[Published in European Journal of Philosophy, Vol 4(1), pp.

1-16, 1996]

Identification and the Idea of an

Alternative of Oneself

JAN BRANSEN

Department of Philosophy
Utrecht University
P.O. Box 80.126
3508 TC Utrecht
The Netherlands
Phone: + 31 30 532090 / Fax: + 31 30 532816
Email: Jan.Bransen@phil.ruu.nl

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

In his 1987 paper Identification and Wholeheartedness1, Harry Frankfurt tries

to adjust his hierarchical account of autonomy by stressing the importance of the
decisive act of identification as the heart of autonomy. This shift of emphasis is
motivated by the persistence of two problems that seriously threaten the plausibility of
any account of autonomy based on the idea of higher-order mental states. The first is the
threat of an infinite regress: if a first-order desire is autonomous because the agent has a
second-order desire that this first-order desire be effective, then the agent seems to be in
need of a third-order desire to account for the autonomy of this second-order desire, and
a fourth-order desire to account for, ad infinitum. In short, why should we stop at the
second level? The other problem is the so-called ab initio problem: how can a higherorder desire guarantee that an agent acts autonomously in following a lower-order desire
if we do not seem to need a guarantee that the agent acts autonomously in following the
higher-order desire? In short, why should we go to the second level at all?2
I think Frankfurts move makes it possible to answer these problems. As it
stands, however, the move is not an unconditional success, because the notion of identification is notoriously obscure, and the stress on the agents decisiveness furthers an
unfortunate misinterpretation of what is at stake. But, as I shall argue in this paper, if
we complete Frankfurts move by emphasizing that as is the right preposition to
accompany the verb to identify we might get closer to a plausible account of autonomy. The most significant feature of this account is the replacement of the ambiguous
distinction between first-order desires and second-order volitions by the more promising
distinction between alternatives for and alternatives of oneself.

I. Decisiveness authorizes hierarchy

The hierarchical account of autonomy is based upon the distinction between
first-order desires and second-order volitions.3 A first-order desire is directed at an

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

action, whereas a second-order volition is directed at a desire: it is the desire that some
first-order desire be effective.4 Thus, if you want to refrain from smoking you typically
have, according to the account, a number of conflicting first-order desires (for example,
both a desire to smoke a cigarette and a desire not to touch any cigarettes) and a secondorder volition that one of these first-order desires (the desire not to touch any cigarettes)
be effective. The hierarchical account of autonomy assumes that to have a second-order
volition means to be concerned with (and, eventually, to be responsible for) the motivations (and, consequently, the actions) you yourself consider to be your own. Therefore
it makes sense, according to the account, to maintain that a person is autonomous if she
acts in accordance with her second-order volitions.
At first sight, the idea of such a hierarchy is attractive: it allows for inner
conflicts, for the complex structure of motivations, and for the idea that autonomy has
everything to do with deliberation, with making up ones mind. But its simplicity is
misleading: in fact, the idea is deeply ambiguous. For, on the one hand hierarchy is a
notion with a clear, descriptive meta- connotation. That a mental state is higher means
that it is about a lower state, or has this lower state as its intentional object. But on the
other hand, hierarchy has a definite authoritative connotation as well. That a mental
state is higher means that it articulates with more authority the content of a persons
will.
Although it is clear that the hierarchical account of autonomy derives its plausibility from the assumption that both connotations are related, it is not obvious how, or
that, they are related. But it is obvious that the infinite regress and the ab initio problem
are motivated by the conviction that both connotations diverge in a significant way. This
is sometimes recognized as the incompleteness problem5: if it is clear that a desire is not
automatically more authoritative about a persons will by merely being higher up in the
hierarchy, then it is clear that the account still lacks an explanation of the way in which
such a desire becomes authoritative. The infinite regress is threatening if the required
explanation takes recourse merely to the meta- fact; and the ab initio problem is

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

threatening if we fail to see that an additional explanation is required.

In his 1987 paper, Frankfurt accepts the incompleteness problem. His way of
putting the problem is interesting, for it contains the seeds of his move towards identification:

The mere fact that one desire occupies a higher level than another in the hierarchy seems plainly insufficient to endow it with greater authority or with any
constitutive legitimacy. () It does not make clear why it should be appropriate to construe a person as participating in conflicts within himself between
second-order volitions and first-order desires () It appears that the hierarchical model cannot as such cope with this difficulty. It merely enables us to
describe an inner conflict as being between desires of different orders. But this
alone is hardly adequate to determine with respect to that conflict where (if
anywhere) the person himself stands.6

The second and the last sentences of this quotation are particularly telling. They
suggest that Frankfurt assumes that the hierarchical account of autonomy implies that it
is possible to locate the person herself within the inner arena populated by her desires,
volitions, and perhaps other motivational factors. One reading makes this look like a
category mistake, or like the homunculus fallacy. But there is another, more sympathetic
reading. Frankfurt wants to point out that if the hierarchical account says that an
autonomous person is a person who acts in accordance with her second-order volitions,
then this means that somehow these second-order volitions function within the inner
arena as authorized representatives of the person herself. It is as if some first-order
desire, confronted with an opposing second-order volition, faces the disapproving look
of the person herself, instead of just another contending desire. Frankfurt wants to
safeguard this idea, i.e. that second-order volitions are the authorized representatives of

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

the person herself; but he is ready to admit that the mere fact that these volitions are
second-order desires does not in itself make them the representatives they have to be. In
order for such a second-order volition to become an authorized representative, it is
necessary that, as it were, the person herself drops by and gives the volition her
blessing. At least, that is the image Frankfurt suggests in his presentation of the
incompleteness problem and in his attempt to answer it in terms of a decisive act of
identification.
The point of such an act, Frankfurt emphasizes, is not to clear the way for the
performance of an action, nor is it to ensure that one will act well. Rather, the point is
to establish a constraint by which other preferences and decisions are to be guided.7
The point of a decisive act of identification is to make up ones mind8, to create an
orderly arrangement within ones arena by putting a particular second-order volition in
charge, endowing it with authority. Frankfurts image is that of a number of people who
make up after a quarrel. They can do so only if all conflicting parties participate in it,
and they can do so even if the conflict that led to the quarrel continues to exist. Think of
the referee in a football game, forcing two players to make up after they run foul of one
another. Or better, think of what these players would do in a friendly, off-the-record
game without a referee. They would make up by decisively and explicitly expressing
their intention to see the game as being just for fun, as being guided by a constraint to
enjoy the match. We can think of this constraint as being higher up in the hierarchy in
two ways. The constraint is higher because it is authoritative about the character the
match should have. But it is also higher in the meta-sense: the constraint is about the
actions of the players; the constraint makes it possible to condemn specific actions, to
dissociate the match as a whole from certain intolerable offences.
That such a constraint is higher up in the hierarchy in both ways is, according to
Frankfurt, due to a decisive act of identification. If there is a motivational conflict within
me between the desire not to touch any cigarettes and the desire to smoke a last
cigarette, my decisive identification with the former desire consists in the appointment

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

of a second-order volition as a constraint endowed with authority, separating first-order

desires that make up my mind from those that are recognized as really (from now on)
alien to me. Although it might be possible that the conflict continues to exist (addictions
are hard to give up), it is no longer a conflict between some of my desires. Instead, it is a
conflict between me (within the inner arena of my mind represented by a second-order
volition) and a stubborn, persistent, but alien first-order desire.

Frankfurt argues that his adjusted hierarchical account of autonomy, with its
stress on the importance of the decisive act of identification, answers both the threat
of an infinite regress and the ab initio problem.
He deals with the latter problem by stressing the difference between two kinds
of motivational conflicts. One sort of conflict concerns the priority or position of
desires in a preferential order. As Frankfurt says, the issue here is which desire to
satisfy first. Conflicts of this kind do not necessarily require higher-order volitions for
their resolution; they are resolved by integrating all competing desires into a single
ordering, and this might be done by simple weighing. But there are conflicts of another
kind. These are conflicts that concern whether or not a particular desire should be given
any place in the order of preference at all.9 To resolve conflicts of this kind, the person
needs higher-order desires that allow her to divide the competing desires, to extrude
particular desires as alien to her will, to reject these desires as entitled to no priority
whatsoever.
It is because of this difference between kinds of motivational conflicts that we
need, according to Frankfurt, a hierarchical account of autonomy. And we can have one,
according to Frankfurt, because, as we have seen, it is by means of a decisive act of
identification that a person authorizes desires as being higher in the relevant sense: being
second-order volitions that are representatives of the person herself.
Frankfurt deals with the infinite regress by arguing against the claim that it must
be arbitrary to think of second-order volitions as authoritative.10 A persons decisive

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

identification with a second-order volition consists, according to Frankfurt, in the

personss conviction that yet another investigation of the desirability of one or the other
of a number of conflicting desires will lead to the same result. That is, any third-, fourthor even higher-order volition will, in full agreement with the authoritative second-order
volition, underscore that it is desirable that the particular first-order desire pointed out
by the second-order volition is effective and not another. Therefore, although it is
perfectly possible that a person engages in a potentially endless sequence of evaluations,
it is pointless to do so if that person has decisively identified herself with a particular
second-order volition. Frankfurt compares this way of terminating such a sequence with
the way in which someone attempting to solve a problem in arithmetic decides to stop
checking the result of her initial calculation. Of course, it is possible to perform yet
another calculation in order to confirm the result of the first (and second) calculation.
But such behaviour will be pointless once the person is confident that she knows the
correct answer, or is convinced of the fact that the cost of another check will be greater
than the value of reducing the likelihood of error.
The decisive act of identification, then, seems to be the heart of the hierarchical
account of autonomy. It seems to be so, because it should be understood as the act of
authorizing a hierarchy among a persons desires, and it is only because of the fact that
the higher-order desires are authorized representatives of the person that we can explain
an autonomous act as an act in accordance with a persons second-order volitions.

II. A tempting misinterpretation

What is worrying in Frankfurts stress on the decisive act of identification, is
that it might strengthen the suspicion that the hierarchical account of autonomy is question-begging. That is, we might be lured into thinking that Frankfurts move reintroduces
the person as an active and independent (if not to say: autonomous) entity who is able
to endow a specific desire with authority, putting it in charge on behalf of the person. In

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

this section, I shall argue that the seductiveness of such a misinterpretation of

Frankfurts move follows from the unfortunate decisionist overtones that accompany a
common misunderstanding of the act of identification.11 The misunderstanding is to
think that the correct preposition that accompanies the word identification is with,
whereas I shall argue that it should be as.

Throughout his work, Frankfurt uses the preposition with in discussions of the
act of identification, as does almost everyone working in the field.12 It is, however, this
usage that leads to obscurity (and, in addition, to an implausible account of autonomy),
because it is fundamentally unclear how many entities are involved in an act of identification with. Consider the following sentences:

(1)

You identify with the desire not to touch any cigarettes

(2)

You identify yourself with the desire not to touch any cigarettes

Both sentences have the same meaning; they can be used interchangeably.13
However, grammar has it that there are two entities involved in the first sentence (you
and the desire) and three in the last sentence (you, yourself and the desire). Does this
mean that the reflexive pronoun used in (2) is just an empty placeholder? Well, suppose
so. Suppose there are only two entities involved: you and the desire not to touch any
cigarettes. Let us investigate this supposition and ask what it is you do in performing a
decisive act of identification with, and why this would have the effect of endowing the
desire in question with authority. What you do, by identifying with the desire in
question, is express your deep sympathy for this desire. You declare that what is central
to your identity corresponds in a significant way with the desire in question. Now, why
would such a declaration have the effect of endowing the desire in question with authority? There is a simple answer: because that is precisely the intention of your act. What

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

you do by thus identifying yourself with a particular desire is, as Frankfurt puts it, to
establish a constraint by which other preferences and decisions are to be guided.14 But
if this analysis is correct, the adjusted hierarchical account of autonomy is deprived of
any explanatory force!
This is so because on this interpretation the act of identification is nothing but an
arbitrary act of transferring the authority of the agent to the desire in question. But what
does the authority of the agent mean? If we can answer this question, then the hierarchical account of autonomy is superfluous. But if we cannot answer the question, then
the hierarchical account of autonomy is empty. Either way is void of explanatory force.
Either way leads, at best, to the question-begging reintroduction of the person as an
active and independent, autonomous entity that is supposed to be able to endow a
specific desire with authority, putting it in charge on behalf of herself, even though we
are unable to understand how it is possible for this person to do as she chooses. We can
clarify the unacceptability of this interpretation by examining the other possibility.
This is the possibility of maintaining that sentence (1) is elliptical, and that the
reflexive pronoun in sentence (2) is not an empty placeholder with merely a grammatical
function. On this interpretation there are three entities involved: you in the capacity of
the agent of the act, you in the capacity of one of the objects of the act, and the desire
not to touch any cigarettes. Again we should ask what it is you do by performing a
decisive act of identification with, and why this has the effect of endowing the desire in
question with authority. Well, what you do is establish, articulate or uncover a contingent relationship between two entities that are supposed to have their own well-determined identities, a relationship that presupposes the identity of both, putting the
identity of the first in a particular perspective by means of the identity of the second.
Thus, you put your identity in a particular perspective by means of the light that is
shed upon you by the desire not to touch any cigarettes.
The advantage of this interpretation is that it makes it possible for the agent to
have reasons for her act. That is, the agent is in a position to conceive of both the iden-

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

10

tity of herself (as an object of attention) and the identity of her desire. The significant
similarities she notices give her reasons for her act of identification with. It is not just an
arbitrary, blind decision that is supposed to be its own reason, as is the case in the
first interpretation involving just two entities.
But why would this act of putting your identity in a particular perspective have
the effect of endowing the desire in question with authority? Well, I think that it would
not. What is likely to be the case is that you (in the capacity of the agent of the act of
identification) are in a position that allows you to shed light upon your identity (in the
capacity of an object of attention), by means of emphasizing the dominant, influential,
or otherwise significant presence in your inclinations and deliberations of the desire not
to touch any cigarettes. In other words, the act of identification with, if considered to be
an act involving three entities, is an act of illumination, an act that makes you see what
is the case, not an act of authorizing. If there happens to be some kind of
authoritativeness involved in such an act, it will be a consequence of the fact that the
suggested relationship is truly informative about the identity of the first entity (i.e.
you). But, obviously, that is not enough. Something similar will be the case with respect
to the other desires you have. For, surely, if you are a person who wants to refrain from
smoking, it will no doubt be very illuminating to put your identity in perspective by
identifying yourself with the desire to smoke one last cigarette.
My conclusion is that we should not take the act of identification to be an act of
identification with. If we do take it as such an act, then we are either forced to accept
that identification has an arbitrary, decisionist character, or that it is illuminative but
cannot be authoritative. Instead, as I shall argue in the next section, we should take the
act of identification as to be the heart of Frankfurts account of autonomy.

III. The act of identification as

If we take the act of identification to be one of identification as, we have to

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

11

accept that from the grammatical point of view the object of such an act cannot be a
desire. It does not make sense to identify oneself as a desire, at least not in a nonmetaphorical way. This does not seem to be a big problem, since it is perfectly sensible
to reformulate sentence (2)

(2)

You identify yourself with the desire not to touch any cigarettes.

as either
(3)

You identify yourself as a person moved by the desire not to touch any
cigarettes.

or
(4)

You identify yourself as the person moved by the desire not to touch any
cigarettes.

There are interesting consequences related to using either the indefinite article a or the
definite article the. In sentence (3) the phrase beginning with the indefinite article a
functions as a predicate, which has a sense but not, necessarily, a reference, implying
that it is taken for granted that the subject term yourself has a reference. According to
this sentence to identify oneself as is something like to describe oneself as. This
would imply that your identity is well-determined, and that the description provided by
the act of identification is external to this identity, serving interpersonal, or
communicative, purposes. The picture might be that of someone who is interviewed,
and who, after being asked, describes herself in this or that way. Of course, we can
imagine an intrapersonal case, i.e. some kind of internal interview, the person herself
being both the interviewer and the interviewee. This we would call introspection, the
motive for the interviewer being that she has never really thought about how to
characterise herself in terms of her desires, and the answer of the interviewee being the

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

12

result of, presumably, a close look inside. The most significant feature of this
reformulation of sentence (2) by means of sentence (3) is the presupposition of
yourself having a well-determined, but so far undescribed identity accessible to
yourself. In those paradigmatic situations of inner conflict or undeterminateness that
requires the person to perform an act of identification this presupposition does not
seem to be very plausible. Let us, therefore, take a look at the other possibility.
In sentence (4) it is taken for granted that the phrase beginning with the definite
article the has a reference, which turns out to be the same as the initially apparently
indefinite reference of the indexical yourself. According to this sentence to identify
oneself as is not a matter of description, but much more a matter of recognition, of
realisation or determination in the sense of discovery. The identity pointed out by
means of the act of identification is, according to this sentence, not an identity between
an object and a linguistic phrase, but a real identity to be found in the world. In the
interpersonal case the picture might be that of someone who introduces herself by
referring to a phrase or description under which she is already known (e.g. her name),
granted that the person she meets is not acquainted with her looks. Thus, a teacher
might identify herself to a group of freshmen as their philosophy teacher. It might,
perhaps, be possible to imagine an intrapersonal case of someone who introduces or
presents herself to herself in this way, but the conditions of such an act (knowing that
one is unknown in one way and known in another) make it difficult to imagine how such
a self-presentation would be like.
It seems more promising, therefore, to suggest a different interpersonal picture:
that of making yourself recognisable to someone from afar by slowly moving nearer to
her. This is a picture that makes sense in the intrapersonal case, as in cases where it does
take some time until it becomes clear to a person that she herself is really, or most truly,
motivated by this or that desire.15 According to this picture the act of identification as is
best understood as an act of determination. This fits nicely with Frankfurts own
characterisation in terms of making up ones mind, but on this interpretation it is

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

13

possible to avoid the decisionistic overtones, because the picture suggests that the act of
identification as is an act in which the agent is responsive to herself and guided by the
way in which her present indeterminateness is related to the alternative of herself she is
determined to be.16

Before elaborating on this picture, I would like to compare sentence (4) with the
following sentences to illuminate the proposed interpretation:

(5)

He identifies the well-thumbed book as a copy of Kants first Critique.

(6)

She identifies herself as the woman they talked about.

In both sentences the act of identification as is induced by circumstances in

which the agent is confronted with an entity whose identity is concealed, or at least not
unproblematically given. And the point of the act is that the agent succeeds in
determining or articulating what appears to be the proper identity of the entity in
question. The act of identification as is an act of determining the identity of an entity
that at first appears to be undetermined. Somebody sees a book and he notices
immediately that the book is used intensively, but at first sight he does not see which
book it is (perhaps it is covered, or lying open). But then he recognizes the book, or
reads the title which he remembers, and by thus determining the identity of the book he
might be said to have identified the well-thumbed book as a copy of Kants first
Critique. The same process occurs in the case of the woman who realises that she is the
object of conversation, and also, I claim, in the kind of cases we are interested in.
Ordinary language is telling, in this respect. For what happens in the case described by sentence (4) is that at first you are confronted (as we say) by yourself: a
person whose identity, as far as its true motivations are concerned, is concealed, or
undetermined. But then something happens, something that can be understood in both a

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

14

passive and an active sense: you succeed in determining or articulating what turns out to
be your proper identity by realising that you are the person moved by the desire not to
touch any cigarettes. This is not merely an arbitrary decision on your side. The act of
identification as involves, at least from the grammatical point of view, three different
ways in which you yourself are present, or given: (a) you in the capacity of the
agent of the act, (b) you in the capacity of the experientially given, undetermined person
in doubt, and (c) you in the capacity of being the person moved by a particular desire.
And it is not merely up to the agent to determine the identity of the person in doubt as
actually being the same as the identity of the motivated person. There is no decisionism
here. For the identification can be successful only if the person in doubt is given in such
a way as to enable the agent to discover whether or not identifying the person in doubt
as the motivated person implies an increased understanding, or a more accurate articulation, of the identity of this person in doubt. However, it is also not merely a matter of
wait and see. The act of identification as is an act, an attempt to articulate your proper
identity, an attempt to interpret yourself, which requires that you should somehow be
able to determine that this person moved by the desire not to touch any cigarettes is the
right (or the best) alternative of yourself.17
To clarify the improvement of this interpretation of the act of identification over
the one discussed in the previous section, it might help to compare the account
developed here with the case of identification with understood as involving three entities.
The latter case, as I argued above, boiled down to putting your identity in a particular
perspective by means of the light that is shed upon you by the desire not to touch any
cigarettes. This case did not allow for authorisation, because it was not possible, on this
account, to explain why the light shed by this desire was so special.
On the interpretation put forward here, however, the point of the act of identification is not to illuminate your identity. Its point is to articulate, or determine, your
identity. The act of identification as is not an act that relates two incompatible entities
(persons and desires) suggesting that one of them has authority with respect to the

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

15

identity of the other. Instead it is an act of uncovering, articulating or determining the

identity of the person in doubt and that of the motivated person as actually being
instances of one and the same entity (your true or better self). That is why the act of
identification as might allow for authorisation. It might do so, because it aims to express
the truth.18 As such this does not, of course, guarantee authoritativeness. Though aiming
to express the truth, one might err. But the model of truth sits well with the idea of
authoritativeness. Identifying the well-thumbed book as a copy of Kants first Critique,
is not, as such, an authoritative act, but precisely in its aim to express the truth it points
towards the relevant authority (i.e. the truth about this book). The same might be said in
the case of the autonomous person, being someone who identifies herself as the person
moved by the desire not to touch any cigarettes. In doing so she determines the truth
about herself: she is this person, and she is autonomous if she self-consciously succeeds
in acting in accordance with this truth about herself.19

IV. Alternatives for and alternatives of oneself

The interpretation of the act of identification as developed in the previous section implies an important shift of emphasis. According to this interpretation, the
phenomenon of autonomy should not be understood in terms of the authoritativeness of
particular desires, but rather in terms of the authoritativeness of particular alternatives
of oneself. Although the act of identification might still be understood as being an act of
authorizing a hierarchy among a persons desires, it is only indirectly so. The act of
identification as is basically an act of determining the authoritativeness (i.e. the truth) of
a particular alternative of oneself, an alternative characterised by the fact that it qualifies
the person herself as an agent moved by a particular desire. This shift has two important
consequences: (1) it suggests us to replace the distinction between first-order desires and
second-order volitions by the, as I shall argue, more promising distinction between
alternatives for and alternatives of oneself, and (2) it allows us, subsequently, to avoid

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

16

the ambiguous notion of a hierarchy. This is so because although determining the authoritativeness of an alternative of oneself presupposes higher-order aboutness, this has
nothing whatsoever to do with the authoritative-connotation associated with secondorder volitions (i.e. any thought about whatever alternative of oneself will be a higherorder mental state, but this fact has nothing to do with whether or not a particular
alternative is considered to be the right or true one). As a consequence it would be best
to drop the adjective hierarchical as inappropriate with respect to the proposed account of autonomy. The account does presuppose self-reflexivity, and in this sense it
requires higher-order mental states (i.e. it requires not only states with mental content
but also states about mental content20), but the account does not make use at all of the
idea of a complex hierarchical structure of desires, volitions and other motivational
factors.
But let me first spell out the point of the proposed distinction between
alternatives for and alternatives of oneself.
It is important not to misinterpret the grammatical function of the little word
of in the idea of an alternative of oneself. The distinction between alternatives for and
alternatives of oneself should not be understood as referring to options given to and
options generated by the person in question. The word of should not be taken as
suggesting that the agent in question is the author of the alternatives, be it in the passive
mode (i.e. somehow the alternatives sprang from the mind of the agent) or in the active
mode (i.e. the agent has, in some process of deliberation, taken the responsibility for
being confronted with these alternatives). There is another interpretation and that is
the one I have in mind an interpretation according to which the phrase alternative of
oneself means to refer to an alternative qualification or determination of the agent herself. According to this interpretation the agent herself is the intentional object all
alternatives are about; the alternatives presenting different modes of existence of this
intentional object.
The interpretation I favour highlights two features of the idea of an alternative.

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

17

The first feature is that a set of alternatives can be either a set of different objects or a
set of different qualifications of one and the same object. Think, for a suitable analogue,
of the difference between, on the one side, a choice between having an egg or a croissant
for breakfast, and, on the other side, a choice between having your egg hard-boiled or
soft-boiled. The first choice is a choice between different intentional objects; the second
a choice between different qualifications or determinations of one and the same object.
This distinction is a conceptual one; it is not meant to refer, ontologically
speaking, to different kinds of situations in which an agent faces what are really
alternatives for her or really alternatives of her. After all, it is possible to reformulate
both kinds of choice in terms of the other. We can think of different objects as if they
are different qualifications of another (more abstract) object, and we can think of
different qualifications of one and the same object as if they are different objects in
themselves. We can think, for example, of the choice between an egg or a croissant as a
choice between different qualifications of the abstract object the food you eat for breakfast. Likewise, it is possible to reformulate the choice between a hard-boiled egg and a
soft-boiled egg as a choice between different objects, even though it might be the same
egg that has the potential to turn either into a hard-boiled or a soft-boiled egg. There is
nothing wrong with imagining a language in which it would be unclear whether the latter
choice involved merely one intentional object, e.g. when there were, in this language,
different words for un-boiled, hard-boiled and soft-boiled eggs.
The second feature of the distinction introduced here is that a set of alternatives
might or might not refer to the agent who faces them. It is quite common to consider a
set of different objects of desire without paying any attention at all to yourself or even
your desires. It is almost impossible, however, to consider a set of different modes of
existence without thinking of yourself, your plans or your ideals. The first set is a set of
alternatives for oneself, the second a set of alternatives of oneself. Facing a choice
between alternatives for oneself does not require self-reflexivity, whereas facing a choice
between alternatives of oneself does. This is an important difference, especially with

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

18

respect to the phenomenon of autonomy, since it highlights the way we ourselves are
involved in a choice. I can think of having an egg or a croissant for breakfast, and I can
make my choice without any need to think about myself or my preferences. And this is
so even though it is not clear at all that my choice will not have an effect on the
qualifications that determine the mode of my existence. Due to contemporary health care
advertising we all know, for example, that my choice will have such an effect, because
eating eggs is bad for a persons cholesterol. So I had better make my choice in a selfreflexive way, making it, that is, not by considering alternatives for me (having an egg or
a croissant) but by alternatives of me (being a heart patient or not).
This requires that I think of myself as an (abstract) object with respect to which
I have to determine which qualification is most appropriate. And that is precisely the
kind of situation in which it begins to make sense to talk about an act of identification
as, and, by the same token, about autonomy. That is, on this account a person is capable
of being characterised as either autonomous or not once she is able to reconstruct the
choices she has to make in terms of choices between different alternatives of herself.
Whether or not she in fact acts autonomously depends, in addition, upon whether or not
she is able to determine the right or best alternative of herself, and whether or not she is
able to let herself be guided by this knowledge.
I assume it goes without saying that this account of autonomy is not a recipe
that instructs you how to become autonomous. Just as Frankfurts original account does
not say which second-order volitions a person should have, this account does not say
which alternative of oneself is the right or the best one. The account just aims to point
out what an autonomous person is able to do: to determine which alternative of herself is
the right or the best one.
This brings me to the following important observation. The verb to determine,
which plays a crucial role in the account of the act of identification as presented here, is
ambiguous in a significant way. On the one hand it means to lay bare or to discover;
on the other hand it means to lay down or to decide on. Both aspects, the contem-

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

19

plative and the constructive, are present in the act of identification as. Determining
yourself, considered to be a person in doubt, to be, truely, the person moved by this
particular desire seems to be as much a matter of finally discovering which alternative of
yourself you are, as a matter of finally deciding which alternative of yourself you are to
be. I think this ambiguity is absolutely central to our experience. It is the ambiguity
present in the unsteady certainty of ones own truth21 of which it is impossible to
know whether it is true because you have made it so or because you have found it to be
so. It is the ambiguity that characterizes our human condition: to live the life of only one
alternative of ourselves in the face of so many others.

If all this is plausible, it seems that we should reconstruct Frankfurts model of

autonomous action in a way that emphasizes that we should not think of self-reflexive
deliberation as a struggle within the person between desires, volitions, and other
motivational factors, aiming at realising a hierarchy among the parties involved. Selfreflexive deliberation is, on this account, a matter of considering alternatives of oneself,
aiming at determining which alternative is the right or the best one. Though, of course,
this gives rise to problems of its own22, it seems promising and evocative in just the
right ways, because (1) it avoids the picture of an inner arena and the related problem of
having to locate the authority of the person herself in this arena in a non-questionbegging way; (2) it suggests that self-reflexive deliberation requires oneself as an
(abstract) object, and involves the difficult task of evaluating a number of alternative
determinations of yourself; and (3) it suggests that autonomy is not primarily a capacity
of an agent able to make decisions about her desires, but a capacity of a person able to
be responsive to alternatives of herself and to be guided by the way in which her present
indeterminateness is related to these alternatives.

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

20

V. Conclusion
In this paper I have tried to revise Frankfurts account of autonomy by
furthering an interpretation of the act of identification that releases it from decisionist
overtones. There were two reasons for doing this. The first is that Frankfurt rightly
argues that emphasising the essential role of the act of identification makes it possible to
escape from the threat of an infinite regress and to solve the ab initio problem. The
second is that Frankfurts own account of the act of identification is likely to lead to an
interpretation that would deprive his hierarchical account of autonomy of any
explanatory force. The interpretation I have developed here is based upon the claim that
as is the right preposition to accompany the verb to identify. I have shown that this
interpretation implies a shift of emphasis from the distinction between first-order
desires and second-order volitions to the distinction between alternatives for and alternatives of oneself. One important consequence of this shift is that it turns out to be the
case that there are no good reasons for calling this account of autonomy hierarchical.
The proposed account avoids the ambiguous picture of a hierarchy of desires. Though
some desires are more authoritative about a persons will than others, this is not so
because they are higher up in a hierarchy, but because they are desires to be true to the
right, or the best, alternative of oneself.23

Notes:
1

reprinted in Frankfurt (1988).

The succinct formulations are taken from Dworkin (1981).
3
The distinction was introduced by Frankfurt in his seminal paper Freedom of
the Will and the Concept of a Person (Journal of Philosophy, vol. 68, 1971, pp. 5-20).
2

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

21

One of the major supporters of the hierarchical account is Dworkin (1988). See also, for
defences and criticisms of it, Watson (1975), Taylor (1977a), Thalberg (1978), Friedman
(1986), Christman (1987) and Christman (1989).
4
There is a difference between a second-order desire and a second-order volition.
The former is merely the desire to have a first-order desire, irrespective of whether or
not we want this desire to be effective. In order to understand what it is like to be a bat,
we might, for example, want to have a desire for mosquitoes, without, of course,
wanting this desire to be effective. The latter is, more specifically, the desire that a firstorder desire constitutes our will, that it is effective, moving us all the way to action.
5
Christman (1989a) p. 11.
6
Frankfurt (1987), p. 166. Italics in original.
7
ibid. p. 175.
8
ibid. pp. 172ff.
9
ibid. p. 170
10
It is important to stress that the threat of an infinite regress discussed here
concerns the account of autonomy, not the experience of autonomy. The point is not
that the account should guarantee that the agent is sure that she is right about her
desires, that she has ruled out the very possibility of experiencing the need to reconsider
her desires. It might well be that absolutely no one ever has the experience of knowing
with complete certainty that a particular desire is hers. But that does not imply that it is
not possible to give an account of what it means that a desire is a persons own. Quite
the contrary. Therefore, the threat of the infinite regress points out that the account
under consideration is probably not a convincing or perhaps not even an intelligible account of what it means that a desire is a persons own. It is completely indifferent about
whether or not there are any desires that are truly a persons own. It is in this light
correct that Frankfurt, in his attempt to answer the threat of an infinite regress, argues
against the reproach that the authoritativeness of second-order volitions must be
arbitrary.
11
In his 1991 paper, The Faintest Passion, Frankfurt seems to be aware of the
misguiding decisionist overtones in his account of autonomy. He attempts to provide
another adjustment, now by stressing the importance of being self-satisfied as the crucial
other side of decisiveness: Identification is constituted neatly by an endorsing higherorder desire with which the person is satisfied (Frankfurt (1991), p. 14). As will
become clear below, the continued usage of the preposition with makes this
adjustment suspect to the same criticism, even though I symphatise with the attempted
move away from the model of deciding.
12
I have found only one exception: Dworkin (1981) uses as on p. 59: he is
acting authentically in that he identifies himself as the kind of person who wants to be
motivated by envy.
13
Cf Frankfurt (1987), p. 172: When someone identifies himself with one
rather than with another of his own desires () Suppose that a person with two
conflicting desires identifies with one rather than with the other.
14
Frankfurt (1987), p. 175.
15
The idea that reflexivity is not a matter of transparency, but requires a
painstaking process of self-interpretation, is a main theme in the hermeneutic or

Identification and the Idea of an Alternative of Oneself

22

interpretative tradition. See, for instance, Ricoeur (1977, 1981), Taylor (1977a, 1977b),
and Tugendhat (1985).
16
I am aware of the fact that the phrase she is determined to be is ambiguous.
Both an active, decisionistic reading and a passive, contemplative reading is
possible. I think we should not try to eliminate this ambiguity. It is precisely by
stressing this ambiguity that we can avoid a sheer decisionistic interpretation. I return to
this ambiguity below.
17
Let me, again, emphasise that the ambiguity of the verb to determine is
significant. See below.
18
It will be clear from the context that the notion of truth used here is not that of
a strictly descriptive, empirical truth. Instead it is, what might be called, an evaluative
truth. This is not the right place to discuss this notion of truth. But it is, perhaps, a
good place to refer to the work of two philosophers that have deeply influenced my
views on these matters: Tugendhat (1985), and Taylor (1976, 1977a, 1977b, 1989,
1991).
19
I would like to point out that Frankfurts later views on autonomy, in which
the notions wholeheartedness and being self-satisfied play a crucial role, are largely
in agreement with the interpretation developed here; an interpretation in which
considerable weight is given to a self-reflexive relationship in which the agent is
responsive to herself and guided by, what I call, the alternative of herself she is
determined to be. Cf. Frankfurt (1991, 1994).
20
See Pettit (1993) for an account of higher-order mental states that makes uses
of the distinction between states with and states about mental content.
21
I think Frankfurt is right to suggest that wholeheartedness and being selfsatisfied are good indicators of this truth, as well as of its delicate, sometimes
apparently merely psychological foundation. Cf. Frankfurt (1991, 1994).
22
This is not the right place to discuss these problems, but I think it is the right
place to mention some of them. There is first the difficult problem of the ontological
status of alternatives of ourselves. Is their reality constituted by our stories about
ourselves? Or does their reality transcend these stories? If they dont, there is the metaethical problem of what it could mean to say that some of them are the right or the true
alternatives. But if they do, there is the epistemological problem of how to get to know
them.
23
My work on this paper has profited from discussions with my colleagues at
Utrecht, Ton van den Beld, Bert van den Brink, Rob van Gerwen, Willem van Reijen,
Marc Slors and Maureen Sie; from the opportunity to present the paper at the Dutch
Graduate School for Ethics and at the Department of Philosophy of the University of
Tennessee, Knoxville; and from the comments I received from Joel Anderson, Stefaan
Cuypers, Harry Frankfurt, Philip Pettit, Mark Sacks and an anonymous referee of the
European Journal of Philosophy.

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