THE CONCEPT OF AKRASIA IN ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY: PLATO, ARISTOTLE, AND THE STOICS

2022-9
Akkökler Karatekeli, Büşra
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This thesis investigates the concept of akrasia, with particular attention given to its sundry interpretations in the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In this inquiry, I argue that these philosophers agree on the lack of knowledge of the akratic person, while they differentiate from each other as to what this missing knowledge is. Irrespective of their rejection or acknowledgement of akrasia due to their conceptions of the soul, I argue that Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics share the common view that the causes of akrasia are the wrong evaluation of phantasia and insufficient or wrong exercise of reason, which are strengthened by poor education and bad habituation. Hence, in this thesis, I aim at demonstrating that a full account of this concept can be given if both the intellectual reading of the concept of akrasia (which reads akratic action as an action caused by ignorance) and the non-intellectual reading of it (according to which akratic action is an outcome of a mismatch between the commands of reason and appetite) are considered together with the essential role education and habituation play in akratic action.
Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, akrasia, phantasia
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/99464
Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats
B. Akkökler Karatekeli, “THE CONCEPT OF AKRASIA IN ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY: PLATO, ARISTOTLE, AND THE STOICS,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2022.
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