Akratics as Hedonists: Protagoras 352b-355a

Abstract

Sometimes we do one thing, though we take ourselves to have more reason to do another. This phenomenon is known as ‘akrasia’, and in the contemporary literature, such agents are depicted as acting on (and against) a wide variety of reasons. Donald Davidson, for instance, makes a point of the fact that the specification of an action as akratic does not involve reference to any particular value achieved or forgone by the akratic agent (2001, 30). Contemporary theorists of akrasia describe the phenomenon in a value-neutral way, as unified by the formal fact that such agents act against their better judgment. I will present and defend an alternative account, found in Plato’s Protagoras, on which the only value that can be at stake in an akratic choice is pleasure. In the Protagoras, Socrates famously rejects the standard ways in which people are prone to describing akratic actions. Although ‘the many’ (οἱ πολλοί) understand akrasia as being overcome by pleasure or knowingly doing what is bad or acting against belief, Socrates wants to show that such locutions are in some way incoherent. His argument has two parts: the first, which I shall call ‘the hedonism argument’ (352b-355a), secures the key premise of the second (355a356a), which is standardly dubbed ‘the ‘ridiculous’ argument’. In the second part Socrates translates the akratic’s claim to have chosen a lesser good because he was overcome by the pleasure into the ‘ridiculous’ (γeλοῖον) claim that he willingly chose a lesser pleasure over a greater one, being free to choose otherwise, when seeking only pleasure. My topic is the first part, an argument that establishes the hedonism deployed in the second part. Hiding in this seemingly preparatory section of the text is, I claim, an underappreciated argument for a restricted form of hedonism.