Higher desires can also be manipulated
A hierarchy does not secure autonomy if the attitudes with which a person identifies were themselves coercively implanted or distorted.
Contemporary philosophy · 1929–2023
Frankfurt
Frankfurt asks whether freedom lies less in alternative possibilities than in which desires an agent identifies with and makes effective.
Harry Frankfurt was an American philosopher known for work on free will, moral responsibility, personhood, love and care. His hierarchical account of desire and his counterexamples to the principle of alternate possibilities reshaped debates about autonomy and responsibility.
AgencyEthicsMind
The question he enters
The question Frankfurt enters
Are you free when you get what you want, or only when the desire moving you is one you want to govern you?
The central move
Look at identification, not just options
Frankfurt distinguishes first-order desires from higher-order attitudes about which desires should move us. A person acts freely when the will with which they identify becomes effective, and moral responsibility may remain even where an agent could not have done otherwise if coercion never explains the actual choice.
Key ideas
Terms that carry the argument.
- First-order desire
- A desire to perform an action or obtain an object.
- Second-order volition
- A desire that a particular first-order desire become the one that effectively moves the agent.
- Identification
- The agent's endorsement of some motive or commitment as expressing the will they take as their own.
- Frankfurt case
- A scenario designed to show that a person can be responsible even when an intervener makes alternative action impossible but never intervenes.
Where the view strains
Objections and limits.
Alternative possibilities may return
Critics argue that Frankfurt cases retain some relevant flicker of freedom or fail to eliminate every morally significant alternative.
Sources and routes
Read the work. Follow the argument.
Primary texts
Where to meet the position.
- JSTORFreedom of the Will and the Concept of a PersonWebThe hierarchy of desires, personhood and freedom of the will.Stable journal record for The Journal of Philosophy 68(1), 14 January 1971, pages 5-20. · Bibliographic record and platform preview; complete access may require an account or institutional subscription. Checked Aug 2026.
- JSTORAlternate Possibilities and Moral ResponsibilityWebCounterexamples to the claim that responsibility requires the ability to do otherwise.The Journal of Philosophy, volume 66, number 23, 1969, pages 829–839. · Stable journal record; full-text access may depend on an institution or personal account. Checked Aug 2026.
- Cambridge CoreThe Importance of What We Care AboutWebEssays on care, necessity, identification and the structure of agency.Official Cambridge Core chapter record for the title essay in The Importance of What We Care About (1988), pages 80-94. · Publisher abstract and bibliographic record; complete access may require purchase or an institutional subscription. Checked Aug 2026.
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