Harry Frankfurt
Being free means acting on the desires we want to have, what we love gives our lives meaning, and “bullshit” is worse than lying because it does not care about the truth at all.
Placement
Princeton philosopher: a person can want to have certain desires, and freedom of the will is acting on the desire one wants; one can be responsible without alternatives – and bullshit is worse than lying, because it does not care about truth at all.
Key ideas
- Second-order desires
- Frankfurt cases
- On Bullshit
- The reasons of love
Influence
Influenced by 1
René Descartes
influenced by ✓
Frankfurt read Descartes’s Meditations as a defence of reason, asking whether reason can vindicate itself against doubts from demons, dreams and madness (Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen, 1970). H. G. Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen: The Defense of Reason in Descartes’s Meditations (1970); SEP “René Descartes”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
René Descartes › 1596–1650
Position
Frankfurt’s 1969 paper attacked the “principle of alternate possibilities”, the assumption that a person is morally responsible only if they could have done otherwise. In “Frankfurt cases” a hidden controller would intervene if the agent were about to choose differently, but never needs to; the agent acts on their own and is responsible, although they could not have done otherwise. His 1971 essay defined persons by “second-order desires”: we can want to have, or not to have, our desires, and freedom of the will consists in acting on the desire one wants to be effective – the unwilling addict is unfree, while the “wanton” does not care which desire wins. Later work moved from the will to love: what we care about, and above all what we love, gives our lives their shape and is itself a source of reasons rather than a response to them. “On Bullshit” distinguishes the bullshitter from the liar: the liar must know the truth in order to hide it, whereas the bullshitter is indifferent to it, which makes bullshit a greater enemy of truth than lies. “On Inequality” argued that what matters morally is that everyone has enough, not that everyone has the same.
Life & context
Harry Frankfurt (1929–2023) was born in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, and adopted as an infant. He studied at Johns Hopkins University, where he took his doctorate in 1954. He taught at Ohio State, at Rockefeller University in New York until its philosophy programme closed in 1976, and at Yale, where he chaired the department for nine years. From 1990 he taught at Princeton, becoming professor emeritus in 2002. His essay “On Bullshit”, first published in 1986, became an unexpected bestseller when it was reissued as a small book in 2005. He died in Santa Monica, California, at the age of ninety-four.
Main works
- Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility (1969)
- Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen (1970)
- Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person (1971)
- The Importance of What We Care About (1988)
- The Reasons of Love (2004)
- On Bullshit (1986; book 2005)
- On Inequality (2015)
Appears in
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