Will, habit, and the limits of character
Which of your desires do you want to have?
What it argues
What distinguishes a person is not reason but second-order desire: wanting to want something, or wanting not to. Freedom of the will is the alignment of the will you act on with the will you want to have. Addiction is the case where the two come apart.
The probe
Pick one first-order desire active today. State your second-order stance on it. If there is a gap, that gap is where the problem lives.
The source
Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person, Journal of Philosophy 68 — Harry Frankfurt, 1971. The link goes to the text or to a catalogue record for it, not to a summary. This one is the text itself.
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