This paper seeks to develop an account of what it means to think ethically and to therefore be able to criticise certain forms of life, practices, and institutional arrangements by taking the particular case of the promissory relations undergirding modern social and economic relations as a privileged case. By drawing on the Humean problematic of the “is-ought” and Anscombe’s denunciation of “modern moral philosophy” with respect to the question of generating ethical obligations for promissory relations, I offer a Hegelian-Aristotelian account of “ethical life” which demonstrates the necessity of incorporating any account of promissory relations within a more holistic conception of oneself, the world, and others. In so doing, I draw upon a series of thinkers in the Hegelian tradition in dialogue with Hume and Anscombe in order to draw out the intersubjectively constituted normative structure of certain social forms which may appear natural or non-normative and which take the contract or promise as their form, such as the debt or wage-labour contract, in order to situate them within a broader conception of ethical life, and, where this ethical life is threatened, to be able to criticise and overcome them.
In particular, I seek to show how our relations to others in modern global capitalism cannot be reduced to “simple promises” but rather represent a unique form of domination which reorients orthodox ethical interpretations. Through Rödl’s account of self-comprehension, the limits of the promissory model are demonstrated through the universal, reflective moment contained in thinking self-comprehensively whilst participating in these relations. I then turn to Taylor’s understanding of positive freedom as the basis of any ethical critique, by which we can recognise affronts to freedom insofar as they prevent us from realising certain value-laden ends. Drawing on McDowell, Pippin, and Stern, I show how an Aristotelian ethical naturalism situates the Kantian demand for self-legislation within Hegel’s account of freedom and ethical life which relies upon a form of collective self-understanding grounded in what it means to live a free life within which any analysis of such promissory or contractual relations must be situated.
