Abstract
In this paper, I want to discuss the relation between ambivalence and the unity of the self. I will raise the question whether a person can be both ambivalent about his own will and nevertheless be wholehearted. Since Harry Frankfurt’s theory is my main point of reference, I briefly introduce his account of the will and the reasons for his opposition towards ambivalence in the first section. In the second section, I analyse different interpretations of ambivalence. In the third section, I provide a narrative account of a diachronic integration of the self that allows for the integration of volitional ambivalence. Finally, I scrutinise different meanings of the unity of the self, since disintegration, not ambivalence, seems to be bad for us. I conclude that persons can indeed be wholeheartedly ambivalent.
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Notes
Admittedly other authors, for instance Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, defend a much wider definition of ambivalence, which includes such phenomena as being unsure how to assess a situation, or even an event in the past. “[A]n historian can be ambivalent about whether she thinks, all things considered, it was a fault in Caesar that he was ambitious (…)” (Oksenberg Rorty 2010, 428 f.). I find this too broad an understanding, but for my purposes it is enough to stress that ambivalence pertains at least to one’s own will.
Obviously I don’t want to imply that worthiness should be read as a moral notion. It is also not implied that the reflexivity involved in self-assessment is done consciously or deliberately. It might simply happen to us that we are torn – cognitively or emotionally – between two alternative desires, but in order for that to happen we need to be able to take a stance towards ourselves.
Oksenberg Rorty (2010) uses “purism”, which seems to imply that a decided will is pure – but pure in what respect? As I want to show, the potential problems with ambivalence are not due to the “ingredients” it adds, but to the structure and dynamics of the will it causes.
I use “wholehearted” in the common understanding of the term, i.e., roughly, “being unconditionally decided”. I believe this is also Frankfurt’s usage of the term, though he has never defined it, as far as I know. For him, being wholehearted means to have a unified or undivided will (cf. Frankfurt 1992, 100 f.).
Frankfurt uses the technical term ‘volitions’ for desires that are supposed to motivate a person, i.e. to become his will. There are also special cases of desires about desires that we do not want to become effective. Frankfurt gives the example of a person who has the second order desire to desire to take drugs, simply to find out how it feels for addicts to be addicted. This person does not have a second order volition to take drugs (ibid.).
I need to skim over certain complications regarding the difference between Frankfurt’s earlier view on identification, which on the surface seems to require an act of evaluative endorsement, and his later emphasis on “volitional necessities”, which are, as it were, already part and parcel of the volitional structure of a person (cf. Frankfurt 1999; Velleman 2002, 92). I take it to be a difference between a more active determination of one’s own will in contrast to a discovery of an already existing character or self. The former view invites a misinterpretation of Frankfurt’s aims since he is clearly opposed to the possibility of a construction of one’s own self. So for Frankfurt, in his later writings, wholeheartedness is a lack of opposition to a desire (cf. Frankfurt 1982, 87). He also explicitly explained the notion of identification as “acceptance” and held that “identification does not entail endorsement” (Frankfurt 2002c, 161), hence pointed out the consistency of his view over the years. But be that as it may, the way desires become ours is not the main topic of my paper.
The possibility of an indefinite regress (or progress) of levels of volition has been widely discussed in the literature; see for instance Watson 1975.
I ignore differences in Frankfurt’s account of “wholeheartedness”, “care”, and “love”. Later on, I will introduce the term “cares” as a technical term to refer to any volitions a person identifies with and deems important. The first criterion makes cares elements of one’s own will, the second rules out trivial desires one identifies with (cf. Frankfurt 2002c, 161). In virtue of caring about something a person is exposed to impairments of her well-being.
From now on, I use the term “one’s own will” to refer to the volitional features a person identifies with. It should be clear that one’s own will is not always one’s real will, because the latter refers to effective desires, and they might not always be the ones a person identifies with. One’s own will is always a possible real will of that person.
I believe it is not so much the lack of knowledge about oneself that Frankfurt is concerned with, but the lack of determination of what one really wants. Being determined can be an unconscious feature of a person.
In the following I use “cares” to refer to volitions a person wholeheartedly identifies with. They are volitions regarding things a person cares about. For my purposes, the differences between the notions of identification, wholeheartedness, caring, or love, are insignificant.
Ekstrom (2010, 374 f.) discusses this kind of indecision, but calls it a case of conflict. Arguably, Frankfurt hints at two different sources of inner division when he distinguishes “lack of coherence within the realm of the person’s higher-order volitions themselves” and cases where “the person’ preferences concerning what he wants are not fully integrated” (Frankfurt 1987, 165).
Again, I don’t want to insist that this is the only meaningful understanding of ambivalence. In fact, Eugen Bleuler (1914), who coined the term, used “ambitendency” for the phenomena Frankfurt is dealing with, and also distinguished between “intellectual” and “affective” ambivalence.
However, in a later paper (Frankfurt 2001, 11), Frankfurt discusses a fairly similar case as an example of ambivalence, where a man’s will is indeterminate as to whether to love a particular woman or not.
It might therefore be advisable to distinguish Zeno’s case as a special case from other cases of volitional indecision. Voluntary wantonness seems to be different from volitional indecision as it is does not involve indecision about the particular object of cares but indecision about any such object. However, the point I want to make here is that although voluntary indecision might be normatively unproblematic if the person does not care about whether to care for either object she is undecided about, voluntary wantonness cannot be a recommended strategy to solve that kind of indecision if we (as human beings) should care about determining our will in that area of our lives.
This seems to hint at a general assumption about what is worth caring for. When people care for something that has no general significance in the lives of human beings, it is not to be deemed a problem if they are undecided about it. Indeed, their very indecision might be starting point for advising them to stop caring about trivial things.
Maybe it is worth stressing again that I’m unsure about whether Frankfurt actually sees volitional indecision as a case of ambivalence.
“A decision to care no more entails caring than a decision to give up smoking entails giving it up.” (Frankfurt 1982, 84)
Frankfurt’s account of the relation between reasons and desires is complicated. For him, reasons can create desires, but here he understands reasons as internal; they are reasons of a particular person, hence we cannot be directly moved by normative considerations. “It is that once we have decided on what is to count with us as a reason, we then have given ourselves what is commonly (…) thought of as a desire. The reason is not derived from the desire, but creates it.” (cf. Frankfurt 2002d, 185) Note that Frankfurt here says that we can decide what is to count as a reason with us. This is an unfortunate choice of terms, since it seems to be in conflict with other remarks of his. After all, it would seem to imply that we can decide what to desire. I therefore suppose “decide” here is meant to stand for, roughly, “determine”.
Cf. Frankfurt 1993, 139. According to the ancient myth, Agamemnon had to sacrifice his daughter to appease the goddess Artemis, who had grounded him on the island of Aulis by causing the wind to cease.
There is a potential third interpretation of the unity of the self that I won’t discuss, namely to be oneself, or to be authentic. The very idea of authenticity presupposes a disunity, or split, of the self into a right and a wrong way of seeing oneself that Frankfurt cannot allow, since it would require external criteria. To be sure, we might not yet know who we are, and ambivalence, according to Frankfurt, is a symptom of such a lack of knowledge. Yet, although Frankfurt toys with the term “essence” (Frankfurt 2004, 19, 43), I don’t believe that there is, according to his theory, any further “deeper self” to be discovered. Being wholehearted about certain things simply determines who we are. When we are wholehearted, we are authentic. Hence, a discussion about lack of authenticity, or about a lack of being oneself, does not add to what has been discussed so far.
Again, consider Frankfurt’s discussion of the story of Agamemnon (Frankfurt 1993, 139).
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Acknowledgments
This paper has a very long and convoluted history. I presented an embryonic version at a workshop in Potsdam on Harry Frankfurt’s work in 2003, and later at a conference in Bristol. It then developed into roughly its current shape courtesy of discussions at two workshops of the AHRC-funded Research Network “New Thinking on Alienation” in Dortmund and Münster. I have received feedback by far too many people to mention individually here, but wish to state my sincere gratitude to them, as well as to two anonymous reviewers who provided valuable comments.
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Schramme, T. On Being Wholeheartedly Ambivalent: Indecisive Will, Unity of the Self, and Integration by Narration. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 17, 27–40 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9465-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9465-9