44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith [40]
Before Matthew came into Big Lou’s coffee bar that morning, full of the news of the attempted break-in at the gallery, Big Lou 82
Akrasia: The Essential Problem
had been engaged in conversation with Ronnie and Pete about the possibility of weakness of the will.
“Ak-how much?” asked Ronnie.
“Akrasia,” said Big Lou, from her accustomed position behind the counter. “It’s a Greek word. You wouldn’t know about it, of course.”
“Used in Arbroath?” asked Ronnie coolly.
Big Lou ignored this. “I’m reading about it at the moment. A book on weakness of the will by a man called Willie Charlton, a philosopher. You won’t have heard of him.”
“From Arbroath?” asked Ronnie.
Big Lou appeared not to hear his remark. “Akrasia is weakness of the will. It means that you know what is good for you, but you can’t do it. You’re too weak.”
“Sounds familiar,” said Pete, stirring sugar into his coffee.
“Aye,” said Big Lou. “You’d know. You’re a gey fine case of weakness of the will. You know that sugar’s bad for you, but you still take it. That’s weakness of the will. That’s what philosophers all incontinence of the will.”
Pete glanced at Ronnie. “That’s something else. That’s diarrhoea of the will.”
Big Lou sighed. “Diarrhoea and akrasia are different. But it’s useless trying to explain things to you.”
“Sorry,” said Ronnie solemnly. “You tell us about akrasia, Lou.”
Big Lou picked up a cloth and began to wipe the counter.
“The question is this. Does weakness of the will make sense?
Surely if we do something, then that means that we want to do it. And if we want to do it, then that means that must be because we think that it’s in our best interests to do it.”
Ronnie thought for a moment. “So?”
Big Lou intensified her rubbing of the counter. “So there’s no such thing as a weakness of will because we always do what we want. All the time. You see?”
“No,” said Pete.
Big Lou looked at Ronnie. “And you? Do you see?”
“No.”
Akrasia: The Essential Problem
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Big Lou sighed. It was difficult dealing with people who read nothing. But she chose to persist. “Take chocolate,” she began.
“Chocolate?” said Ronnie.
“Yes. Now imagine that you really want to eat chocolate but you know that you shouldn’t. Maybe you have a weight problem. You see a bar of chocolate and you think: that’s a great wee bar of chocolate! But then something inside you says: it’s not good for you to eat chocolate. You think for a while and then you eat it.”
“You eat the chocolate?”
“Yes. Because you know that eating the chocolate will make you happier. It will satisfy your desire to eat chocolate.”
“So?”
“Well, you can’t be weak because you have done what you really wanted to do. Your will was to eat the chocolate. Your will has won. Therefore your will has been shown not to be weak.”
Ronnie took a sip from his sugared coffee. “Where do you get all this stuff from, Lou?”
“I read,” she said. “I happen to own some books. I read them. Nothing odd in that.”
“Lou’s great that way,” said Ronnie. “No, don’t laugh, Pete. You and me are ignorant. Put us in a pub quiz and we’d be laughed off the stage. Put Lou on and she’d win. I respect her for that. No, I really do.”
“Thank you,” said Lou. “Akrasia is an interesting thing. I’d never really thought about it before, but now . . .”
She was interrupted by the arrival of Matthew, who slammed the door behind him as he came in and turned to face his friends, flushed with excitement.
“A break-in,” he said. “Wood all over the place. The cops have been.”
They looked at him in silence.
“The gallery?” asked Pete.
Matthew moved over towards the counter. “Yes, the gallery. They were disturbed, thank God, and nothing was taken. I could have lost everything.”
“Bad luck,” said Ronnie. “That might have helped.”
84
Peploe?
There was a silence. Big Lou glared at Ronnie, who lowered his gaze. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. I meant to say that it was bad luck