Abstract
Despite widespread agreement that ambivalence precludes agency “at its best,” in this paper I argue that ambivalence as such is no threat to one’s agency. In particular, against “unificationists” like Harry Frankfurt I argue that failing to be fully integrated as an agent, lacking purity of heart, or being less than wholehearted in one’s choices, tells us nothing about whether an agent’s will is properly functioning. Moreover, it will turn out that in many common circumstances, wholeheartedness with respect to some motive or course of action is itself a defect in an agent’s will.
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Notes
Augustine’s discussion of these issues immediately follows his famous prayer that God “grant [him] chastity and continence, but not yet,” (1992, VIII. vii. 17). After describing what he takes to be the general problem with being ambivalent, he goes on to explicitly compare his ambivalence between a lustful life spent in pursuit of sexual pleasure and a life devoted to God to “sickness” and “torture,” (1992, VIII. xi. 25).
This is similar to Frankfurt’s claim that “it is these acts of [resolving one’s will]---that create a self out of the raw materials of inner life,” (Frankfurt 1988, 170).
A number of philosophers have hinted, if not explicitly claimed, that they reject this tradition’s emphasis on unity or wholeheartedness (though not always in precisely the same way that I want to here). Cf. Calhoun (1995), Velleman (2002), Wolf (2002), Poltera (2011), and Gunnarsson (2014). Of these, Wolf’s view comes closest to the one I develop in the remainder of the paper. But whereas Wolf finds herself “ambivalent about … ambivalence,” (Wolf 2002, 239), I am more confident that when it comes to ambivalence per se, there is nothing to be ambivalent about.
Alexander Jech has recently argued that although Augustine’s and Kierkegaard’s proposed analyses of wholeheartedness are importantly different than the account proposed by Frankfurt, Augustine, Kierkegaard, and Frankfurt are all worried about the same purported malady. This suggests that although the historical antecedents to Frankfurt’s view were not always careful to specify what precisely ambivalence involves (Kierkegaard is a notable exception in this regard), they were meaning to pick out the same thing. For more, see Jech (2013).
Similarly, Christine Korsgaard has recently claimed that “in order to be an agent, you need to be unified—you need to put your whole self, so to speak, behind your movements,” (Korsgaard 2009, 213).
For more on this point, see Swindell (2010).
What would wholehearted endorsement even look like in this context?
Of course, not just any reason will suffice; you must settle your will for the right kinds of reasons. But this is no different than in the arithmetical case. For in that case, you will not want to decide to stop for just any old reason—e.g., that you are tired or bored for example, or that you are indifferent about being correct. Only reasons of the sort Frankfurt invokes (e.g., that given your competence in basic arithmetic, the likelihood of error is low enough to move on) will legitimate the decision to stop. Analogously, in the practical case, one will want to select a course of action on the basis of the reasons that make that course of action choiceworthy (in cases of conflict between merely permissible courses of action) or rationally necessary (in cases in which one possible course of action is rationally required). Thus, that mere fact that one option is more convenient or less taxing will not typically be a reason that will resolve the agent’s will.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for making this point.
In particular, what seems important for settling these questions is not some prearranged list, but an exercise of normative competence. For more on this point, see Dancy (2004), especially Chapter 11, “Rationality, Value, and Meaning”.
Timothy Schroeder and Nomy Arpaly (1999) raise a similar worry about Frankfurt’s notions of alienation and externality.
It is worth noting, however, that it is not altogether clear that being psychologically alienatied from one’s motives is necessarily bad. As Peter Railton (1984) has pointed out, morality sometimes requires this of us. And no doubt it is not just morality, but also our love for others and for our own selves will almost surely make it rationally required of us that we sometimes feel alienated (and so ‘unresolved’ in that sense) from the motives that we act on.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for The Journal of Ethics for making this point.
I think it is worth acknowledging that the appeal of wholeheartedness in this case depends, in part, on the fact that it is generally wrong to cheat on your partner. In cases of this sort, there is a distinctively moral reason for the man to resolve his will in a particular way, and then, having done so, to work to excise any recalcitrant feelings he might have for his former mistress. To be ambivalent here would, it seems, reveal a (further) moral flaw. But not all conflicts between agents’ loves need involve conflicts between morally permissible and morally impermissible ends. As I noted at the outset, an agent might find herself torn between self-realization and her obligations to family. Here the choice is not between permissible and impermissible ends but between prima facie permissible goods. And it is cases like this where ambivalence seems more appropriate. No doubt, the conflicted agent must resolve her will. But she if she is properly attuned not only to reasons that will rationalize the course of action that she does in fact choose, but also to reasons that would rationalize the alternative course, then she will have reason for ambivalence.
You might think that by claiming that “a will properly attuned to the reasons there are” can adequately resolve questions of what to do, I am begging the question against Frankfurt, who is an internalist about reasons (i.e., he holds that the reasons that exist in any set of circumstances crucially depend on the motives that an agent has wholeheartedly endorsed). It is not clear to me, however, that this criticism is ultimately correct. After all, my argument does not rely on the falsity of existence internalism about reasons, since it is compatible with internalism as such that the reasons that the “reasons there are” for an agent’s will to be “properly attuned to” are all connected to her actual motivational set in the right way. Now as for whether only those motivations that an agent has wholeheartedly endorsed can give rise to reasons, that is precisely the issue at stake here. But even if one adopts an internalist account of reasons, it will not show that an agent who is not wholehearted cannot have reasons. For plausibly, an agent’s status as a bare rational agent is not itself dependent on whether she has ever wholeheartedly endorsed any of her motives (how could one ever become a rational agent otherwise?).
Korsgaard (2009, 152).
Of course, if you are really ambivalent, then it is not clear that you will have a settled conception of a good life in the first place. This is because ambivalence involves incoherence at the deepest levels of an agent’s practical identity—the precise aspects of our practical identities that Frankfurt takes to constitute our conception of a good life. Indeed, according to Frankfurt (2004), you cannot determine what constitutes a good life without first determining what you love. But if you are ambivalent about what you love, then it might seem that you cannot have a settled conception of what a good life would be for you. It is therefore no wonder that Frankfurt claims that, wherever possible, ambivalence should be excised from our wills, or at least, it should be managed the way one might manage a long-term illness.
Although, as an anonymous referee has rightly pointed out to me, an ambivalent agent might also drag her feet in a way that makes her worse off. This is no problem for what I say here, however, since all I want to do here is note that ambivalence can have value for an agent, but this is consistent with ambivalence being disvaluable for agents in some circumstances (though insofar as ambivalence can be bad for someone, it is not because it represents a failure in the structure of their will). In so doing, I ally myself with Wolf (2002), Poltera (2011), and [suppressed], who each explicitly note this in their discussions of the value of ambivalence.
Indeed, this way of conceptualizing things seems to follow straightforwardly from conceptions of the cognitive/conative divide that rely on the notion of “direction of fit”.
See Williams (1993) for one such interpretation.
Cf. Conee (1982).
Frankfurt has suggested that Agamemnon is forced to betray himself, since he is forced to choose between two motives that are “equally defining elements of his own nature,” (Frankfurt 1999a, b, 139, n. 8). And while I agree that Agamemnon betrays himself at Aulis, it is not clear that this is because Agamemnon still identifies with his love for his daughter. After all, when he “veers … unholy” with “outrage,” it seems that what is so unholy and outrageous is that he has wholeheartedly endorsed his decision to sacrifice Iphigenia, not that he is ambivalent.
One might disagree with the details of Williams’ and Nussbaum’s analysis and yet still think the general point holds: one is not a good agent if one’s emotional responses to choices that have suffering as part of their foreseen consequences is not muted in some way by remorse.
For further development of this point, see Velleman (2002).
Thanks to John Martin Fischer for helping me formulate this point in this way.
Some readers might think that morally responsible agency is a rather low bar and so insufficient for agency “at its best.” In my view, however, this simply betrays a problematic individualism that stalks contemporary work on agency. We are, in my alternative view, fundamentally social agents who “live and move and have our being” in our relationships with one another—relationships that (with few exceptions) presuppose our status as morally responsible agents. This suggests that being merely morally responsible is not a deficient form of agency but an expression of agency at its best for creatures like us.
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Acknowledgements
For their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I am grateful to Sarah Buss, John Fischer, Samantha Matherne, Eddy Nahmias, Tamler Sommers, Neal Tognazzini, and two anonymous referees. I also want to thank Chris Franklin, Helen Hattab, Dave Phillips, Philip Swenson, and audiences at Georgia State University and Rice University for their helpful feedback on these ideas.
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Coates, D. A Wholehearted Defense of Ambivalence. J Ethics 21, 419–444 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-017-9257-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-017-9257-x