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Web End = J Value Inquiry (2015) 49:667689
DOI 10.1007/s10790-015-9523-8
Maria A. Carrasco1
Published online: 18 September 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
It is generally assumed that impartiality is a dening 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.1
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 equal weight to everybodys 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 a matter of subjective feelings or personal opinions;
1 Cf. Bernard Gert, Impartiality, in Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte C. Becker, eds., Encyclopedia of Ethics (London: Routledge, 2001); John Cottingham, Ethics and Impartiality, Philosophical Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1 (1983), p. 87; Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 10; Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 90. Various expressions of this fundamental moral rule are to be found in the tenets of most religions and creeds through the ages, testifying to its universal applicability. Confucius, for instance, was asked whether the true way could be summed up in a single word, and answered, Reciprocity is such a word (Analects XV 23) (cf. Golden Rule in Antony Flew, ed., A Dictionary of Philosophy (London: MacMillan, 2002). See also W. Patrick Cunningham, The Golden Rule as Universal Ethical Norm, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1998), pp. 1059.
Particular thanks to Christel Fricke for her extensive feedback and discussion of the topic. All remaining errors are, of course, mine. The research for this work was supported by Project FONDECYT n. 1141208.