promise

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

A promise deliberately stabilizes a future relation by binding an agent’s future conduct to a shared expectation. In the Arendt-informed treatment, it creates reliability within the unpredictability of action and enables cooperation beyond immediate incentives. A promise is thus a small institution whose credibility matters for the shared practices and longer projects it helps sustain.

Explanation

AB pairs promise with forgiveness: one binds an unknown future while the other reopens a future burdened by the past. Its Arendt attribution is retained in the narrative note. The pairing concerns capacities for shared action, rather than a guarantee that unforeseen consequences can be eliminated.

RB3 extends promising to constitutions, treaties and protections that allow collective action after rupture. It also treats false promising in a separate Kantian argument: if deception becomes ordinary, the practice loses the trust that makes promising possible. This institutional viability test is related to, but distinct from, the Arendtian response to unpredictability.

PB connects public action with promising, while RB2 locates it within socially learned concepts, symbolic futures and irreversible consequences. These are contextual developments, not reasons to treat every rhetorical promise of novelty or every fictional pledge as a direct definition of this ethical institution.

Scope and attribution

Retain the proposed ethical entry with the distinct institution-preservation test recorded as a related sense.

AB — The Actual Book

Promising binds a shared future and complements forgiveness, with Arendt explicitly retained.

Occurrence locators: 190, 195, 204; Thinker register: 227; Notes: 249.

PB — The Possible Book

Promising belongs to public participation in the shared world.

Occurrence locators: 106.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Symbolic foresight, social acquisition and irreversible consequences provide background.

Occurrence locators: 123, 146, 225, 293.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Promise is a micro-institution and a basis for collective rebuilding; Kant’s false-promise test remains a distinct argument.

Occurrence locators: 163, 221, 255, 256, 270, 271, 273, 274, 282, 293, 296, 318, 322.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.