"Promising to Do Wrong"

Most of us would agree that a promise to kill, assault, or steal from another person cannot be normatively binding, at least in the absence of some extraordinary justification. But it turns out to be not so easy to say why. It is easy to see that killing, assaulting, and stealing from another are all forms of conduct that are ordinarily morally wrongful. Yet it is not the case that the independent moral impermissibility of a promised action always invalidates promissory bindingness. For example, my promise to help you move looks to be normatively binding, even if I am under a prior, fiduciary obligation to attend a company meeting elsewhere. Similarly, my promise to drive you to the local train station is not invalidated merely because, in the absence of the promise, I ought to be present at my daughter’s graduation ceremony.

The central question I will address in my talk is: What exactly is the connection between the moral impermissibility of an action and the normative bindingness of a promise to perform it? While this question is interesting in its own right, a proper solution to it, I believe, will also teach us something insightful about the value, point, and content of promissory relationships.

In my talk, I will advance a promisee-centric condition of bindingness, according to which the bindingness of a promise to perform an otherwise wrongful action turns on whether the promisee in particular may permissibly aim at the realization of the promised outcome. To provide a deeper rationale for my account, I will moreover motivate and defend a distinctive conception of the normative relationship between promisors and promisees, one that sees the former as acting as instruments of the latter in realizing the promised outcome.