How much is the word worth today? From an evolutionary point of view, keeping one's word has been and continues to be favorable for human beings, because it creates bonds of cohesion and cooperation. However, the promise is also going through a time of crisis, both in private life and in politics. So says Montserrat Herrero [Fia 89 PhD 94], professor of Philosophy Politics and researcher at Institute for Culture and Society. "As the poet and award Nobel Vicente Aleixandre said, "Being loyal to oneself is the only way to be loyal to others"."

Why do human beings have the need to promise?
We are temporal, our existence moves in the coordinates of past, present and future. With our actions we not only live in the present, but we also secure a future for ourselves. That is to say, we need to acquire a certain stability, we need to commit our will for the long term deadline. And we can only do this by giving the most intimate thing we have, which is our word. Our word is ourselves, and not something external. A person who has no word lacks identity. But also, in this way of assuring the future, we can glimpse a desire for eternity. There are things that you do not want to be diluted or disappear, because their way of being is "forever". For example, a true love, be it for a person, a family, a country or God. From these relationships always arise the strongest commitments and the most inviolable promises.

Do you share the idea that the given word has been the basis of all societies?
Yes, of course. Nietzsche raises in On Truth and Lies in an extramoral sense the extreme opposite case: all men have an innate inclination to deceit. It is a status of great distrust in which a fight to death is engaged. The only way out of this status is to artificially generate something like truth. Hence, by means of a pact, univocal meanings for words can be determined, and agreements can be reached. All men must take the determination to respect the valid meanings, if they want to live in peace. Nietzsche places the lie at the origin of truthfulness, in his interest in subverting values. But, in any case, he needs respect for truth and truthfulness in order to build society. No society can subsist on the basis of lies, that is, on the devaluation of the word. Even Nietzsche recognizes this.

The functioning of promises and oaths has been institutionalized for thousands of years.
Legal institutions merely support this anthropological-political foundation: oaths and fidelity to them are at the basis of every social order. The Italian political scientist Paolo Prodi reviews in one of his books - TheSacrament of Power: The Political Oath in the Constitutional History of the West - the different forms that this juridical institution has acquired over time. Indeed, the oath(ius iurandum) was of enormous importance in antiquity and, of course, among Roman jurists. The very term ius seems to be related to the oath and, probably, to Iovis (Jupiter), the god invoked in the oath to punish perjury. From this reality, jurisprudence developed the concept of fides - or loyalty to the word given - which played a decisive role in the training of Roman Law and, in particular, of the Law of Nations, the precedent of international law and the new global law.

Until recently, "speaking out" was something almost sacred. Are we suffering today from a crisis of trust?
It was sacred because, as John Locke says, it was understood that there was a sacred witness who had power over the order of the world and of language. Not respecting it implied self-destruction. With God dead, Nietzsche would say, we are left with only language to guide us. But the postmodern turn at Philosophy, which has taken the "linguistic turn" very much into account, has even put an end to this presumption. The word can be violated without any problem. It seems to possess no entity whatsoever. Neither the reality of things can be a limit to my statements, nor am I subject to my own word, says the new Philosophy in its libertarian boast. In the postmodern context we move in what we understand from Wittgenstein onwards as "linguistic games". 

Have we devalued the value of the word?
According to Wittgenstein, words and propositions are not endowed with some meaning independent of us. If we wish to understand their meaning, we must examine the circumstance that endowed it. That is, we must determine how the word is used. What must be accepted are plural forms of life that generate non-unifiable meanings. For his part, Michel Foucault rejects the idea that there is a founding subject of speech that transcends it, or the idea that at the base of experience there are pre-existing meanings, which are neutral or real. All speech is a violence that we apply to things.

You mean that reality is created in language and not the other way around?
That's right. My words don't have to adapt to anything. They are pure will to power. This is the new context. If I say there is no crisis, there is no crisis here and now... At least not during my term of office. At least during my term of office. Was it true or not? It doesn't matter, if I managed to win the elections and stay in power for another few years. This is how the current structure of language works for many: as a pure will to power. The discursive theory of the philosopher Ernesto Laclau is a magnificent example of this internship. 

What happens when you don't believe in your word?
What happens is what we see: corruption, dissolution, distrust, enmity, strife.

How can the value of the promise be recovered?
In the field of staff, it seems to me that it is simple: never lie. Truthfulness seems to me to be the most important virtue. It simplifies everything and corrects everything. It was already in the tablets of Moses. Without it, it is impossible to follow any of the other advice in those tablets. One lies out of fear or in pursuit of some utility. However, we usually do not know the real utility of actions. What it will be in the future is unknown to us, and in retrospect we usually realize that we were wrong in our calculations. The simplest thing to do is always to be truthful. On the other hand, we must remember the old saying: "You'd rather catch a liar than a cripple".

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Religion and Civil Society

Montserrat Herrero [Fia 89 PhD 94] teaches at teaching and research at campus in Pamplona as full professor of Philosophy Moral and Politics. She also directs the four-monthly journal yearbook Filosófico, which has been published uninterruptedly since 1968.

She combines her activity professor in the School of Philosophy and Letters with her work as principal investigator in the project "Religion and Civil Society" of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), the research center in Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Navarra. 

This project delves into the reasons why religion as a fundamental element in the constitution of any society -family, civil society institutions and political community- from different perspectives: theological, philosophical, historical, legal, social or communicative.

Every year, the group of research to which it belongs organizes an international congress , attended by leading specialists from around the world. This course, to be held on March 10-11, 2016, will have as its theme goal a greater understanding between the Abrahamic religious traditions: Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Participants will show how their research can further efforts for peace and understanding in today's world.