Margot Witte

In the philosophical literature, it’s popular to suggest that internal conflict has negative consequences for our agency (Frankfurt, 1988), our self-understanding (MacIntyre, 1981), and our relationships (Korsgaard, 2009). Against these ‘unificationist’ accounts of agency, I offer a defense of internal conflict. In tragic choices between two intimate relationships, internal conflict plays an important role. My argument is motivated by familiar examples, such as Sophie’s Choice. In cases like these, the agent must be internally conflicted in a particular way, lest we detract from the value of our relationships. "Being conflicted" is used here as a technical term, referring to a sustained cognitive and affective response to a tragic choice. The conflicted agent cognitively recognizes the tension between her commitments and is motivated by it. She is affectively conflicted to the extent that she experiences the reasons as stemming from her own will and feels fitting emotions (e.g., dread, anguish, horror). Internal conflict realizes certain “relational goods”—the components of a relationship that make it valuable. There are many possible relational goods in any given relationship, such as mutual care and participation in joint activities. I focus on the relational good of mutual attunement, arguing that, at times, one cannot be fully attuned to another person without experiencing internal conflict. This account invites us to recognize the relational reasons we have to sustain and accept internal conflict, rather than viewing it as a problem to be resolved. In doing so, it also exposes a limitation of unificationist theories of agency.