Mentor: Facundo Alonso, Ph.D.

What does it mean to be truly committed? In both the philosophy of action and ethical theory, commitment is invoked to explain why agents not only form intentions but also hold to them in the face of competing considerations and changing circumstances. Two influential traditions dominate the conversation. The first, following Michael Bratman, identifies commitment with the stability of future-directed intention: once an agent settles on a plan, that intention resists easy reconsideration and structures further practical reasoning. The second, developed by Christine Korsgaard and refined by Facundo Alonso, grounds commitment in the agent's reflective endorsement of reasons as normatively binding: to be committed is to stand behind a course of action on the grounds that one has sufficient reason to do so. This project argues that each of these accounts, even taken together, leaves something essential out.

Drawing on Harry Frankfurt's work on caring, I argue that commitment is best understood as the convergence of four interrelated elements: (a) an intention to act, (b) endorsement of certain reasons as normative grounds for that intention, (c) caring about the action itself, and (d) caring about the commitment itself. Caring, on this account, is not merely a feeling or preference but a will-bound, identity-shaping attitude. It is the motivational foundation that gives commitment its characteristic resilience, meaning its capacity to resist temptation, withstand contrary reasons, and shape the agent's identity over time. Without caring, normative reasons remain abstract and intentions remain fragile; with it, commitments become counterfactually robust and genuinely one's own.

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