Is ambivalence an agential vice?

Abstract

This paper takes as its starting point a debate between Harry Frankfurt and J. David Velleman. Frankfurt argues that we need to resolve ambivalence since it necessarily threatens autonomy. Velleman challenges this claim, arguing that a desire to resolve ambivalence threatens autonomy when it prompts repression. I argue that the relationship between ambivalence and autonomy is more ambiguous than either theorist tends to acknowledge. In doing so, I recommend three features relevant for assessing whether or not ambivalence threatens autonomy.

Keywords:

• ambivalence
• autonomy
• Frankfurt
• Velleman
• authenticity

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to several anonymous reviewers and to various members of the philosophy departments at the University of Wollongong and University of Illinois, Chicago, respectively, for some invaluable feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks also to Catriona Mackenzie and Sarah Sorial for ongoing discussions about ambivalence.

Notes

On Frankfurt's account, an agent's identity is fundamentally practical and constituted by the fact that he cares deeply about certain projects, values, people, or ideals, and acts in accordance with those (Anderson 2003, 90). For the purpose of my discussion here I use ‘identity’ to signify this practical notion.

I do not engage with Korsgaard's work in this paper, although what I say here has implications for her view that an agent constitutes his identity through reflectively endorsing his reasons for action.

See Schechtman (2004) and Swindell (2010) for different accounts that tackle similar ambiguities in Frankfurt's work.

Repression denotes dissociating from a centrally defining psychological motivation and misrepresenting the role of it in our psychological lives (Velleman 2006, 344).

My working assumption is that real-life examples of ambivalence as documented in autobiographies like Fry's, can be used to test the adequacy of Frankfurt's and Velleman's views since both take themselves to be providing accounts that are responsive to the nature of our lives as agents.

Representative here is Frankfurt's (1988, 16–25) discussion of why the willing, unwilling, and wanton addicts lack autonomy. See Friedman (1986) and Schechtman (2004) for objections to this aspect of Frankfurt's work.

Decisive identification ‘resounds’ throughout the ‘potentially endless array of higher orders’ (Frankfurt 1988, 21). This aspect of Frankfurt's work is a direct response to Watson's (1975, 108) ‘regress objection’, namely, Frankfurt cannot explain why second-order volitions have motivational authority.

This is relevant for the discussion of Benson's critique in section 3.

It is widely assumed that Frankfurt is committed to an ontological account of the self. Representative here are Friedman (1986), Wolf (2002), Watson (1975, 2002), Velleman (2006), and Calhoun (2008). This is a misconception: Frankfurt explicitly states that he does not imply any ‘ontological implications’ and is not inclined to ‘construe the self as an “entity” at all' (Frankfurt 2002, 124).

In a recent development in the debate, Swindell uses this example to highlight what she takes to be two subtly different forms of ambivalence at issue in Frankfurt's account. Taking her cue from Frankfurt, she characterizes ambivalence as ‘fundamentally a certain structure of the will (conflict of second-order desires) that is “necessarily typically” accompanied by a certain affective element (the feeling of being torn)’ (Swindell 2010, 28). She argues that Agamemnon's ambivalence is ‘a case of failure to order desires (a failure of willing) and not a failure to form a psychic positions about a desire (a failure of identifying)’ (Swindell 2010, 28). In the former case, the agent has centrally defining motivations but cannot order them in the requisite way to be autonomous/form a will. Although a detailed discussion of Swindell's account would require an independent paper, she is right to suggest that there are some inconsistencies in Frankfurt's treatment of ambivalence. See ‘The Faintest Passion’ (Frankfurt 1999, 95–107, especially 99–100) and Swindell (2010, 25–6). Nevertheless, I have reservations about her distinction between identification and willing because it seems to rest on a conflation between autonomy as self-control and autonomy as authentic self-expression. Further, insofar as identification (be it decisive identification or volitional necessity) is a form of willing (either in the self-control sense or in the sense of authentic self-expression) on Frankfurt's account, I have reservations about her terminology as well.

Although I employ the metaphor of ambivalence/repression being psychologically ‘unhealthy’, questions concerning what constitutes a psychologically ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’ response require more careful discussion than either Frankfurt or Velleman provides.

In this way, his account of autonomy trades on a theoretical ideal that does not necessarily match our intuitions about the nature of an agent's identity or what it means to be autonomous in practice.

See Lugones (1990) and Calhoun (1995).

Some autonomy theorists distinguish ‘global’ autonomy (autonomy over a person's life as a whole) from ‘local’ autonomy (autonomy with respect to certain actions and decisions). An agent can also exercise ‘narrowly programmatic’ autonomy with respect to a particular period or set of decisions in her life. See Meyers (1989, 48–9, 264–5) and Benson (2005, 120). I revisit the relationship between ambivalence and locally/narrowly programmatic autonomy in sections 4 and 5.

In a similar vein, Oshana (2005, 83) has criticized Frankfurt for failing to take seriously the extent to which ‘circumstantial necessities’ such as sex, gender, ethnicity, class, and race can define an agent's identity and be a profound source of ambivalence and self-estrangement.

This example is loosely based on Patricia's Hughes' (2004) autobiography Enough in which she recounts her experience of domestic violence. The notion of being ‘paralysed by ambivalence’ is one I take from Friedman's (2003, 2005) discussions of domestic violence, although it is also central to Swindell's analysis (2010).

This sketchy account cannot do justice to the multitude of other considerations relevant for assessing whether or not a victim of domestic abuse can exercise autonomy, despite her ambivalence. As I discuss shortly, this is precisely why we need a more complex account of the relationship between ambivalence and autonomy.

A decision like this is autonomous in at least a local or narrowly programmatic sense. It involves a decision to significantly change the course of her life based on self-reflection.

I take my cue here from Swindell (2010, 29–30) who distinguishes between residual ambivalence and paralysing ambivalence. Although she does not explicitly state as much, I think agents like Fry and Agamemnon can move from paralysing ambivalence to residual ambivalence or vice versa.

This example shares certain features with Parfit's (1984, 327–8) well-known example of the Russian Nobleman, which is frequently cited to illustrate the problem of ambivalence, or ‘civil war’ within an individual. If Korsgaard's (2009, 203–4) analysis of the Russian Nobleman is correct, then Fry's problem is not ‘disunity with his future self, but his disunity with himself here and now’.

I borrow this term from Calhoun to denote the source of motivations that derive from the ‘reflective process of identification, endorsement, and alienation’. These motivations enter into the ‘volitional activities of agents’ (Calhoun 2008, 195).

See Fry (1998, 432). Although Fry and the Latina lesbian are examples of agents whose autonomy was arguably enhanced once they took ownership of their ambivalence, being authentically ambivalent need not enhance autonomy.

In a similar vein, Wolf raises the concern that Frankfurt's account of wholeheartedness appears to presuppose that we cannot be wrong about what we care about or identify with (Wolf 2002, 139). Further, Calhoun critiques Frankfurt's failure to ‘mention the possibility that one might lose the appropriate motivating desires altogether and fail to be able to rekindle them’ (Calhoun 2008, 200).

Versions of this objection have been developed by feminists and relational autonomy theorists. See Mackenzie and Stoljar (2000).