] These are only moral weaknesses in a qualified sense, he says.
Aristotle may indeed be right that we don't blame these as we do the moral weaknesses which involve bodily pleasures, and he may also be right that we don't talk of self indulgence and self-control in this sphere--but there is still a serious question as to whether we should. So perhaps he is not right to restrict his analysis to this sphere. [3.d]
There are two kinds of moral weakness, he says, i.e. impetuosity, in which one is "driven on be emotion because they do not deliberate, and simple lack of strength, in which one does deliberate, but simply "does not abide by the results."[EN1150b20] In the end, the impetuously morally weak are better than those who lack strength, for they yield to stronger emotion and without deliberation.[EN1151a] And what's more, "a self-indulgent man is worse than one who is morally weak", which is to say, he is "less pardonable" who acts under weak emotion than one who "is overcome while offering resistance. "[EN1150b7] In this, moral weakness is not a vice in the strict sense, for akrasia violates choice, and vice is a choice. Neither is moral weakness unjust. While the morally weak will act as the unjust do,[EN115la5-10] they do not plot and deliberate underhandedly [as at 1149bl3], and so are not themselves unjust. The morally weak person is also more curable, that is, more easily persuaded to change his mind than the self indulgent, for he at least has good intentions. [En1151a26] By analogy, "A morally weak person is like a state which enacts all the right decrees and has laws of a high moral standard, but does not apply them ...a wicked man, on the other hand, resembles a state which does apply its laws, but the laws are bad."[EN1152a20-24] And unlike the self indulgent person, who feels no regret, and thus cannot be easily cured, the morally weak person does feel regret, and is thus more curable [EN1150b30](as against the conclusion which appeared true at 1146a31-b2). While he acts voluntarily, he is only half wicked, "because his moral choice is good." [EN1152al6]
What does it mean then, he asks, to be morally weak in an unqualified sense? Do morally weak people act knowingly? If so, what sense of 'knowing' is at work?
10
l.b. According to Aristotle, Socrates denies the possibility of moral weakness, which is to say, the possibility that one can know what is right, but follow other desires nonetheless. Aristotle takes Socrates to hold that one cannot do "on the basis of emotion, what he knows to be base."[EN1145b25]
It is, I think, Socrates actual view that only through ignorance of what is good and bad does one act contrary to good. Everyone desires what is good for them, according to
Socrates, and so, if a person acts contrary to that good, it is because they are confused about what actually is good, and thus did not have knowledge to begin with. Socrates is perfectly willing to admit that a person may think something is best and be wrong about it, in which case, she has only opinions or beliefs, which certainly can be overcome by pleasure. For Socrates, actual knowledge and desire go hand in hand, and thus to know what is good is to desire to act toward it, and to desire to act otherwise is to fail to actually 'know' what is good. By this view, passion and reason simply cannot conflict, for both are engaged in the search for the good.
Aristotle claims that this theory is disproved by the observable facts, and that we need to better understand the emotion involved in moral weakness. [EN1145b27] If it is ignorance, what kind? Given how we blame it, it must be more than mere weak conviction about one's knowledge/beliefs/opinions.
Aristotle dismisses, too quickly perhaps, the contention held by Plato's followers at
the Academy that it is true belief, not knowledge, which a morally weak person goes against. He claims this has no bearing on the argument because some people think they have knowledge even when all they have are beliefs and opinions. In fact, he says, "some people are no less firmly convinced of what they believe than others are of what they know," and so "if weakness of their belief is the reason why those who hold opinions will be more liable to act against their conviction than those who have knowledge, we shall find that there is no difference between knowledge and opinion." [EN1146b30]
Aristotle then distinguishes two forms of the verb 'to know', claiming that one may be said 'to know' both when he is and when he is not exercising the knowledge he has. However, it seems to me that one who is said to have knowledge which he conveniently fails to use when it comes into conflict with passion at the point of action does not really have 'knowledge' at all--at least not in the sense that Socrates was attempting to qualify the term [Meno]
In fact, if such a person exists, she might be said to be 'ignoring' her own so-called knowledge, and since 'ignore' is the root verb of the noun 'ignorance,' it seems to me that
what Aristotle is postulating, i.e. an active or voluntary form of ignorance, even temporary ignorance, only affirms Socrates'.
Not even by Aristotle's own account of the knowledge which is necessary for practical wisdom [phronesis] is such a thing possible. Phronesis requires both correct reason and correct desire, i.e. both knowledge and virtue, making akrasia, not a weakness of knowledge, but a simple lack of virtue. This seems to be a fair account of what would have to be true for one to actively ignore or, at any rate, fail to attend to the good one is assumed to 'know.' He himself claims that, when people are considered both practically wise and morally weak, it is cleverness they have, not phronesis. These differ in that, while both follow reason, only practical wisdom involves moral choice. Practical wisdom involves good character in which one both has and exercises knowledge, not like the morally weak, who may have knowledge, in a sense, but, as if drunk or asleep, ignore what they are said to know. This is the complaint Socrates had with the Sophists, who made claims to knowledge which was not, by the standards of practical wisdom, really knowledge at all, but mere opinion and cleverness of rhetoric. If practical reason is deliberating properly, then knowledge and desire will coincide in the way Socrates would predict. Thus, [l.c.] akrasia is prima facie impossible, even by Aristotle's own account.
But Aristotle has the learning process as his concern. He contends that the correct desire which must accompany correct reason and correct will to lead to correct action, must
thus be cultivated in children. He takes care to consider how children's development is all important in this respect, as did Plato, arguing that, since it is pleasure that makes us do wrong things, and pain that keeps us from doing right things, children's education should be such that they learn to feel pain and pleasure at the proper things. Thus they will learn to give and take honestly and justly, relative to their own resource, and it will give them pleasure to do so.
To understand this process better, consider a scenario that is, unfortunately, more common than we like to admit, i.e. the child who is enticed into sexual activity at a very young age by the manipulation of his or her natural pleasures, is made to feel responsible
for the abuse by reference to that pleasure, and has pain, often well-remembered, held out as the alternative to cooperating in those pleasures. This cycle, once in motion, intensifies the pleasure experienced by the child by contrasting it with the ever-present possibility of pain, and thus gratitude is thus likely to be the emotional reaction to sexual attention that is pleasurable, and self-disgust to be the reaction to that which is painful, as it is held out as one's own fault, the result of non-cooperation with one's abuser. The self that would be most desirable would be the tenacious/enduring one then, and the reward for this strength would be that the experience would seem pleasurable rather than painful. In a sense, the possibility of pain has amplified the pleasure for this person. Plato describes the experience of pleasure in the Republic, where he explains that those experienced in pain, moving toward comfort, think they're moving toward pleasure, when really they're only moving away from pain toward center, which is the state of rest, and the absence of either pleasure or pain. Only those who begin on balance are actually moving toward pleasure and not just away from pain.l This shows the relative nature of pleasure and pain, hence
1Republic--What does it mean to say "that only the pleasures of intelligence are entirely true and pure; all the others are illusory. "[Republic, tr. Coruford; p.309] "We speak of pain as the contrary of pleasure. Is there not also a neutral state between the two, in wltich the mind feels neither pleasure nor pain, but is as it were at rest from both?...youmust have heard people say, when they are ill, that nothing is pleasauter than to be well, though they never knew it until they were ill; and people in great pain will tell you that relief from paiu is the greatest pleasure in the world. There are many such cases in wltich you find the sufferer saying that the height of pleasure is not positive enjoyment, but the peace wltich comes with the absence of pain. ..in the same way, then, when enjoyment comes to an end, the cessation of pleasure will be paiufnl ...If so, that state of rest wltich, we said, lies between pleasure and pain, will be sometimes one, sometimes the other...both pleasure and pain are processes of change which take place in the mind ....whereas the neutral condition appeared to be a state of rest between the two ...it [cannot] be right to regard the absence of pain as pleasant or the absence of enjoyment as paiufui ...If follows, then, that the state of rest is not really either pleasant or painful, but only appears so in these cases by contrast. There is no soundness in these appearances; by the standard of true pleasure they are a sort of imposture. "[Republic, tr. Coruford; p.310] But relief from pain cannot be the same thing as pure pleasure, or cessation of pleasure the same as pure pain, for "consider pleasures wltich do not follow on pain. There are plenty of them; the best example is the pleasures of smell. These occur suddenly with extraordinary intensity; they are not preceded by any pain and they leave no pain beltind when they cease. "[Republic, tr. Cornford; p.310] And yet, "the great majority and the most intense of all the pleasures, so called, wltich reach the mind by way of the body ...and the pleasures and pains of anticipation wltich precede them ..." are of "the class of pleasures which do involve some sort of relief from pain. "[Reonblic, tr. Coruford pp.310-311]
"Here is an aualogy ...You think of the world as divided into au upper region and a lower, with a centre between them. Now if a person were transported from below to the centre, he would be sure to think he was moving 'upwards'; and when he was stationed at the centre and looking in the direction he had come from, he would imagine he was in the upper region, if he had never seen the part which is really above the centre. And supposing he were transported back again, he wonld think he was traveling 'downwards,' and this time he would be right. His mistake wonld be due to !tis ignorance of the real distinctions between the upper and lower regions and the centre. "[Republic, tr. Coruford; p.311] "You will not be surprised, then, if people whose ignorance of truth and reality gives them many unsound ideas, are similarly confused about pleasure and pain and the intermediate state. When the movement is towards a painful condition, they are right in believing that the pain is real; but when they are passing from a state of pain to the neutral point, they are the difficulty of discerning which pleasures and pains are absolute and objective among so many diverse appearances. Such conditioning forces are very strong. A child with such experience, turned adult, is certain to have a very hard time discerning true pleasures from false ones.
This also shows, I think, another way in which Socrates and Plato recognized that the process of learning about the proper weight of goods and bads is necessary to truly knowing anything. Despite Socrates, who might rightly claim that this person does not have true knowledge of pleasure if that so-called knowledge is not binding in action, Aristotle is also right, I think, to emphasize that experiential and emotional realignment is required for such knowledge, in the strong sense, as it is for full virtue.
In the end, even for Aristotle, it is only knowledge in the very weak sense which is ever overcome by passion. A morally weak person engages in a kind of reasoning in which the appetite for pleasure transforms the opinions, which cannot be called knowledge in any meaningful sense if so easily untethered. It is such untethered knowledge which Socrates called true belief, and that it can be so easily forgotten is the reason he insisted on the process of tethering in order for belief to qualify as knowledge. I think Aristotle's discussion of steadfastness bares this out. [EN115la25] The morally strong person "remains steadfast" to "true reason and right choice." Not as the obstinate, who only resemble moral strength for their resistance to change, but are not persuaded by argument, as the morally strong are, and are sometimes even persuaded, without argument, by emotion or pleasure.[ll51b12] The morally strong has knowledge which is stable, and does not give out to persuasion by emotion for having been convinced by rational argument which has been supported by experience.
I think that it is important to remember the sensitivity to change which Aristotle holds key when comparing his view of akrasia to that of Socrates. While Socrates seems fully aware of the need for tethering our opinions to tum them into knowledge, Aristotle examines the process of this moral development itself, interested as he is in 'becoming' one's best self. In this process of moral learning, only the already good person will always get it right. As Aristotle emphasizes, it is far too easy to fail to navigate through change, to fall into mistake with regard to pleasures and pains, and thus to miss the target of one's best and proper function, for the process to go unexamined. As Rorty notes, "the object of inquiry in the Ethics is, as [Aristotle] says, to determine how to become good and not merely to know, theoretically, what virtue is."[EN 1103b27-31][p.282, Rorty] Indeed, given Socrates' argument regarding the significance of the knowledge of goodness to an understanding of the forms in Republic Book VI, and his discussion of pleasure and happiness in Protagoras, and his discussion of virtue in Meno, I think Socrates would have encouraged this examination into the processes of practical reason.
2.a. Aristotle's account of akrasia.
According to Aristotle, a person can act against knowledge by failing to apply
knowledge of the universal premise to actions, which are particular. He claims that "the
final concrete term of his reasoning is not a universal, and does not seem to be an object of scientific knowledge in the same way that s universal is. "[EN1147b12] In such a case as firmly convinced that they are approaching the pleasure of complete satisfaction. In their ignorance of true pleasure, they are deceived by the contrast between pain and the absence of pain, just as one who had never seen white ntight be deceived between the contrast between black and gray...look at it this way. As hunger and thirst are states of bodily iruinition, which can be replenished by good, so ignorance and unwisdom in the son! are an emptiness to be filled by gaining understanding ...."fReoublic, tr. Cornford; p.311] Asks what has more reality, that which is connected with "the unchanging and immortal world of truth", or that of the world of "mortality and perpetual change?"
Rorty notes, one's "knowledge of general principles is at a different level of actualization from his habits of perception and his habits of action." [p.283, Rorty] Knowledge in the true sense is always universal, and cannot be overpowered by appetite, but can be misapplied to a particular case by the mistakes of sense perception.[footnote, p.l85, tr. Ostwald] Itis the final premise which determines action, so the morally weak person either does not have this premise, or has it "not in the sense of knowing it, but in the sense of uttering it as a drunken man may."[EN1147b10] Thus, a morally weak person can have 'knowledge' with one term nonspecific, but does not 'know' in the strong sense, i.e. with both terms fully understood.[EN1147al-10] And thus we are led to Socrates' own conclusion, but with a twist, that "moral weakness does not occur in the presence of knowledge in the strict sense, and it is sensory knowledge, not science, which is dragged about by emotion." [EN1147bl5]
By contrast with a practical syllogism in which moral knowledge is binding and thus realized in action (e.g. everything sweet ought to be tasted [uni versa! belief], and this thing before me is sweet [sense perception]), there is "the case we have been looking for, the defeat of reason in moral weakness."[EN1147a36] In this case, (according to some translations) a universal opinion [e.g. "forbidding us to taste things of this kind"] comes into conflict with another opinion (by Ostwald's translation, though apparently not in other's) [e.g. that everything sweet is pleasant], and a concrete perception [e.g. that this thing before me is sweet], and these, with an appetite for pleasure. Now we have a conflict of opinion and appetite, says Aristotle. But Socrates would have to say we still do not have a conflict between knowledge and desire, for the universal here is a true belief, at best.
In addition, the term 'having' has different senses, such that one can both have and not have knowledge, again, as one who is sleeping or drunk. The morally weak, according to Aristotle, are in the latter state. They can utter words that spring from knowledge of the good, and yet not really understand what they are saying, such as students who only yet know the words about a subject, but not its full meaning, or actors who can only speak the lines, but could not speak them from heart. "The subject must grow to be part of them, and that takes time."[EN1147a23] Again, this indicates the importance of tethering, a press which Socrates was all too aware of the need for...that is, if true knowledge was our en
3.a. Does Aristotle successfully show akrasia to be possible?
Yes, I think he does, though he is somewhat too unclear on how different premises
function in our process of acquiring knowledge, and perhaps this is for the best. Consider how his account applies to the example of the unfaithful lover, one who 'knows' that breaking trust is bad, that sex is often good, that some apparent bads outweigh some apparent goods, and that this is an opportunity for sex. One is tempted to conclude that the uncertain premise is both the universal and the premise, as it is their congruence which is being tested, since as it is as of yet uncertain which is true and which is untrue Such a onw doesn't seem to really know, in the strong sense, either the good of trust or the bad of broken trust, nor to know whether the good of this part encounter would outweigh the bad that is risked, nor even whether there is risk at all. Perhaps such a person also holds the premise that unfaithful encounters sometimes go undetected, and perhaps this weighs heavily in his or her reasoning. Or perhaps it is even this premise which is being tested, oft' repeated as it is in a culture which holds appearances of justice to be enough. There is thus some question of whether s/he actually has or 'knows' any of these premises. And so s/he may act in favor of the lesser good, not yet knowing, in the strong sense, that it actually is the lesser rather than the higher good. As both Socrates and Aristotle note, things appearing as relative as they do, it is often very difficult to tell exactly what is up and what is down, and the proper weights of goods. [Protagoras] The learning is the process of coming to 'have' these premises in a stable way, that is, to tether them. If knowledge were full, people would have less reason to test the premises they hold. But moral growth is a learning process, and moral certainty is the outcome of the diverse experience which tethers our beliefs and makes them knowledge. And in this process, we sometimes make mistakes about the proper weights of goods and bads, perhaps even voluntarily, if only to learn from them. One can be sure that the unfaithful lover would not forget so easily the next time, having learned from the mistake made once.
The thing is, this being deliberate, it is not moral weakness in the sense described at EN1151a-52a, where the acratic person's moral choice is said to be good...but then he acts against choice, "enacts all the right decrees and has laws of a high moral standard, but does not apply them,"[EN1152a20-24] which makes no choice in the sense of deliberation [prohairesis], but does make a choice in the sense of voluntary action [hekousia], such as one who merely lacks strength, that is, deliberates but "does not abide by the results.[EN1150b20]2 This is the one then who knows better, so to speak, and acts "against his choice and thinking" when he does not think he should pursue pleasure, but does it anyway. [EN1146b24] It is thus called "morally weak without qualification,"[EN1148all] i.e. vice, which Socrates and Aristotle would agree is a choice. The difference, as noted at EN1146b20, is not in the act, but in the manner in which the agent yeilds to temptation.
Thus, Aristotle can affirm Socrates at ENVII 3 1147b15, [3.c.] because his defense of akrasia does not violate the essence of Socrates' point, but only qualifies the forms that choice can take. I would be the first to defend Socrates in the claim that we always do what we know is best, but the 'learner' is not yet the 'knower', and so I think we and Aristotle have good reason to want to examine the possibility of akrasia in the process of tethering by which we learn our moral lessons, and thus turn true beliefs to knowledge. Socrates would say, I think, that this is all part of the measuring art, which is the proper function of both reason and passion.
Akrasia is a force at work in our reasoning, as it represents that state of doubt or uncertainty about the good by which we fall short of true understanding, 'knowledge,'in the strict sense. The pretense of knowledge by intellect alone is one I think neither, even Socrates, would ever make, as it discredits knowledge in the soul of human experience. It's true that Aristotle said that theoretical wisdom is the most high, but he also said and showed that it alone isn't enough. As Socrates emphasized, one has to have seen the good from enough views that it is stable, i.e. unforgettable, to be able to claim to 'know' it (and even then there is some question as to whether this is sufficiently humble for a good person to do). This is why dialogue is imperative in Socrates', and deliberation in Aristotle, i.e. because the objective world is considerably complex, and thus seen from an infinity of subjective perspectives. Thus, Socrates message has great import in this rich and diverse world which Aristotle undertook to appreciate and examine. I think perhaps he, like Socrates and Plato before him, saw himself as teaching the teachers how to teach, reminding them of the humility which is imperative if the complexity of appearances is to be taken seriously, and if we are to learn from all there is to study, and perhaps to 'know' what, among appearances, is untimately real. The claim that all we really know is how much we don't know [Apology] challenged Aristotle to discover how much of the rich subject matter of the world can indeed be 'known'...without arrogance, but with full appreciation and even--once tethered--objectively.
2 Moral weakness is unlike self-indulgence in this way--they 11are, in a way, concerned with the same pleasures and pains ...but not in the same way. Self-indulgent men pursue the excess by choice [prohairesis], but the morally weak do not exercise choice,"[EN1148a9-16, llSlall-13] However, remember, choice alone only makes for self-control or indulgence, not in itself for moral strength--it is not choice, per se, but right choice which is praiseworthy and makes for moral strength. When one pursues and avoids the excesses of pleasure and pains, "and does so not by choice but against his choice and thinking," he is called "morally weak without qualification. "[EN1148all]
There seems no reason to think that Socrates would not have applauded Aristotle's considerable efforts. Yet Aristotle himself wants to refute the idea, held by some interpretations of Socratic doctrine, that intellectual understanding alone is enough to change behavior--a position he attributes to those Socratics, rightly or wrongly--and wants to assert the role of emotion and habituation in learning and relearning. There can be no denying this role, I think. But it seems important to note that this does not seem to be what Socrates had in mind when he asserted that real 'knowledge' entails action. Rather, I think Socrates would have been in full agreement with Aristotle on the point that true understanding requires this alignment of different ways of knowing, different points of view come of different experience in tethering. Socrates point is not, I think, as Aristotle argues against, that intellectual understanding alone will change behavior, but only that intellectual understanding which does not change behavior is not true understanding at all- not knowledge, but only true belief. He was trying to show the Sophists how it followed that they did not really know what they pretended to know if it did not change their behavior.. .if there was this tension between reason and emotion. Indeed, truly knowing integrates these, such that one desires what one knows to be good, and if one does not desire it enought to keep from being swayed by passion or emotion from this good, then one does not actually 'know' its true good, i.e. one does not 'know' what one claims to 'know,' though one may clearly have a belief--and it may even be a true belief--but again, knowledge, in the strong sense, requires that true belief be tethered, i.e..[Meno] And it could be argued that this is just what is accomplished by Aristotle's process of habituation, i.e. the acquiring of perspective by the lessons of experience which can give us insight into our beliefs and thus prove them to be or not to be knowledge.
This is similar in a significant way to Aristotle's conception of habituation, which does not deny the importance of intellectual understanding, certainly, but only adds to it explicitly what Socrates implicitly assumed--that experience, including key intellectual experiences, give us reasons to believe, rightly or wrongly, truly or falsely, and this is a significant part of learning, the part which makes action automatically virtuous, as opposed to having to work against desire, which can go against our best interest when confused about the good, but never when the good is truly known. Only such a one really gets it right.
Thus, Aristotle is absolutely right, I think Socrates would have to say, to note that
character change needs more than mere intellectual understanding, for the emotions and desires follow experience which tethers, or proves a true belief to be knowledge, and a
false belief to be ignorance. And both are key to happiness, which is, they agree, dependent on genuine virtue, i.e. having one's emotions in line w/right reason, and thus desiring to do what is right. If one truly knows, that is, understands, that some action would be good for him or her, then they will truly desire to act in accordance with this knowledge. When one understands that only being good leads to being happy (again, in the truest sense of the word), then there is no reason for doing otherwise. Weakness of will is, I think, only misunderstanding, and understanding does require tethering along with intellectual understanding.
A Zen Buddhist might say that knowing intellectually without the right desire is
really only taking someone else's word for it, and not learning it first hand, experiencing it fully. We can see the difference in Aristotle's discussion of the difference between the mere appearance of virtue vs. full virtue, as (kataton orthon logon differs from metaton orthon logon). While the former produces the right actions, actions in keeping with virtuous ends, it does so for reasons that don't necessarily correspond with the reasons of a fully virtuous person, who, in Aristotle's terms, has both the practical and theoretical knowledge, both the desire and the rational understanding. For Socrates, both intellectual and experiential evidence affords new insight, new perspective. Doing the right thing for the right reason automatically involves having the right desire for both Aristotle and Socrates.
So, if Aristotle thinks he's arguing against Socrates, taking Socrates to be claiming intellectual knowing is enough to change behavior, again, I think Socrates is not, and
claiming only that knowledge so-called as that which does not bind behavior (e.g. 'wisdom' that does not lead to 'courage') is not really 'knowledge' at all, even if we call it that. We may 'believe' something, and it may be true, but true knowledge is tethered, and thus stable, unforgettable, and trustworthy, and thus binding in practical reason on behavior, and in this different than true belief, which is uncertain. Hence, the unity of the virtues, as ail virtues are the same in that they involve this knowledge of goods and bads, and thus, having any one of them entails having ail the others in the proper time and place. Such that the truly wise cannot help but be truly brave when the opportunity for courage presents itself, and those who are less than courageous when the times comes to prove it are, admit it our not, less than wise. It stands to reason. If we can agree that everyone does desire what is good for themselves, whatever that means, then it would follow that everyone thus desires to understand what is good for them, and thus 'know' why one does as one does. To reach understanding, and then to deny it is, we must admit, to fail to actual!y understand.
True wisdom regarding the proper weights of goods and bads would bind us to the good course, and desire would see to it once true understanding is tethered. In other words,
really knowing something, i.e. "having" it in the strong sense of attending to it when it is relevant, entails behaving according to it, and anything less is pretending to 'know' what one does not actually 'understand'. If one really understood, one would follow the right desires for the right reasons, i.e. because it is good. And yes, in one's self-interest too, if only serendipitously. Hence, Socratic egoism.
I think Socrates is right then to claim that to 'know' is to 'desire' and to fail to desire is to not really 'know'. What value is there in blurring this distinction which he tried
so hard to observe? And I can't help but think that Aristotle, were he to have thought it through further than to settle for the lesser sense of 'to know', would have agreed that knowledge so easily forgotten or voluntarily ignored is not really knowledge in a meaningful sense. Despite what one calls the state of such understanding, it is not 'understanding' in the full sense, and Socrates would have us reserve the term 'knowledge' to express this ail-things-considered form, and call lesser forms 'beliefs' and 'opinions'. Because we can be wrong about what is good, and even when we are right about it, we can forget, sometimes voluntarily. Everyone desires the good, but it appears differently to each of us, and it is up to us to reconcile our perspective with others in order that reason can tether our beliefs and thus turn them into the kind of knowledge which holds in action, i.e. are not so easily forgotten or ignored when it comes time to act. As Aristotle rightly notes, many people who are clearly wrong in their beliefs nonetheless insist that what they have is knowledge--and yet, this obstinance does not make it the case. We can call it whatever we like, but anyone who thinks it all the way through would agree that, while such untethered belief may be true, it is not yet true 'knowledge', that is, not fully understood if it is not fully examined. In fact, in Socratic terms, should we ever be so arrogant as to claim to actually have knowledge, as if forgetting how much there is to the whole of truth and how little of it we actually can have, even in principle, we would inhibit the ongoing proces of learning in assuming we've already reached the end.
In the end, it seems to me quite right that it is our actions which prove what we actually know. And whatever we call it, such wisdom is courage is temperance is justice when it comes down to testing the stability of our so-called knowledge.