Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 13.07.1981, Blaðsíða 242

232
Páll S. Árdal
promise generally hopes that the promisee will take what is said to have
the point characteristic of promises. In some cases, the charge “But you
promised” seems to be in order, although you are not specifically under-
taking to do something for the promisee. A friend asks you whether
you are going to be at a certain party, and you categorically assert that
you are going to be there, knowing that the person is looking for a lift
home. When in such a case you categorically assert that you are going
to a party, knowing that, if you don’t go, your friend would be grossly
inconvenienced, it seems to me not unreasonable for you to be expected
to consider yourself to have made a promise, although you are not
initially going to the party for your friend. Once you know the point of
your friend’s question, you seem to me to be obliged to do whatever
you can to minimize the damage you may have done, by, perhaps
rashly, making a categorical assertion that your friend had a right to
depend upon in his future behaviour.8
It is of course even clearer that a promise is made if the person
looking for a lift asks ‘Will you give me a lift home from the party?’,
and the car owner answers with a categorical ‘Yes’, knowing that the
person would not go to the party, unless secured of a lift home, and
that this could be provided only by him. Of course, the obligation to go
to the party, and to give the person a lift home, might be stronger, if
the promise had been made more emphatically by the use of some such
expression as ‘I promise to give you a lift home’. But it seems to me an
error to maintain, as Don Locke seems to do, that an obligation is
created, only if some such locution is used.9 A categorical statement of
intention, given the circumstances as I have described them, would con-
stitute a promise, and your obligation to go to the party is the obligation
to keep a promise, and, if for no good reason you don’t go to the party,
you would be liable to be correctly criticised for having broken a
promise.
One may in general assert that, when the point of the promise ceases
the obligation ceases, unless the promise aroused favourable expecta-
tions in other people, in which case there may be an obligation not to
disappoint or mislead these people, although no promise to them has
been broken. But the following must be emphasised: it is in some cases
impossible to decide whether you ought to keep a particular promise,
8 Don Locke, Dialogue, Vol. 15, 1976.
9 ibid.