苏格拉底论无人自愿为恶或对不自制的否定

Socrates on “No One Errs Willingly” or the Negation of Acrasia

苏格拉底伦理学否定不自制(ακρασια)的可能性,"无人自愿为恶"就是这种看法的经典表述,作恶是出于无知。由此,T.厄尔文(T.Irwin)发展出一种被人称为标准的经典解释的观点,即对于苏格拉底来说,一个有德性的人只有以善为对象的理性欲求。但是,这种经典解释忽略了非理性的成分对人的影响和作用,对不自制的问题进行了过于简单化的处理。事实上,我们从多处文本中都可以看到一种苏格拉底认同历时性的信念不自制的可能性,T.佩内(T.Penner)论证了历时性的信念不自制,但是,他并没有对这种可能性的条件进行分析:即这种可能性是建立于下述三个前提上:(1)真信念有一种内在的不稳定性;(2)人所拥有的非理性的欲望和激情具有动机性作用;(3)人的真信念容易受感觉印象和想象图像的作用而屈服于显像的能力之下。

Socrates denies the incontinence or the weakness of the will(ακρασια),and"no one does evil voluntarily"is the classical formulation of this view,since doing evil owes to ignorance.Hence,T.Irwin developed the so-called classical interpretation:for Socrates,a virtuous man has only the gooddependent rational desires,whereas the non-rational desires and passions have no causal explanatory function.However,Irwin ignored the function of the non-rational part of the soul in human action.In fact,we will find that Socrates possibly acknowledged a kind of diachronic belief-acrasia.Although T.Penner has argued for the diachronic belief-acrasia,but he has ignored of pointing out the three conditions which serve as conditio sine qua non of it:(1)the true belief has an inherent instability;(2)the non-rational desires and passions have motivational forces;(3)the true belief can be easily affected by the sensible objects and images,which render it subject to the power of appearances.