EDUCATING ETHICAL BEHAVIOR:
ARISTOTLE'S VIEWS ON AKRASIA
Deborah Kerdeman
University of Washington
"Can the teaching of ethics really help cleanse the business world of shady dealings?" Asked by Newsweek magazine during the height of the recent Wall-Street scandals,1 this query resonates with perennial concerns about whether or not virtue can be taught and how such instruction might best be effected. The problem, Newsweek declares, is not that students lack ethical standards or are incapable of distinguishing wrong from right. The challenge for educators rather lies in helping students act on the virtues they espouse. "Even in today's complex world, knowing what's right is comparatively easy," Newsweek concludes. "It's doing what's right that's hard."
Why do people act wrongly, when they know full well what right conduct demands? This phenomenon, known to philosophers as incontinence or akrasia, receives extensive treatment in Book Seven of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.2 Like Newsweek, Aristotle holds that akrasia presents a special challenge for moral education. How does Aristotle conceive this challenge, and what might contemporary educators learn from Aristotle's analysis? To appreciate Aristotle's insights into akrasia and moral instruction, it is helpful to begin by looking at popular views of the akratic's dilemma.
Popular beliefs about incontinence are varied and often contradictory, Aristotle contends.3 Two, however, bear scrutiny. Aristotle summarizes them as follows:
(1) The continent person seems to be the same as one who abides by his rational calculation; and the incontinent person seems to be the same as one who abandons it.
(2) The incontinent person knows that his actions are base, but does them because of hi ...