One thought too many
A morality that puts your attachments before an impartial tribunal cuts you off from what gives your life meaning.
Objects to
Bernard Williams · Moral Luck · 1981
- Seeing your spouse and a stranger drowning, if you first ask whether impartiality permits you to save your own, you have already had, as it has been said, one thought too many.
- Our loves, our loyalties, our gratitudes are not preferences one justifies: they are what make a life worth living.
- To demand that they answer to an abstract equality is to make oneself a stranger to oneself in the name of morality.
Therefore An impartiality that condemns attachment thus turns against what it claimed to serve: a human life worth living.
Possible resolutions of the objection
Challenges