Volitional Necessities
Harry Frankfurt and Bernard Williams have contended that our integrity as agents depends on being subject to a form of voluntary volitional incapacity. This chapter explores this thesis, distinguishing such necessities from pathologies of compulsion and addiction, which deform our wills, and also from what might be called normative and deliberative necessities. It turns out that Frankfurt's treatment of the phenomena reveals an unclarity about the different roles of caring and endorsement in his account of agency.
Keywords: volitional necessity, Frankfurt, Williams, deliberation, will, decision, integrity, endorsement, caring, desire
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .