What Is A Person?
By: Katharina E.
Tags: Human Behavior, Harry Frankfurt, Philosophy, Psychology, Desire

What Is A Person?

It has to do a lot with the structure of desires, according to the philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt.

Illustration by Kika Fuenzalida on mixkit.co

Would you describe yourself as a person? Perhaps you thought “person” is just the single form of people or one individual who belongs to the human species. The philosopher we’ll be talking about today disagrees: He would only attribute the term “person” to you if you are capable of deciding what you want to do, to put it crudely.

Let’s dive deeper into what Harry G. Frankfurt (born 1929) discusses in his article “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”.

His definition of a “person”

A person is not in a biological sense the single form of people, but a philosophical qualified term for humans, as they are different from (other) animals in the ability of self-determination. The structure of the will is what differentiates persons from other creatures, according to Frankfurt. We as humans are not alone in our motives and desires; But how we structure them is different, he argues.

Only a person can form “second-order desires”.

While he admits that animals can want and choose things to do (what he calls first-order desires), we can also “want what we want”. We are capable to want to have a specific desire (what he names second-order desires).

Humans are capable of wanting different things than what they are actually wanting. No other animal than man seems to self-reflect on their wishes and desires, and it “is manifested in the formation of second-order desires”.

He says that a statement like “A wants X” expresses a first-order desire, while A is a person and X is an action, and it says remarkably little:

“Such a statement may be consistent, for example, with each of the following statements: (a) the prospect of doing X elicits no sensation or introspectible emotional response in A; (b) A is unaware that he wants to X; (c) A believes that he does not want to X; (d) A wants to refrain from X-ing; (e) A wants to Y and believes that it is impossible for him both to Y and to X; (f) A does not “really” want to X; (g) A would rather die than X; and so on.”

Crucial for being a person, however, is his definition of will.

The will is an effective desire. A desire which ultimately leads into an action. The will of a person describes one or multiple desires, which cause the action.

Will “is the notion of an effective desire — one that moves (or will or would move) a person all the way to action.”

So if one says: ”I want that X-ing is my will” it means that exactly this desire — to X — becomes effective, or causes the action.

And the capacity to feel and think this sentence is specifically attributed to persons, according to Frankfurt. He presents a new term for it:

Second-order volition

It means, wanting that one desire becomes the will. In other words, having a second-order desire that wishes that a first-order desire becomes effective, the cause for the action.

The agent who is capable of having second-order desires but can’t have second-order volitions, wouldn’t be a person in his eyes. For this creature, he uses the term: ‘Wanton’.

“The essential characteristic of a wanton is that he does not care about his will.”

A wanton has desires, which move him to act in specific ways, whether or not he wants them to move him or if he would want to be moved by other desires. Frankfurt states that this class of “wantons” contains very young children and all nonhuman animals. However, it may also include some adult humans as well.

The example of two types of drug addicts

The first one is unwillingly a drug addict. He hates his addiction. Although he has the desire to take drugs, he has also another desire to stop taking drugs. These are two conflicting first-order desires.

But he classifies them: He would rather stop taking drugs, and this is his second-order desire. So he wants that the desire to stop being addicted becomes his effective desire, his will. This want can also be described as the second-order volition.

The second type of drug addict is a wanton. He acts according to his first-order desires, “without his being concerned whether the desires that move him to act are desires by which he wants to be moved to act.” He is just incapable of being concerned about what he wants his will to be.

He may have conflicting first-order desires just as the first type of drug addict. But unlike the first type, he doesn’t prefer one desire over the other to be his will. Therefore, he doesn’t suffer from his addiction, as the first type does, when he isn’t able to refrain from taking the drug, although he preferred this desire.

The wanton addict doesn’t (or can’t) care which of the desires wins out: