1 Harvard University Political Theory Colloquium For 11 March 2010 ...

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Woolf, Raphael (2002). ‘Consistency and Akrasia in Plato’s “Protagoras”’. Phronesis
47:3, 224-52.
----- (2008). ‘Socratic Authority’. In Pauliina Remes and Juha Sihvola (eds) Ancient
Philosophy of the Self, 77-107. Berlin: Springer.
Zeyl, Donald J. (trans.) (1997). Gorgias. In John M. Cooper with D.S. Hutchinson (eds)
Plato. Complete Works, 781-869. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett.
1 Plato only once uses any cognate of akrasia, in the context of a child born through the
akrateia of a male guardian who has sex when either too young or too old for optimal
reproduction (Rep. 461b), a passage isolated from the context of those normally
interpreted as ‘denial’ or ‘vindication’ of akrasia (but see its mention in Walsh 1980
[1971]). There is no explanation given for this failure of self-control, nor is this text
referred to in the passages of primary interest to us.
2 Christopher Bobonich (2002: 277-8) notes the absence of ‘the will’ in the Republic’s
tripartite scheme, while following David Sedley (1992: 146-8) in arguing that the thumos
‘can account for the person’s willpower’ as an ally of reason.
3 Nicholas Denyer (2008:108, on Prt. 322b5-c1), remarks that whereas ‘tradition had
confidently associated’ aidôs and dikê, ‘[it was, however, becoming the custom [in late
fifth and early fourth century Greece] to associate – sometimes even to equate – aidôs
with sôphrosûnê (Chrm.160e, Thuc. I.84.3, Isoc.7.48, Xen. Smp. I.8, Arist. EE 1234a27-
33).’ He continues, in a remark to be recalled when we return to the question of the unity
of the virtues below: ‘Such vagaries present a crack where Socrates can insert the wedge
of his question about the unity of virtues (329c1-d2).’
4 In this respect my approach converges with that of Ferrari 1992, who argues ‘that
neither Socrates the character nor Plato the writer is refusing to acknowledge the
phenomenology of akrasia (to give this behavior its customary label)’ (115). However,