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The Importance of What We Care About
This 1988 volume is a collection of thirteen seminal essays on ethics, free will, and the philosophy of mind. The essays deal with such central topics as freedom of the will, moral responsibility, the concept of a person, the structure of the will, the nature of action, the constitution of the self, and the theory of personal ideals. By focusing on the distinctive nature of human freedom, Professor Frankfurt is able to explore fundamental problems of what it is to be a person and of what one should care about in life.
202 pages, Paperback
First published May 27, 1988
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1089 people want to read
About the author
Harry G. Frankfurt
19 books351 followersHarry Gordon Frankfurt was an American philosopher. He was a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, where he taught from 1990 until 2002. Frankfurt also taught at Yale University, Rockefeller University, and Ohio State University.
Frankfurt made significant contributions to fields like ethics and philosophy of mind. The attitude of caring played a central role in his philosophy. To care about something means to see it as important and reflects the person's character. According to Frankfurt, a person is someone who has second-order volitions or who cares about what desires he or she has. He contrasts persons with wantons. Wantons are beings that have desires but do not care about which of their desires is translated into action. In the field of ethics, Frankfurt gave various influential counterexamples, so-called Frankfurt cases, against the principle that moral responsibility depends on the ability to do otherwise. His most popular book is On Bullshit, which discusses the distinction between bullshitting and lying.
Frankfurt made significant contributions to fields like ethics and philosophy of mind. The attitude of caring played a central role in his philosophy. To care about something means to see it as important and reflects the person's character. According to Frankfurt, a person is someone who has second-order volitions or who cares about what desires he or she has. He contrasts persons with wantons. Wantons are beings that have desires but do not care about which of their desires is translated into action. In the field of ethics, Frankfurt gave various influential counterexamples, so-called Frankfurt cases, against the principle that moral responsibility depends on the ability to do otherwise. His most popular book is On Bullshit, which discusses the distinction between bullshitting and lying.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 3, 2011
Of one thing there's no doubt: Fankfurt is a smart dude. His essays are crisp, clear, and relevant - at least, as relevant as one can reasonably expect a collection of philosophical essays to be.
Don't get me wrong: this is not an easy read. "The Importance of What We Care About" tackles some difficult issues: moral responsibility, determinism, and the notion of self, among others. Fankfurt's analysis of these topics is nuanced and incisive: there are no muddy thoughts here. He always narrows the scope of his investigations, so you never feel like you're drowning in unfamiliar terminology or wadding through an overabundance of underdeveloped ideas. Frankfurt's writing is neither difficult nor pretentious. That said, every sentence counts: be prepared to focus.
The payoff is well worth it. Frankfurt tackles some of the go-to questions of philosophy - mentioned above - and he does so admirably. His answers are often unorthodox, but always sensible. More than once, I found myself wondering: "how could anyone have ever thought otherwise?"
As interesting as these standard topics are, the real treat are the essays about issues philosophers almost never discuss. In 'the importance of what we care about,' he asks: why do we care about some things more than others? In 'on bullshit': what is bullshit, and why is there so much of it? In 'necessity and desire': when does needing something take precedence over desiring something? And so on.
These essays are well-written, and the often-unusual topics are ones you'll be able to relate to. If you don't like philosophy, 'The Importance of What We Care About' won't convince you otherwise. If, however, you like thinking for its own sake, you owe it to yourself to pick this one up. It's terrific.
Don't get me wrong: this is not an easy read. "The Importance of What We Care About" tackles some difficult issues: moral responsibility, determinism, and the notion of self, among others. Fankfurt's analysis of these topics is nuanced and incisive: there are no muddy thoughts here. He always narrows the scope of his investigations, so you never feel like you're drowning in unfamiliar terminology or wadding through an overabundance of underdeveloped ideas. Frankfurt's writing is neither difficult nor pretentious. That said, every sentence counts: be prepared to focus.
The payoff is well worth it. Frankfurt tackles some of the go-to questions of philosophy - mentioned above - and he does so admirably. His answers are often unorthodox, but always sensible. More than once, I found myself wondering: "how could anyone have ever thought otherwise?"
As interesting as these standard topics are, the real treat are the essays about issues philosophers almost never discuss. In 'the importance of what we care about,' he asks: why do we care about some things more than others? In 'on bullshit': what is bullshit, and why is there so much of it? In 'necessity and desire': when does needing something take precedence over desiring something? And so on.
These essays are well-written, and the often-unusual topics are ones you'll be able to relate to. If you don't like philosophy, 'The Importance of What We Care About' won't convince you otherwise. If, however, you like thinking for its own sake, you owe it to yourself to pick this one up. It's terrific.
August 23, 2012
"Each of us is indisputably a creature of history. Without the past, we should be nothing, and it is only by appreciating that he is through and through the product of historical contingencies— biological, social, and personal—that a person can recognize and make sense of his own nature." -Frankfurt
September 24, 2023
Style: Highly repetitive yet mostly impenetrable, specific to academic philosophy departments. The essays don't have proper introductions or conclusions. Twelve out of thirteen are reprints of publications over an 18-year span, so they weren't originally intended to go together, and you have to connect the dots yourself. I had to read the book three times to begin to get it, and I summarized it here — there's an unpaywalled link to my 11-minute read on Medium.
February 20, 2020
13 essays by Harry G. Frankfurt, on the following themes:
ⅰ: If you do something because you willed yourself to do it, you are responsible for having done it, even if you could not in fact have done otherwise. The fact that your action was done under coercive threat or that it was predetermined does not absolve you of responsibility for it if the actual reason you took the action is because you intended to. For you to be blamable/creditable for some action does not require that you could potentially have done something else, contrary to centuries of previous theorizing about ethics.
ⅱ: A perhaps defining property of “persons” is that we can form “second-order volitions”: desires about our desires. Because a person may wish that her will were directed toward wishes other than her current wishes, it is for persons that questions of “free will” arise: do I have the ability to choose my own wishes, or do I merely have the ability to work toward the fulfillment of whatever unchosen wish currently predominates?
ⅲ: Threats and offers are two ways that one person may try to influence someone to exercise his will in a particular way. For either of these to rise to the level of “coercion,” or at any rate, “compulsion” — in a sense that absolves the person coerced of moral responsibility for the resulting action — it must go beyond merely influencing his will and become more like imposing one’s own will upon him.
ⅳ: Doing something because it is the lesser of available evils, and therefore something one would rather not have to do, is still to do it freely and responsibly. Though being responsible for doing the lesser of available evils doesn’t necessarily make you blameworthy for the evil. If indeed it was the lesser of available evils, that is enough to deflect the blame.
ⅴ: Things we do may be active (actions) or passive (mere happenings). “Passions” (e.g. anger) also may be active or passive in this way: some passions we own as part of our persons (they are “internal”), others take hold of us without our consent (“external”). A person may externalize a passion by rejecting it or refusing to cooperate with it or even by submitting unwillingly to it, or can internalize one by agreeing with it, going along with it, incorporating it into one’s self image. Merely regretting having a passion that you in fact go along with willingly isn’t enough to externalize it.
ⅵ: Whether what someone does is their “action” or a “mere happening” cannot be resolved by looking at the prehistory of the activity for its causation (e.g. was it intended or desired). Rather, something about the activity (or the person doing it) while it is occurring discriminates the cases: whether or not the activity is being done under the person’s guidance. A behavior that is not desired, willed, or even anticipated, can nonetheless be a person’s action if when it takes place the person takes ownership of it and guides it intentionally.
ⅶ: Parallel to epistemology & ethics is the study of “what to care about”. To care about something is to have a long-term personal investment in it. To care is not necessarily or even often voluntary, but to shape what one cares about is an important way to shape one’s will. To care about something is to give it will-power: to foment “volitional necessity.” A person compelled by volitional necessity does not typically feel her will has been overcome, but that the compulsion is (or is compatible with) her will. Being compelled by something we care about (e.g. the truth) is paradoxically liberating. The question of which things are worth caring about is vulnerable to philosophical critique. If you are to care about anything, caring about whether you’re caring about the right things is a good place to start.
ⅷ: I showed in essay #1 that the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, which says that a person can be morally responsible for doing an action only if that person could have done otherwise, is false. I also asserted that the conundrum of whether or not determinism is true, and if true whether it is compatible with free will, is not significant to questions of moral responsibility. Peter van Inwagen believes he has demonstrated that I am wrong about this. He is mistaken.
ⅸ: People use the word “need” in an imprecise way that can make needs seem important even when they’re not. A “need” is not absolute but always relative to an end: I need α in order to β. To learn the moral priority of α you must examine β; α derives its moral priority from that of β. In particular, a need that you have only because of a desire that you voluntarily have assumed is not worthy of much respect.
ⅹ: What is “bullshit”? Essentially it is indifference to the truth: a sort of bluff in which one goes through the motions of conveying something factual without actually attending to what it takes to represent the truth. It differs from “lies” in part in that the liar does care about what the facts are (in order to misrepresent them). For this reason also it is more dangerous to the enterprise of truthseeking. For various reasons it also seems especially prominent lately.
ⅺ: Economic equality is an unwise choice of a social ideal. “Maximizing the incidence of sufficiency” is a better candidate. Focusing on one’s relative economic status rather than one’s absolute economic needs is ethically disorienting. Some common economic arguments for the value of economic equality do not withstand close inspection. Even the Rawlsian qualified justification of inequality (the “difference principle”) is too tepid.
ⅻ: An experience of consciousness is simultaneously an experience of self-consciousness, or of reflexive consciousness-of-being-aware. (It also seems suspiciously superfluous, “an ontological absurdity”). Consciousness of our motives is of particular concern to us; we typically (unless we are “wanton”) compare our present motives to what we believe our motives ideally should be. By deciding in favor of one particular motive, a person “constitutes himself”; by accomplishing it he exercises “his own will”. One may fail to be “wholehearted” if one continues to be influenced by motives that oppose those that one has decided to identify with.
ⅹⅲ: Because for utilitarians well-being is the only rational good, no sort of action is off-limits to them in theory (any sort of action might improve well-being in some conceivable scenario). So it may seem that it would be difficult for them to make durable commitments to certain principles of conduct (aside from utilitarianism itself). The same sort of suspicion is leveled at atheists (if there is no god, everything is permitted). However a person may indeed still find some courses of action “unthinkable”, based on something integral to her nature, and will not do such actions. This may be a rational thing, and may indeed rescue us from repugnant conclusions of judgement.
ⅰ: If you do something because you willed yourself to do it, you are responsible for having done it, even if you could not in fact have done otherwise. The fact that your action was done under coercive threat or that it was predetermined does not absolve you of responsibility for it if the actual reason you took the action is because you intended to. For you to be blamable/creditable for some action does not require that you could potentially have done something else, contrary to centuries of previous theorizing about ethics.
ⅱ: A perhaps defining property of “persons” is that we can form “second-order volitions”: desires about our desires. Because a person may wish that her will were directed toward wishes other than her current wishes, it is for persons that questions of “free will” arise: do I have the ability to choose my own wishes, or do I merely have the ability to work toward the fulfillment of whatever unchosen wish currently predominates?
ⅲ: Threats and offers are two ways that one person may try to influence someone to exercise his will in a particular way. For either of these to rise to the level of “coercion,” or at any rate, “compulsion” — in a sense that absolves the person coerced of moral responsibility for the resulting action — it must go beyond merely influencing his will and become more like imposing one’s own will upon him.
ⅳ: Doing something because it is the lesser of available evils, and therefore something one would rather not have to do, is still to do it freely and responsibly. Though being responsible for doing the lesser of available evils doesn’t necessarily make you blameworthy for the evil. If indeed it was the lesser of available evils, that is enough to deflect the blame.
ⅴ: Things we do may be active (actions) or passive (mere happenings). “Passions” (e.g. anger) also may be active or passive in this way: some passions we own as part of our persons (they are “internal”), others take hold of us without our consent (“external”). A person may externalize a passion by rejecting it or refusing to cooperate with it or even by submitting unwillingly to it, or can internalize one by agreeing with it, going along with it, incorporating it into one’s self image. Merely regretting having a passion that you in fact go along with willingly isn’t enough to externalize it.
ⅵ: Whether what someone does is their “action” or a “mere happening” cannot be resolved by looking at the prehistory of the activity for its causation (e.g. was it intended or desired). Rather, something about the activity (or the person doing it) while it is occurring discriminates the cases: whether or not the activity is being done under the person’s guidance. A behavior that is not desired, willed, or even anticipated, can nonetheless be a person’s action if when it takes place the person takes ownership of it and guides it intentionally.
ⅶ: Parallel to epistemology & ethics is the study of “what to care about”. To care about something is to have a long-term personal investment in it. To care is not necessarily or even often voluntary, but to shape what one cares about is an important way to shape one’s will. To care about something is to give it will-power: to foment “volitional necessity.” A person compelled by volitional necessity does not typically feel her will has been overcome, but that the compulsion is (or is compatible with) her will. Being compelled by something we care about (e.g. the truth) is paradoxically liberating. The question of which things are worth caring about is vulnerable to philosophical critique. If you are to care about anything, caring about whether you’re caring about the right things is a good place to start.
ⅷ: I showed in essay #1 that the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, which says that a person can be morally responsible for doing an action only if that person could have done otherwise, is false. I also asserted that the conundrum of whether or not determinism is true, and if true whether it is compatible with free will, is not significant to questions of moral responsibility. Peter van Inwagen believes he has demonstrated that I am wrong about this. He is mistaken.
ⅸ: People use the word “need” in an imprecise way that can make needs seem important even when they’re not. A “need” is not absolute but always relative to an end: I need α in order to β. To learn the moral priority of α you must examine β; α derives its moral priority from that of β. In particular, a need that you have only because of a desire that you voluntarily have assumed is not worthy of much respect.
ⅹ: What is “bullshit”? Essentially it is indifference to the truth: a sort of bluff in which one goes through the motions of conveying something factual without actually attending to what it takes to represent the truth. It differs from “lies” in part in that the liar does care about what the facts are (in order to misrepresent them). For this reason also it is more dangerous to the enterprise of truthseeking. For various reasons it also seems especially prominent lately.
ⅺ: Economic equality is an unwise choice of a social ideal. “Maximizing the incidence of sufficiency” is a better candidate. Focusing on one’s relative economic status rather than one’s absolute economic needs is ethically disorienting. Some common economic arguments for the value of economic equality do not withstand close inspection. Even the Rawlsian qualified justification of inequality (the “difference principle”) is too tepid.
ⅻ: An experience of consciousness is simultaneously an experience of self-consciousness, or of reflexive consciousness-of-being-aware. (It also seems suspiciously superfluous, “an ontological absurdity”). Consciousness of our motives is of particular concern to us; we typically (unless we are “wanton”) compare our present motives to what we believe our motives ideally should be. By deciding in favor of one particular motive, a person “constitutes himself”; by accomplishing it he exercises “his own will”. One may fail to be “wholehearted” if one continues to be influenced by motives that oppose those that one has decided to identify with.
ⅹⅲ: Because for utilitarians well-being is the only rational good, no sort of action is off-limits to them in theory (any sort of action might improve well-being in some conceivable scenario). So it may seem that it would be difficult for them to make durable commitments to certain principles of conduct (aside from utilitarianism itself). The same sort of suspicion is leveled at atheists (if there is no god, everything is permitted). However a person may indeed still find some courses of action “unthinkable”, based on something integral to her nature, and will not do such actions. This may be a rational thing, and may indeed rescue us from repugnant conclusions of judgement.
July 27, 2021
Sharp and witty, this essay collection managed to hold my attention throughout.
I can't say anything more than this, however. It held my attention, yes. But my curiosity never peaked. I didn't come out of the experience with more than a couple of new ideas, some of which could never really impact the way I work or live in a substantial way.
But, credit where credit is due - the essays do have a certain charm to them. I could never really get myself to put down the book. Harry did a good job not only thinking, writing and researching, but also carefully meddling and crafting his words, sentences and paragraphs.
A fine read.
I can't say anything more than this, however. It held my attention, yes. But my curiosity never peaked. I didn't come out of the experience with more than a couple of new ideas, some of which could never really impact the way I work or live in a substantial way.
But, credit where credit is due - the essays do have a certain charm to them. I could never really get myself to put down the book. Harry did a good job not only thinking, writing and researching, but also carefully meddling and crafting his words, sentences and paragraphs.
A fine read.
November 7, 2008
Frankfurt was a professor of mine in college and he writes like he taught--clearly. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to understand his texts the first time round. The thoughts are dense and provocative but the writing is limpid. And he's writing exactly about the things I care about! And about bullshit, also a good topic. I admit, I never finished all the essays because I had to return the book to the library but this is definitely a worthwhile read.
August 10, 2024
What of my favorite arguments for the freedom of the will. Harry G. Frankfurt's essay Freedom of the Will presents a profound exploration of what distinguishes humans from other creatures: the ability to engage in reflective self-evaluation. Frankfurt introduces the concept of second-order desires—those desires where one not only wants or chooses something but also wishes to want or reject certain desires themselves. This capacity to form second-order volitions, or the desire for specific desires to govern one’s actions, is what Frankfurt identifies as essential to being a person. Unlike "wantons," who act on their strongest impulses without reflecting on their desirability, a true person actively engages in shaping their will according to higher-order desires, thereby exercising true freedom of the will.
Frankfurt further argues that this reflective capacity is crucial for achieving genuine autonomy. A person who fails to align their will with their second-order volitions may feel estranged from themselves, like a passive bystander rather than an active participant in their own life.
Frankfurt further argues that this reflective capacity is crucial for achieving genuine autonomy. A person who fails to align their will with their second-order volitions may feel estranged from themselves, like a passive bystander rather than an active participant in their own life.
October 18, 2019
"The reason a person does not experience the force of volitional necessity as alien or as external to himself, then, is that it coincides with - and is, indeed, partly constituted by - desires which are not merely his own but with which he actively identifies himself."
"A person is active when it is by his own will that he does what he does, even when his will is not itself within the scope of his voluntary control."
"A person is active when it is by his own will that he does what he does, even when his will is not itself within the scope of his voluntary control."
February 17, 2020
Frankfurt seems to be an amazing person. He can be incompetent in a seemingly unlimited number of fields. And his incompetence gives him the capacity to have a vague opinion on anything. Apparently his only skill, kissing rears to get the sinecure, rests without a book.
December 18, 2018
Excellent read!
March 28, 2009
This book is a collection of essays by Harry Frankfurt on such weighty topics as freedom of will, coercion, moral responsibility, what we identify with, among others. I suspect this book is the collection of papers that Frankfurt requires his students to read for some class. I read this book because I had previously read an essay by Harry Frankfurt called "On Bullshit" (It's in my list). In fact, that essay is included in this book.
I found the book pretty difficult. It felt good to improve at reading the essays and think about the heavy issues, but in the end, I don't think I really understood it as well as would be required if I were in Frankfurt's class. It is full of double/triple/quadruple negative statements that I found a bit hard to follow and some of the concepts can be hard to grasp.
The "On Bullshit" essay is by far the easiest to read and understand. It makes some really interesting points on the meaning of truth and bullshit. It even ends with a pretty surprising statement on sincerity. Therefore, I would recommend it to someone new to philosophy and Harry Frankfurt in particular.
I found the book pretty difficult. It felt good to improve at reading the essays and think about the heavy issues, but in the end, I don't think I really understood it as well as would be required if I were in Frankfurt's class. It is full of double/triple/quadruple negative statements that I found a bit hard to follow and some of the concepts can be hard to grasp.
The "On Bullshit" essay is by far the easiest to read and understand. It makes some really interesting points on the meaning of truth and bullshit. It even ends with a pretty surprising statement on sincerity. Therefore, I would recommend it to someone new to philosophy and Harry Frankfurt in particular.
April 24, 2014
I would recommend at least the essay entitled "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person".
October 8, 2014
Frankfurt has a precise and combative style in these philosophical essays on ethics and the philosophy of mind.
March 16, 2021
Great number of essays. Important reflection on moral responsibility, higher order or second order desires and the structure of human volition. Easy to follow through.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews