Abstract

In this paper, I examine how an agent can cause and rationally guide his actions. A common approach explains an action by the agent's motives which cause and rationalize it. Given the fact that an agent does not always identify with the motives that propel him to action, the common approach does not account for an agent's autonomy in his acting. Consequently, I focus on the question whether an agent can rationally guide his action such that he controls his action by his own causal powers without being just moved to it. In this endeavour, Harry Frankfurt's more recent work in which he tries to specify recalcitrant dispositions like "caring" as conditions of autonomy, and hence as conditions of an action's rational guidance, will serve me as a case in point.