Knowing what’s best and doing something else: the Greeks called it akrasia.1 Aristotle decided it makes you only half bad.
Knowing what’s best and doing something else: the Greeks called it akrasia.1 Aristotle decided it makes you only half bad.
One more episode, and suddenly it’s 3 a.m. The Greek word for that is akrasia: knowing what’s best and doing something else anyway. It means, roughly, having no command over yourself.
Aristotle gives it a whole book of the Nicomachean Ethics. He compares it to a drunk person reciting poetry: the right words come out, and nothing changes. And he is kind about it. Such a person isn’t unjust, he says. Only half bad.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 7.3 (1147b) and 7.10 (1152a).
The kratos in akrasia means “rule” or “strength”. It’s also the second half of democracy: the people’s rule.Before you press play tonight, say out loud which episode is the last one.
1 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 7, 1145a–1152a; “half bad” at 1152a17
