ABSTRACT
Socrates had made deliberate action against one’s better judgment impossible; Aristotle had explained it as always due to some epistemological malfunction; the Stoics inserted a moment in their account of action where the agent opts for/assents to a course of action. Aristotle had left it obscure whether the akratic agent could in the circumstances have done other than they did-whether passion could be resisted at the time, as distinct from the tendency to the passion being worked on over time. While it is not easy to reconcile the Stoic position with their general determinism, it seems clear that the insertion of assent is intended to secure responsibility for the agent, by leaving it always in some sense possible for them to assent to any of their current rational presentations; consequently reason can always win, in that the agent can always give reason the prize. This is sometimes seen as introducing some notion of will, of a power to enact or not enact what reason suggests. It is also worth noting that the Stoics abandon the Aristotelian distinction between reason’s ‘presentations’, which are always of the form ‘It is good for a human being to…’ and those of desire, which do not present anything as good for beings of such and such a category to do. For the Stoics all these presentations are of the general form ‘It is fitting for me now to…’ Both these changes become incorporated into later treatments of action.
