ABSTRACT
This chapter informs that any explanation of why debts generate obligations at all must make reference to future trust. This is how Hume proceeds in his famous discussion of the obligations arising from promises in the Treatise on Human Nature. So far, Hume has not explained why promises generate duties. He has shown that one ought to keep one's promises if one hopes to be trusted in the future, but this is an 'ought' of prudence rather than of duty. In refusing to play by the rules of the institution, one weakens it, and to weaken a good institution is, other things being equal, an evil. Elizabeth Anscombe develops Hume's account to show not only that honouring promises if not debts specifically is prudent, but also that it is genuinely morally obligatory. Also Anscombe's development of Hume's argument to apply to debts specifically and not simply to promises can be expanded.
