Managing Temptation: Comments on Chrisoula Andreou’s ‘Micromanagement and Poor Self-Control’

Abstract

In ‘Micromanagement and Poor Self-Control’, Chrisoula An-dreou argues that some cases of poor self-control are best understood as arising from poor self-management, in particular a kind of intrapersonal micromanagement. She argues that this furnishes us with a better understanding of those cases than the orthodox foreign force paradigm does (on which poor self-control amounts to diminished self-control). I argue that we cannot do without the foreign force paradigm to explain the cases that Andreou discusses. I suggest a both/and approach on which poor self-management and diminished self-control together explain poor self-control.