Journal of the History of Philosophy

Weakness of will (or akrasia, to use the Greek term) denotes a phenomenon that many would regard as forming part of everyday human experience. I hate to admit to it, but I do sometimes reprimand my children more harshly than I think I should, and similar situations occur daily. This could be an example of weakness of will or incontinence: I will to be constructive and provide a model of calm interaction, but fail to do so because my will is weak and I end up acting against better knowledge. But what is it that happens in such situations? Philosophers, theologians, poets, and other writers have discussed this question as akrasia, as well as under other headings. Weakness of Will from Plato to the Present not only contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the history of akrasia, but is also the first book that attempts to cover the trajectory of this issue through all major periods of Western philosophy. The book invites a broad range of readers, focusing on canonical figures from Plato and Aristotle through Augustine and Aquinas to Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche,

On the back flap, the book announces its intention to use akrasia as a prism through which one can "provide an overview of moral philosophy as a whole." One should not mistake this, however, for the claim that Western ethics as a whole can or should be viewed as a series of responses to the problem of akrasia. On the contrary, several articles in the volume provide arguments showing why the problem of weakness of will as traditionally understood is not a theme in thinkers like Descartes or Kant, or even Augustine. Many articles relate to akrasia rather more tangentially, such as Ann Hartle's well-crafted article on Montaigne's view of a certain sort of weakness of character as making authentic goodness possible. Similarly, Giuseppe Mazzotta's rich essay on Dante's ideas concerning art's capacity to heal a wounded will shows a willingness on the part of the editor to allow authors to retain their own registers rather than forcing them all into one mold. While this has resulted in a book with fine scholarly contributions, the effect may well be a bit bewildering to students, if ultimately quite rewarding.

Hoffmann's volume complements the existing literature on the history of akrasia, which has mostly focused on ancient and medieval debates. Indeed, the volume invites interested scholars of early modern philosophy to fill the gap between medieval discussions and the recent revival of scholarly interest in weakness of will as a contemporary philosophical issue because, as it stands, the volume itself cannot claim to fill it in a satisfactory way. The first six articles in the collection form a pretty cohesive story about philosophical discussions of akrasia from Plato to Henry of Ghent. Apart from James Wetzel's somewhat adventurous treatment of Augustine, whom he characterizes as a thinker led to self-deception by his failure to accept his own mortality, the chapters share a sense of focus that the latter half of the book mostly lacks. The five articles on Dante, Montaigne, Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche do raise the question of weakness of will, but mostly to show that these thinkers did not discuss akrasia. This is, of course, far from irrelevant, and the articles themselves are interesting and well-written, but the reader is left with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction: Surely early modern thinkers with more substantive treatments of akrasia can be found?

In a book that aims to be comprehensive in this way, it is hard to avoid a sense of a history "from peak to peak"—a list of canonical figures, as it were. In some chapters, such as John McCarthy's quite exciting article on Descartes's ethics of mastering the passions, the [End Page 466] novelty of Cartesian claims is evaluated in terms of how they...