Question

Wht according to Kant you ought to respect your promises

Answer 1

Kant starts from the notion of "duty" and while this is a very old-fashioned word, it should sound familiar to the concept behind. Imagine, your friend told you she's pregnant but is asking you to promise to keep her safe. This juicy bit of gossip is on the tip of your tongue over the coming weeks but because of your promise you do not tell anyone.

There are things we accept as being expected of us irrespective of what we (really) want to do. Kant means this by duty. But that does pose the issue. If it's not desires that drive us to do what's right (even desires that are very strong), what does it do? In our case, why are we keeping our promise given the strong will to chatter? The response Kant gives is "good will."

Imagine you need money to pay off some debts and take a look at some examples. You go to a friend to borrow the money, and tell the friend you're going to pay him back. You know you won't be able to refund your mate, but you tell him anyway. You make a false statement. Is that allowable? To check, we first look at the principle that underlies the practice, something like, "If I need anything, I will make a false promise to get what I need." What would happen if everyone made false promises whenever they needed anything? False promises are rife, so rife that promises are meaningless; they're just hollow words. The maxim can not be universalised for this purpose. The maxim included the concept of making a promise, but if promises fail to have any value when universalized then we couldn't really make a promise. Since the maxim can not be universalized, we do not obey it and thus we derive the obligation not to make false promises.