complete stranger—is, it is said, too demanding and, far from being morally
required, is, or can be, morally objectionable.
A number of writers have responded to this criticism by agreeing that, if
impartiality required us to set aside our personal attachments, then it would
indeed be at best over-demanding and at worst absurd (see, for example,
Baron 1991 ; Barry 1995 ; Deigh 1991 ). However, they claim that the commit-
ment to impartiality does not require this. Their defence depends on distin-
guishing between two levels of impartiality: impartiality at the level of
ordinary decision-making (level 1 impartiality) and impartiality at the level
of principle selection (level 2 impartiality). And the argument is that, while
impartiality is indeed important in moral and legal principles, those prin-
ciples can (and should) be ones that themselves allow room for personal
attachments.
Thus, defending the two-level distinction, Brian Barry concedes that:
‘‘there would be something crazy about a world in which people acted on
an injunction to treat everybody with complete impartiality,’’ but he goes on
to insist that what the supporters of impartiality are defending is ‘‘imparti-
ality as a test to be applied to the moral and legal rules of a society... the
critics are talking aboutWrst-order impartiality—impartiality as a maxim of
behaviour in everyday life’’ (Barry 1995 , 194 ). Moreover, and crucially, level 2
impartiality does not entail level 1 impartiality, so it is possible to support
impartiality as a test of the moral and legal rules of society without being
committed to impartiality as a requirement of everyday decisions and ac-
tions. Indeed, the defenders of impartiality are insistent that any sensible set
of moral principles will allow discretion and some will even enjoin partiality:
the commandment ‘‘honor thy father and thy mother’’ applies impartially to
all children, but it permits (indeed requires) partial behavior with respect to
one’s own parents. It requires that each and every child honorhisparents, but
not thereby everyone else’s parents.
However, even if we agree that impartiality, properly understood, does not
extend to all our everyday decisions and actions, it nonetheless sets limits to
the extent to which, and the contexts in which, we can favor our friends and
family over strangers. As Barry notes: ‘‘there is a natural inclination to make
special eVorts on one’s own behalf and on behalf of those whom one cares
about. It is the role of rules of justice (including norms of strict impartiality)
to set bounds to the working of this inclination, by ruling out actions that
injure others and prohibiting such violations of impartiality as nepotism’’
(Barry 1995 , 205 ). And the bounds are partly set by reference to a distinction
426 susan mendus