This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
P. F. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” Proceedings of the British Academy 48 (1962): 1–25, reprinted in Gary Watson (ed.), Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 72–93. Page numbers in citations to follow will be from the reprinted edition.
Ibid., p. 92.
P. F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 16.
Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment”, p. 83.
Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism, p. 39.
Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment”, p. 87.
Ibid., p. 83.
See Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism, pp. 14–21.
The phrase ‘presumption of reciprocity’, which I have used a few times now, is derived from this wonderful quotation from Christine Korsgaard: “The willingness to take a chance on some form of reciprocity is the essence of holding someone responsible.” See her “Creating the Kingdom of Ends”, Philosophical Perspectives 6 (1992): 305–332, 312. Where she says ‘holding someone responsible’, though, I would say ‘holding someone to be responsible’. For more on this distinction and others, see Neal A. Tognazzini, “The Strains of Involvement,” in Clarke, McKenna, and Smith (eds.), The Nature of Moral Responsibility (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
Michael McKenna has a very nice paper in which he argues that the insight of the Frankfurt-style counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities is importantly similar to Strawson’s insights about the sorts of excuses that mollify our moral emotions. My suggestion in this paper is that there is yet another point at which Frankfurt and Strawson meet. See Michael McKenna, “Where Frankfurt and Strawson Meet,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 29 (2005): 163–180.
An idea first articulated (by Frankfurt) in Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” The Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971): 5–20.
Harry Frankfurt, Taking Ourselves Seriously & Getting it Right (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), p. 8.
Ibid., p. 19.
See Harry Frankfurt, “The Faintest Passion”, in Necessity, Volition, and Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 95–107, 99.
Harry Frankfurt, The Reasons of Love (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 16.
Harry Frankfurt, “The Dear Self,” Philosophers’ Imprint 1 (2001): 1–14, 9.
Frankfurt, Reasons of Love, p. 42.
Ibid., p. 37.
Harry Frankfurt, “On the Necessity of Ideals,” in Necessity, Volition, and Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 108–116, 114.
Frankfurt, Reasons of Love, p. 45.
Frankfurt, Taking Ourselves Seriously, p. 40.
Frankfurt, Reasons of Love, p. 50.
Harry Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. ix.
Harry Frankfurt, “The Importance of What We Care About,” in The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 80–94, 88.
Harry Frankfurt, “Autonomy, Necessity, and Love”, in Necessity, Volition, and Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 129–141, 130.
See Harry Frankfurt, “Rationality and the Unthinkable,” in The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 177–190, 182.
Frankfurt, Taking Ourselves Seriously, p. 45.
Ibid., p. 38.
Frankfurt, Reasons of Love, p. 40. For example, Frankfurt suggests that “we cannot help caring about avoiding crippling injury and illness, about maintaining at least some minimal contact with other human beings, and about being free from chronic suffering and endlessly stupefying boredom” (Taking Ourselves Seriously, p. 38). Elsewhere he suggests that we also cannot help loving our children, and our own lives (Reasons of Love, p. 40).
Frankfurt, Taking Ourselves Seriously, p. 40.
Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment”, p. 91.
Ibid., p. 76.
Gary Watson, “Peter Strawson on Responsibility and Sociality,” Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, forthcoming.
Strawson (“Freedom and Resentment”, p. 90): “But these attitudes of disapprobation and indignation are precisely the correlates of the moral demand in the case where the demand is felt to be disregarded. The making of the demand is the proneness to such attitudes.”
Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism, p. 20.
Ibid., p. 33.
Ibid., p. 39.
Frankfurt, Reasons of Love, p. 50.
Frankfurt, “On the Necessity of Ideals”, p. 114.
Frankfurt, Taking Ourselves Seriously, p. 32.
Ibid., p. 33.
See Harry Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen (Indianapolis & New York: Bobbs Merrill Company Inc., 1970), reissued as Harry Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers and Madmen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
Harry Frankfurt, “Identification and Wholeheartedness,” in The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 159–176, 169. The objection to which Frankfurt is responding in this passage is raised by Gary Watson, “Free Agency”, The Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 205–220.
Frankfurt, Taking Ourselves Seriously, p. 106.
Frankfurt, Necessity, Volition, and Love, pp. ix–x.
Frankfurt, “The Faintest Passion”, p. 98.
Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen, p. 247.
Ibid., p. 248. Frankfurt’s citation for this quotation from Descartes is AT VII, 145, ll. 1–8.
Ibid., p. 247.
Ibid., p. 249.
Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment”, p. 92.
Ibid., p. 83.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991), p. 152.
For the remark about the moral saint, see Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment”, p. 85. Notably, in this passage Strawson explicitly contrasts the moral saint with those who are at “the level of our common humanity”.
Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen, p. 256.
Frankfurt, Reasons of Love, p. 28.
Acknowledgments
My understanding of both Strawson and Frankfurt owes much to the work and wisdom of Gary Watson. I thank him for that, and I also thank Andrew Khoury for the invitation to contribute to this issue, and for his editorial guidance.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tognazzini, N.A. Reactive Attitudes and Volitional Necessity. J Value Inquiry 48, 677–689 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9464-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9464-7