Promises and contracts

A promise is a communication of your will.

Accordingly, a promise cannot be broken, properly speaking, if at least one of the circumstances relevant to the promise changes, since the will of the promise-maker was resolved in the context of the former circumstances, which have ceased to exist.

If none of the relevant circumstances have changed, however, then necessarily the promise-maker did something wrong. For in the given, unchanged, circumstances, either the promised action was the rational course of action, or the action actually performed – or neither. If the promised action was the rational course, then the promise-maker acted irrationally, and therefore immorally, when he broke it. If the actually performed action was the rational course, then the promise-maker acted irrationally, and therefore immorally, when he made the promise; the promise was rash, or possibly a lie. If neither action was rational, then he acted immorally in both situations.

In order to plan for actions even despite changing circumstances, we also have contracts. Contracts are promises joined to conditional transfers of property, such that, if the promise is not fulfilled, some property is transferred from the promising party to the other party, or to a third party.

This property cannot be the promise-maker’s body, since self-ownership is not transferrable. It cannot be the right to do specific things with their body either, since this necessarily creates an action conflict if they change their mind about consenting to those things. Furthermore, since no one has the right to perform evil acts, it would be immoral for a man to agree to have his hand mutilated if he does not pay a debt, for instance – since it would be wrong for him to mutilate himself in this way.

Although it may seem that way in some cases, the collection of already transferred property is not, properly speaking, coercive punishment, since the property was transferred by contractual consent. So, the collection of such transferred property may be exercised by other parties than a legitimate state. Only a legitimate state, however, may also take away additional property from a contract-breaker, for the purpose of actual punishment.

This post was edited in 2023-03-09.