ABSTRACT
Once again, it is tricky to find a good English equivalent for heko¯n. In Greek there are in fact two pairs of words used in this context: hekousion and akousion, which are used of actions, and the corresponding words heko¯n and ako¯n which are used of persons. If, as is often done, hekousion is translated ‘voluntary’, the opposite would have to be ‘involuntary’; but it is not right to say that the storm-tossed captain jettisons the cargo involuntarily, though Aristotle says that he does so ako¯n. (One might sneeze involuntarily, and that’s quite different from the case of the captain.) I shall therefore mostly use ‘willingly’ and ‘unwillingly’, so as to have a neat pair of opposites in English.1
