On Promises to Oneself, Continued
I asked here if one is free to release oneself from a promise made to oneself.
Suppose that one may release oneself from such a promise. Questions arise:
If (a) the making of a promise morally obligates one to keep that promise and (b) we are morally bound by our obligations, does a promise to oneself make sense? Is it incoherent to make a promise to oneself, since one is not really bound to keep it, given that one may release oneself from the duty to keep it?
We have an interesting philosophical problem here. Think about it in terms of this set of statements, each of which is plausible, but collectively are inconsistent. To resolve the inconsistency, one of the statements must be denied. But which one?
1. All moral obligations morally bind us.
2. We have moral obligations to ourselves.
3. To be morally bound is to be morally compelled.
4. We are not morally compelled to keep our moral obligations to ourselves.
Proposition (1) seems true by definition. Ditto for (3). (2) is quite plausible. For example, one is obligated to oneself to care for one’s own health. I agree with Kant that one is obligated to oneself to cultivate one’s talents, seek one’s own moral and intellectual excellence, and treat oneself as an end. Ross agreed as well, holding that we have duties to ourselves with respect to self-improvement. And (4) is plausible, since a right-holder is free to release (at least some) of his rights, thereby canceling what is owed to him.
But I sense a reason to deny (4). It seems that some rights cannot be released by the right-holder. For instance, plausibly, human beings have the moral right to be treated with dignity in accordance with our personhood, and we can’t just decide to give up that right. If human beings are in fact intrinsically valuable and worthy of proper respect as persons, we can’t decide not to have such value. The fact that we have this value is a fact about the world that we cannot change arbitrarily. It seems, then, that one is morally compelled to keep one’s obligation to oneself regarding the treatment of oneself with proper dignity and respect.