acrasia
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /əˈkɹeɪ.zɪ.ə/
ipa: /-ˈkɹæ-/
ipa: /əˈkɹeɪ.zi.ə/
homophone: akrasia
Forms: form: acrasias
Etymology: A variant of akrasia.
Senses: examples: text: What I think this depicts is a relationship between the reasons we have to act and the action we do. This problem of acrasia suggests that sometimes we have those reasons. We think smoking is bad for health so the action we would expect is that we would refrain from smoking. Instead, we smoke.
ref: 1972 summer, Arthur Cody, “Weakness of the Will”, in Synergist: A Publication of the Office of Academic Affairs, volume 5, number 2, Chicago, Ill.: Northeastern Illinois University, →OCLC, page 115:
text: So when the badness of a poor doctor or actor is said to be 'similar by analogy' to badness proper[…], and this is used to shed light on the 'similarity' between acrasia proper and the acrasias in respect of anger, honour, and gain[…], the thought must be that a bad doctor stands to doctoring more or less as a bad man stands to action, while a choleric acratic stands to anger more or less as an acratic proper stands to bodily pleasure.
ref: 1989, A[nthony] W[illiam] Price, “Aristotle on the Varieties of Friendship”, in Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, →ISBN, page 144:
text: Augustine's original interpretation of our human condition is that we struggle and fail to do what we want to do and know that we ought to do – the classical problem of weakness of will or acrasia. […] We recognize acrasia in ourselves […] it is an acrasia which is tied to specific weaknesses: the man who yearns for vodka, and who tries and fails to limit his vodka-intake, may have no serious difficulty in avoiding over-eating.
ref: 1994, John M[ichael] Rist, “Soul, Body and Personal Identity”, in Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, published 2000, →ISBN, page 137:
text: I earlier […] introduced a notion of ‘hard acrasia’, that is, of a conscious failure to live up to what I judge to be best in what I desire most, choose, and do. We need to distinguish this from ‘soft acrasia’: in cases of soft acrasia, the agent’s perception is dimmed and his judgement deflected, so that he acts in a way that he would not have chosen in a cool hour, with judgement and perception unimpaired, and yet not with conscious contrariety to an occurrent choice, in cases of hard acrasia, his perception is clear, his judgement unequivocal—and yet, out of weakness, he acts otherwise.
ref: 1995, A[nthony] W[illiam] Price, “Plato”, in Mental Conflict (Issues in Ancient Philosophy), London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 92:
text: Socrates undertakes to press this indictment against that explanation of acrasia which he takes to be by far the most common of all: that men who know the better will do the worse because they are "overcome" or "defeated" by desire for pleasures.
ref: 1995, Gregory Vlastos, “Socrates on Acrasia”, in Daniel W. Graham, editor, Studies in Greek Philosophy, volumes II (Socrates, Plato, and Their Tradition), Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, →ISBN, part 1 (Socrates), page 50:
topics: human-sciences
philosophy
sciences
glosses: Alternative spelling of akrasia (“(uncountable) lack of physical or (especially) mental strength; poor willpower; also, the tendency to act contrary to one's better judgment; (countable) an instance of this”)
Related terms: acratic
acratically