Books by Harry G. Frankfurt

A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLEROne of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "e;we have no theory."e; Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Filosoffen Harry G. Frankfurt er nok bedst kendt for sin samfundskritiske bestseller Om bullshit fra 2005. Men det er hans originale bidrag til debatten om fri vilje, der stadig diskuteres – nu 50 år senere. “Viljens frihed og personbegrebet” er et forsvar for vores intuitive fornemmelse af at være viljesfrie, ansvarlige personer – et ikke ukompliceret forehavende. Ved at bruge stofafhængighed som eksempel viser Frankfurt forskellene mellem en fri og en ufri vilje. Som stofafhængig kan man på én gang have et ønske om at tage et stof men samtidig ønske, at man ikke havde lyst til at tage det. Mennesket har evnen til ikke bare at ville dette og hint, men også at overveje motiverne bag og konsekvenserne af vores handlinger. Det er kun, hvis man identificerer sig med det, man vil, at man handler frit – det er kun sådan, man bliver en person. Viljens frihed og personbegrebet er en del af bogserien AFTRYK, der samler korte og vedkommende filosofiske tekster med en væsentlig virkningshistorie. Rasmus Bysted Møller har skrevet introduktion til teksten, der gør den relevant for studerende såvel som læsere, som ønsker at få indblik i fri vilje-debatten.

This beautifully written book by one of the world's leading moral philosophers argues that the key to a fulfilled life is to pursue wholeheartedly what one cares about, that love is the most authoritative form of caring, and that the purest form of love is, in a complicated way, self-love. Harry Frankfurt writes that it is through caring that we infuse the world with meaning. Caring provides us with stable ambitions and concerns; it shapes the framework of aims and interests within which we lead our lives. The most basic and essential question for a person to raise about the conduct of his or her life is not what he or she should care about but what, in fact, he or she cannot help caring about. The most important form of caring, Frankfurt writes, is love, a nonvoluntary, disinterested concern for the flourishing of what is loved. Love is so important because meaningful practical reasoning must be grounded in ends that we do not seek only to attain other ends, and because it is in loving that we become bound to final ends desired for their own sakes. Frankfurt argues that the purest form of love is self-love. This sounds perverse, but self-love--as distinct from self-indulgence--is at heart a disinterested concern for whatever it is that the person loves. The most elementary form of self-love is nothing more than the desire of a person to love. Insofar as this is true, self-love is simply a commitment to finding meaning in our lives.

En af de mest iøjnefaldende træk ved vor kultur er, at der er så meget bullshit. Alle ved det. Vi leverer alle sammen vores bidrag. Men vi har ikke nogen klar forståelse af, hvad bullshit er, hvorfor der er så meget af det, eller hvilke formål det tjener. Harry G. Frankfurts klassiske essay om, hvad bullshit er, og hvorfor bullshit ikke er det samme som løgn.

This 1988 volume is a collection of thirteen seminal essays on ethics, free will, and the philosophy of mind. The essays deal with such central topics as freedom of the will, moral responsibility, the concept of a person, the structure of the will, the nature of action, the constitution of the self, and the theory of personal ideals. By focusing on the distinctive nature of human freedom, Professor Frankfurt is able to explore fundamental problems of what it is to be a person and of what one should care about in life.

In this classic work, best-selling author Harry Frankfurt provides a compelling analysis of the question that not only lies at the heart of Descartes's Meditations, but also constitutes the central preoccupation of modern philosophy: on what basis can reason claim to provide any justification for the truth of our beliefs? Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen provides an ingenious account of Descartes's defense of reason against his own famously skeptical doubts that he might be a madman, dreaming, or, worse yet, deceived by an evil demon into believing falsely. Frankfurt's masterful and imaginative reading of Descartes's seminal work not only stands the test of time; one imagines Descartes himself nodding in agreement.