 The philosophical work on these topics is body of literature that spans the ages. Although promising as a phenomenon is rarely the sole subject of a major work, it is a subject treated by many major figures. From the ancients to the medievals to the moderns and beyond, theorists have sought to explain the normative force of promises. While the bulk of the corpus is in ethical and political theory and the related fields of legal theory and applied ethics, work on promises has also been done in the philosophy of language, action theory, rationality theory, game theory and other areas.