What good is commitment?

Ethics 119 (4):613-641 (2009)
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Abstract

Deeply embedded in popular cultural portrayals of admirable lives, in everyday conceptions of maturity, and in philosophical work in ethics and political philosophy is the idea that people not only will, but ought to, make commitments and that it is good for the individual herself to do so. In part one I briefly raise skeptical doubts about the defensibility of the normative pressure to commit, and suggest that commitment may only be one style of managing one’s diachronic existence. In part two I examine the distinguishing features of commitment and how commitment differs from “mere” intention. Parts three and four are devoted to detailed critique of the principal philosophical defenses of the value of commitment, including both Pragmatic and Better Life arguments. In the last section, I try to construct an explanation for what makes commitment attractive to many persons if not universally so.

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Cheshire Calhoun
Arizona State University

Citations of this work

Aesthetic Commitments and Aesthetic Obligations.Anthony Cross - 2022 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 8 (38):402-422.
There Are No Purely Aesthetic Obligations.John Dyck - 2021 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 102 (4):592-612.
Commitments, Reasons, and the Will.Ruth Chang - 2013 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 8.
Commitment, Reasons, and the Will.Ruth Chang - 2013 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 8. Oxford University Press. pp. 74-113.

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