aristotle on pleasure and the worst form of akrasia

PLEASURE AND AKRASIA 255

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 5: 255–270, 2002. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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ARISTOTLE ON PLEASURE AND THE WORST FORM OFAKRASIA

ABSTRACT. The focus of this paper is Aristotle’s solution to the problem inherited fromSocrates: How could a man fail to restrain himself when he believes that what he desiresis wrong? In NE 7 Aristotle attempts to reconcile the Socratic denial of akrasia with thecommonly held opinion that people act in ways they know to be bad, even when it is intheir power to act otherwise. This project turns out to be largely successful, for whatAristotle shows us is that if we distinguish between two ways of having knowledge (‘po-tentially’ and ‘actually’), the Socratic thesis can effectively account for a wide range ofcases (collectively referred to here as ‘drunk-akrasia’) in which an agent acts contrary tohis general knowledge of the Good, yet can still be said to ‘know’ in the qualified sensethat his actions are wrong. However, Book 7 also shows that the Socratic account of akrasiacannot take us any farther than drunk-akrasia, for unlike drunk-akrasia, genuine akrasiacannot be reduced to a failure of knowledge. This agent knows in the unqualified sensethat his actions are wrong. The starting-point of my argument is that Aristotle’s explana-tion of genuine akrasia requires a different solution than the one found in NE 7 whichrelies on the distinction between qualified and unqualified ‘knowing’: genuinely akraticbehaviour is due to the absence of an internal conflict that a desire for the ‘proper’ pleas-ures of temperance would create if he could experience them.

KEY WORDS: akrasia, Aristotle, incontinence, moral weakness, Nicomachean Ethics,Plato’s Protagoras, pleasure, Socrates, virtue, weakness of will

ABBREVIATIONS: NE – Nicomachean Ethics; EE – Eudemian Ethics; DA = De Anima

The topic of this paper is the problem of moral weakness, what the An-cient Greeks called akrasia.1 Jonathan Lear (1991, p. 175) defines akrasiaas a moral failure in which an agent “decides that a certain course of ac-tion would be best for him and then acts against his own judgement”. Learsays that what makes this such an interesting philosophical puzzle is thatit is not clear how akrasia is even possible. Philosophy’s first major en-counter with akrasia can be traced back to Plato’s Protagoras. Towardsthe end of the dialogue, Socrates turns to the commonly held belief thatpeople, knowing the bad to be bad, will sometimes choose it anyway eventhough it is possible for them to choose otherwise. The best explanationthat Socrates could find for akrasia came from the hedonists who argued

1The Greek akrasia resists translation into English, so I will retain the Greek through-out.

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that moral agents are driven by pleasure and that sometimes the desire forit is so powerful that it can lead us to act against our better judgement. Yet,this meant that knowledge and rationality were not the supreme govern-ing principles in a moral agent, for the hedonists’ account portrayed know-ledge as a slave being dragged around by passion. Socrates, however,believed in the sovereignty of knowledge and denied the possibility ofgenuine akrasia altogether. For Socrates, the virtues were forms of know-ledge, and temperance was knowing how to choose between pleasures andpains. No one does wrong willingly, he famously argued, but only throughignorance of what is truly good for a person: “[Knowledge] is a fine andnoble thing capable of governing a man, and whoever recognises what isgood and bad will never be mastered by pleasure and compelled to actotherwise than knowledge dictates” (p. 352c).

The main focus of this paper is Aristotle’s solution to the problem ofakrasia. Interpretations of Aristotle’s solution have traditionally fallen intotwo main camps: those that believe he reduces all akrasia to some form ofculpable ignorance; and those that believe he allows for genuine cases ofakrasia in which the agent acts against full knowledge.2 One who takes theformer line of interpretation might come to see Aristotle as ultimatelyholding a weaker version of the Socratic thesis by allowing agents to actcontrary to their knowledge of what virtue requires in general while stilldenying, along with Socrates, the possibility of acting contrary to whatdeliberation has shown to be the best course of action in the particularsituation.3 Thus, for example, a man may have the general knowledge thatadultery is wrong, but fail to realise that the woman he desires is his neigh-bour’s wife. If the man acts on this desire, he can still be said to ‘know’ in aqualified sense that his behaviour is wrong without being aware of it at thetime of action. A person who acts akratically in this sense, Aristotle says,has knowledge “like the man asleep, mad, or drunk” (1047a13). Accordingly,we can refer to this form of moral weakness as ‘drunk-akrasia’.4

2Aristotle distinguishes two ways in which a person can be said to ‘know’ something(NE 2.7, 1046b31–5; DA 2.1, 412a10–11, a23–8). One can have knowledge without us-ing it (a state), or one can be actually using that knowledge (an activity). I use ‘full’ know-ledge (or having knowledge in the strict sense) in the second sense. I will return to thisdistiction further below.

3Robinson, p. 88.4I will eventually distinguish drunk- and genuine akrasia according to the two ways

the agent ‘knows’ his actions are wrong (see note 2 above). Drunk-akrasia correspondsto the first sense of having knowledge, viz. he has the knowledge but is not actually re-flecting on it at the time of action. When speaking of moral weakness in general I willsimply use ‘akrasia’.


The failure to see Aristotle’s solution as an improvement over the So-cratic thesis, however, is a consequence of limiting the scope of that solu-tion to NE 7. While it is true that Aristotle only provides a solution to casesof drunk-akrasia in Book 7, I will argue that the necessary means for re-constructing a solution to genuine cases of moral weakness (acting againstfull knowledge) can be found in his discussion of virtue as a whole. More-over, I will argue that other interpretations of Aristotle’s solution that doallow for genuine akratic behaviour – those that do not reduce all akrasiato ignorance – remain unsatisfying for the sole reason that they lead to atrivial distinction between genuine akrasia and self-control (enkrateia). Thepurpose of this paper is to offer a new interpretation of Aristotle’s solu-tion that allows for genuine akratic behaviour while avoiding the conse-quences associated with more traditional interpretations. The starting pointof my argument is the claim that Aristotle’s explanation of genuine akrasiarequires a different solution than the one found in NE 7 which relies onthe distinction between qualified and unqualified ‘knowing’. Thus, if thereis a solution to be found, it must be developed from things Aristotle saysoutside of NE 7. What I will argue is that for Aristotle genuinely akraticbehaviour is due to the absence of an internal conflict that a desire for theproper pleasures of temperance would create if the akratic person couldexperience them. Before we get to that solution, however, we first need totake a brief look at the four states of character relevant to our discus-sion: temperance (sôphrosunê), self-indulgence (akolasia), self-control(enkrateia), and moral weakness (akrasia).

In NE 2 Aristotle defines virtue (aretê) as a state of character concernedwith choice, lying in a mean (a mean relative to us) which is defined bya rational principle and determined by the person of practical wisdom(1107a1–5). Moreover, virtue is situated between two vices, a state of char-acter tending towards excess and one tending towards deficiency. Our in-terest lies in the sphere of pleasure, specifically, the pleasures of food, drink,and sex. The virtue concerned with these bodily pleasures is temperance.Temperance is a state of character that disposes a person to desire the rightamount of bodily pleasures and to the right degree and at the right times(1119b17–19). Self-indulgence, on the other hand, is the state of charac-ter lying in excess of the mean while the state of character that falls shortof temperance is a sort of insensitivity to pleasure, what we tend to call‘stoicism’. The stoic is the one who does not desire the pleasures of food,drink, and sex at all and who remains unaffected by them to the point whereit is harmful to his well-being. Thus, it is not surprising to find that Aris-totle views the inability to enjoy these pleasures as a vice, a defect of char-acter, though one that is relatively rare (1107b7).

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While I will examine Aristotle’s theory of pleasure in more detail be-low, it is important to note that for Aristotle it is not the case that all bodilypleasures are bad and should be avoided. The affections of hunger andsexual appetite are both natural desires that promote our (biological) well-being. So, some bodily pleasures are necessary and thus worthy of rationalchoice, since they contribute to the health and overall condition of an in-dividual. Thus, Aristotle says, as long as they are not hindrances to theseends or contrary to what is noble, it is acceptable to pursue them (NE 3.11,1119a16–19). It follows that merely pursuing bodily pleasures is not whatmakes a person self-indulgent, since even the virtuous person pursues them.The self-indulgent man is the hedonist who neglects these conditions (a20–22) and chooses pleasure above all else (a1). For Aristotle, a person is calledself-indulgent because he loves pleasures more than they are worth anddelights in them to excess and contrary to what is noble: “He is the onewho pursues the excesses of pleasant things, or pursues to excess thosepleasure which are deemed necessary, and he does so by choice and fortheir own sake and not at all for the sake of any result distinct from them”(NE 7.7, 1150a19–22). Thus, self-indulgence involves choosing pleasureas an end in itself and not simply as a means to some further end such ashealth or well-being. The temperate person, on the other hand, does notfind the self-indulgent man’s activities pleasant. She fails to see the pleas-ures derived from unworthy sources as objects of desire to the point whereshe is actually repulsed by them (1119a12–14). Because the temperate per-son only desires in accordance with reason, she does not have to rely onher knowledge of what temperance requires in the particular situation topoint her towards virtue.5 Her appetites are already harmonised with herrational principle and thus act as a beacon for virtuous activity: “For thenoble is the mark at which both [her appetite and her intellect] aim”; andshe craves only the things she ought, as she ought, and when she ought,“and this is as reason directs” (1119b14–16; cf. NE 6.2).

Most of us, however, do experience the desire for the pleasures associ-ated with self-indulgence from time to time. We might crave a greasy burgerwhen we know that it is bad for our heart, or we might desire our neigh-bour’s wife though we know adultery is wrong. Sometimes these desiresare so strong that they overstrain human nature, so much so that most ofus cannot withstand them. At other times, the temptation for pleasure isweak, and most of us easily restrain our appetite (1150a11). What is im-portant is that in the former case, when our appetite overwhelms us to the

5cf. Rorty, p. 274. Rorty says this of the practically wise man, but it equally holds forthe temperate man since the former will have the virtue of temperance.


point where we yield to it contrary to our better judgement, Aristotle saysthat we are not blamed for our actions since the desire for pleasure wasstronger than any normal person could resist (1110a25). It is here that theboundary between self-control (enkrateia) and moral weakness (akrasia)is defined. Unlike the temperate person, the pleasures associated with self-indulgence are equally tempting to both the self-controlled person and theakratic person. Of these two agents, the former (the enkratês) has a stateof character that disposes her to routinely control her appetite and act inaccordance with the dictates of reason. She is praised for her characterbecause she refuses to yield even to those desires that overstrain humannature.6

The akratic person, on the other hand, is one who is incapable of re-straining his appetite and yields even to those weak desires that most of useffortlessly resist. His state of character is such that he is routinely defeatedby passion and always follows his appetite contrary to what is noble (kalon).However, Aristotle warns that akrasia is not to be considered simply as adisposition to pursue bodily pleasures in excess of the mean, for in thatcase his condition would merely be one of self-indulgence (1146b20–22).The self-indulgent man pursues the excess of bodily pleasures because heis convinced that he ought to pursue them (or at least that it is not wrongto do so).7 But the akratic man truly believes that temperance is part of thegood life and understands that being temperate requires abstaining fromover-indulgence. Thus, what truly separates the akratic man from the self-indulgent man is that the former has the right ends: he knows what is vir-tuous (pursuing the right amount of pleasure and abstaining from excess)and why it is virtuous (because temperance is good for a person insofar asits end is the overall health and well-being of the agent). The akratic per-son, Aristotle says, is simply “a man whom passion masters so that he doesnot act according to the right rule (orthos logos), but it does not masterhim to the extent where he is ready to believe that he ought to pursue suchpleasures without reservation” (1151a20–25).8

6The self-controlled person’s character, however, is not one of temperance (sôphrosunê)because the temperate person only desires in accordance with reason. Thus, while bothstates of character dispose an agent to act in identical ways (both act in accordance witha rational principle), temperance doesn’t involve a desire for the excess of pleasant things,and so there is nothing to ‘control’ (kratein).

7NE 1146b22–23, 1118a1 ff., 1150b29 ff. Cf. Rorty, p. 272: “He is self-indulgent as amatter of principle”.

8There are two other states of character similar to akrasia and enkrateia – viz., malakia(softness of character) and karteria (moral endurance) – but concern resistance to painrather than pleasure (NE 7.7).

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DRUNK-AKRASIA VERSUS GENUINE AKRASIA

According to Aristotle, when we say that the akratic man acts knowingwhat he does is wrong, we must understand the word ‘knowing’ here intwo ways: “since we use the word ‘know’ in two senses (for both the manwho has knowledge but is not using it and he who is using it are said toknow), it will make all the difference whether, when a man does what heknows he should not, he has the knowledge but is not exercising it, or [hasthe knowledge and] is exercising it; for the latter seems strange” (1146b31–34). What Aristotle has in mind here is the following. As a result of propermoral training, an agent will have the capacity to exercise the kind of know-ledge required for making informed moral decisions. Once she has acquiredthis capacity the agent can be said to know what is expressed by her moralknowledge, but only in a qualified sense. She is said to possess knowledgeas a first-actuality (entelekheia hê prôtê), a potentiality to apply that know-ledge to particular situations. In this state, the agent is said to know that Xis wrong in the sense that the sleeping geometer can be said to know theaxioms of geometry, namely in the qualified sense of having knowledgebut not using it. Thus, the other sense of ‘knowing’ refers to actually us-ing that knowledge. In this state the agent’s moral knowledge is fully ac-tualised, and we say that she knows what is expressed by that knowledgein the unqualified sense. Thus, we can say that an agent knows that X iswrong in the unqualified sense when she is actually thinking, ‘X is wrong’,that is, when she is using her knowledge to make informed moral deci-sions about the particular situation.

With this distinction in hand we can divide akrasia into drunk-akrasiaand genuine akrasia. These two forms of akrasia are distinguished fromone another at the cognitive level by the fact that the drunk-akratic actsknowing what he does is wrong only in the qualified sense of having know-ledge but not using it. This person, Aristotle says, does not know his ac-tions wrong “in the sense of one who consciously exercises his knowledge,but only as a man asleep or drunk can be said to know something”. More-over, Aristotle continues, “although he errs willingly (for he knows in asense both what he is doing and what end he is aiming at), he is not a badman, for his choice is sound, so that he is only half-bad” (1152a14–18).(By saying the akratic’s ‘choice’ is sound, Aristotle means his choice ofhis choice of ends, i.e. which types of actions he ought to pursue, not whichparticular action he ought to pursue – this is what he is said to know onlyin a qualified sense). While not literally drunk, Aristotle characterises thisagent as a sort of ‘pleasureaholic’ who “gets drunk on little wine” (1151a1–3). He is the type of person who is easily intoxicated by thoughts of bod-


ily pleasures to the point where he temporarily loses the capacity to exer-cise his moral knowledge. What saves the drunk-akratic from being a badman (kakos) is that his problem is temporary and curable; he would nothave acted that way had he been ‘sober’. When not under the influence ofpassion, the drunk-akratic is cognitively stable and capable of using hisknowledge to make sound moral judgements in order to determine (andthus, pursue) the best course of action in the current situation.9

Rorty (1980, p. 273) offers perhaps the best summary of Aristotle’saccount of this kind of akrasia and the various types of ignorance involved:

Sometimes the [akratic man] acts impulsively: he can fail to think about whether thesituation before him falls under his general principles about what is good (1150b–19)[sic]. Or if he does think about what he is doing, he does not see the particular caseproperly: he misperceives or misdescribes what is before him. Or even if he gets itright, he can fail to connect it with his general principles, fail to see the import of hisknowledge. He then fails to draw the right conclusion about what to do, either mak-ing the wrong decision or failing to act from the decision implicit in his beliefs.

All forms of drunk-akrasia, then, can be accounted for in terms of an in-tellectual error, a failure to deliberate correctly as the result of culpableignorance induced by passion (1147a1–b18; cf. NE 3.5). However, the samecannot be said for the genuinely akratic man. This agent acts in the pres-ence of full knowledge; he knows in the unqualified sense that what hedoes is wrong and yet does it anyway. This is what makes genuine akrasiasuch a hard problem: it is not an intellectual error. The genuinely akraticman is not ignorant of the fact that his desires are wrong when he makeshis decision to act on them, and so his failure is not knowledge based. Toput this another way, the entire time he is engaged with the object of hisdesire, the genuinely akratic man is thinking to himself, “I know what Iam doing here is wrong, and I really should not be doing this”, and he trulybelieves it (see EE 1224b16–17 and below). Thus, to use Aristotle’s drunk-enness analogy, the problem of genuine akrasia requires a different solu-tion than the one given for drunk-akrasia in NE 7 precisely because theagent is ‘sober’ when he acts.

On the one hand, the genuinely akratic man is cognitively indistinguish-able from the person of self-control (the enkratês): both agents judge ab-

9Aristotle’s explanation for why drunk-akrasia is voluntary (and thus blameworthy)is discussed in NE 3 (esp. 1113b14–1114a30). While I don’t have room to rehearse thataccount, Aristotle drunk-akrasia is voluntary because he was responsible for becomingthe type of person who is defeated by passion contrary to what is noble (just as the alco-holic is responsible for becoming an alcoholic); once he is akratic his actions are consid-ered voluntary (and thus blameworthy).

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stinence to be the best course of action in the particular situation, and botharrive at this judgement as a result of correct deliberation (unlike the drunk-akratic who fails to deliberate properly and so acts through ignorance).Thus, the genuine akratic and the person who exhibits self-control cannotbe distinguished in terms of their beliefs. On the other hand, the genuinelyakratic man is behaviourally indistinguishable from the self-indulgent man:both agents deliberately pursue the excess of pleasure contrary to the rightrule. In fact, the only difference between the genuinely akratic man and theself-indulgent man is that the former at least knows (in the unqualified sense)that his present appetites are contrary to what is noble and should be re-strained. Yet, as we shall see, such knowledge is of no use to him. The prob-lem of genuine akrasia thus arises from the fact that the genuinely akraticman thinks like the self-controlled person, but then for some reason acts likethe self-indulgent person. It is clear, then, that an adequate solution to thisproblem must not only explain why the genuinely akratic man, after delib-erating, fails to stand by his conclusion (why knowledge is of no use to him)but also why the person who exhibits self-control under the same conditionsmanages to abide by her conclusion (why knowledge is of use to her).

ARISTOTLE’S THEORY OF PLEASURE

To appreciate the error involved in genuine akrasia, it will be necessary todiscuss the role of pleasure in Aristotle’s analysis of virtue. The impor-tance of pleasure goes to the very core of Aristotle’s Ethics: “Because wemeasure even our actions (and some of us more than others) by the rule ofpleasure and pain, our whole study must be concerned with these; for tofeel pleasure and pain rightly and wrongly has no small effect on our ac-tions” (1105a4–7; cf. 1104b10–12). Aristotle divides pleasure into twokinds: alien pleasures (allotriai hêdonai) and proper pleasures (oikeiaihêdonai). Up to this point I have been discussing pleasure solely in termsof those associated with self-indulgence, the alien pleasures of temperance,those bodily pleasures that arise contrary to the right rule. Indulging in alienpleasure will thus include (1) delighting in bodily pleasures derived froman unworthy source (e.g. adultery) and (2) delighting in the amount ofnecessary bodily pleasure in excess of the mean (e.g. if the proper amountof wine to enjoy at a dinner party is two glasses, and a person indulges infive, then the alien pleasure will be the pleasure derived from those threeextra glasses).Aristotle’s theory of pleasure, as it pertains to virtue, contains two majortheses: the negative thesis expressed in NE 7 and the positive thesis devel-


oped in detail in NE 10. Following up on various warnings issued againstthe dangers of measuring one’s actions too much by the rule of pleasure,10

Aristotle formulates his negative thesis according to which alien pleasuresimpede or destroy the activity of virtue (NE 7.13). If one were to take thisas Aristotle’s final account of pleasure, then one might be led to concludethat in the case of genuine akrasia, even though the agent knows whichcourse of action to take, he is somehow prevented from acting on thisknowledge by a strong desires for alien pleasure. However, this simply endsup trading in one problem for another, since these same alien pleasureswill be equally tempting to the person who exhibits self-control in the samesituation.11 In that case we are left with the problem of explaining how isit that the latter agent manages to restrain her appetite and act in accord-ance with her knowledge while the former (the genuinely akratic person)does not.12

Since the two agents are identical in terms of their knowledge (they bothknow in the unqualified sense that they ought to resist the temptation foralien pleasure), the only explanation for why a strong desire for alien pleas-ures does not prevent the self-controlled person from acting on her know-ledge would be to say that she has the type of character that disposes herto do so. This explanation would trivialise the distinction between genu-ine akrasia and self-control (enkrateia) and reduce all states of characterto mere descriptive labels for cataloguing different moral agents (e.g. self-control is a state of character that disposes an agent to be self-controlledwhile akrasia is a state of character that disposes an agent to act akratically).As a result, Aristotle’s explanation of moral phenomena becomes hope-lessly question begging.

I think Aristotle’s solution to the hard problem of akrasia is more il-luminating than this. I think that we can find in the Ethics an answer to thequestion of why some people, but not others, after deliberating, fail to standby their conclusion, and why some people who judge rightly act enkraticallyand follow reason while others act akratically and follow appetite. And Ithink we find this answer in Aristotle’s theory of proper pleasures.

10e.g. 1104b10–b33, 1105a7–b7, 1118a20, 1119a15, b5–10.11This seems to be entailed by Rorty’s view (e.g. p. 274).12This consequence will follow whether we assume that both agents desire the proper

and alien pleasure simultaneously (i.e. they both suffer from an internal conflict of de-sires) or that both desire the alien pleasure only (neither desires rightly). The former viewcan be found, either explicitly or implicitly, in Sullivan (1977), Wiggins (1978–1979),Dahl (1984), and (possibly) Burnyeat (1980). The latter is held by Annas (1980), Urmson(1980), and (possibly) Rorty (1980).

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In addition to the negative thesis of NE 7 discussed above (the thesisthat alien pleasures impede the activity of virtue), Aristotle offers a posi-tive account in NE 10 which takes pleasures to differ in kind according tothe moral worth of the activities they complete:

Since activities differ in moral value, and some are worthy to be chosen, others to beavoided, and others neutral, the same will also be true of their pleasures; for each ac-tivity has its proper pleasure. The proper pleasure of a worthy activity is a fine andnoble thing, and that proper to an unworthy activity is base; for desires for noble thingsare praised and desires for base things are blamed. (1175b25–29)

Together Aristotle’s two theses yield a theory of pleasure according towhich activities are intensified – judged with greater precision, made moreenduring, and made morally better – when accompanied by their properpleasures and destroyed when hindered by their alien ones:

The proper pleasure intensifies its activity, since each class of things is better judged,and with better accuracy, by those who engage in the activity with pleasure that makeprogress in [performing] their proper function because they enjoy it. For example, itis those who enjoy geometrical thinking that become proficient in it and grasp itsvarious problems better, and similarly those who take pleasure in music or building,and so on.

A still clearer proof [that pleasures differ in kind] may be drawn from the fact thatactivities are impeded by pleasures arising from other activities. . . . For instance, thelovers of flute-playing are incapable of attending to arguments when they overhearsomeone playing the flute, because they enjoy flute music more than the activity athand, so that the pleasures connected with flute playing destroy the activity concernedwith argument. (1175a28–1175b8, emphasis added)

The important point here is that a person will perform their proper func-tion better if they enjoy it. And since the proper function of a rational agentis an activity of reason in accordance with virtue (1097b23–1098a18), itwill be those people who take pleasure in virtuous activities that are mostsuccessful at being virtuous.

With this in mind, I want to suggest that finding Aristotle’s solution theproblem of genuine akrasia requires a shift in our explanatory strategy awayfrom what it is in the case of akrasia that prevents the agent from actingon his knowledge towards what it is in the case of enkrateia that gives herthe strength to act on hers. Whence, according to Aristotle, does the enkratêsderive the power to restrain her appetite and stand fast against the tempta-tion for alien pleasure?

We find our answer in EE 2. There Aristotle tells us that the source ofthe self-controlled person’s power to restrain her appetite is her experi-


ence with the proper pleasure of temperance, the pleasure she takes inabstaining from over-indulgence and acting in accordance with her tem-perate ends:

For the person of self-control feels pain now in acting against her appetite, but has thepleasure of hope, i.e. the hope that she will be presently benefited [by abstaining], oreven the pleasure of actually being at present benefited because she ishealthy.13 (1224b15–16)

The proper end of the activity of temperance is the overall health and well-being of the agent, and so the proper pleasure of temperance is the pleas-ure derived from acting in accordance with this end, i.e. from abstainingfrom over-indulgence with a view to health (cf. NE 1104b5, 1153a35). Thisis precisely the pleasure that the self-controlled person is said to experi-ence when she refuses to yield to her passions contrary to the right rule;the hope of realising her temperate ends (being healthy) is a source of pleas-ure for her. As such, while the self-controlled person is pulled towards theimmediate pleasure by her strong appetite, she will also feel an emotionalpull towards the activity of temperance.

If this is right, if Aristotle thinks the source of the self-controlled per-son’s ability to restrain her appetite is an opposing desire for the pleasuresassociated with being temperate, then he should equally hold that the sourceof the genuinely akratic man’s inability to restrain his appetite should bethe lack of an opposing desire for those same pleasures. And this is ex-actly what we find. Aristotle continues the EE passage:

On the other hand, the akratic man is pleased at securing through his akratic behav-iour the object of his desire, but he has the pain of expectation, thinking that what heis doing is wrong.14 (b16–17)

There is no question that the agent Aristotle is talking about here is thegenuinely akratic man, for the pain he feels arises from thinking that he isdoing wrong. This man knows in the unqualified sense that he should notfollow his appetite and yet does it anyway. More importantly, what is miss-

13Although the subject in the Greek is masculine, I use the English ‘she’ to preserveconsistency.

14Note that the akratic man does suffer from one kind of internal conflict of desireshere, namely a conflict between his desire for pleasure and his desire to avoid pain (thepain of knowing he is acting against his conception of the good life). However, this inter-nal conflict is not explanatory since the desire to avoid the pain that attends his thought,“I should restrain my appetite”, would not explain why he follows it. Moreover, resist-ing pain would be malakia, not akrasia (see note 8 above).

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ing from his emotional response to this situation is the proper pleasure oftemperance, the pleasure that should attend his knowledge that abstainingfrom over-indulgence will benefit him (it will help him realise his chosenends). This, I believe, is the key to Aristotle’s solution to the problem ofgenuine akrasia: the reason the genuinely akratic man acts as he knows heshould not is that he is not prevented from following his appetite by aninternal conflict that the desire for the proper pleasure of temperance wouldcreate if he could experience it (cf. EE 1225b25 and Physics 247a9–15).In other words, even though the genuinely akratic man knows (in the un-qualified sense) that following his appetite is wrong, because he does notexperience an emotional pull towards the activity of temperance there isno opposing force to restrain him.15 This, then, is why, after deliberating,the genuinely akratic man fails to stand by his conclusion:

. . . to the akratic man, knowledge brings no profit; but to those who desire and act inaccordance with a rational principle, knowledge about such matters will be of greatbenefit. (NE 1.3, 1095a9, Ross trans.)

Even when reason issues a command and thought says to pursue or avoid something,movement does not follow, for action is only prompted by desire (epithumian), just asin the case of akratic. (DA 3.9, 433a1–4)

As I have said, it is outside the pages of NE 7 that Aristotle’s position ongenuine akrasia is to be found.

The error of genuine akrasia can ultimately be traced to uneven or in-complete moral training.16 For Aristotle, moral training is not simply amatter of blindly internalising a set of rules of conduct, but learning to takepleasure in acting in accordance with those rules. For “to enjoy the thingswe ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on moralexcellence” (NE 1172a22–24; cf. 1104b4 ff., 1179b30). The genuinelyakratic man knows that temperance is the best course of action in the presentcase, he just hasn’t learned how to enjoy it. Yet, this is not an intellectualerror, it is not the result of ignorance, for there is no further piece of know-ledge that he can acquire that will allow him to see temperance as a pleas-urable activity. Unlike the akratic man who knows his actions are wrongonly in the qualified sense (i.e. the one who has knowledge “like the manasleep, mad, or drunk”), the genuinely akratic man’s condition cannot becured by any further deliberation. It is for this very reason that Aristotle’s

15cf. 1175a28–1175b8 translated above.16See Burnyeat (1980) on this point.


explicit solution to drunk-akrasia and “the explanation of how the akraticman’s ignorance is dissolved and [how] he returns to a state of knowledge”(1147b6–20) does not extend to genuine cases of moral weakness.

SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS

In NE 7 Aristotle attempts to reconcile the Socratic denial of akrasia withthe commonly held opinion (endoxa) that people sometimes act in waysthey know to be bad even when it is in their power to act otherwise. Thisproject turns out to be largely successful. For what Aristotle shows us thereis that if we distinguish between potential and actual knowledge, then theSocratic thesis can effectively account for a wide range of cases (collec-tively referred to as ‘drunk-akrasia’) in which an agent acts contrary to hisgeneral knowledge of the Good, yet can still be said to ‘know’ in the quali-fied sense that his actions are wrong. However, what Book 7 also shows isthat the Socratic account of akrasia cannot take us any farther than drunk-akrasia, for unlike drunk-akrasia, genuine akrasia cannot be explainedsolely in terms of the agent’s beliefs because his beliefs are identical tothose of the enkratic person who exhibits self-control in the same situa-tion (e.g. EE 1774b16–17). This is what forced Socrates to deny the pos-sibility of genuine akrasia.

However, it doesn’t follow that Aristotle denied it. For Socrates, sinceknowledge of the Good is sufficient for moral action, no two agents canhave identical beliefs and yet differ in terms of their actions; if their ac-tions differ, their knowledge must also differ and thus, ‘no one does wrongwillingly except through ignorance’. For Socrates, while pleasure is ex-planatory insofar as it can help us to understand why people act badly(kakôs), virtuous action can be understood solely in terms of an agent’sknowledge (since the virtues are forms of knowledge). For Aristotle, how-ever, the explanatory value of pleasure is not limited to cases of immoralbehaviour. In addition to knowledge, an adequate account of moral con-duct will also make reference to the agent’s desires. Thus, pleasures (theobject of desire), and in particular the pleasures associated with virtue(the object of virtuous desire), will also have explanatory value insofaras they allow us to better understand the sources of moral behaviour (e.g.NE 2.3).

What I have attempted to show in this paper is that in order to appreci-ate Aristotle’s solution to the problem of genuine akrasia (one that is notreducible to culpable ignorance or acting with qualified knowledge), we

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must take seriously the idea that in matters of bodily pleasure having know-ledge of what is moderate and what is excessive in a particular situationwill only be useful to those “who desire and act in accordance with rea-son” (NE 1095a10; cf. PA 687a7 ff. and GA 742a27). While the person whoexhibits self-control is among those who desire the pleasures of self-in-dulgence, she is also among those who derive pleasure from being temper-ate. She enjoys abstaining from over-indulgence, and so having knowledgeof what is excessive brings her great profit, especially when faced withtemptation. This helps to understand why Aristotle believed, against Soc-rates, that knowledge is of no use to the genuinely akratic man (1095a9).For Aristotle, reason is impotent without desire; action, he said, is onlyprompted by desire (DA 433a1–4). And so it should follow from this thatvirtuous action is only prompted by virtuous desire, that is, a desire forthe proper pleasures of virtue. By allowing the desire for the right kind ofpleasure to play a role in the explanation of virtuous action, Aristotle couldoffer a much more adequate solution to the problem of akrasia than thedeflationary account offered by his predecessor. Since the genuinely akraticperson and the self-controlled person differ in terms of their actions, thengiven their identical beliefs as to which action they ought to pursue theymust differ in terms of their desires. And since both experience an equaldesire for the wrong pleasures, the explanation for their different behav-iours must lie in their different desires for the right pleasures, namely, theproper pleasures of temperance. What the genuinely akratic man lacks, then,is not correct knowledge but correct desire. Thus, while drunk-akrasia andgenuine akrasia differ at the cognitive level, genuine akrasia and self-con-trol differ at the emotional level.

Aristotle also saw the explanatory value of pleasure in helping to dis-tinguish the different states of character concerned with it (cf. 1104b5–10).What distinguishes enkrateia (self-control) from other states of character isthat it alone involves a genuine conflict of desires: the enkratic person alonefeels an emotional pull from both sides. The only difference between herstate of character and one of temperance is that, like most of us, she issensitive to the desire for alien pleasure. The temperate person, on the otherhand, is one who not only abstains (and enjoys abstaining) from over-in-dulgence, but does so without difficulty. The difference between the drunk-akratic and the genuine akratic is that the former would have experiencedthe desire for the proper pleasure of temperance if he had been ‘sober’,and thus he would have acted otherwise. The only difference betweengenuine akrasia and self-indulgence is the fact that the former involves arational principle, and so the genuinely akratic man at least knows that he


ought to choose abstinence. Yet, what makes these two states of characterdangerously similar is that they dispose their agents to knowingly pursueunworthy pleasures without any desire to act otherwise. Unlike the drunk-akratic from Book 7 whose error is the result of culpable ignorance, forthe genuinely akratic man it is a want of moral sentiment, not knowledge,that lies at the root of his condition. This man’s problem is that his soul isnumb to a certain range of pleasures, namely, the pleasures derived frombeing temperate.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Jimmy Lenman and the British Society of EthicalTheory. I would also like to thank John Thorp and Byron Stoyles for theirinput on earlier drafts of this paper.

REFERENCES

Annas, Julia, Aristotle on Pleasure and Goodness, in A.O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristo-tle’s Ethics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980, pp. 285–299.

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Urmson, J.O., Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean, in A.O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristo-tle’s Ethics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980, pp. 157–170.

Walsh, J.J., Aristotle’s Conception of Moral Weakness. New York: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1973.

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King’s College, LondonWilliam Goodenough HouseMecklenburg SquareLondon, WC1N 2AF, UKE-mail: [email protected]

aristotle on pleasure and the worst form of akrasia

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