Promising Ourselves, Promising Others

The Journal of Ethics 19 (2):159-183 (2015)
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Abstract

Promising ourselves is familiar, yet some find it philosophically troubling. Though most of us take the promises we make ourselves seriously, it can seem mysterious how a promise made only to oneself could genuinely bind. Moreover, the desire to be bound by a promise to oneself may seem to expose an unflattering lack of trust in oneself. In this paper I aim to vindicate self-promising from these broadly skeptical concerns. Borrowing Nietzsche’s idea of a memory of the will, I suggest that self-promising involves an activity of the will, aimed at the preservation and protection of one’s values. I explain how, understood in this way, these promises can indeed bind, and show that the motivation for making them need not involve mistrust or other alienated attitudes. I then turn to interpersonal promising, arguing that this same activity of the will is required for sincerely promising others: in effect, making a sincere promise to another requires making a promise to oneself. Attention to this under-appreciated aspect of interpersonal promising enriches our understanding of all promises, and helps to correct a narrow and distorted picture of what it means to be bound

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Citations of this work

Promising's Neglected Siblings: Oaths, Vows, and Promissory Obligation.Kyle Fruh - 2019 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (3):858-880.
Promises.Allen Habib - 2009 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
On the Rationality of Vow‐making.Alida Liberman - 2019 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (3):881-900.
Promising as Doxastic Entrustment.Jorah Dannenberg - 2019 - The Journal of Ethics 23 (4):425-447.

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References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
The View From Nowhere.Thomas Nagel - 1986 - New York: Oxford University Press.
A Treatise of Human Nature.David Hume & A. D. Lindsay - 1969 - Harmondsworth,: Penguin Books. Edited by Ernest Campbell Mossner.

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