Akrasia

Acting freely and deliberately against your own judgement about what is best: weakness of will.

Also: weakness of will, incontinence, akratic action

What it means

Akrasia is knowingly doing what you judge to be the worse option, for example taking a second helping of dessert while believing you should not. In Plato's Protagoras, Socrates denies it is possible: no one who believes another course is better will keep to the worse one. Aristotle accepted that it happens and distinguished impetuous akrasia, acting on passion without deliberating, from weak akrasia, deliberating and then being overcome. In modern philosophy Donald Davidson argued that akrasia is possible but irrational, while Richard Holton suggested that weakness of will is better understood as failing to stick to one's resolutions. Whether addiction counts as akrasia remains disputed.

The questions it belongs to

• 3.4 Moral PsychologyAre people naturally good, naturally selfish, or naturally neither?
• 6.24 Philosophy of ActionWhat is the difference between your arm rising and your raising it?
• 3.1.4 Moral MotivationCan you know an act is wrong and be entirely unmoved?

Thinkers

• Socrates
• Aristotle
• Donald Davidson
• Richard Holton

Traditions

• Greek & Roman
• Analytic

To read

• Categories — Aristotle
• Essays on Actions and Events — Donald Davidson
• Metaphysics — Aristotle

Sources and further reading

• Weakness of Will (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Aristotle’s Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Written by the Coordinates of Thought editors and checked against the sources above on 29 October 2026. Not peer-reviewed. How we write and check.

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