Explain and assess Hume’s theory of the moral obligation to keep promises.
2500 word essay
Required reading
Treatise Book 3, part 2 Of justice and injustice
Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, section 3 Of justice and appendix 3 Some farther considerations with regard to justice
Further reading
Theories of Justice B. Barry, University of California Press, 1989
Paradoxes of Rationality and Cooperation ed Richmond Campbell and Lanning Sowden, University of British Columbia Press, 1985
‘Hume: norms and the obligation to be just’ S. Darwall in his The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’ Cambridge 1995
‘David Hume: contractarian’ D. Gauthier, Moral Dealing Cornell
Convention, D. Lewis, Blackwell 1969
Utilitarianism, JS Mill Chapter 5
Justice ed A. Ryan, OUP 1993
‘Promising and obligation’ T Pink in Philosophical Perspectives 2009, edited by John Hawthorne and Jason Turner
