Directed Obligations and the Trouble with Deathbed Promises
On some popular accounts of promissory obligation, a promise creates an obligation to the person to whom the promise is made (the promisee). On such accounts, the wrong involved in breaking a promise is a wrong committed against a promisee. I will call such accounts directed obligation accounts...
| Published in: | Ethical theory and moral practice |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Springer Science + Business Media B. V
[2015]
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| In: |
Ethical theory and moral practice
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| IxTheo Classification: | NCB Personal ethics |
| Further subjects: | B
Rights
B Harm B Directed-obligation B Promises B Posthumous B Death |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | On some popular accounts of promissory obligation, a promise creates an obligation to the person to whom the promise is made (the promisee). On such accounts, the wrong involved in breaking a promise is a wrong committed against a promisee. I will call such accounts directed obligation accounts of promissory obligation. While I concede that directed obligation accounts make good sense of many of our promissory obligations, I aim to show that directed obligation accounts, at least in their current forms, cannot accommodate an obligation to keep deathbed promises. While the term 'deathbed promise' refers to any promise made to a person who is dying, I focus specifically on deathbed promises which will not, or even cannot, be fulfilled until after the promisee's death. In what follows, I examine two prominent types of directed obligation account: (i) rights-based accounts, which argue that a promissory obligation is a directed obligation because a promise gives the promisee certain rights, and (ii) harm accounts, which argue that a promissory obligation is a directed obligation because a promise puts the promisee in a special position to be harmed. I argue that neither version can accommodate an obligation to keep deathbed promises. |
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| ISSN: | 1572-8447 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10677-014-9520-1 |