One of the central claims of " Unprincipled Virtue " is that the assistance that Huckleberry Finn renders to Jim is morally worthy even though Huck actively believes that he is doing something wrong, and that akrasia can sometimes be a more rational state than individual autonomy.
22.
Akrasia appeared later as a character in Spenser's The Faerie Queene, representing the incontinence of lust, followed in the next canto by a study of that of anger; and as late as Jane Austen the sensibility of such figures as Marianne Dashwood would be treated as a form of ( spiritual ) incontinence.
23.
In this sense, " enkrateia " is the state of performing what is known to be a positive choice because of its positive consequences as opposed to " akrasia ", which is the state of performing what is known to be not a positive choice ( because of its negative consequences ), but nevertheless performing it because of its immediate pleasures.
24.
In other words, he argued that it made no sense for someone to say, sincerely : " I ought to do X, " and then fail to do X . This was identified by Frankena, Nobis and others as a major flaw in Hare's system, as it appeared to take no account of " akrasia ", or weakness of the will.
