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TOPIC: Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person” (1971) — summary
SEARCH QUERY: "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person" Harry Frankfurt 1971 pdf
RATIONALE: Classic compatibilist paper introducing hierarchical accounts of freedom and the importance of identification with one's motives.

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Frankfurt’s central claim is that freedom of the will is not the same thing as simply being able to act without external বাধṣions. What matters is the structure of a person’s desires. He distinguishes:

- first-order desires: desires to do or have something;
- second-order desires: desires about which first-order desires one wants to have;
- second-order volitions: second-order desires that a particular first-order desire should become effective and determine action.

On this account, a being is a person if it can reflect on its motives and care about which desires will move it. A wanton is a being that operates only at the first-order level and is indifferent to whether its desires are the ones that actually govern it. The key mark of personhood is therefore reflective self-evaluation and the capacity to identify with, or distance oneself from, one’s motives.

Frankfurt argues that freedom of the will consists in having one’s effective will accord with one’s higher-order endorsement. A person’s will is free when the desire that actually moves the person is the desire the person wants to be effective. This means a person may act voluntarily yet still lack freedom of will if the effective desire conflicts with the person’s higher-order wish. Conversely, someone may be driven by a desire yet still have a free will if that desire is the one the person identifies with.

The paper is important because it shifts discussion of freedom from the availability of alternative possibilities to the internal hierarchy of desires and the issue of identification with one’s motives. It helped shape later compatibilist views of autonomy and self-governance.

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KEY CONCEPTS:
  - first-order desire
  - second-order desire
  - second-order volition
  - person
  - wanton
  - freedom of the will
  - identification with motives
  - reflective self-evaluation
  - self-governance
  - compatibilism

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