Akrasia, Acedia and Turkish Delights
I was thinking about CS Lewis’s description of Edmund’s deception in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. In his encounter with the witch, she deceives him by feeding him Turkish delights. These Turkish delights make Edmund more susceptible to the White Queen’s lies. It has always bothered me that it’s Turkish delights that fuel Edmund’s deception. While the other three experience the joy of community with the beavers and the awe of Aslan’s presence, Edmund’s experience of these events is corrupted all because of some Turkish delights. It’s completely absurd that due to some food Edmund believes the queen’s lies and betrays everyone.
However, isn’t it equally absurd that humanity would betray natural order and the true, authentic joy of a relationship with the Divine for transient dalliances? We, created in the image and likeness of God, continually trade our identity as such for lesser, trivial, and oftentimes awful things. In the process we move further away from Being and further into nonbeing—death. What prompts us to do such? Why do we trade Good itself for evil?
I used to think that if only people knew how good Good is, that they would seek the good. Failure, sin and evil are the results of lacking knowledge. If people truly understood the Good, they would pursue it. However, clearly this isn’t the case. In Plato’s Symposium, Alcibiades clearly has knowledge of the good yet persists in vice. His case is echoed throughout history as individuals knowledgeable of the good willingly turn their backs on it and lustily pursue vice.
In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle grapples with why people run after evil instead fo pursuing the good. He concludes that the weakness of the will or what he calls akrasia plays a role in man chasing after vice. The inclinations within the self are out of control and the will is not powerful enough or not habituated enough to pursue the good. Therefore, man must struggle with himself in order to set his inclinations in order. Those who struggle with their inclinations and continually prevail he calls the morally strong. In contrast, the morally weak are those who struggle with their inclinations and continually fail.
However, one of Aristotle’s requirements for virtue is that the virtuous act must be performed from an unshakable character. Therefore, the truly virtuous individual does not struggle with pursuing the good. He recognizes what is good and performs it without struggle. This virtue of readily choosing the good Aristotle labels temperance. The temperate man has successfully ordered his inclinations such that they are not scattered and all over the place; rather, they function according their nature and according to the appropriate extent.
Within the Christian tradition, akrasia has been used to describe man’s inclination towards sin. In my next post on this topic, I’ll discuss how one Christian depiction of the Fall describes Original Sin as a proclivity for sin and akrasia. I will then move on to discuss a particular vice I’ve mentioned before, the vice of acedia (sloth) and how it works with akrasia.
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