Irreducible Freedom: Persons and Wantons

I challenge Harry Frankfurt's distinction between persons and wantons, and I try to show how emerging evidence about dubious practices like gay therapy has shed light on some incorrect assumptions.

 

Harry Frankfurt in Freedom of the Will and Conception of a Person made the distinction between persons and wantons by the ability to form second order volitions. Persons can form second order volitions and wantons cannot form such desires. The wanton behaves like an animal which is driven by first order desires or desires which conflict with his second order desires. A first order desire motivates a person to do something, that something is a thing the person wants to do. While a second order desire is a thing a person wants to want to do. The first order desire can and often times does conflict with second order desires, for instance smoking can interfere with the desire to quit. One may want to want to do something, but if the second order desire conflicts with the first order desire, it is not his effective desire or his will.  

 

A second order volition is an effective second order desire, it is a second order desire which is in accordance with the will. Harry Frankfurt makes the distinction here, between a person and a wanton. A person according to Frankfurt is defined by his ability to have second order volitions, second order desires that become effective.  It is through these second order volitions that we can rise above animals as free agents. But can we say that animals are not free, if we look closer into the nature of second order volitions and human behavior we will see that as free persons we are surprisingly similar to animals. This distinction would be valid if agents were capable of constructing authentic second order desires.

 

The problem that is not addressed by Frankfurt is that upon forming second order desires the human cognition can hardly recognize what manner of desires are possible. This an epistemological problem raised by several existentialist philosophers, most notably Jean Paul Sartre. The conception of the free person according to Frankfurt is more generally a conception of the self. It is one’s personal identity as a free agent which is founded upon the individual’s facticity. But that does not make one’s second order volitions authentic and it makes the distinction between person and wanton, human and animal inauthentic.

 

A new trend that illustrates this argument is the phenomenon of gay therapy or reparative therapy where persons believe they can form effective second order desires regarding their sexual partners. Gay therapy attempts two goals, one is to change a person’s homosexual inclinations to heterosexual ones and the second goal is to abolish homosexual inclinations completely. There is mounting evidence that gay therapy is clearly ineffective. But many gay men still seek out gay therapy in an attempt to convert their sexuality. We could say that these men are forming second order desires but they are unable to form effective second order desires or second order volitions. They want to desire heterosexual relations, but they are unable to make this desire effective. This is the characteristic of a wanton or an animal which cannot overcome conflicting first order desires.

 

However the conflict here does not have to arise because the homosexual man lacks will, it might be because the second order desire is inauthentic. The second order desire may not be part of the homosexual man’s facticity and it may not have any factual relevance with regard to the homosexual man. But the homosexual man’s lack of knowledge leads him to believe that gay therapy can transform his second order desire into an effective desire.  The ineffectiveness of the second order desire in question may not ever arise from the homosexual man’s capacity to choose, it just might be a biological (or even a psychological) fact regarding sexuality.

 

There is no reason to believe that second order desires are authentic. The authenticity of the second order desire may not be in the person’s scope of knowledge, so one may think that such a desire is authentic. One can attempt to make a second distinction between a person and a wanton simply by education. People who are educated can have more effective second order desires than people who are not educated because they possess more knowledge about what kind of second order desires can be effective. This is also a distinction Frederick Douglass makes in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, where he compares the uneducated slaves to a herd of animals. One could say that the ability to form effective second order desires leads to greater degrees of freedom. In Frederick Douglass’ case, his education has led him to want freedom but it has also led him to an effective second order desire because his education has given him a means to make the desire effective and abolish conflicting desires that may stem from epistemological uncertainty. However the distinction between an animal and a human, or a wanton and person still remains inauthentic because of the nature of knowledge and our knowledge regarding our facticity.  

 

Frankfurt’s distinction between the person and the wanton fades once we recognize that certain second order desires cannot become second order volitions. Some might feel disgusted by this idea because once again it brings us closer to our primitive ancestors. It makes us acknowledge the animalistic character in persons. It keeps us connected as opposed to disconnected from other living things which we might have the inclination to feel superior towards. However I find a sense of harmony in knowing that we are connected to other living things, we are not distinct “persons” but just another form of the “wantons” on the evolutionary track.