The Passivity of Self-Satisfaction: A Critical Re-appraisal of Harry Frankfurt’s Normatively Thin Ontology of Autonomy

Abstract

This chapter attempts to “re-boot” the discussion of Harry Frankfurt’s approach to autonomy, in the service of a new diagnosis of the strengths and weak- nesses of his satisfaction-based ontology of the will. Criticisms of Frankfurt’s work have tended to focus on a lack of normative foundations, often missing Frankfurt’s aim of shifting discussions of autonomy towards a focus on avoiding passivity in how one cares about what one cares about, while still acknowledging the central role of volitional necessity and, especially, self-satisfaction in autonomous agency. Although this approach provides Frankfurt with interesting ways of deflecting criti- cisms that are ethical in character, the lack of attention to the hermeneutic and lin- guistic dimensions of our inner life, leaves his approach with insufficient grounds for identifying the passivity of those who are unable or unwilling to engage in genu- ine self-interpretation.