The Relationship between Weakness of Will and Ethical Life in Aristotle: A Glance at Socrates’ View and Aristotle’s Critique of Weakness of Will

“Weakness of will” is one of the fundamental concepts in Aristotle’s ethics, a thorough understanding of which requires an understanding of its meaning and use in his views. In this paper, following a descriptive-analytic method, the authors initially refer to the lexical roots of the expression of “weakness of will” in Greek and, then, try to explain Socrates’ idea of weakness of will and Aristotle’s critique of this view. Next, given some of the referents of the concept of weakness of will in Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, they seek to demonstrate why human beings sometimes act against their ethical knowledge. Later they provide Aristotle’s analysis of the phenomenon of weakness of will as one of the obstacles to living an ethical life and argue that sometimes it stands in contrast to rationality. As a result, while being aware that something is ethically wrong or right, an individual, under the influence of their misplaced desires, might act unethically or cease to act ethically.In Aristotle’s view, a necessary condition for the rationality of ethical necessity is for human beings to benefit from “practical wisdom”. He also believes that if the intellect leads the other human faculties at the level of act, individuals will certainly choose and do the right thing.