Why Be Impartial?

Who decided that morality had to be impartial? And when did they decide it? I ask because my feelings and my moral intuition are decidedly partial. Am I some kind of selfish jerk? I guess that’s possible. I’ve written before about not caring about the vast majority of people.

Utilitarianism and deontology demand impartiality. They are two of the most popular ethical systems in use today. I can’t get on board with either of them, though. I think the naturalistic fallacy dealt a decisive blow to utilitarianism 130 years ago. And, frankly, deontology is just silly. (That will take at least another full post to explain but trust me that it’s simply impossible to live under the rigors of deontology.)

I guess I prefer partiality to impartiality because I live in the real world. It’s not just that me and mine are more important to me than random strangers, though. It’s that I would consider someone pretty monstrous who didn’t believe that. Imagine someone who truly believes in utilitarianism. They believe that everyone is completely equal, morally speaking. So, they treat their kids and their parents and their friends just like they treat perfect strangers. You have to admit, that person would seem really weird at the very least.

I’m not the first partialist by any means. It was a common way of thinking a long time ago. A person’s in-group (to use a modern word) took precedence over their out-group. You can even see it today in libertarian philosophy (I am decidedly not a libertarian, though).

Many will probably say that impartiality was an innovation, and a good one. It helps put up a defense against in-group/out-group thinking. But I think it has gone too far. There is a time and a place for impartiality, sure. The government should be impartial, for example. I just don’t think personal morals are the place for impartiality.

None of this is to say that we should be mean to strangers. It’s just that they shouldn’t get the same preference as our kith and kin.