We all know the feeling. You have homework due the next day, but you’ve been binging Stranger Things on Netflix. You know that you have to complete your homework, and that there are tangible consequences if you don’t, yet you still decide to watch Stranger Things. Why? You seem to be acting irrationally, but you know you are doing so. How can one act against their better judgment, and knowingly so? This feeling/scenario is called akrasia, or weakness of will. The Stranger Things example can hit a little too close to home, so I’ll rephrase it. Consider there are two choices, E and F. E is better than F in every conceivable way, yet you still choose F. This is a paradox. If your choice is the worse choice in every measure, how could you choose it? So, to go back to the homework, you know that finishing it tonight would be the better idea, in all respects. It would receive a better grade and cause you less stress later on. Yet you still watch Netflix. Or doomscrolling, which all of us are familiar with. Say you set an alarm to get off social media at 10:30 p.m., knowing you have a test early the next day, but you scroll until midnight. Precisely, if one judges A to be the best path, all things considered, why would one pick anything else than A?

Socrates famously thought that akrasia was impossible. Akrasia relies on knowledge. A true weakness of will can only occur when one knows what they are giving up on or losing out on. So, in regard to the homework, Socrates would reply that the only person who continued to binge-watch Stranger Things would be someone who was unaware of the consequences of their actions, like they assumed they had an extension on the homework when in reality they did not. Cognitive error, not a failure to abide by your will, is the problem. But we all know this is not true, and it gets to what I see as the root of the problem. Humans are inherently irrational and are guided by their emotions more so than their logic.

Aristotle disagreed with Socrates, arguing that akrasia could occur. Aristotle acknowledged the presence of akrasia in everyday life, distinguishing between it and enkrateia, which means self-control. However, Aristotle thought that for akrasia to occur, one must “forget,” or the consequences of their actions must be clouded by desires. One retains the knowledge and therefore does not have a cognitive error, but just has a clouded judgment by temporary desires. So the desire for entertainment could act as a competing motivation in your brain to prevent you from accessing your better judgment, which would alert you that watching Netflix is in fact the worse decision. So, one knows that studying is better, but they are overpowered, or their judgment is clouded, by temporary desires.

The view of reason started to change in the Modern European period. Philosophers like Hume, Kant, and Schopenhauer began to realize the limits of reason. All three acknowledged that reason had limits. Hume, in particular, said that reason was not the true end all be all earlier Greek philosophers thought it to be. Hume knew that reason had its limits: it was the slave of passions, and therefore one acts on what they desire most, not what they reason to be the best. This was the flaw of akrasia: it assumed that humans are rational and seek to always find the best possible scenario. But in reality, humans are the subject of conflicting motivations and desires. It is very difficult, Hume would argue, to step back and see what is really best for you, because the majority of decisions are based on what you want in the moment. Humans are notoriously short-sighted, and logic, in turn, is often used to merely justify emotional decisions. The modern view of akrasia is like this: less of a logical contradiction than a battle of competing desires, where one desire takes over. From this perspective, akrasia is less a paradox and more an illustration of how easily our impulses can overrule our ideals. Socrates and Aristotle had the right idea, but their flaw was assuming that humans are rational beings.