← See the axis · Partiality

The limits you already accept

You already admit that partiality has limits coming from elsewhere.

Objects to Partialism

1. You would give the last seat in the lifeboat to your child without remorse. But you would condemn the judge who acquits his son, or the official who reserves the public contract for his nephew.
2. These limits, you accept: there are situations where putting your own first becomes a wrong, and you know it.
3. Yet if the bond were by itself the foundation, nothing could stand against it; that you recognize limits shows that partiality answers, at bottom, to a demand for equality that goes beyond it.

Therefore The limits you place on partiality therefore show that it answers, in the last resort, to an impartial justice.