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Abstract: According to Harry Frankfurt, We Enjoy Free Will Only When We Wholeheartedly Endorse Our Actions

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Abstract: According to Harry Frankfurt, We Enjoy Free Will Only When We Wholeheartedly Endorse Our Actions Abstract: According to Harry Frankfurt, we enjoy free will only when we wholeheartedly endorse our actions. Thus Frankfurt views ambivalence as a “disease of the will” that undermines our freedom by undermining the coherence of our volitional identity. While I agree that there’s a link between free will and identity, I argue that the unification of the self may involve holding together an incoherent set of identifications—especially for personalities forged within culturally diverse communities. I hope to show that the ambivalence inherent in such “intersectional identity” allows for the self-reflection and creativity that is essential for free will. Word Count: 3258 Free Will and Wholehearted Ambivalence In this paper I explicate and critique Harry Frankfurt’s influential theory of free will. On his view, we enjoy free will only when we act on desires we wholeheartedly endorse. Frankfurt contrasts wholeheartedness with ambivalence, which he views as a “disease of the will” (“Faintest” 100) that undermines our freedom by undermining the unity and coherence of our identity. While I agree that there’s an important conceptual link between free will and the “unity” of our identity, I claim, contra Frankfurt, that the unification of the self may involve holding together an incoherent set of identifications. This is especially true of personalities forged at the intersections of culturally disparate communities. I argue that the ambivalence inherent in “intersectional identity” allows for critical self-reflection, intentional self-creation, and thoughtful action, all of which are essential to our freedom of will. I. To see clearly why Frankfurt thinks ambivalence undermines free will, let me briefly review the main points of his theory. Many creatures have “first-order desires,” which are “desires to do or not do one thing or another” (67). But unlike other creatures, we persons also form “second-order desires,” which have as their object, not our actions, but our first-order desires. Frankfurt reserves the term “will” for our effective first-order desires—those that move us to action (68). A second-order desire that some first-order desire should become our will, Frankfurt terms a “second-order volition.” The capacity to evaluate our first-order desires and form second-order volitions is integral to his conceptions of free will and personhood. Frankfurt claims that when our effective first-order desires “mesh” with our second-order volitions, our actions reflect our volitional identity and thus are the products of our free will. But why, Gary Watson has asked, should we treat second-order volitions as authoritative? In response, Frankfurt introduced the notion of “wholeheartedness.” He claims we constitute our “selves” by wholeheartedly endorsing some desires and rejecting others (“Identification” 170). Further, among our endorsed desires, we must establish a “single ordering” that establishes our priorities over time (170). This process of “ordering and rejection” doesn’t necessarily remove conflict between desires (nor does rejection entail repression1); rather, the conflict is “transformed into a conflict between one of [the desires] and the person who has identified himself with its rival” (“Identification” 170, 172). Wholeheartedness, then, constitutes the self as a coherent and stable set of rank ordered desires. “In the absence of whole-heartedness,” however, “the person is ... himself divided” (“Identification” 165). Such ambivalence is, for Frankfurt, a “disease of the will” that involves endorsing conflicting desires or attitudes toward the same object (“Faintest” 99-100). On this view, ambivalence destroys free will because it undermines the coherence of the self. However, as I’ll argue, Frankfurt exaggerates the dangers of ambivalence and gives short shrift to its agentic potential. No doubt ambivalence can be self-defeating, but ambivalent agents may take constructive and self-expressive action (which they “own”) in spite, or even because, of ambivalence. Indeed, ambivalence may be central to our self-conceptions. This raises the 1 See Frankfurt, Harry. “Reply to J. David Velleman.” FREE WILL AND WHOLEHEARTED AMBIVALENCE possibility (which Frankfurt denies) of wholehearted ambivalence—which I construe not as unequivocal endorsement of our actions, but as unequivocal identification with the ambivalent self our actions reflect. While we should try to resolve “self”-defeating ambivalence, the capacity to identify with conflicting perspectives allows for a richer, more internally diverse, self- conception and enables us to better negotiate a complex social world. In developing this point, I draw on Edwina Barvosa-Carter’s work on relational autonomy, which itself is a development of Gloria Anzaldúa’s work on “mestiza consciousness.” II. Interestingly, Frankfurt’s compatibilist theory of free will accommodates the significant role socialization plays in forming our character. However, his theory doesn’t say enough about how cultural influences shape our desires. For example, a young man raised in a small Bible Belt town who experiences homosexual desires likely would internalize heterosexist values and reject such desires while endorsing his effective first-order desires to conform with local gender and sex norms. That his second-order volitions and effective first-order desires mesh, despite persistent “outlaw” desires, doesn’t dispel the suspicion that his effective hetero-normative desires don’t reflect his “real” self. Being socialized in an isolated, homogenous community affords little opportunity to develop the critical self-consciousness which Frankfurt sometimes recognizes as essential for agentic development. In contrast to such wholeheartedness, ambivalence is inescapable for those socialized at the intersections of culturally disparate communities. Barvosa-Carter has pointed to the significance of Anzaldúa’s notion of “mestiza consciousness” to capture the ambivalent mode of self-awareness and self-creation characteristic of intersectional identity. The term “mestiza” refers to a woman of mixed Spanish and American Indian descent. As Barsova-Carter notes, FREE WILL AND WHOLEHEARTED AMBIVALENCE however, “mestiza consciousness” may refer to any “subjectivity characterized by a diversity of different identities ... that mingle and collide within the self” (6-7). Thus mestiza consciousness is not uncommon. Given the complexity and interconnectedness of our world, most of us have multiple identities shaping our endorsements. Unlike the young man’s repressive hetero- normative socialization, the ambivalence inherent in intersectional identity allows for critical self-reflection, intentional self-creation, and thoughtful action. Borvosa-Carter has coined the term “mestiza autonomy,” which she defines as an “account of autonomy in which an agent who has a diversity of social relations and group memberships critically reflects upon the contents of her particular social and personal identities to forge a set of guiding endorsements” (9). Despite her claims to the contrary, it seems that such an account is compatible with Frankfurt’s notion of wholeheartedness. An agent who displays mestiza autonomy, in Barvosa-Carter’s sense, has a coherent set of guiding endorsements— though they’re drawn from multiple sources. Barvosa-Carter defines the “ambivalence” within mestiza autonomy as “an equivocating connection to selected principles that [the agent] ultimately does not endorse and will not act upon” (14). This is not what Frankfurt means by ambivalence. Whatever this “equivocating connection” amounts to, it isn’t something that entails conflict within the agent’s guiding endorsements. Frankfurt’s view implies that, insofar as our identities beget conflicting endorsements, we have less free will. But given the inherent multiplicity of, and conflict within, mestiza consciousness, the standard of volitional coherence fails to recognize the agentic capacities of intersectional subjects. As Anzaldúa argues, la mestiza’s plural identity allows her to break from set patterns of thought in a holistic movement of self-creation that incorporates conflicting identifications without forcing coherence—she “learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be FREE WILL AND WHOLEHEARTED AMBIVALENCE Mexican from an Anglo point of view” (101). Significantly, la mestiza’s ambivalence doesn’t leave her unable to act in a self-affirming way; rather, the “Western mode” (to use Anzaldua’s term) is crippling insofar as it forces an inauthentic coherence. Insofar as la mestiza’s contrasting identities beget conflicting endorsements (e.g., “traditionalist” versus “assimilationist” attitudes), their co-existence in one psyche begets ambivalence. On the Western (either/or) conception of identity, which Frankfurt endorses, la mestiza’s integrity as an agentic person hinges on her ability to overcome ambivalence and, where there is conflict, unequivocally side with her indigenous self, her Euro/Spanish-American self, or some third conceptual and/or normative perspective. While it’s possible to construct a coherent, non-ambivalent personality from diverse sources (as with Borvosa-Carter’s notion of mestiza autonomy), such a person wouldn’t exemplify mestiza consciousness because she wouldn’t view herself as authentically Indian, Mexican, and/or Anglo, but rather as an atomic individual who has constructed her own identity out of cultural materials from which she stands apart. Mestiza consciousness, by contrast, is structurally conflicted. On the view
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