Harry G. Frankfurt, “The Importance of What We Care About”, Synthese 53(2), November 1982, pp. 257–272 — DOI-10.1007/BF00484902. Reprinted as chapter 7 of The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 80–94 (LIT-693), whose “Sources” page gives the Synthese details.
Key takeaways
Registered from second-hand sources and from Frankfurt’s preface, not a reading of the essay. Each point says who reports it.
- Caring. Buss and Westlund’s SEP Personal Autonomy (LIT-296, §2, read in NOTE-267) cite this essay, with “On Caring” (1999), for the coherentist accounts on which the agent’s point of view is constituted by what she cares about. They give no page and no quotation.
- Volitional necessity. Robb’s SEP entry (LIT-294, §3.3, read in NOTE-269) cites it for volitional necessity, being unable to will otherwise because of one’s own values, with Luther’s “I can do no other” as a prima facie counterexample to the principle of alternate possibilities, answered by tracing.
- Ideals. Frankfurt’s preface to the 1988 collection (read in Cambridge’s publisher preview) says that “the ideals to which a person freely devotes his life are not exclusively or even primarily moral ideals”, and that “I have made a few stabs, in the title essay of the collection and in some of those that were written subsequent to it, toward the development of a theory of ideals” (pp. vii–viii).
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-04 at the owner’s request, to file Harry Frankfurt “to the best of your ability”. It is philosophy of the will and of value, with no instruction for machine-learning practice, so no anthology topic holds it.
Unavailable because no lawful copy could be read (see the status note). The
takeaways are what read sources say the essay does; they quote nothing
from it.
Its place in the record’s Frankfurt. It sits between the 1971 account of identification (LIT-692) and the Tanner Lectures (LIT-293), which are the record’s first-hand statement of caring as “wanting to go on wanting” (p. 180) and of volitional necessity as irresistible but “not coercive” (p. 197). The record therefore has the later form of both themes first-hand and this, their first statement, only by report. No relation is declared: the essay is unread, and the lectures do not cite it.
How it bears on the theories. Robb’s use of it bears on THEORY-119, the account that PAP is false: a volitional necessity is an inability to do otherwise that comes from the agent’s own will, and Robb reports the standard reply that tracing restores PAP for such cases. It bears on THEORY-120 as the point where Frankfurt’s account begins to place the agent’s standpoint in what he cares about rather than in a single second-order volition.
Priority for a reading: medium. The lectures already give the record the mature view. This essay would show when caring and volitional necessity entered it and whether Luther is Frankfurt’s own example.
Access when seeded:
- Crossref record (Synthese 53(2), pp. 257–272, November 1982).
- Springer’s article page: a script challenge, not followed.
- Unpaywall and OpenAlex: closed, no repository copy; the Georgetown handle OpenAlex lists returns “not found”.
- Cambridge’s publisher preview of the 1988 collection (contents, sources, preface and most of chapter 1): read for the preface; it does not reach chapter 7.