Abstract

This book sketches the history of medieval discussions of the phenomenon Aristotle calls "akrasia". It aims at refuting the widespread prejudice that there was no medieval problem of akrasia because the Christian and Augustinian conception of the will as an autonomous power makes the idea of an agent knowingly acting against reason unproblematic. On the contrary, the author shows that interest in akrasia spanned the Middle Ages, though the parameters of the debate changed after the Nicomachean Ethics became known in the thirteenth century.