PANEL 11 / PARTIALITY AND IMPARTIALITY IN ETHICS AND POLITICS
CONVENOR: JOÃO DA ROCHA RODRIGUES
All enquiries about the panel should be sent to [email protected]
A growing body of work has sought to bridge the gap between impartiality in ethics and politics and the irreducibly subjective aspects of human experience. These subjective aspects involve, to a great extent, the inescapable worth of our own ground projects, as well as “special” relationships we have with others — such as family, friends, or countrymen. In short, we cannot but act “partially” toward ourselves or to those close to us.
Thinkers like Bernard Williams, Thomas Nagel, Liam Murphy, Samuel Scheffler, and Susan Wolf, wrote extensively on the question, exploring how we can reconcile the demands of impartiality with the personal bonds, loyalties, and individual projects that shape our perspectives.
In stark contrast to this movement, many contemporary ethical and political theories, such as consequentialism and Rawlsian liberalism, continue to insist on a largely impartial ethics. Despite their differences, both frameworks require us to step back from our personal attachments or “biases” when deciding on the central principles of ethics or politics.
This impartial stance is in direct opposition to the cultural trends that prioritize subjective,
community-based perspectives and often dismiss impartial reasons as irrelevant to our deeply held beliefs. This form of "subjectivism" suggests that reason seems hindered in challenging ingrained opinions, habits, and societal norms, making rational dialogue increasingly difficult.
The tension between partiality and impartiality continues unsolved, and all the different kinds of theories—fully impartial, mixed, or fully partial or subjective—have both problems and important contributions.
We are interested in communications on a wide range of topics related to these themes, such as, but not limited to, the following:
All enquiries about the panel should be sent to [email protected]
A growing body of work has sought to bridge the gap between impartiality in ethics and politics and the irreducibly subjective aspects of human experience. These subjective aspects involve, to a great extent, the inescapable worth of our own ground projects, as well as “special” relationships we have with others — such as family, friends, or countrymen. In short, we cannot but act “partially” toward ourselves or to those close to us.
Thinkers like Bernard Williams, Thomas Nagel, Liam Murphy, Samuel Scheffler, and Susan Wolf, wrote extensively on the question, exploring how we can reconcile the demands of impartiality with the personal bonds, loyalties, and individual projects that shape our perspectives.
In stark contrast to this movement, many contemporary ethical and political theories, such as consequentialism and Rawlsian liberalism, continue to insist on a largely impartial ethics. Despite their differences, both frameworks require us to step back from our personal attachments or “biases” when deciding on the central principles of ethics or politics.
This impartial stance is in direct opposition to the cultural trends that prioritize subjective,
community-based perspectives and often dismiss impartial reasons as irrelevant to our deeply held beliefs. This form of "subjectivism" suggests that reason seems hindered in challenging ingrained opinions, habits, and societal norms, making rational dialogue increasingly difficult.
The tension between partiality and impartiality continues unsolved, and all the different kinds of theories—fully impartial, mixed, or fully partial or subjective—have both problems and important contributions.
We are interested in communications on a wide range of topics related to these themes, such as, but not limited to, the following:
- Can partial behavior be justified?
- Which problems face moral theories that uphold full impartiality?
- Conflicts between the family and liberal education.
- Consequentialism and partiality.
- The communitarian critiques of liberalism as a conflict of partial (cultural, religious) and impartial demands.
- Agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons for action.
- Immigration and the permissible partial favoring of countrymen.
- The morality of inheritances against the demands of impartial distributive justice.
- Hybrid-ethical theories (ex. Scheffler, Nagel)
- What is the importance of special relationships to ethics and politics?
- What limits partiality and impartiality?
- Practical problems and solutions that allow us to reconcile partiality and impartiality.
