Moral philosophers tend to interpret the assumption of impartiality in two very different ways.  One way of interpreting it says that when we reason from “the ethical point of view,” we detach ourselves from our own interests and try to take up a point of view that includes everyone’s interests at once and to give them all equal consideration.  From this perspective, we are trying to figure out what is the best thing to do overall or objectively or from no particular person’s or group’s point of view.  This is the kind of detachment we aim for in science, which tells us what is true, period, not what seems to be true from some perspective or other.  This interpretation of impartiality is best expressed in consequentialist or utilitarian ethical theories.  We will say more about these theories later in the course (under the heading of “All Interests”).

A second way that philosophers interpret impartiality does not presuppose that we detach ourselves from our own interests when we reason about ethics.  Rather, these views say instead that we should reason from our own perspective, taking into account our own interests – selfish, altruistic, and otherwise – in trying to figure out what to do.  The ethical requirement comes in the demand that we each must justify our own reasons for acting to other rational agents, i.e., to other people who have their own interests, who might be affected by our actions, and who can themselves give and demand justifications for what they do.  If we can justify our actions to all the other people who will be affected by them, then we will not be acting in ways that they have reasons to object to. Put another way, we will not be acting on principles that others have reason to reject.  The principles that we can justify by this kind of reasoning can be claimed to be impartial, because they are equally acceptable to all rational agents, regardless of our different interests and points of view.

This latter interpretation of impartiality is at the core of contractualist ethical theories.  The idea goes back to classical social contract theories (as formulated by philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant).  Another way of putting the basic idea is that ethically right actions are those that are justifiable to each person (as opposed to justified from some detached point of view).  These are principles that are ideally acceptable by unanimous consent.

This page written by Douglas MacLean.