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Recommended: Summary of harry frankfurt's freedom of the will and the concept of a person

Harry Frankfurt does not agree with Strawson that the title of personhood can be awarded to any entities that possess certain states of consciousness and some physical characteristics. The issue with this definition is that it includes animals as they have a physical body and some level of consciousness. A person can be also described as the singular form of ‘people’, which is mainly concerned with differentiating a person from other biological species. Frankfurt believes that only humans, and not animals, have the privilege of becoming persons. The key distinction between an animal and a person is in a person’s ability to form second-order volition and act with a free will. In this paper, I will explain Frankfurt’s theory of second-order volition and its significance in portraying a complete wanton as a non-person being.
There are two major points that Frankfurt makes in his paper. The first is that a person is defined as someone who has second-order volition, described a desire for a certain desire to become one’s will (Frankfurt, 10). The second-order volition arises from one’s preference of a specific first order desire over other desires. A first-order desire is one’s desire “to do X”, which refers to an action. There are two groups of first-order desires: the effective desires that motivate a person to take a certain action and the non-effective desires that are by definition, desires that are not effective. In Frankfurt’s perspective, one’s will is equivalent to one’s effective first-order desire. A second-order desire is when one forms a desire “to want to do X”, where “to do X” refers to a specific first order desire. There is an important distinction between the two types of second-order desires. One is simply a desire ...

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...g and wants the desire to not take the drug be his will, would end up taking the drug due to his addiction. He lacks free will but at least he has formed his second-order volition and is struggling with free will, which makes his position different from that of a wanton. A complete wanton who also happens to be a drug addict, on the other hand, has a first-order desire to take the drug and another to refrain from taking the drug. Due to his inability to form a second-order volition and his addiction, the wanton’s desire to take the drug will become effective but this is not necessarily the will he wants to have. The difference between unwilling addict and the wanton in their lack of freedom lies on the fact that a wanton cannot even form a second-order volition and unlike the unwilling addict, he is not a person according to Frankfurt’s conception of personhood.

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