Abstract
Weakness of will, by which is meant a failure to act in accordance with one's judgment about what is best to do, raises two philosophical problems. Ancient and medieval philosophers approach weakness of will as a moral problem. They primarily consider it to be a disposition and thus focus on weakness of will as a diachronic phenomenon. Contemporary philosophers, by contrast, tend to approach weakness of will as a logical puzzle. They focus on its most paradoxical form: a single action. Their challenge is to explain how someone can perform an action while at the very same time judging it best to act otherwise. Central to the present research project is the observation that this shift in the approach to weakness of will prevents a proper understanding of its diachronic nature and precludes attention to its moral aspects. This research project is the first to investigate how the two different approaches bear on one another. It aims to contribute to the current philosophical discussion by developing a dispositional account of weakness of will while focusing on its moral significance. Recent insights and distinctions from the contemporary approach will, in turn, help to articulate the moral questions raised by weakness of will, and in that way enable an effective contribution to the ongoing philosophical debate. The project's primary significance lies in its contribution to the current philosophical debate: its focus on moral issues rather than logical puzzles and its attempt to develop a contemporary dispositional account. But the project clearly is also of interest outside academia, since understanding weakness of will is relevant for our self-conception as human agents.