Harming Ourselves

​We human beings, manifestly the earthly creatures with the highest capacity for reason, yet are the sole creatures that, maddeningly, act against our own advantage, and by choice engage in actions that harm ourselves, even though other options were present, and these other options not only would not have caused self-harm, but have benefitted us. How is it that we so often act against our own best interest? That is, we encounter a choice between either A or B, and though A overall is more advantageous to us, we choose B. Why?
The Ancient Greeks sought to explain this perplexing contrary aspect of the human psyche by the term akrasia, a term that is commonly understood as meaning 'weakness of will', in that we are cognizant of all relevant matters in a particular choice, and thus are aware that A is the better choice for us, but yet we, seemingly perversely, nonetheless choose B. The term is often defined as "incontinence," but in the present, the word incontinence cannot escape its urinary associations, and so a literal translation is perhaps best, with kratia meaning control or governance, and therefore akrasia being best understood as an absence of self-mastery or of self-control.
For Socrates, as is very well known, only through a lack of knowledge does one ever engage in bad actions, for Socrates believed that if one had true knowledge of the greater good derived from choosing A over B, or in choosing B over A, then one could not help but make the right choice. Hence for Socrates akrasia is impossible, for one would never act against one's own good, so long as one understood the facts in a given case. It is important here to grasp that for Socrates, to choose B over A when A offers a greater quantity of good for ourselves involves a logical contradiction, and hence was impossible. An illustration here is helpful. In defense of akrasia, one might offer that, well, yes one chose B over A, but the choice was compelled by the greater pleasure received by choosing B over A. For Socrates this makes no sense, for if it is truly the case that A offers greater good than B, then selecting B is equivalent to choosing option B over A when B represents one ounce of gold and A represents two ounce of gold. It just makes no sense. Socrates, then, believed that one chose B only because one lacked the necessary knowledge of relative worth, that one for some reason could not understand the greater good found in choice A. Socrates suggested that the impairment of understanding might be due to proximity, that one chose B because B was more proximate in some sense, and hence one lacked a clear view of the totality of the situation, and B appeared more appealing because of its appearing larger in one's view. As Socrates asks, "Do things of the same size appear to you larger when seen near at hand, and smaller when seen from a distance?" (356d). Socrates advises that if we can perfect the art or the skill of measurement, that then we will not be deceived by appearances, but see or measure things as they really are, and if we can accomplish this, then we deprive mere appearance of its "power" that "often makes us wander all over the place in confusion" (356d). For Socrates, one is capable of doing evil because one is deceived by appearances, and one mistakes what is in fact evil for what appears good, or one mistakes for a greater good what in fact is a lesser good. If one perceives clearly, and is not mislead by appearances, then one is not capable of committing evil, for as Socrates states, "no one goes willingly toward the bad or what he believes to be bad" (358d).  
As Socrates famously states in Protagoras, in this case (that is, if choices are made based on appearances), then knowledge is "dragged around by all these other things as if it were a slave" (352c). For Socrates, "if someone were to know good and bad, then he would not be forced by anything to act otherwise than knowledge dictates" (352c). Thus for Socrates, choosing B is the result of a lack of knowledge, for if one had the necessary knowledge, then one could only choose A. Socrates affirms this view in Gorgias, wherein he declares "if I engage in anything that's improper...I do not make this mistake intentionally but out of my ignorance" (488a).
Aristotle had a somewhat different view on akrasia, proposing that self-harming behavior originated in or was enabled by two different characteristics, one being impetuosity, whereby the intense pleasure derived from an activity, such as sugar indulgence, overwhelms - temporarily - one's reasoning, that the pleasure to be gained causes a lapse in sound judgment. We see this effect in anger as well, for in the heat of our agitation we may lash out, physically or verbally, to our later remorse, when clear-sighted reason dawns over our clouded cognition. The other cause is our weakness, for as Aristotle perceived matters, there are those who can reason well enough who yet lack the character needed to carry forth correct thinking into proper acting. With impetuosity, there is no deliberation, and one acts in accordance with one's (momentary) passion, but with weakness, there is deliberation but one still gratifies one's passions, for one lacks the character and the strength to do otherwise. In a sense, though, Aristotle is not far from the Socratic view, for he does associate akrasia with diminishment of cognitive acuity, but a significant distinction is that Aristotle believed that passions rival and even trump reason, and thus we can act against our best interests even with perfect knowledge of the facts of the situation. 
An akratic person, then, acts against reason due to being under the influence of some strong feeling or emotion (pathos). An enkratic person is one who experiences the same strong emotion of feeling, but does not act as the feeling or the emotion directs, but instead follows the dictates of reason. Thus for Aristotle, akrasia is a very real phenomenon indeed, for Aristotle was the great observer of all things, and the fact that individuals do sometimes act against their own best interest was too evident for Aristotle to accept Socrates's theory that one chooses the more harmful of two options for no reason other than the absence of necessary knowledge.
What Socrates seems not to have accepted is that an individual will sometimes willingly choose to act in a contrary manner, act against reason and against the good, just for what gratification the individual enjoys in doing so. It is important here to note that as far as we know, Socrates never wrote anything, and the Socrates we know through the Dialogues is Plato's conception. We do not know, therefore, to what extent the Dialogues present Socrates's views or Plato's views, or - as is likely - a blend of the two. In any case, as the philosopher Martha Nussbaum states, Plato "never entertains the thought that there may be in human beings a desire simply to act in a perverse and irrational way" (Love's Knowledge, Essays on Philosophy and Literature, pg. 121). 
Dostoyevsky mined the depths of the human psyche as deeply as any, and as he wrote in Notes from Underground, the human being has odd qualities, and that one may "Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness....such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of the species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick." As Dostoyevsky goes on to write, an individual acts perversely "in order to prove to himself - as that were so necessary - that men are still men and not the keys of a piano." As Dostoyevsky's character (the Underground Man) goes on to say, even were the laws of nature (determinism) were wholly in control and science proved a man no more than a piano key, that the same man "would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point." 
For all Socrates's wisdom, most of us surely are in agreement with Aristotle and with Dostoyevsky, in believing that knowledge is not sufficient for virtue, that sometimes a human being will act in a perverse and irrational way, act against his or her own best interest, if only for the satisfaction of the act itself providing to the actor a sense of agency, that is, for the gratification obtained from a sense of having some influence on the world, some influence on others, for the gratification found in an expression of a will to power, and thus to declare by this act that one is an autonomous being, unbound, finally, by convention, by taboos, by ethical standards, by decency, or even by reason itself.