Should you save a great archbishop or your own mother from a fire?
In 1793 William Godwin argued that if a fire forced you to choose between the archbishop Fénelon, whose work helps many, and a chambermaid, you should save Fénelon, even if the chambermaid were your own mother. What magic, he asked, lies in the word my? Philosophers have argued over his answer ever since.
Impartiality, or even-handedness, is the principle that decisions should rest on objective grounds, not on bias or favouritism. Bernard Gert defined it precisely: someone is impartial in a given respect towards a group if their actions are not swayed at all by which members of that group gain or lose. On that view a person can be impartial in one respect and partial in another.
Many great ethical traditions build on the idea. David Hume spoke of judging from a common point of view. Adam Smith, in 1759, imagined an impartial spectator with no stake in either side of a dispute. Henry Sidgwick held it self-evident that no one person's good matters more than another's from the universe's point of view. Later thinkers pictured an ideal observer, fully informed and dispassionate, or in R. M. Hare's version an archangel free of human weakness. John Rawls, in 1971, asked which principles of justice people would choose behind a veil of ignorance that hid their own place in society. Peter Singer drew a demanding conclusion in 1972: the well-off should give to famine relief until giving more would cost something of comparable moral weight.
Critics say this misses what makes relationships valuable. Bernard Williams imagined a man who can save just one of two people drowning, and one is his wife; if he stops to check that impartial morality allows him to save her, he has had one thought too many. Michael Stocker mocked the friend who visits a hospital purely out of duty, and Susan Wolf doubted that a life of total moral impartiality would be a good one. Care ethics, from Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings, centres attention on particular people.
Defenders reply that impartially chosen rules can themselves demand partiality, such as requiring parents to look after their own children. The idea also works as a legal standard: the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights promises everyone impartial, fair and timely handling by its institutions.
Source: Impartiality
