Scanlon on Promising

Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence

Volumn 14, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 143-154

  Pratt, Michael ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85007610418     PISSN: 08418209     EISSN: 20564260     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S084182090000240X     Document Type: Review

References (57)

1. A. Burrows, "Dividing the Law of Obligations" in A. Burrows, ed., Understanding the Law of Obligations (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 1998) 1 at 8-14.
2. Thus Hume referred to promising as 'one of the most mysterious and incomprehensible operations that can possibly be imagin'd.
3. D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature in D. Norton, M. Norton, eds., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) at 336.
4. Hume was the first to make this observation: 'Morality is supposed to consist in relation.
5. Every new imposition of morality, therefore, must arise from some new relation of objects; and consequently the will could not produce immediately any change in the morals, but could have that effect only by producing a change upon the objects.
6. A physical analogy may clarify Hume's point. By moving my rook in front of your king, 1 do not immediately create the physical relationship of proximity that then exists
7. I merely create the situation in virtue of which that relationship may be said to exist. Analogously, by saying my wedding vows in front of a judge and several witnesses
8. I directly give rise not to a legal relation between spouses, but rather to a situation in virtue of which that relation may be said to exist.
9. This observation, too, was first made by Hume.
10. Michael Robins provides a contemporary restatement: 'Stated loosely in the idiom of action theory, "creating an obligation" must be the name of an intentional non-basic act (i.e., roughly something we do by doing something else)
11. M. Robins, Promising, Intending, and Moral Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) at 6-7.
12. H.A. Prichard, "The Obligation to Keep a Promise" in his Moral Obligation: Essays and Lectures (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968) 169 at 170
13. David Hume, Joseph Raz, John Finnis, John Rawls, John Searle, H.L.A. Hart, Charles Fried, Elizabeth Anscornbe, Richard Bronaugh, and Tony Honore\
14. D. Hume, supra note 2
15. Book HI, Section V; J. Raz, "Voluntary Obligations and Normative Powers II" (1972) 46 Proc. Aristotelian Soc. 79;
16. J. Raz, "Promises and Obligations" in P.M.S.Hacker, J. Raz, eds., Law, Morality and Society: Essays in Honour ofH.LA.Hart (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977) 210;
17. J. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980) at 298-308;
18. J. Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules" (1955) 64 Phil. Rev. 3;
19. J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971) at 342-50;
20. J. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1969) at 57-64;
21. H.L.A. Hart, "Legal and Moral Obligation" in A.I. Melden, ed., Essays in Moral Philosophy (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1958) 82 at 100-03;
22. C. Fried, Contract as Promise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981);
23. G.E.M. Anscornbe, "Rules, Rights, and Promises" (1978) 3 Midwest Studies in Phil. 318;
24. R. Bronaugh, "Promises" in L. Becker, ed., Encyclopedia of Ethics (New York: Garland Press, 1992) 1020;
25. T. Honore\ Responsibility and Fault (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 1999) at 59.
26. This point is eloquently expressed by Elizabeth Anscornbe, at 319.
27. T.M. Scanlon, "Promises and Practices" (1990) 19 Phil., Publ. Affairs 199.
28. A revised version of this paper appears as chapter seven of Scanlon's book What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1998).
29. Unless otherwise noted, all citations will be to this latter version.
30. Those theories I dub 'perlocutionary' insist on this dependence.
31. J.L. Austin, How to Do Things With Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975) at 101-32.
32. C Fried, supra note 5
33. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) 27 at 42-43;
34. H.L.A. Hart, supra note 5 at 84-94;
35. L. Fuller, "Consideration and Form" (1941) 41
36. Colum. L.R. 798 at 806-08;
37. J. Raz "Promises in Morality and Law" (1982) 95
38. Harvard L.R. 916 at 933-38
39. B. Coote, "The Essence of Contract" (1988) 1 J. Contract L. 91 at 194-95;
40. M. Ferson, "The Formation of Simple Contracts" (1924) 9 Cornell L. Q. 402;
41. E.A. Farnsworth, Changing Your Mind: The Law of Regretted Decisions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998) 9-17, 36-38;
42. R. Barnett, "A Consent Theory of Contract" (1986) 86 Colum. L.R. 269 at 296-300.
43. D. Patterson, "The Value of a Promise" (1992) 11 L., Phil. 385. Gillian Hadfield comments briefly on Scanlon's paper in her "Of Sovereignty and Contract:
44. W.D. Ross put the classic objection: 'Suppose .. that the fulfilment of a promise to A would produce 1,000 units of good for him, but that by doing some other act I could produce 1,001
45. J. Narveson, "Promising, Expecting, and Utility" (1971)
46. H. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan, Co, 1874) at 277-88.
47. R. Meek, D. Raphael, P. Stein, eds., Adam Smith: Lectures on Jurisprudence (New York: Clarendon Press, 1978) at 92, 87-89;
48. D.H. Hodgson, The Consequences of Utilitarianism: A Study in Normative Ethics and Legal Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967) at 40-42.
49. P. Singer, "Is Act-Utilitarianism Self-Defeating?" (1972) 81
50. D. Regan, "On Preferences and Promises: A Response to Harsanyi" (1985) 96 Ethics 56 at 58-64.
51. J.J.C. Smart, B. Williams, Utilitarianism For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973) at 93-118
52. A Sica, ed., What is Social Theory? The Philosophical Debates(Oxford Blackwell, 1998) 118 at 119
53. G. Cupit, "How Requests (and Promises) Create Obligations" (1994) 44 Phil. Q. 439 at 442
54. and G.J. Warnock, The Object of Morality (London: Methuen &Co, 1971) at 98-101.
55. M. Cohen, "The Basis of Contract" (1933) 46 Harv. L.R. 553 at 573.
56. C. McMahon, "Promising and Coordination" (1989) 26 Am. Phil. Q. 239
57. G. Den Hartogh, "A Conventionalist Theory of Obligation" (1998) 17 Law, Phil. 351 at 355-56.