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49. [Arist.] Mag. mot . 1182a25.
50. EN 1145b14 seq. Aristotle indeed raises the question whether the psychological mechanism of akrasia might not, in an
imperfect agent, work to his ethical advantage; hence his discussion of Neoptolemus, and of the "sophistic paradox" (1146a17
seq.). But his discussion of these matters heads off what, from the point of view of a less ethicised psychology, is most
interesting: cf., for example, 1151b21: "For not everyone who does anything for the sake of pleasure is self-indulgent or bad or
incontinent, but he who does it for a disgraceful pleasure." Aristotle's psychological theories have, more generally, ethical
implications. Sarah Broadie has said that "within Aristotle's framework a value-free theory of 'basic' human nature is impossible"
( Ethics with Aristotle , p. 102). I should emphasise, however, that in commenting on Plato's and Aristotle's psychological
theories I do not want to imply that there could be an adequate account of human psychology that was totally "value-free''.
Whether there could be such a thing (whether, for instance, psychology can dispense with a notion of "normality" that is not
purely statistical) seems to me doubtful, but it is not the point raised by the present discussion. The point here is, rather, what
range of values is in question, and what particularly demands explanation. The criticism of Plato and Aristotle is not so much that
they took psychological explanation to involve values as that they incorporated into it a particular set of ethically and socially
desirable values. This question comes up again below, in chap. 6, p. 160 seq.
51. "How Is Weakness of the Will Possible?" in Essays on Actions and Events , p. 30 n. 14.
52. See especially Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, "Where Does the Akratic Break Take Place?" and "Akrasia and Conflict," both in
Mind in Action .
53. EGP p. 80. See Redfield's account of Fränkel's position and comments on it, p. 20 seq.
54. German Tragic Drama , p. 106 seq. Vernant has remarked (IMA p. 55), citing Vidal-Naquet, that Achilles is the only
character in the Iliad represented as singing to himself (and to Patrodus) of heroic deeds (9.189). But it is wrong to move from
this to the claim that "en tant que personnage héroique, Achille n'a d'existence pour lui-même que dans le miroir du chant qui lui
renvoie son propre image." There is an a priori objection: how would he know who to sing about? But more seriously, materials
we are given in the poem itself falsify this picture.
55. P. 22 seq.; as he says on p.22, "we should be cautious about moving so quickly [as Fränkel does] from poetry to
culture." I entirely agree with this; the question I go on to raise in the text is whether the poetry itself leaves us with an
impression of Achilles as having as instantaneous a psychic life as Redfield suggests.
56. at 19.67 is not a report of an act of will; it is a performative announcement: "The quarrel is over."
57. The necessity at 18.113 is expressed by (not "by force", Lattimore). It is repeated at 19.66, but "it does not
become me" at 19.67 is . For this word, see G. Redard, Recherches sur : there are associations with
, human appropriation. Cf. also Lowell Edmunds, Chance and Intelligence in Thucydides , p. 43 [CI]. In the fifth
century, there was a tendency for to be favoured as an expression of internally based necessities and requirements, while
was preferred for needs, causal necessity, divine inevitability, and other more external constraints: see Barrett on Eur. Hipp
Shame and Necessity http://content.cdlib.org.oca.ucsc.edu/xtf/view?docId=ft4t1nb2fb&chunk....
. 41. This way of expressing such a contrast does not operate in Homer, who uses only once. See also S. Benardete, "XPH
and D EI in Plato and Others," which contains many useful observations, though we should not accept the remark (p. 293),
which Benardete himself rightly says is paradoxical, that for the ancients ethics "were outside the sphere of the subject."
58. Austin, p. 276 n. 18; for the other approach, cf. D. L. Page, Homeric Odyssey , p. 123 seq. For a sensitive treatment,
see Sheila Murnaghan, Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey , chap. 4.
59. "Penelope recognizes Ulysses not by his scar but by his imagination": Richard Ellmann on Molly Bloom, in "The Uses of
Decadence," reprinted in a long the riverrun , p. 17.
60. Socrates, facing death, compares himself to Achilles: ,
Plato Ap . 28B-D (the reference is to Il . 18.98-104). Gregory
Vlastos ( Socrates , PP. 233-35) notes one similarity and a great difference: "In the quest for happiness the noblest spirits in the
Greek imagination are losers .... Socrates is a winner .... Desiring the kind of happiness he does, he can't lose." Granted this,
and still more if one adds an expectation of immortality (which Socrates is prepared to entertain, 40E seq., and which may
perhaps be heard in the word ), the Homeric words take on a very different tone. On Socrates as hero, cf. Nicole
Loraux, "Socrate, contrepoison de l'oraison funêbre," L'antiquité classique 43 (1974), cited by Vernant, IAM p. 42. Kebriones: Il .
16.775-76.
Chapter Three Recognising Responsibility
1. Od . 22. 154-56
.
2. Cf. in particular the use of with another verb to mean success in doing that very thing: e.g., Il . 4.106-8
; 23.466 .
3. 10.372 . Out of nine occurrences, another five clearly have
this sense: 4-43, discussed in the text; 23.434-35, 585, of driving the horses to avoid a crash; 6.523, Hector reproving Paris for
idleness in basle, , which notably says that he is not only unwilling, but deliberately
so; and 3.66, the gifts of the gods are not to be thrown aside, , where
the point is not that a person would not willingly get them of course he would but that he would not get them by setting out to
. At 7.197 it seems to have only rhetorical force (Aristarchus read ). At 8.81 and 13.234 it may mean merely that
someone does something willingly, the sense in which it is the contrary of (see below in the text, and n. 4). This is the
usual sense in the Odyssey , clearly expressed at 4.646-47,
. At 22.351-53,
, the suggestion is
neither that the minstrel came into the house unwillingly nor that he came into it unintentionally, but rather that he was dragged
into it, which was not an action of his at all. Problems on this boundary are endemic to coercion. See chap. 6 below, pp. 152-54,
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