Weakness of will from Plato to the present

Tobias Hoffmann

This volume contains 13 original essays on weakness of will by scholars of contemporary philosophy and the history of philosophy. It covers the major periods of Western philosophy. Kenneth Dorter. “Weakness and Will in Plato’s Republic,” pp. 1–21: Plato notes that self-mastery is paradoxical because someone who is master of himself is equally subject to himself. He resolves the paradox by dividing the self into better and worse parts, and defining self-mastery as the rule of the better over the worse. But Plato also recognizes the serious obstacles to demonstrating that our self is composed of parts, or that one part is better than another, and shows the limitations of his demonstrations and how to go beyond them. To appreciate his full teaching we must go beyond Book 4 to the later books of the Republic. Terence H. Irwin. “Aristotle Reads the Protagoras,” pp. 22–41: When...

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