Promises and Threats

Abstract

There are certain assumptions which, by and large, those who write about promising seem to make: that a promise always involves a promisee; that every promise involves the same relation between promiser and promisee; that, in every case the obligation to carry out what is promised falls solely on the promiser; and that what is promised is always something that the promisee wants (or that the promiser thinks he wants). I would like to question these assumptions. Further, I would like to repudiate Professor Colin Grant's suggestion' that 'a threat may be defined as an unwelcome promise'. This is echoed by, among others, Professor Pall Ardal,2 who believes that the locution 'I promise. . .', is often used to make a threat and that a threat is distinguished from a promise in that a threat is unwelcome to the threatened person (promisee); by Professor John Searle,3 who says 'a promise is a pledge to do something for you, not to you; but a threat is a pledge to do something to you, not for you'; and by Professor David Lewis,4 who says 'The whole point of promising-or threatening, as strategists knowis to bind oneself to do something. . .'. When one promises, one promises to perform some future act. (To promise that something is, or will be, the case is to misuse 'I promise' for 'I assure you that' or 'I guarantee that'.) The act to be performed must be an act of one's own; one cannot promise for other people, except in the special case where one is acting as proxy for someone, and then one is not so much promising oneself as simply being the mouthpiece by which another promises. However, to say that one can promise only for oneself is not to say that the act promised will come about only by one's own exertions. Colin Grant, for instance, in his insistence that one can only promise for oneself, says 'The future states of affairs referred to in promise-sentences are those whose existence or non-existence depends entirely5 upon equally future actions of the person who makes the promise' (ibid.). Quite apart from the fact that there are promises the keeping of which directly involves, as I hope to point out, the participation of the promisee, the keeping of very many promises depends indirectly on people other than the promiser; for example, if I promise to meet you, my keeping this promise will depend to a certain extent on the bus service employees. Many of the promises that we make involve, as I have said, some participation on the part of the promisee, in the keeping of the promise. We might, in fact, arrange promises in order, starting with those where the promisee seems to be involved quite as much as the promiser in the keeping of the promise and ending with those where the promisee does