Thinker · TH-0196
Harry Frankfurt
Harry Frankfurt was an American philosopher who taught at Rockefeller University, Yale and Princeton. He reshaped the free-will debate with cases suggesting that moral…
On the Coordinates: 6.19 Philosophy of Love and Friendship · 6.24 Philosophy of Action
Harry Frankfurt was an American philosopher who taught at Rockefeller University, Yale and Princeton. He reshaped the free-will debate with cases suggesting that moral responsibility does not require the ability to do otherwise, and with a hierarchical account of the self built on second-order desires and identification. In later work on caring and love he argued that love is not a response to the value of its object but a bestowal: caring about something is what makes it important to us. His essay On Bullshit became widely known.
Key ideas
- A person can be morally responsible even when they could not have done otherwise.
- Persons are distinguished by second-order volitions: wanting certain desires to be the ones that move them.
- Love is not a response to value but bestows importance on its object.
- Caring about things is what gives shape and importance to a life.
Major works
- "Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility" (1969)
- "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person" (1971)
- The Importance of What We Care About (1988)
- The Reasons of Love (2004)
In the conversation
- Debate Compatibilism answers a question nobody was asking
- Debate Frankfurt is right that we don’t love our children for their qualities, and all love works that way
- Discussion Frankfurt’s unwilling addict and the men in my prison reading class
- Discussion The tumour cases: why does a cause we can see on a scan excuse, when one we can’t see doesn’t?
- Question Why does any list of qualities feel like the wrong answer to “why do you love me?”
- Debate The deviant causal chain shows the causal theory of action cannot be repaired
- Reading group Reading group: Sen’s ‘Rational Fools’ and the problem of commitment
In the Journal
In the Coordinates
The questions of philosophy where Harry Frankfurt takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.
- 6.19 Philosophy of Love and Friendship Do you love someone for their qualities, or for being them?
- 6.24 Philosophy of Action What is the difference between your arm rising and your raising it?