Abstract: Do valid promises restrict the promisor’s liberty? A familiar view—associated with Kant and many contemporary Kantians—holds that, by generating an obligation to perform, a promise extinguishes the promisor’s moral liberty to do otherwise. I argue that this picture is misleading. Although promises do eliminate Hohfeldian moral liberties, they leave intact a more basic form of moral liberty: in a central sense, performance remains up to the promisor, even in the face of a moral obligation to perform.
The sense in which promisors (though obliged to perform their promise) remain entitled to choose to perform the promised act bears on a central and overlooked distinction between two kinds of deontic requirement and two corresponding kinds of liberty rights. Only one of these tracks what I shall call ‘deontic constraints’—those that, among other things, determine the permissibility of the use of force against others. The deontic requirements created by promises belong to a different category, which I shall call simply ‘moral obligations’, and their corresponding ‘claims’. I contend that facts about our moral obligations and claims need not alter agents’ deontic constraints or what I call their basic liberty. Unlike deontic constraints, they impact agents’ practical deliberation and render appropriate certain reactive attitudes, without expanding the domain of permissible forceful interference.
Tracking the importance of distinguishing these two kinds of deontic requirement (and liberty rights) has important payoffs. Among others, it helps explain why the mere fact of promising cannot justify legal enforcement and supports a sharper distinction between forms of subjection that do, and do not, involve a loss of basic liberty, including in debates about political authority.
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Workshop in Moral Philosophy Convenor: David Owens
