The Immorality Of Promising

Philosophers Richard Fox and Joseph DeMarco challenge both popular wisdom and traditional moral philosophy by arguing that all the standard received theories on promising are wrong. Against those who uphold promising as an exemplary moral practice, they attempt to prove that promising is immoral. Against those who believe that promising creates a moral obligation, they maintain that promises have no such power. Some traditional philosophers have supported the view that the duty to keep promises is self-evident, while others have claimed that it is supported by reason, and still others that it is prescribed by social practice.Social contract theorists in fact have taken the extreme position that all moral rights and duties are founded on promises, as promises are thought to be the foundation of contracts. All these doctrines are mistaken, according to Fox and DeMarco, because promising cannot all by itself create any obligations and because promising is in the final analysis morally unjustified.
"The Immorality of Promising" elucidates paradoxes and dilemmas that go to the very foundations of ethics and morality, and will be of great interest to professional philosophers and students of ethics alike.