ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the countervailing ideal rests on the element of impartiality that underlies the nature of the moral enterprise, as its most significant thinkers have come to understand it. In proposing that special duties need justification from an impartial perspective, the chapter revives a debate that goes back two hundred years to William Godwin, whose Political Justice shocked British society at the time of the French Revolution. Modern critics of impartialism argue that an advocate of an impartial ethic would make a poor parent, lover, spouse, or friend, because the very idea of such personal relationships involves being partial toward the other person with whom one is in the relationship. In a calmer or more philosophical moment, on the other hand, we can reflect on the nature of our moral intuitions, and ask whether we have developed the right ones, that is, the ones that will lead to the greatest good, impartially considered.
