Desire and Human Agency

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt's model of desire and volition and Northwestern University philosopher Charles Taylor's model for strong and weak evaluation, as well as some philosophical questions and problems concerning free will raised by the two models.

From the Paper:

"In his essay, "Freedom of the will and the concept of a person," Harry Frankfurt describes two sorts of human desires: first-order and second-order. A first order desire, which human animals have in common with other animals, is simply a desire for some object or action. An example of a first-order desire shared by human and non-human animals is sex, or, more accurately, the pleasure associated with sex. Second order-desires, however, are desires which have, as their object, another desire."

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