Akrasia (; Greek , "lacking command" or "weakness", occasionally transliterated as acrasia or Anglicised as acrasy or acracy) is a lack of self-control, or acting against one's better judgment. Beginning with Plato, a variety of philosophers have attempted to determine whether or not akrasia exists and how to best define it. History In Plato's Protagoras dialogue, Socrates asks precisely how it is possible that, if one judges action A to be the best course of action, one would do anything other than A? Classical answers Plato's Socrates attests that akrasia does not exist, claiming "No one goes willingly toward the bad" (358d). If a person examines a situation and decides to act in the way he determines to be best, he will pursue this action, as the best course is also the good course, i.e. man's natural goal. An all-things-considered assessment of the situation will bring full knowledge of a decision's outcome and worth linked to well-developed principles of the good. A person, according to Socrates, never chooses to act poorly or against his better judgment; and, therefore, actions that go against what is best are simply a product of being ignorant of facts or knowledge of what is best or good. Aristotle, acknowledging that we intuitively believe in akrasia, devoted book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics to a more empirical approach to the question. He distances himself from the Socratic position by arguing that akrasia occurs as a result of an agent's opinion, not their desire. Since opinion is formulated mentally in a way that may or may not imitate truth, while appetites are merely desires of the body, opinion is only incidentally aligned with or opposed to the good, making an akratic action the product of opinion instead of reason. For Aristotle, the opposite of akrasia is enkrateia, a state where an agent has power over their desires. Aristotle considered one could be in a state of akrasia with respect to money or temper or glory, but that its core relation was to bodily enjoyment. Its causes could be weakness of will, or an impetuous refusal to think. At the same time, he did not consider it a vice, because it is not so much a product of moral choice, but instead, a failure to act on one's better knowledge. For Augustine, incontinence was not so much a problem of knowledge (knowing but not acting) but of the