This volume gathers essays from leading scholars to discuss partiality in ethics. The chapters examine the virtuous and vicious ways in which we relate to those close to us.
There has long been a puzzle in ethics concerning the balance between our general moral obligations to everyone and our specific moral obligations to a smaller subset of people: our family, our nation, and our friends. There has been longstanding tension between the moral intuition that equality entails that we have the same moral duties to everyone and the moral intuition that special obligations entail that we have much greater duties to those close to us. The chapters in this volume discuss varying perspectives on partiality within a wide range of relationships. Section 1 offers overarching visions of partiality. Section 2 examines how roles and relationships might shape partiality. Section 3 focuses on the potential moral dangers and pitfalls of partiality. Finally, Section 4 looks at specific applications of partiality expressed as our loyalty to country, religion, sports teams, and employers.
Virtuous and Vicious Expressions of Partiality will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of religion.
Introduction Section 1: Overarching Visions of Partiality 1. Morality’s Partiality: An Essay in Virtue-Based, Role-Relative, Patient-Focused Moral Theory J. L. A. Garcia 2. Parity, Pluralism, and Permissible Partiality Chris Tucker 3. Is Partiality Part of Morality? Alan H. Goldman 4. Attitudes of The Will and Attitudes of The Heart Stephen Darwall Section 2: How Roles and Relationships Might Shape Partiality 5. Why Partial Relationships are Necessary: A Model for Virtuous and Loving Unequal Relationships Eric J. Silverman 6. Role Centered Morality and Virtuous and Vicious Partiality Michael Beaty Section 3: The Moral Dangers of Partiality 7. Partiality Traps and our Need for Risk-Aware Ethics and Epistemology Guy Axtell 8. Smugness as a Kantian Vice Karen Stohr 9. Loyalty and Epistemic Partiality Kathryn C. S. Schmidt Section 4: Specific Applications of Partiality: Loyalty to Country, Religion, Sports Team, and Employer 10. Anti-Patriotism’s Unintended Reformation: The Mistakes of George Kateb’s Patriotism and Other Mistakes Joseph Prud’homme 11. Faithfulness and Religious Partiality Patrick X. Gardner 12. Practices of Partiality: Affinity, Loyalty, and Sports Fans Kyle Fruh, Marcus Hedahl, Luke Maring, and Nate Olson 13. Partiality We Owe Our Employers Chris Tweedt
Eric J. Silverman is Professor of Philosophy at Christopher Newport University. He has over 30 academic publications in ethics, philosophy of religion, and psychology, including six books. His most recent book is Sexual Ethics in a Secular Age: Is There Still a Virtue of Chastity? (Routledge, 2021).
