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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Shame and Necessity' and 'Commentary on the Sentences'

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2 ideas

20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / d. Weakness of will
Passions are judgements; greed thinks money is honorable, and likewise drinking and lust [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Chrysippus says (in his On Passions) that the passions are judgements; for greed is a supposition that money is honorable, and similarly for drunkennes and wantonness and others.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.111
     A reaction: This is an endorsement of Socrates's intellectualist reading of weakness of will, as against Aristotle's assigning it to overpowering passions.
We judge weakness of will by an assessment after the event is concluded [Williams,B, by Cottingham]
     Full Idea: Williams has shown that whether an action was weakness of will depends on an evaluation after the event, as in the question of whether Gauguin was right to abandon his family to pursue his art.
     From: report of Bernard Williams (Shame and Necessity [1993]) by John Cottingham - Reason, Emotions and Good Life p.1
     A reaction: The 'Gauguin Problem' is that Gauguin's actions only become weakness of will if the pictures are no good, and he can't know that till he's painted them. Good point.