Weakness of Will from Plato to the Present

by Tobias Hoffmann

Overview

In thirteen original essays, eminent scholars of the history of philosophy and of contemporary philosophy examine weakness of will, or incontinence—the phenomenon of acting contrary to one's better judgment. The volume covers all major periods of western philosophy, from antiquity through the Middle Ages and the modern period down to the present.

Alfred Mele and Alasdair MacIntyre examine weakness of will from a contemporary perspective. Mele addresses the issue from the vantage point of Libertarianism. MacIntyre argues against the widespread view that actions that are out of character require special explanation, and reinterprets weakness of will as a failure to use moral lapses for moral progress. The other authors critically engage accounts of weakness of will by past philosophers: Kenneth Dorter writes on Plato, Terence H. Irwin on Aristotle, Lloyd Gerson on Plotinus, James Wetzel on Augustine, Denis J. M. Bradley on Aquinas, Tobias Hoffmann on Henry of Ghent, Giuseppe Mazzotta on Dante, Ann Hartle on Montaigne, John C. McCarthy on Descartes, Thomas E. Hill Jr. on Kant, and Tracey B. Strong on Nietzsche.

The philosophical examination of weakness of will highlights central problems of action theory, such as the connections between desire, conviction, and action, between intellect and will, and between rationality and emotions. It also addresses important ethical issues such as the diversity of character dispositions, moral progress and moral education, the limits of virtue, and moral responsibility.

The historical and contemporary perspectives offered in this volume will enrich current debates, not only by suggesting answers, but also by broadening the usual range ofquestions about weakness of will. Owing to the intimate connection of the topic with other key themes in moral philosophy, the historical and thematic studies contained in this book also provide an overview of moral philosophy as a whole.

Tobias Hoffmann, associate professor of philosophy at The Catholic University of America, is the author of Creatura intellecta: Die Ideen und Possibilien bei Duns Scotus mit Ausblick auf Franz von Mayronis, Poncius und Mastrius and Johannes Duns Scotus: Die Univozität des Seienden, and coeditor of The Problem of Weakness of Will in Medieval Philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813215204
Publisher:	Catholic University of America Press
Publication date:	03/01/2008
Series:	Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy Series , #49
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d)

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Weakness of Will from Plato to the Present

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THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS

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ISBN: 978-0-8132-1520-4

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Chapter One

Weakness and Will in Plato's Republic KENNETH DORTER

The central problem in determining Plato's attitude toward moral weakness lies in the apparent discrepancy between what Socrates says in dialogues like the Protagoras, Laches, Charmides, and Meno, on the one hand, and Book 4 of the Republic, on the other. The former are characterized by moral intellectualism, the view that since we always want good things for ourselves, once we know that something is good we will act in accordance with that knowledge; they argue that knowledge has an intrinsic power too great for it to be enslaved by inferior principles like appetite and spiritedness. While the Protagoras scornfully ascribes to "the multitude" the view that knowledge alone is not strong enough to rule over its rivals-that without the help of something like moral strength it can be enslaved by our emotions (352b-c)-the Republic seems to defend precisely the view that the Protagoras dismissed as that of the multitude. According to Book 4, it is possible for us to know what is good and yet fail to act on that knowledge because we are too weak to master our temptations or fears, so that if our knowledge is not accompanied by moral strength or self-mastery, our rational faculty can indeed be over-mastered by its inferiors:

Self-control [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is surely some kind of order, the self-mastery [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] of certain pleasures and appetites, as they say, using the phrase "master of oneself" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]-I don't know how-and other such phrases that are like traces that it has left behind.... Yet isn't the expression "master of oneself" ridiculous? He who is master of himself would also be subject to himself, and he who is subject master. The same person is referred to in all these statements.... But the saying seems to me to want to say that in the same person there is something in the soul that is better and something that is worse, and when the part that is better by nature is master of the worse, this is what is meant by speaking of being master of oneself.... But when, on the other hand, because of bad upbringing or bad company the better part which is smaller is mastered by the multitude of the larger, we blame this as something shameful, and call it being subject to oneself and licentious. (430e-31b)

In the soul of the tyrant, explicitly, "the most reasonable part of it is dishonorably and wretchedly enslaved" (577c).

It is tempting to resolve the inconsistency by supposing that Plato has simply changed his mind and come to recognize, like Aristotle, that we quite regularly act against our better judgment under the pressure of our appetites and fears. There are two reasons to be cautious about that solution, reasons that seem to point in opposite directions. On the one hand, the dialogues that assert moral intellectualism all end at an impasse; they fail to resolve the issue to which they are devoted, and leave us uncertain about precisely what we are meant to learn. Conceivably, we may be meant to learn that the inquiry foundered because the doctrine of moral intellectualism leads to a dead end. In that case the Republic would present positively what the other dialogues imply negatively: the need to accommodate the possibility of weakness of will.

On the other hand, the Republic presents its self-mastery thesis in a way that undermines our confidence in it as much as if it too had led to an impasse. Just prior to his introduction of the concepts of self-control and self-mastery, Socrates says, "Two things still remain to be discerned in our city, self-control and ... justice. How then might we find justice without having to bother any more about self-control?" (430d). He seems to be suggesting that the most adequate conception of justice would not require reference to self-control (or self-mastery), but Glaucon replies that he does not want to skip over self-control in any case, so whatever lay behind Socrates' question remains unexplained. Socrates renews his misgivings more forcefully midway through the ensuing discussion: "in my opinion we will never get an accurate answer using our present methods of argument." But when he adds that "perhaps we can get an answer that's up to our previous standard," Glaucon is satisfied, so the source of Socrates' dissatisfaction once again fails to be explained (435c-d; cf. 504b). After these warnings it is not surprising that Socrates sums up their eventual conclusion with something less than enthusiasm: "if we said that we discovered the just person, and the courageous one ... I think we would in some way not completely seem to be lying" (444a).

It seems, then, that if the intellectualistic claims of dialogues like the Protagoras are thrown into question by their aporetic conclusions, the self-mastery thesis of the Republic is made to look equally uncertain in other ways, and it is conceivable that the Republic may ultimately not be opposed to moral intellectualism after all. As I intend to show in this paper, no interpretation can do full justice to the Republic's position that does not accommodate Socrates' insistence that the treatment in Book 4 is inadequate, and the way that the conception of knowledge changes in the next three books, especially after the Divided Line. The conception of knowledge presented in Book 7 will be sufficient for virtue-no longer vulnerable to temptation and fear or in need of supplemental reinforcement-which means that the Republic is not ultimately at odds with the Protagoras; the discrepancy appears only if we take Book 4 to be the Republic's final word on the subject, instead of seeing it as a preliminary treatment that is superseded in what follows.

The first quotation shows that the concept of self-mastery requires (1) a conception of the soul or self as divided, and (2) the identification of one part as better and another as worse. In what follows we shall consider, first, how Socrates establishes in Book 4 that the soul has three parts, and then the arguments in Book 9 for regarding rationality as in some sense the best of them (both claims are contentious, and their contentious nature will be pointed out by Socrates himself). Only then will we return to the argument for the tripartition of the soul to discover why Socrates disparaged it, and how it is superseded by the conception of knowledge introduced in Books 5-7. Because of the Republic's "arch" structure, it is in those central books that the discussion reaches the highest level, after which it explicitly returns to the discussion of Book 4 (543c). Why Plato proceeds in this way will be considered subsequently.

Since the concept of will does not appear directly in Plato (the term usually translated as "weakness of will," [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] as at 461a, simply means "weakness"), we will formulate the problem in terms of Socrates' statement that moral weakness ("being subject to oneself") means that the better part in us is overpowered by the worse. In that case, for our purposes Plato's question in Book 9, "Which is our best part?," can be taken to mean, "Which is our true will?"

1. The Tripartite Soul

Books 2 and 3 develop Socrates' model of the soul writ large, the depiction of the formation of a city as a visible analogue of the soul, to facilitate our understanding of the nature of justice (368c-69a). When the city evolved into three classes-productive workers, military auxiliary, rulers-the definitions of the virtues were based on the relationship of the classes to one another. Consequently the definitions will be transferable to the soul only if it has an analogous triadic structure. It is obvious that the distinctive characteristics of the three classes-appetite in the productive class, spiritedness in the auxiliaries, rationality in the rulers-are in each of us since we all enjoy pleasures, have a degree of ambition, and care whether things are true or false. It is also obvious that they sometimes lead to conflicting goals and desires; but that does not mean they must be discrete parts within us. It is doubtful, for example, that we ever experience rationality when it is not accompanied by some emotion, or emotion that is completely devoid of rationality, so our experience does not seem to support a model of the self in which these functions are anything like separate parts. Socrates raises the problem himself: it may be, he says, that our soul acts as a unity when it learns, gets angry, and desires, rather than doing each of these with a different part of itself (436a). My hand can reach for objects of pleasure, swing a tennis racket in competition, and turn pages in pursuit of truth, but that does not mean it has different parts for each of the three functions. Why should it mean that in the case of the soul? To eliminate that possibility Socrates constructs an argument around the principle of opposition, an ontological equivalent of the principle of contradiction:

(1) The same thing cannot be opposed to itself in the same respect, in relation to the same thing, at the same time. So, if this happens in the soul we are not dealing with one thing but many (436b).

(2) Standing still while moving our arms and head is not an exception because we are not standing still and moving in the same respect: our feet are at rest and our arms are moving (c-d).

(3) The same is true of a spinning top that stays in one place: "it's standing still with respect to its axis ... and moving in a circle with respect to its periphery" (d-e).

(4) Sometimes we are thirsty but decide not to drink, so there is something in us that tells us to drink, namely, appetite, and something else that tells us not to, namely, rationality, the two of which must then be different species in our soul (439c-e).

(5) Sometimes we get angry at ourselves because of our appetites, in which case our spiritedness fights against our appetite as one thing against another (439e-40d).

(6) When we rationally restrain our anger, then spiritedness and rationality are in opposition (441a-b).

We will consider the cogency of this argument in section 6, but for now we can say that it provides at least prima facie grounds for believing that appetite, spiritedness, and rationality are distinct parts of us. Our next step is to see how Socrates establishes that rationality is the best of the three, and must be obeyed for self-mastery to occur-in which case rationality is what would correspond to our true will and be the referent of weakness of will. That conclusion is by no means self-evident. Most people are governed by their appetite, the next largest group by spiritedness, and the smallest by rationality, so the concept of weakness of will is seen in different ways by different people. Appetitive or spirited people sometimes feel that if they listened to the warnings of reason and refrained from doing what their appetites or spiritedness prompted, it would show not strength of will but timidity. Thrasymachus has nothing but contempt for the "weak," "fearful" people who do not try to maximize their pleasures and power (344c), a view that Glaucon echoes as a devil's advocate (359a-60d), and that resurfaces again in Book 8 (549c-50a). Rational people may appear weak to the spirited, and unadventurous to the appetitive. Throughout the history of philosophy hedonists have championed appetite over rationality, and, especially since Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, voluntarists have championed something like spiritedness over rationality. Outside the philosophical community there is even stronger disagreement with the claim that the pursuit of truth is preferable to the pursuit of pleasure or power. Here again Socrates himself calls attention to the problem: although to rational people rationality seems like what is best in us, to appetitive people appetite appears to be best and rationality is good only as an instrument of our appetites, while to spirited people spiritedness seems best and rationality is good only if it brings us honor (580c-81c).

To establish his claim that reason alone deserves to be our ruling faculty-our will-(and that therefore the just life, the rule of reason, is the best life), Socrates offers three arguments to the effect that only a life that follows reason will bring true and lasting happiness, while the others lead only to ambiguous and temporary satisfaction. In terms of the question of weakness of will, it makes sense to call reason our true will if it is the only drive that can bring us fulfillment.

2. First Argument: Fitness to Rule

Socrates' first argument compares the inner life of the most just and the most unjust person. The most just person is ruled by rationality, while the most unjust is ruled by the most extreme of the three forms of appetite. The three forms are distinguished by first dividing appetite into necessary and unnecessary appetites, and then unnecessary appetites into lawful and lawless species. Necessary appetites are those that are indispensable or beneficial, like the desire for healthy food. Unnecessary appetites are neither indispensable nor beneficial, and are "harmful both to the body and to the soul with respect to wisdom and self-control," like the desire for unhealthy food (558d-89c). Socrates' description of lawless appetites could have come straight out of Freud:

They are probably in all of us, but when restrained by the laws, and by the better desires together with rationality, in some people they are gotten rid of completely or only a few weak ones remain, while in others they are stronger and more numerous.... They are aroused during sleep when the rest of the soul slumbers-the rational, gentle, and ruling part of it-but the bestial and wild part, full of food or drink, springs up and, pushing away sleep, seeks to go and satisfy its dispositions. You know that in this condition it dares to do everything, as though released from and rid of all shame and wisdom. It shrinks from nothing, and tries to have sex with its mother, as it believes, or with any other person, god, or beast; nor does it shrink from any murder or refuse any food. In a word, it stops short of no folly or shamelessness.... There is then a terrible, wild, and lawless form of appetite in each of us, even in some of us who seem to be most moderate, and this becomes clear in our sleep. (571b-d, 572b)

Once we relax control over our appetites, things that were once unthinkable become at first conceivable and then irresistible, as we become driven by an appetite for the excitement and adventure of novelty. The belief that every appetite no matter how extreme deserves to be gratified cannot help but be felt eventually as an insatiable craving. But those who are in the grips of an insatiable craving cannot be happy; they are rather the most unhappy and least free kind of person, slaves to their most violent appetites. Socrates had already argued in Book 7 that the life of rationality leads to a vision of goodness that brings complete happiness (516b-19d). Now, by contrast, we find that the most appetitive life has the opposite effect and leads to the greatest unhappiness. The argument gives us one reason to believe that if weakness of will means that the worse part of us rules over the better, it is those ruled by appetite who most fit this description.

3. Second Argument: Criteria of Truth

The next argument could hardly begin more hesitantly: "Look at this second one if indeed you think there's anything in it" (580d). This is where Socrates points out the relativity we noted earlier, that appetitive, spirited, and rational people all love their defining pleasure-material things, honor, or wisdom, respectively-so if we ask them which of the three kinds of life is most pleasant they would each choose their own: lovers of material things will not care much about learning or honor except where they are materially profitable; lovers of honor have contempt for money, which they consider vulgar, and for learning, which they regard as smoke and nonsense (some things never change), except where these can bring them honor; and lovers of wisdom regard the other two not as true pleasures but only as necessities, which they would ignore if possible. How then can we decide which of the three is correct (580c-81c)?

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Contents

Preface....................vii
Tobias Hoffmann, Introduction....................ix
1. KENNETH DORTER, Weakness and Will in Plato's Republic....................1
2. TERENCE H. IRWIN, Aristotle Reads the Protagoras....................22
3. LLOYD P. GERSON, Plotinus on Weakness of the Will: The Neoplatonic Synthesis....................42
4. JAMES WETZEL, Body Double: Saint Augustine and the Sexualized Will....................58
5. DENIS J. M. BRADLEY, Thomas Aquinas on Weakness of the Will....................82
6. TOBIAS HOFFMANN, Henry of Ghent's Voluntarist Account of Weakness of Will....................115
7. GIUSEPPE MAZZOTTA, Dante: Healing the Wounded Will....................138
8. ANN HARTLE, Montaigne's Marvelous Weakness....................159
9. JOHN C. MCCARTHY, Descartes's Feeble Spirits....................175
10. THOMAS E. HILL JR., Kant on Weakness of Will....................210
11. TRACY B. STRONG, Nietzsche, the Will to Power, and the Weak Will....................231
12. ALFRED R. MELE, A Libertarian View of Akratic Action....................252
13. ALASDAIR MACINTYRE, Conflicts of Desire....................276
Bibliography....................293
Contributors....................309
Index of Names....................313