Harry Frankfurt | |
|---|---|
 Frankfurt at the American Council of Learned Societies 2017 annual meeting | |
| Born | David Bernard Stern May 29, 1929 Langhorne, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | July 16, 2023 (aged 94) Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
| Other names | Harry Gordon Frankfurt |
| Education | Johns Hopkins University (BA, PhD) |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic |
Main interests | |
Notable ideas | |
Harry Gordon Frankfurt (May 29, 1929 – July 16, 2023) was an American philosopher. He was a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, where he taught from 1990 until 2002. Frankfurt also taught at Yale University, Rockefeller University, and Ohio State University.
Frankfurt made significant contributions to fields like ethics and philosophy of mind. The attitude of caring played a central role in his philosophy. To care about something means to see it as important and reflects the person's character. According to Frankfurt, a person is someone who has second-order volitions or who cares about what desires he or she has. He contrasts persons with wantons. Wantons are beings that have desires but do not care about which of their desires is translated into action. In the field of ethics, Frankfurt gave various influential counterexamples, so-called Frankfurt cases, against the principle that moral responsibility depends on the ability to do otherwise. His most popular book is On Bullshit, which discusses the distinction between bullshitting and lying.