“Keller’s engaging book makes an important contribution to a critical issue in ethical theory. He presents a tremendously succinct presentation of the views.”–Diane Jeske, University of Iowa

“Partiality is about the nature and source of our reasons for partiality–a central but controversial area of the moral domain. Keller develops a novel account of these reasons, nested in an elegant taxonomy of rival perspectives and illustrated by a series of terrific examples that effectively distill the distinctive arguments under consideration. Partiality is exceptionally clear and stimulating, and I am confident it will quickly be recognized as one of the most significant books on its topic.”–Sarah Stroud, McGill University

Simon Keller is associate professor of philosophy at Victoria University, Wellington. He is the author of The Limits of Loyalty.

PARTIALITY

By Simon Keller

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-15473-2

Contents

Preface…………………………………………………………..viiChapter 1 Special Relationships and Special Reasons…………………..1Chapter 2 My Projects……………………………………………..31Chapter 3 Our Relationship…………………………………………45Chapter 4 Your Value………………………………………………78Chapter 5 My response to Your Value…………………………………113References………………………………………………………..157Index…………………………………………………………….161

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Special Relationships and Special Reasons

How Relationships Make a Difference

imagine that you are watching television, and your show is interruptedby a news bulletin. There has been a fire, and several peoplehave lost their homes. How would you respond? you mighttake no notice. You might feel a twinge of sympathy. If the storyhas an especially strong effect on you, you might donate somemoney to help the victims rebuild their lives.

Now imagine that as you watch the news bulletin, you recognizeone of the houses that have burned down, and you recognizethe owners. They are your parents. Now, how would you respond?You would feel much more than a twinge of sympathy, andyou would be willing to do much more than donate some money.You would get to the scene as quickly as possible and offer all thesupport you could. It makes a difference that these people areyour parents.

If a friend asks you to help him move house, you might happilyagree, even though you would never do the same thing for astranger. If your sister is having trouble paying her bills, youmight give her some money, even though you would not help paythe bills of just anyone. If your son needs a new jacket, you mightbuy it for him, even though you would not buy a jacket for justany child who needs one.

We give special treatment to those with whom we share certainrelationships. You treat a person differently if she is your friend ora member of your family. You may also treat a person differently ifshe is your colleague, your neighbor, your employee, or yourcompatriot. You may also favor your own country over othercountries, your own team over other teams, or your alma materover other schools. This is partiality.

Not only do we give special treatment to those with whom weshare special relationships; we appear to do so for good reasons.We do not do special things for our friends and family membersjust because we feel like it. Showing a special preference for yourfriends and family members is not just like preferring chocolateice cream to strawberry. If you did not treat your own friends andfamily differently from how you treat strangers, then there wouldbe something wrong with you. When you rush off to be with yourparents after hearing of the fire, you will probably take yourself tobe doing something you ought to do. Even if you do not especiallyfeel like going to comfort your parents—perhaps you havehad a long day and would like to watch the rest of your televisionshow—you might go anyway, because you think you should. Theyare your parents, after all.

Norms of Partiality and Reasons of Partiality

The existence of a special relationship can make a difference towhat you are required to do; perhaps you have a duty to providefor your own children, but not for all children. The existence of aspecial relationship can make a difference to what you are allowedto do; perhaps you are permitted to break an appointment to lookAfter your sick husband, but not to look after just any sick person.and, the existence of a special relationship can make a differenceto what it makes sense for you to do, without making a differenceto what you are required to do or allowed to do; if your friend isrenovating his house, you may have a special reason to invite himto live with you for a few weeks, even though you do not have theduty to issue the invitation, and even though you are permitted toissue it to anyone you like.

In all these ways, and perhaps others too, your special relationshipsare “normatively significant” or make a difference to your”normative situation.” Putting it another way, your special relationshipsmake a difference to the standards of assessment towhich your acts are answerable. An act that would otherwise beoptional can be made compulsory; an act that would otherwise beforbidden can be made permissible; an act that would otherwisemake no sense can be made perfectly sensible; and so on. Thestandards to which our acts are answerable can be called “norms,”and the special standards to which our acts are answerable becauseof our special relationships can be called “norms of partiality.”

Sometimes, a special relationship changes your normative situationby giving you reasons to perform some acts rather than others.A reason to perform an act is a consideration that counts infavor of the act, in one way or another. A reason to act, that is tosay, is a consideration that really counts in favor of the act, not onethat merely seems to count in its favor, or that someone merelythinks to count in its favor. (On this way of talking, all reasons aregood reasons; a “bad reason” is no reason at all.) A “reason of partiality”is a reason that is generated by a special relationship, orthat you have because you are in some special relationship. Perhapsone consideration that counts in favor of your rushing toyour parents’ side after hearing of the fire is that it will bringcomfort to your parents. If so, then that is a reason for you to rushto your parents’ side. If it is a reason you have because these peopleare your parents, then it is a reason of partiality.

In other cases, a special relationship may make a difference toyour normative situation without generating reasons. The fact thatyou are in a certain special relationship may give you permissionto do something without giving you any reason to do it. Perhapsyou are allowed to send your own child to piano lessons, but not tosend just any child to piano lessons, but whether you have a goodreason to send your child to piano lessons is a separate question.

(This case might be explained as one in which your special relationshiptakes away a reason that would otherwise be there. Perhapsyou have a reason not to make other children go to pianolessons, but you do not have the same reason when it comes toyour own child; perhaps that is what it is for you to have a specialpermission to make your child go to piano lessons. So perhaps thedifference made by your special relationship here can be explainedas a difference made to your reasons. But this is neither obviousnor, for present purposes, important.)

Reasons and Motives

The considerations counting in favor of our acts are not necessarilythe considerations by which we are moved to act. Our reasonscan be different from our motives. When you rush off to be withyour parents after hearing of the fire, you might be moved by thethought that your parents are in distress and would benefit fromyour presence, or by the thought that it is your duty to be withyour parents in their time of need, or by the thought that peoplewill think badly of you if they find out that you knew about thefire and decided to stay home and watch television. Any of theseconsiderations may be among your motives, but it is a separatequestion whether any of them counts as a reason.

Although there is a difference between reasons and motives, inasking questions about the one we can find cause to ask questionsabout the other. Reasons can sometimes refer to motives; perhapsyou have a reason to favor a friend over strangers only if you regardher with the right motives. And our motives can sometimesreveal something about our reasons; we might learn more aboutyour reasons for favoring your friend by looking more closely atyour motives for favoring your friend, in a case in which your motivesappear to get it right.

The Puzzle of Partiality

We are subject to norms of partiality, and from one point of view,such norms are not at all mysterious. Of course it makes a differencethat a person is your mother, and not a stranger. From anotherpoint of view, however, partiality is puzzling. There is anatural, compelling picture of morality into which norms of partialitydo not appear to fit.

One basic moral truth is that everyone matters and no onematters more than anyone else. This thought lies behind an influentialpicture of morality, which is sometimes called the picture of”impartialist” morality, or of “liberal” or “enlightenment” morality.according to the picture, the individuals who matter morallyare those with some specified inherent property—some morallysignificant feature that they hold independently of their relationshipswith others—and our job as moral agents is to give a certainresponse to that property wherever it is found. On one version ofthe picture, the morally relevant property is the capacity for enjoymentand suffering and our moral task is to maximize enjoymentand minimize suffering, regardless of whose enjoyment orsuffering it is; this is a utilitarian moral theory. On another version,individuals matter morally if they are autonomous and ourmoral task is to treat all autonomous creatures as ends and nevermerely as means; this is a Kantian moral theory. Another versionof the picture might say that individuals matter morally becausethey have rights and our moral task is to avoid ever infringing onanybody’s rights.

If morality is all about promoting overall enjoyment and minimizingoverall suffering, or treating all autonomous creatures asends, or respecting everybody’s rights, then special relationshipswould not appear to hold any moral significance. No one comesto have a greater capacity for enjoyment and suffering, to bemore autonomous, or to have different basic rights just becauseshe is your friend, or just because she has any other particularconnection to you. So why should a person’s particular connectionto you give you any reason to treat her differently from howyou treat others? Why should the fact that someone happens toshare some relationship with you make a difference to how youought to treat her, or how you may permissibly treat her? This isthe puzzle of partiality.

The puzzle of partiality is not a mere theoretical artifact. Wecannot make it go away just by saying that impartialist moral theoriesare wrong. The puzzle arises from something true. Thosewe treat differently from everyone else, within our special relationships,are not more important than everyone else. You prioritizeyour own children’s needs over the needs of other children,but the needs of other children matter just as much as the needsof yours. You make sacrifices for your friends that you do notmake for other people, but your friends do not matter more thanother people. Looking at it from one perspective, the puzzle ofpartiality cannot be avoided. We need some explanation of whywe have good reasons for acting partially, rather than impartially.

The puzzle of partiality might be easy to solve. On the oneside, it could be said that the perspective from which the puzzlearises—a perspective that takes impartiality as the natural startingpoint—is simply mistaken, even if seductive; perhaps the perspectiveof morality is not an impartial perspective after all. On theother side, it could be said that reasons of partiality can easily beincorporated within the impartialist picture; perhaps there aregood impartial reasons for each of us to give different treatmentto those with whom we share special relationships.

A glance at the philosophical literature suggests, however, thatthe puzzle of partiality is a genuine puzzle and that any solutionto it will have ramifications for our thinking about the nature ofmorality. Philosophers use insights about partiality to argue, forexample, that consequentialist and Kantian moral theoriesmust be abandoned; that liberalism should give way tocommunitarianism; that liberal morality needs to be supplementedby another ethical framework with which it is necessarilyin tension; and that not all good reasons are moral reasons.Considerations of partiality have also pushed defenders of variousimpartialist views to make their theories more detailed and sophisticated,and to see more clearly what parts of commonsensemorality their theories can and cannot vindicate. The debateabout reasons of partiality is a site at which higher-level claims inethical theory are tested and brought into conflict.

One way to try to make progress on the puzzle of partiality isto begin with a particular theoretical perspective and then to seewhether it can yield a plausible account of our reasons of partiality.Another, which I pursue in this book, is to begin with normsof partiality, trying to understand what they are and where theycome from, and then to see what the significance of partiality isfor ethics more broadly.

Let me register a quick point about my terminology. The bookis about the normative significance of special relationships, andthat normative significance is not (or not obviously) all about reasons.My topic is “norms of partiality” in general, not the “reasonsof partiality” in particular. But, at places at which I think it makesno difference to the substance of what I am saying, I often talk of”reasons” rather than “norms.” This is because I find talk of”norms” less natural and to lead to some awfully convoluted locutions.When it comes to the philosophy, however, I am concernedthroughout the book with all kinds of norms arising from specialrelationships, not just with reasons.

The Question

Why should we give special treatment to those with whom weshare special relationships? What, for example, is your reason fortreating your friends differently from other people, or your childrendifferently from other children?

To make this a question that might have a single enlighteninganswer, we need to focus on reasons that not only direct us to givespecial treatment to those with whom we share certain relationshipsbut also appear to have something especially to do withthose relationships themselves. Sometimes, when you have a reasonto treat someone differently from others, your reason can bederived straightforwardly from some different reason that hasnothing especially to do with special relationships or partiality.You might have reason to give somebody special treatment becauseyou promised to give her special treatment; perhaps youpromised someone that you would keep an eye on her father. Youmight have reason to give somebody special treatment becauseyou were instructed to give her special treatment; perhaps yourboss has buddied you up with a new colleague. You might havereason to give somebody special treatment because you were assignedthe job of giving her special treatment by some legitimateprocedure for dividing responsibilities; perhaps it has been agreedthat you will look after the baby while someone else takes care ofthe older children. Your reasons to give special treatment in suchcases do not raise any questions about partiality in particular.They instead concern your wider reasons to keep your promises,follow instructions, or carry out your assigned responsibilities.

In paradigmatic cases, our special reasons within special relationshipsare not so easily reducible to other reasons. You havespecial reason to look after your parents, but you probably cannotpoint to any particular promise, command, act of assigning responsibility,or anything else from which your reason obviouslyderives. Your reason seems to have some more intimate connectionwith your parents and your relationship with them.

Reasons can be given at different levels of explanation, and themore finely we distinguish various reasons of partiality, the lessthey have in common. Your reason to go to dinner at your mother’shouse tonight, for example, is not the same as my reason tobuy my son a new jacket this winter. Yet, your reason to have dinnerat your mother’s appears to have something in common withmy reason to buy my son a jacket, but not with your or my reasonsto keep our promises or help a stranger in need. You, withyour mother, and I, with my son, each have reasons that emergefrom special relationships. We work at the appropriate level ofexplanation when we try to say what that similarity is.

Whatever our reasons of partiality all have in common, weshould not assume that they are thereby set apart from all otherreasons. It could be that the right way to explain our reasons ofpartiality is to show that they fall, after all, within some broaderclass of reasons. Perhaps our reasons of partiality are reasons tokeep implicit promises, for example, or to promote happiness inthe most efficient way possible, or to carry out the responsibilitieswe are assigned (or should be assigned) by society at large. Also, itmay be that the class of reasons of partiality is not unified. Perhapsthere are many different kinds of explanation for the manydifferent reasons of partiality, and no level at which those explanationsshare an interesting common character.

Those possibilities noted, however, the appearance remains.There do seem to be reasons, all recommending special treatmentwithin special relationships and all unable to be straightforwardlyexplained by some broader kind of reason, all sharing a distinctivecharacter and presenting a shared challenge to the impartialistpicture of morality. Even if the appearance is deceiving, the appearanceneeds to be explained, and an explanation of why theappearance is deceiving will itself be one kind of story about thenature of the reasons concerned.
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