The slope of favoritism
If the bond is enough to justify, it also excuses the clan against the outsider.
Objects to
- The impulse that makes me put my own first feeds, on a larger scale, nepotism, the clan spirit, the closing of the door to the outsider.
- If the bond is by itself a sufficient reason, what stops me from preferring my tribe to humanity, and shutting my door on whoever does not belong to it?
- Many injustices come not from neglecting one's own, but from the opposite excess: loyalty to one's own raised into the only law.
Therefore A partiality with no counterweight thus opens the way to the most unjust preferences, for lack of a principle to bound it.
Possible resolutions of the objection
Challenges