Morality, Impartiality and Due Partialities
It is generally assumed that impartiality is a defining feature of morality. Philosophers started using the term ‘‘impartiality’’ as late as the 18th century but recognition of the importance of impartiality in moral assessments of human conduct can be traced as far back as the Golden Rule of morality, ‘‘one should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself,’’ and the Christian version, ‘‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself,’’ covering the spectrum of the most important systems of ethics throughout history. This is scarcely surprising. The term ‘‘impartiality’’ is associated with moral requirements such as ‘‘treating similar cases similarly,’’ ‘‘not to make an exception of oneself,’’ ‘‘to give equalweight to everybody’s legitimate claims,’’ etc. Thus impartiality is easily seen as constitutive, if not identical, to what we commonly understand by morality. Indeed, it captures three fundamental moral insights, namely, (a) that morality is objective, in the sense of not being amatter of subjective feelings or personal opinions;