Mind Association

Review
Reviewed Work(s): Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes from Harry Frankfurt by Sarah
Buss and Lee Overton
Review by: Nomy Arpaly
Source: Mind, Vol. 113, No. 452 (Oct., 2004), pp. 744-747
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3489085
Accessed: 01-04-2018 15:42 UTC

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744 Book Reviews

Department of Philosophy GLENN PARSONS

Ryerson University
350 Victoria Street
Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3
Canada

Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes from Harry Frankfurt

edited by Sarah Buss and Lee Overton. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002
Pp. 362. H/b ?30.95, $47.95.

Contours of Agency is a collection of papers honouring the life's work of Harry

Frankfurt. Reading it, I had to remember the conference, held by the authors
that helped inspire it. Under the auspices of Wake Forest University a cast o
excellent speakers came to honour Frankfurt, who was approaching the age o
seventy, in the way that philosophers do: by enumerating the many ways in
which they thought he was mistaken. Frankfurt replied, making clear the
many ways in which he remained unconvinced. Philosophy being a strange
profession, there was not a dry eye in the lecture hall after this exchange. This
book, too, is moving in the way it manages, implicitly but clearly, to convey th
admiration and gratitude of the editors and contributors towards Harr
Frankfurt, while demonstrating at the same time how warranted these sent
ments are.

Sarah Buss and Lee Overton have done an excellent job editing the vo
Especially commendable is the fact that each article is followed immedia
Frankfurt's reply. This is so much better than stacking all of the replie
end: you read Frankfurt's reply to each speaker with the speaker's ow
ment fresh in your mind. The uncommon elegance and thoughtfulne
Frankfurt's replies underscores the wisdom of the editorial decision. A
feature that distinguishes this collection is the impressive cast of contr
Here is the roster: John Martin Fischer, Eleonore Stump, Michael Br
David Velleman, Gary Watson, Tim Scanlon, Richard Moran, Susan Wol
bara Herman, Jonathan Lear, Joseph Raz, and Gerald Cohen. And all of
in, as it were, mid-season form.
Together, they succeed in underscoring the importance of Frankfurt
to the field sometimes known as 'moral psychology' In the introductio
quotes Frankfurt's recent characterization of human beings: they are '
pin down, difficult to sort out, and just about impossible to sum up.' P
no twentieth-century philosopher has done more to drive this point
than Harry Frankfurt-and drive it home without using it as an excu
intellectual laxity or arcane style. He is to moral psychology as Donald
son is to action theory or John Rawls to political philosophy, not only
of the content of his theories, but also due to his having posed to us th
lenge of trying to 'sort out human beings' and convinced us that it is a
philosophical challenge. The fact that he seems to have changed his mi

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 Book Reviews 745

revised his views a number of times only means that he created even more
intellectual trends and fashions than he would otherwise have done. While
phrases from his early work become graduate school cliches, he moves on,
refusing to rest on his laurels, as imaginative and original as ever.
The main topics of the collection are the question of what to love or to care
about and the conceptual problems arising from the fact that we are so often at
odds with ourselves. On the first topic, Frankfurt refuses, despite the current
philosophical climate, to abandon the view that facts about what we care about
determine facts about what is important to us rather than the other way
round, and everything-even morality-is important only to the extent that
we care about it. He provocatively asserts that too much philosophy is written
to accommodate the 'intuition' that it is always rational to do the moral thing,
which should be, given human experience, a controversial claim rather than an
intuition to be accommodated. On the second topic, Frankfurt continues to
shape and reshape his views, creating and struggling with such slippery
notions as identification, autonomy, and volitional necessity. Through the
complex history of his complex views on the topic, Frankfurt seems not to
change his mind about one thing: wholeheartedness, he maintains, is an
intrinsically desirable state for persons. When Wolf suggests that some of us
may embrace ambivalence or prefer it to wholeheartedness, Frankfurt
counters that we can only wholeheartedly endorse wholeheartedness. About
ambivalence, we can only be ambivalent (I must confess an ambivalent atti-
tude to this particular view). The reader who may be exhausted by the soul-
searching that many of the articles here are bound to provoke (as befits first-
rate work on the vagaries of the human heart) may seek comic relief in Gerald
Cohen's reply to Harry Frankfurt's work 'On Bullshit', a genuine but hysteri-
cally funny philosophical piece entitled 'Deeper into Bullshit' (try teaching
that one on the last day of your seminar).
Given the importance of Frankfurt's contribution to comptatibilism, there
is strikingly little in the collection about free will and moral responsibility-
especially about the latter. This reflects the fact that Frankfurt's own interests
have drifted away from the traditional free will debate. This also reflects a more
problematic drift in the focus of the extensive post-Frankfurt literature con-
cerned with autonomy and identification, however these are defined. It seems
that the philosophical fascination with the fact that we do not always want
what we want to want, that sometimes we feel acted upon by our own
psyches-a fascination that was kindled by Frankfurt's early work, but devel-
oped a momentum of its own-seems to have turned into an end in itself. It
no longer has a tight, obvious connection to the questions, 'What makes
human beings responsible (or praiseworthy or blameworthy) for their
actions?' and 'When are people morally responsible?' That is, a writer on
autonomous agency no longer has to assume that the class of autonomous
actions is the same as or even closely approximates the class of actions for
which we are morally accountable, or the class of actions for which we are

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746 Book Reviews

'free' in the terms of the good old free will debate. Though the word 'auton-
omy' has also been associated with such topics as the condition under which
consumers of health care should be allowed to make their own decisions,
much of the literature represented in Contours of Agency lacks obvious impli-
cations for this topic, too. If there are non-obvious implications, as one would
expect there to be, they are often left for a later discussion, consigned to a foot-
note, or simply not spelled out. With some exceptions (Velleman's work, for
example), even the question 'What is action?' no longer appears to be a huge
concern for those who write about identification and autonomy.
I am a little uneasy about the way autonomy and identification concerns
have drifted away from moral responsibility, applied ethics, and action theory.
Please do not confuse my uneasiness with anything like claiming that philo-
sophical work on the vagaries of the human heart is not interesting or impor-
tant unless it maintains a connection to moral responsibility, applied ethics or
action theory. That would be just as silly as criticizing, say, an epistemologist
for not doing ethics. Nor do I have any intention of denying that some con-
temporary work on agency is brilliant (Frankfurt's own recent work being a
prime example). My unease stems from different sources. One of them may be
a simple concern for clarity. Take moral responsibility. It is often unclear
whether and how a thesis about autonomy or identification is meant to be rel-
evant to moral responsibility. It is often assumed, as a matter of course, that
any discussion of autonomy is relevant to moral responsibility-after all, eve-
ryone knows that autonomy is a condition of moral responsibility. This is
obviously true about such works as Alfred Mele's Autonomous Agents (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995), where 'autonomy' seems largely interchangea-
ble with 'freedom of the will'. However, when one argues that autonomy is
something we do not have unless we are wholehearted, say, or unless our
motives fit our values, and so on, the claim that one's work is relevant to moral
responsibility is no longer self-evident. Since, understandably, no one is step-
ping forward to argue that we are never responsible for actions that are
deemed 'non-autonomous' by such views, they do not seem to be 'simply'
accounts of the conditions of moral responsibility. The claim that a thesis of
this type is relevant to moral responsibility cries out for detailed defence and
elaboration. Of course, there are authors-Frankfurt being a clear example-
who say outright that they are not (or in the case of Frankfurt, are no longer)
concerned with moral responsibility; it is simply not their subject. But even in
these cases, the fact that the identification literature borrows heavily from the
vocabulary of moral responsibility and of discourses generally deemed rele-
vant to it is a constant source of confusion for this reader. To borrow an exam-
ple used for different purposes by Velleman: when Frankfurt says that
Agamemnon, after betraying and killing his beloved daughter, no longer exists
as a person, does he mean to imply that it makes no sense to punish the post-
Iliad Agamemnon for a murder committed by the previous, presumably no
longer existing, Agamemnon? If not, what exactly does the non-existence

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 Book Reviews 747

amount
amount to?
to? It
Itisisnot
notunreasonable
unreasonablefor
for
the
the
responsibility-minded
responsibility-minded
philosopher
philosophe
to ask
ask for
for some
someclarification
clarificationononthis
this
score.
score.
Buss
Buss and
and Overton
Overtonremind
remindususthat
thatFrankfurt's
Frankfurt's
work,
work,
justjust
likelike
thethe
human
human
beings
beings he
he attempts
attemptsto
tounderstand,
understand,is is
hard
hard
to to
pinpin
down
down
or or
sumsum
up. up.
A paradoxi-
A paradoxi
cal thing
thing about
aboutFrankfurt's
Frankfurt'swork,
work,they
they
seem
seem
to to
say,
say,
is that
is that
it seems
it seems
to raise,
to raise,
and and
wrestle
wrestle with,
with,questions
questionstotowhich
whichnono
philosopher
philosopher
concerned
concerned
with
with
the the
human
human
condition
condition can
can be
beindifferent,
indifferent,and
and
yet
yet
it it
is is
very
very
hard
hard
to figure
to figure
out out
what
what
these
thes
questions
questions are,
are,exactly.
exactly.Free
Freewill?
will?Consciousness?
Consciousness?Personhood?
Personhood?
Nothing
Nothing
sounds
sounds
quite
quite right.
right. At
Attimes
timesI Ithink
thinkthat
thatpart
part
ofof
the
the
near-hypnotic
near-hypnotic
appeal
appeal
of Frank-
of Frank
furt's
furt's work
work to
topeople
peoplewith
withmy
myphilosophical
philosophicalinterests
interests
is the
is the
factfact
thatthat
he revives,
he revives
within
within the
the analytic
analytictradition,
tradition,the
theold
old
search
search
forfor
peace
peace
of of
mind
mind
(ataraxia)
(ataraxia)
and and
the
the good
good life
life (eudaimonia),
(eudaimonia),ororatatany
any
rate,
rate,
for
for
something
something
that
that
could
could
alleviate,
alleviate
to some
some degree,
degree,our
oursense
senseofofbeing
beinghelpless
helpless
before
before
thethe
slings
slings
andand
arrows
arrows
of for-
of for-
tune
tune and
and the
the mental
mentalturmoil
turmoiltheythey
create.
create.
However
Howevertechnical
technical
Frankfurt's
Frankfurt
discussion
discussion sometimes
sometimesgets,
gets,ititremains-in
remains-inthe
the
best
best
sense-a
sense-a
philosopher's
philosopher's
attempt
attempt to
to tackle
tacklethe
thedark
darknight
nightofof
the
the
soul.
soul.

Deaprtment of Philosophy NOMY ARPALY

Brown University
Box 1918

Providence, RI 02912
USA

Themes in the Philosophy of Music, by Stephen Davies. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2003. Pp. 292. H/b ?37.00.

We are fortunate indeed to have this collection of essays by a leading philoso

pher of music, most of which appeared originally from 1980 to 2002, but two
of which are new. The book is organized into four sections: ontology, perfor
mance, expression, and appreciation. There is, however, a certain amount of
overlap between sections-authenticity is explored in relation both to ontol-
ogy and to performance-and ontology emerges as the driving force behind
Davies's approach.
The book opens with a trenchant analysis of the status of John Cage's 4' 33"
as art and as musical work. Davies argues that 4' 33" is not a musical work
(though it is an artwork) because for any musical work there is a distinction
between the sounds that make up the work and ambient sounds (coughs, rus-
tling) that occur during the performance. In the case of 4' 33" there is no such
distinction. It would be a mistake, on Davies's view, to count the audience a
performers in this case: they do not stand in the relation to the instructions
given in the score that performers must, since the instructions are to remain
silent. (Compare, say, audience participation such as singing and clapping.)
This analysis, it seems to me, teases apart the strands of significance of Cage's
piece in a clear-headed and stimulating way. Davies is, here as elsewhere, noth-

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