acrasia

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English

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WOTD – 14 June 2024

Pronunciation

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John Melhuish Strudwick, Acrasia (c. 1888), which depicts the enchantress Acrasia—a personification of intemperance—from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590) in her Bower of Bliss with a knight at her mercy.

Etymology 1

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Learned borrowing from Late Latin acrasia (“lack of temperance”), and from its etymon Ancient Greek ᾰ̓κρᾱσῐ́ᾱ (akrāsíā, “bad mixture”), from ἄκρᾱτος (ákrātos, “pure, unmixed; of a person: intemperate, violent”) + -ῐ́ᾱ (-íā, suffix forming feminine abstract nouns). Ἄκρᾱτος (Ákrātos) is derived from ᾰ̓- (a-, prefix forming terms having a sense opposite to the stems or words to which it is attached) + κεράννυμι (keránnumi, “to blend, mix; to cool or temper by mixing”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₂- (“head, top; horn”)) + -τος (-tos, suffix forming adjectives).[1] Doublet of acrasy.

Noun

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acrasia (uncountable)

  1. (archaic, rare) Lack of self-control; excess, intemperance; also, irregular or unruly behaviour.
    Synonyms: acrasy, immoderation, incontinence; see also Thesaurus:excess
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 51, page 201:
      Him fortuned (hard fortune ye may gheſſe) / To come, vvhere vile Acraſia does vvonne [live], / Acraſia a falſe enchauntereſſe, / That many errant knightes hath fovvle fordonne: […]
      A personification.
    • 1774, Thomas Pennant, “[Ard-maddie]”, in A Tour in Scotland, and Voyage to the Hebrides; MDCCXXII, Chester, Cheshire: […] John Monk, →OCLC, page 428:
      VVaſte your hours in the lap of diſſipation: reſign yourſelf up to the faſcinations of Acrasia; and ſport in the Bovver of Bliss. Cover your tables vvith delicacies, at the expence of your famiſhed clans.
      A personification, referring to Spenser’s Faerie Queene: see the 1590 quotation.
    • [1842, John Fletcher, “Proximate Cause”, in John J. Drysdale, John R. Russell, editors, Elements of General Pathology, Edinburgh: MacLachlan, Stewart, & Company, →OCLC, pages 158-159:
      It has been already remarked, that, by the humoral pathologists, organic diseases in general, and of course inflammation, were attributed to an akrasia or intemperies, consisting in an inordinate flow to certain organs of one or other of the four principal fluids of the body; that of blood producing the phlegmenous inflammation; that of yellow bile, the erythematic, or, as they call it, the erysipelatous; that of the black bile, the scirrhous; that that of the phlegm, the leucophlegmatic, or œdematous, an affection now known to be not of itself inflammatory, although a frequent consequence of inflammation.
      Used to refer to an excess of humour in a body organ, according to the obsolete theory of humorism.]
    • 1988, Charles H. Kahn, “On the Relative Date of the Gorgias and the Protagoras”, in Julia Annas, editor, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, volume VI, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, →ISBN, page 84:
      The psychological doctrine of the Gorgias is more mature. It recognizes the presence in the soul of irrational or good-independent desires (epithymiai), and represents the virtuous soul as one characterized by harmony and order, which requires the restraining of desire […] The Protagoras, by contrast, denies the reality of acrasia and thus implicitly denies the existence of good-independent desires.
      Both the Gorgias and Protagoras are dialogues of Plato.
    • 2020, Aimar Rollan, “Acrasia”, in Karla Nallely, transl., Reflex: Reflections, Poems and Other Stories, [Hackensack, N.J.]: Babelcube, →ISBN:
      The root of all character weaknesses and all addictions is in acrasia; the root of failure also underlies acrasia, along with the personal ruins they become many lives due to this inclination to incontinence and to the cessation of the virtue of crasia – […] crasia is the virtue of force of self-control. The anecdote is told, to illustrate this concept, of the great French writer Victor Hugo, that he had to finish writing a novel within a certain period at the demands of his publisher, but this great character was very given to go out, socialize and district himself with other tasks – with the consequent waste of time and energy to write that this supposes – so, unable to beat his acrasia directly, he opted for an indirect way to beat it: he put all his clothes in a cupboard that was locked so that he could not go outside.
Usage notes
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Many uses of the word refer to book II of The Faerie Queene (1590) by the English poet Edmund Spenser (1552/1553 – 1599) (see the quotation), in which Acrasia is a wicked enchantress living in the Bower of Bliss who causes men to seek pleasure excessively, thus luring them to their deaths. She is eventually defeated by Sir Guyon, who resists temptations to idleness, lust, and violence.

Not to be confused with akrasia (despite some overlap in meaning), which is sometimes spelled acrasia: see etymology 2 below.

Derived terms
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Translations
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Etymology 2

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A variant of akrasia.

Noun

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acrasia (countable and uncountable, plural acrasias)

  1. (philosophy) Alternative spelling of akrasia (“(uncountable) lack of physical or (especially) mental strength; poor willpower; also, the tendency to act contrary to one's better judgment; (countable) an instance of this”)
    • 1972 summer, Arthur Cody, “Weakness of the Will”, in Synergist: A Publication of the Office of Academic Affairs, volume 5, number 2, Chicago, Ill.: Northeastern Illinois University, →OCLC, page 115:
      What I think this depicts is a relationship between the reasons we have to act and the action we do. This problem of acrasia suggests that sometimes we have those reasons. We think smoking is bad for health so the action we would expect is that we would refrain from smoking. Instead, we smoke.
    • 1989, A[nthony] W[illiam] Price, “Aristotle on the Varieties of Friendship”, in Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, →ISBN, page 144:
      So when the badness of a poor doctor or actor is said to be 'similar by analogy' to badness proper […], and this is used to shed light on the 'similarity' between acrasia proper and the acrasias in respect of anger, honour, and gain […], the thought must be that a bad doctor stands to doctoring more or less as a bad man stands to action, while a choleric acratic stands to anger more or less as an acratic proper stands to bodily pleasure.
    • 1994, John M[ichael] Rist, “Soul, Body and Personal Identity”, in Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, published 2000, →ISBN, page 137:
      Augustine's original interpretation of our human condition is that we struggle and fail to do what we want to do and know that we ought to do – the classical problem of weakness of will or acrasia. […] We recognize acrasia in ourselves […] it is an acrasia which is tied to specific weaknesses: the man who yearns for vodka, and who tries and fails to limit his vodka-intake, may have no serious difficulty in avoiding over-eating.
    • 1995, A[nthony] W[illiam] Price, “Plato”, in Mental Conflict (Issues in Ancient Philosophy), London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 92:
      I earlier […] introduced a notion of ‘hard acrasia’, that is, of a conscious failure to live up to what I judge to be best in what I desire most, choose, and do. We need to distinguish this from ‘soft acrasia’: in cases of soft acrasia, the agent’s perception is dimmed and his judgement deflected, so that he acts in a way that he would not have chosen in a cool hour, with judgement and perception unimpaired, and yet not with conscious contrariety to an occurrent choice, in cases of hard acrasia, his perception is clear, his judgement unequivocal—and yet, out of weakness, he acts otherwise.
    • 1995, Gregory Vlastos, “Socrates on Acrasia”, in Daniel W. Graham, editor, Studies in Greek Philosophy, volumes II (Socrates, Plato, and Their Tradition), Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, →ISBN, part 1 (Socrates), page 50:
      Socrates undertakes to press this indictment against that explanation of acrasia which he takes to be by far the most common of all: that men who know the better will do the worse because they are "overcome" or "defeated" by desire for pleasures.
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References

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  1. ^ “acrasia, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, July 2023.

Further reading

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Portuguese

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Pronunciation

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  • Hyphenation: a‧cra‧si‧a

Noun

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acrasia f (uncountable)

  1. acrasia (lack of self-control)

Spanish

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Noun

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acrasia f (uncountable)

  1. acrasia (lack of self-control)
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