ABSTRACT
H. A. Prichard was an interwar Oxford philosopher who, amongst his relatively few published works, wrote a classic article on what he believed constituted a promise. According to Prichard, promises were a form of words that adverted to a prior, general agreement to keep our word. Applying TSS to this entire schema reveals its ineluctable dependence on a profoundly capitalist conception of the world, and specifically, upon a mythical conception of individual, liberal personalities who all rank, trade and make promises to each other out of free will and as notional equals. For Prichard, as for many contemporary Western legal systems, coercion is an awkward concept which must be strictly delineated, and it must be kept separate from general reality. TSS explodes this myth, and along with it, exposes Prichard’s theory of promising for what it is – an attempted underpin for exploitation and inequality.
