ABSTRACT
Aristotle writes dismissively both of Socrates and of Plato: he complains of Socrates that, in denying that there is such a thing as acrasia, he ‘plainly contradicts the appearances’ (NE 7.2.1145b25-8); we have seen that Plato accommodates acrasia by distinguishing opposed families of desires, but Aristotle insists on the unity of desire, remarking, ‘It would indeed be strange to tear this apart’ (DA 3.9.432b45). In the light of my criticisms of both, this may seem a good start, but in f act Aristotle’s own position is problematic because it combines dual loyalties: even though he complains that Socrates was wrong to exclude the possibility of acrasia, he concedes, ‘The position that [he] sought to establish actually seems to result’ (NE 7.3.1147b14-15); and yet he frequently writes of opposed desires in Plato’s manner. It becomes hard to understand how, if he broadly followed Plato in distinguishing kinds of desire, which might have made acrasia easy, he also agreed with Socrates in finding it difficult. We must hope to interpret his implicit loyalty to Plato in a way that leaves room for his explicit loyalty to Socrates; his account of acrasia, elusive in detail but more deeply elusive in motivation, becomes the focus of his ambivalence.
