Harry Frankfurt grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and Baltimore, Maryland. He received his PhD in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in 1954, and he taught in the philosophy departments at Ohio State University; State University of New York, Binghamton; Rockefeller University; Yale University; and Princeton University.

Frankfurt has made original and important contributions to various fields in philosophy, including history of modern philosophy (primarily René Descartes), philosophical psychology, and moral philosophy. He has explored such issues as the relationship between moral responsibility and free will, the nature of the self, the role of necessitation or inevitability in both constraining and constituting persons, and central phenomena such as care, love, and truth. His work has exerted a significant influence on philosophers working in these areas, and some of his writings (especially on the role of love and truth in our lives) have been read by...