Background
Frankfurt, Harry Gordon was born on May 29, 1929 in Langhome, Pennsylvania, United States.
(This volume is a collection of thirteen seminal essays on...)
This 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 ale to explore fundamental problems of what it is to be a person and of what one should care about in life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521336112/?tag=2022091-20
Frankfurt, Harry Gordon was born on May 29, 1929 in Langhome, Pennsylvania, United States.
Bachelor, Johns Hopkins University, 1949. Doctor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, 1954.
Assistant professor Ohio State University, 1956—1962. Associate professor, philosophy State University of New York, Binghamton, 1962—1963. Research associate Rockefeller University, 1963—1964, associate professor, philosophy, 1964—1969, professor, 1969—1976, chair, philosophy group, 1966—1973.
Professor Yale University, 1976—1990, chair, philosophy department, 1978—1987. Professor, philosophy Princeton University, 1990—2002, professor emeritus, since 2002, Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa professor philosophy, 1999—2000. Visiting professor University California, Riverside, 2000.
With United States Army, 1954-1956.
(This volume is a collection of thirteen seminal essays on...)
Apart from his contribution to Cartesian scholarship. Harry Frankfurt's philosophical work has centred on a sustained and original approach to a number of related issues in metaphysics and the philosophy of action, involving the concepts of the human person, free will, moral responsibility, coercion and caring. His contribution has, for many, changed the terms of the debate on free will and moral responsibility. Against a long tradition Frankfurt denies what he calls the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. The impossibility of being able to act otherwise than one did does not of itself impugn free will or responsibility, for the unavailability of alternatives might play no part in someone's action. Free will, and indeed personhood, requires, for Frankfurt, the presence of second-order volitions, a species of second-order desires, where a person desires that some first-order desire be effective in action. A creature lacking these second-order volitions is aptly described by Frankfurt as a wanton. In his book on Descartes Frankfurt advanced the provocative thesis that Descartes’s aim in the Meditations is not truth, but the lesser aim of coherence or incorrigibility.
Fellow: American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Married Joan Gilbert. Children: Jennifer, Katherine.