Teaching Moral Virtue:
How Can We Overcome Moral Weakness?
A paper presented by Steve W. Lemke
at the December 1999 meeting of the New Orleans Chapter of the College Theology Society
at Loyola University
Socrates, Plato, and Paul: Framing the Question
One of the crucial issues in moral development is how to overcome moral weakness, or more positively, how to develop self-control. From ancient philosophers such as Socrates and Plato to modern philosophers such as Donald Davidson and R. M. Hare have struggled with the issue of why we do what we know is not the moral ideal. Socrates and Plato were among the first to attempt to wrestle with the question of "akratic" action--that is, why people believe they should do action x, but do action z instead. The term "akratic" is derived from an adjectival transliteration of the Greek word , often translated "incontinent." Many contemporary philosophers have used terms such as "weakness of will," "lack of self-control," and "moral weakness" to describe this phenomenon. Unfortunately, these translations are interpretive, and may raise other issues not implied in the original Greek nomenclature. (1)
This issue of moral weakness was voiced classically in the Christian Scriptures by the Apostle Paul in Rom. 7:12-25, who lamented that he knew what was right but could not bring himself to do it. Variations of the actual word was used eight times in the New Testament, mostly in the epistles of Paul. (2) In this paper, I will survey the major philosophical approaches to this issue, and propose an answer from a Christian voluntarist perspective which takes the Augustinian view of the will very seriously. (3) From this perspective, akratic behavior is not a matter of poor judgment but of a sinful will. To address akrasia, the paper will advocate an approach to moral education built upon a baptized version of virtue ethics. (4) The Biblical approach to virtuous behavior I will advocate is a concursive act of divine grace and human cooperation.
For Socrates and Plato, akratic action presented something of a dilemma. Their rationalist paradigm assumed that given the right information, people will do the rational thing. But in akratic action, persons appear to act against their best judgment. In his dialogue with Protagoras, Socrates denied that true weakness of will exists, because he believes that no one willingly pursues evil. He also found it an absurd explanation that agents fail to do what they believe is best because they are overcome by passion. (5) Socrates recognized that this doctrine was contrary to public opinion, but his belief was grounded in a firm conviction of the correctness of psychological hedonism. Socrates could not conceive of someone intentionally doing what he or she believed to be painful. (6) His explanation, then, for apparently akratic behavior was ignorance--we are misled by appearances to form the wrong beliefs about the situation. We might see pleasure in the short run in drinking alcohol, for example, but we fail to see its long- term painfulness. (7) So, for Socrates, akratic action essentially did not exist.
Plato (or, as some would have it, the later Plato) offers a somewhat more sophisticated psychology and a
