Summary Of Freedom Of Will And The Concept Of A Person By Harry Frankfurt
Harry Frankfurt’s article, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” discusses how the structure of an individual’s will becomes the basis for whether or not that individual can be considered a person. Frankfurt begins the article by describing two common, yet insufficient views of the concept of a person. The first is P.F. Strawson’s explanation, which states that the concept of a person refers to an entity with a mind and a body. Frankfurt shows how this view falls short by pointing out that many animal species have psychological and physical properties, and yet they are not considered persons. The second unsatisfactory view about the concept of a person is the assumption that the word “person” is the singular of “people” whereby
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There are several complications that can occur which prevent an individual from being a person. The first is when an individual experiences a conflict of his second-order desires about his first order desires. He is torn between which first-order desire he wants to motivate him to act, so there is no clear second-order desire to which the first-order desire can conform. If this individual remains unable to commit to any of his first order desires, he ceases to be a person because his will has been paralyzed and he cannot act at all. He becomes a helpless bystander to the forces that move him. A second situation that hinders personhood is when someone experiences an infinite regression of desires. An individual in this situation has conflicting second-order desires, so he forms a volition about which second-order desire he wants to win. He then has tertiary order desires, which conflict and cause him to form a potentially infinite series of higher order desires. If common sense or fatigue did not stop this individual, he could obsessively refuse to conform his actions to any of his desires and cause the destruction of himself as a person. If he is somehow able to confidently and definitively identify with one of his original first-order desires, he can terminate this infinite regression because the commitment would resound through the numerous higher-order desires that had been
There are several complications that can occur which prevent an individual from being a person. The first is when an individual experiences a conflict of his second-order desires about his first order desires. He is torn between which first-order desire he wants to motivate him to act, so there is no clear second-order desire to which the first-order desire can conform. If this individual remains unable to commit to any of his first order desires, he ceases to be a person because his will has been paralyzed and he cannot act at all. He becomes a helpless bystander to the forces that move him. A second situation that hinders personhood is when someone experiences an infinite regression of desires. An individual in this situation has conflicting second-order desires, so he forms a volition about which second-order desire he wants to win. He then has tertiary order desires, which conflict and cause him to form a potentially infinite series of higher order desires. If common sense or fatigue did not stop this individual, he could obsessively refuse to conform his actions to any of his desires and cause the destruction of himself as a person. If he is somehow able to confidently and definitively identify with one of his original first-order desires, he can terminate this infinite regression because the commitment would resound through the numerous higher-order desires that had been