COMMENTRY ON FRANKFURT

an extract from Self and Subjectivity by Kim Atkins, 2005, pg 139 - 141
(sorry but I had to highlight it all, its ALL relevant)

"...Critical self-reflection and self-determination are inextricable from a morally valuable life: a life that can be said to be “one’s own,”and,for that reason,is worth living. Frankfurt also continues a line of thought originating in Kant’s Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals.3 There,Kant argued that persons are unlike other animals insofar as they have reason, which enables them to intervene in their desires and impulses to direct their actions.

Famously, Kant says that the role of reason is not to make us happy; reason has an altogether different purpose,which is to produce a good will.The purpose of reason, writes Kant, is morality, because it allows us to bring our actions under the directive of our rational wills.The good will is a self-legislating will:one chooses to have one’s actions directed by rational motives alone, and in this way, one is autonomous. Similarly, Frankfurt regards freedom of the will as the defining characteristic of a person. However,while he believes that rationality has a key role,his conception of volition is more complex than Kantian good will. For Frankfurt,the process whereby one comes to endorse certain values and beliefs is partly driven by emotions and desires; it is a process driven by what one cares about. Having one’s intentions and actions driven by what one cares about distinguishes a “person”from a wanton.

 Frankfurt describes the difference between wantons and persons in terms of first- order and second-order desires and volitions. First-order desires are those desires that arise spontaneously from one’s situation and are typically unreflective. First-order desires may be expressed in actions (but not necessarily),the motives of which one does not reflect on in a critically evaluative way.If there is evaluation here at all, it is characteristically instrumental and concerns only how one is to obtain what one wants in the most efficient or satisfying way. At the level of first-order desires,one does not stop to consider which,if any,of one’s desires one wants to have. Many animals besides human beings have first-order desires, but, according to Frankfurt, only human beings are capable of second-order desires.  

Second-order desires arise from reflection upon one’s first-order desires; they are desires about desires. Having reason, we have the capacity to reflect upon, scrutinize, and evaluate our first-order desires.When we reflect upon and evaluate our first-order desires, selecting those desires we want to motivate us, we develop second-order desires. 

Second-order desires often (but not necessarily) give rise to reasons upon which one acts.When this occurs, Frankfurt calls these “second-order volitions”:“Someone has a desire of the second order either when he wants simply to have a certain desire or when he wants a certain desire to be his will. In situations of the latter kind I shall call his second-order desires ‘second-order volitions’.”

Frankfurt distinguishes second-order desires from second-order volitions in this way: a second-order desire is the desire to have a certain desire. However, one may want that desire but not want to act on it. It is only if one also wants to act on that desire that it becomes a volition. To illustrate, he gives the example of a doctor investigating drug addiction. The doctor may want to experience the craving that addicts feel, so that he will understand their situation better.That is, he desires to have the desire for the drug. This is a second-order desire. However, he does not want to take the drug for which he has a desire – he does not have a first-order desire for the drug.That is, he does not want to act on the desire;he does not want his will to accord with that desire. He wants his actions determined by a different set of desires: a desire to be a good doctor,a knowledgeable researcher,and a nonaddict.Because these are the second-order desires on which he wishes to act, these desires constitute his second-order volitions. 

Being a person on Frankfurt’s terms means being the kind of entity who reflects upon their desires and aversions,and chooses (endorses or identifies with) the desires and aversions by which they will be motivated to act. Anyone who does not attempt this,according to Frankfurt, is a “wanton”:“The essential characteristic of a wanton is that he does not care about his will.”5 Wantons can have second-order desires,but unless their wills are actually structured by those desires they will not be persons because they will not have enacted their freedom. Wantons can exercise reason, but do not have freedom of the will because they exercise only instrumental reason, not critical evaluation. On this view, until one critically reflects upon one’s desires, the life one leads will not be genuinely one’s own because it will not be something for which one can be said to be genuinely responsible."