Directed Obligations and the Trouble with Deathbed Promises

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (2):323-335 (2015)
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Abstract

On some popular accounts of promissory obligation, a promise creates an obligation to the person to whom the promise is made . 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: rights-based accounts, which argue that a promissory obligation is a directed obligation because a promise gives the promisee certain rights, and 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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Citations of this work

Promises.Allen Habib - 2009 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Promises to the Dead.James Stacey Taylor - 2021 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 90:81-103.
A Defense of the Obligation to Keep Promises to the Dead.James Stacey Taylor - 2024 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 49 (6):547-559.
Seeing the Good in Medical Ethics.Finn Wilson - 2024 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 49 (6):513-521.

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References found in this work

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What We Owe to Each Other.Thomas Scanlon - 2002 - Mind 111 (442):323-354.
The Realm of Rights.Judith Thomson - 1990 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
The Nicomachean Ethics.Aristotle . (ed.) - 1926 - New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press UK.

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