Higher-Order Desire

Higher-Order Desire

As we know from the work of Frankfurt, it is possible to have second-order desires directed at first-order desires. For example, the prudent alcoholic may decide, upon reflection, to reject or moderate his desire for alcohol: he desires not to desire alcohol, or to act on that desire. He thinks about his first-order desires and assesses their desirability, coming to the conclusion that they are not, all things considered, desirable desires to have. He might succeed in suppressing them, or at least reducing their hold over him. In this he exercises one kind of freedom (freedom from first-order desires). Apparently such higher-order reflection is not available to animals or young children—they are slaves to their first-order desires (for food, sex, aggression, etc.). They can’t distance themselves from their given first-order desires by reflecting critically on them.

            But that is not the end of the story. We can also reflect on our second-order desires: we might decide that too much second-order regulation of first-order desires leads to an unspontaneous and wizened life-style. We might think we need more Rousseau and less Kant in our lives, more D.H. Lawrence and less Saint Augustine. We might even decide that W.C. Fields would be a good role model (more fun, less gloom). We therefore undertake to lessen the impact of our puritan self and adopt a more childlike persona. That is, we have a third-order desire to modify the power of our second-order desire to exercise more control over our first-order desires. We decide to “let it all hang out”, or at any rate more of it. Wouldn’t it be nice to live the life of a carefree unreflective beast? Better than some uptight cardinal or moral philosopher who has read too much Kant! So, we adopt the first-order life-style and enjoy it for a while, but then we tire of the hangovers and general lack of moral seriousness. After a period of reflection, we decide to let our second-order desires have freer rein; this requires us to suppress our previous third-order desire to inhibit our second-order desire to have more control over our first-order desires. That is, we now have a fourth-order desire, occasioned by reflection on our previous higher-order desires. And so on. There seems to be no end, in principle, to this ascension of levels, though no doubt it gets more cognitively cumbersome the higher it goes. Perhaps in the end the agent assumes a position indistinguishable from that of the child or animal but only after a long series of reflective higher-level desire formations. Evidently things are much more complex than the simple binary distinction of first- and second-order desires. It isn’t just that humans can ascend from first-order desires to second-order desires; they can also scale a whole hierarchy of desires directed at other desires.