Self-deception and akrasia present severe problems for certain theories of rational agency, problems that have provoked an astonishing exercise of philosophic self-deception in denying the phenomena, redescribing them in ways that attempt to preserve the theories they jeopardize. Such philosophical self-deception is often also accompanied by philosophic akrasia: standard practices violate the preferred philosophic theories. There have of course also been attempts to save the phenomena

-to explain, rather than explain away self-deception and akrasia so that they do not present embarrassments for the theory of ra-tional agency. But these attempts rarely question the centrality of rationality and rationally oriented motivation that self-deception and akrasia seem to challenge. Rather than trying to save the phenomena by still keeping them at the fringe suburbs of the theory, I want to bring akrasia and self-deception in from the beggarly outskirts, the slums of the self and theories of the self. I want