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PHILOSOPHY 170 TERM PAPER

A CRITIQUE OF IMPARTIALISM

Something is rotten in the state of moral philosophy. Much divides Kantianism and
Utilitarianism, the two pillars of the field, but impartiality does not. 1 Indeed, both accept
wholesale an impartial framework.
Three parts comprise this framework: the actor, the action, and the judge. The first two
are self-explanatory. An individual acts, and their action can be deemed moral or
immoral. This is uncontroversial. From here the impartialist steps in, arguing that an
impartial judge be needed to make such a determination. This determination is made
using an ideal how would a moral saint act? 2 and comparing this actor to the ideal. I
do not argue against any particular ideal, rather, I find fault with the imposing of the
impartial judge.
There is nothing wrong with determining the morality of an action, or indeed using a
prescribed method to make such a determination. Where the impartialist errs is in
requiring an impartial judge to arbitrate the whole system. This way of thinking does
more harm than good. In this paper I will (I) explore the foundation of impartial morality,
as it emerges from Socrates question, and argue for an alternative, based on Bernard
Williams conception of personal projects, and (II) offer three critiques of impartialism,
which the aforementioned alternative may adequately answer.
I
Impartial morality is, at base, an answer to Socrates question, How should one live?
The query is interesting enough but, as is immediately apparent, it is abundantly
impersonal. Within the question a universal, rather than personal, answer is implied.
Herein lies the fundamental mistake which renders impartiality a flawed framework;
though its rationale may be strong and its models sound, it answers the wrong question.
Rather than ask, How should one live? as Socrates does, we ought to ask How should
I live?
We act based on our desires, our gut instincts, our greed, our relationships, our boredom,
our reproductive mandate . . . we conclusively do not act based on our philosophical
models. We are complex and we are faulty. To err is human, to forget that we err is
impartialist. Socrates question is an important one, but it starts at the wrong point. A
model whose beginning assumes impersonality how should one live? cannot well
inform the actions of an entirely three dimensional being, no more than I can wear a hat
drawn for a stick figure.
Socrates starting point tragically misses a vital reality: that people are undefinable on
any but the individual scale. Like an error at the beginning of a mathematical proof,
everything that follows is fundamentally flawed. Perhaps not irredeemably so as in
mathematics, but it is still an error which demands skepticism from the outset.
We can step back even further, by asking How do I live? and creating models based on
deviations from this reality, not deviations from some impersonal ideal. We must choose
our philosophies, our moral guides, by what fits us, our personalities, our relationships,
our needs, our desires not merely what convinces our intellect.

1 Herman 1983, p. 234

2 Wolf 1982, p. 419 - 439

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The impartialist would have us subscribe to a universal philosophy of sorts. He would

have us choose a standard guide for determining moral actions whether it be some
categorical imperative or utilitarian analysis. If philosophies are shoes, he would have us
all wear the same pair at all times; that is to say, he would have us wobbling around in
shoes that dont fit, and are horribly inappropriate for the occasion. And, it seems, the
majority of the philosophically inclined are happy to adopt this mindset. Kantian and
Utilitarian camps gather with banners high, both accepting uncritically that they can
mold themselves to their intellectual ideal, rather than mold their intellectual ideal to
themselves. Philosophy, when treated this way, can do nothing to inform how we live,
because it simply does not fit how we live.
Why are we better able to choose shoes than philosophies? Yes we may ogle and marvel
at all the shoe shop has to offer, but we invest in a pair only if the shoe fits. As C. S.
Lewis brilliantly teaches us, to say that a shoe fits is to speak not only of shoes but of
feet.
Now, this isnt to say that impartial morality isnt appealing. Indeed it is. It asks only that
we act in a way that an impartial judge would find admirable, or at least refrain from the
inverse. This seems reasonable, until one asks who will act as judge. To Immanuel Kant,
an eighteenth century German philosopher, the idea of an impartial view may have
very well have existed a European Christian living in Christian Europe might indeed
have understood certain moral standards to be absolute, that is, impartial. This cannot
have truly been the case. There were moral disagreements, and the philosopher can
always propose a more complicated dilemma in which even impartial moral truths can
be questioned. But perhaps these dilemmas and disagreements were small enough to
sweep under the rug. We mustnt sweep anymore. The world has become bigger. As
societies and individuals, we come in contact with so many others that we are no longer
insulated into the false security of any impartial viewpoint. There are no universally
admired principles: the impartial judge is dead.
In response to understood cultural differences, some have spun on their heels and run the
other way, away from absolutism and toward relativism. We should not impose our
cultural beliefs on their society, they repeat like a mantra. How then should an
individual react to something they see as abhorrent in another society? Like many, I
refuse to accept a society which holds women as property as simply different. No, it is
bad, immoral, and condemnable and I will condemn it!
How then do we reconcile the extremes of impartial morality, informed by absolutism,
and moral relativism? Impartial morality demands that we act as would be acceptable to
some impartial judge, wielding a universal ideal. Moreover it demands that we value
ourselves as moral beings against this judgement. Perhaps worse, relativism demands that
we abandon our convictions and instincts to accept anothers action in the name of openmindedness and culturalism. Neither demands dialogue or an exchange of ideas and,
more importantly, neither allows space for individual personality. We are left with either
conquest or capitulation.
I contend that both systems suffer a common flaw: they ignore individual personhood.
The better alternative, I would argue, is a model which includes character rather than
purposefully excluding it.
The problem, as I see it, stems from the monolithic and impersonal nature of impartial
morality. That we should adhere to acting in a way which an impartial judge would find
admirable ignores the actor in the given scenario. It expects us to act as computers,
programmed to be machines of whatever code the philosopher can write. These codes

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leave inadequate room for character, and specifically neglect the role of individual desires
and circumstances or, as Bernard Williams calls them, projects.3
In his critique of impartial morality, Williams asks, How can an I that has taken on the
perspective of impartiality be left with enough identity to live a life that respects its own
interests?4 These interests, as Williams defines them, are projects or things that are
important or meaningful to an individuals life. I would expand this definition upon
Williams premise to argue that not only are these projects important, but that they are life
itself. Our lives are not defined by eighty beats per minute and neuroelectrical activity.
They are defined rather by our relationships, our pastimes, our careers, our goals, our
desires, our social stations. The word projects initially installs a sense of secondary
nature but this could not be farther from the truth. Projects are not merely important to
what we do, they define who we are and that we exist. Demanding that we hold ourselves
to an impartial viewpoint simply ignores our projects, and thus ignored us as individuals.
Oughtnt we be able to strive on our projects behalf, even in the face of impartial
morality? After all, as Susan Wolf writes, Moral ideals do not, and need not, make the
best personal ideals.5
So what might replace impartial morality? Must it be replaced? Surely! and by surely I
mean I have no idea. My aim is simply to question impartialisms monopoly on moral
philosophy. Instead of attempting to replace it here, we might simply look at what
remains of the original system. Disregarding any notion of impartiality, and thus
removing impartialism from Kants system, we are left with the actor, action, and the
judge, who need not be impartial. Who then ought this judge be? Surely we are able to
make moral choices without asking, Would an impartial judge find this admirable?
What barometer do we then have? In my estimation, we ought to allow ourselves to put
value in character and projects of the individual, and we must recognize this value even if
it comes into conflict with the view of an impartial judge. Individuals must be able to
make moral choices in the name of their own projects, rather than in the name of
adhering to impartiality. This, as it might be called, is personal morality; that actions
can be justified if they are taken for the sake of our projects; and that individual choice is
given weight; that the individual alone is master of her mind. We cannot ask ourselves to
act in accordance with an impartial standard, we can ask ourselves to act in accordance
with our own.
II
The central problems with impartial morality, as I see it, are threefold. (A) Firstly, it
universalizes the human experience into select dilemmas, and then expects us to act in
our real lives as we would in fiction. (II) Secondly, it is detrimental to how we serve
society. (III) And thirdly, it demands that we act as if in a vacuum, as if each action we
take is independent of each other and from our personal projects. As I will attempt to
argue, a philosophy of personal morality affects the inverse of these three complaints
which I hope to illustrate along the way.
A
Impartial morality necessarily universalizes discussion of moral philosophy into select
dilemmas in an attempt to have us approach moral decisions from impartial, rather than
personal perspectives. Because moral philosophy, once impartial morality is supposed,
becomes a study of how the impartial judge would adjudicate, we must view moral
dilemmas from an impartial perspective to test her scales. Systems are created (and

3 Herman 1983, p. 236

4 WILLIAMS, yknow!
5 Susan Wolf, 235

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indeed tested!) on the basis of totally impersonal, non-contextual, and ultimately

impartial scenarios.
If you were a Jew hiding beneath the floorboards with five others and, as a Nazi
inspected the house above, your infant began crying, would you smother your infant or
surely be found? If you were on an overpass and saw a trolly rolling down the tracks
toward five workers, would you pull a lever diverting the trolly to a second track where
only one worker stood? What if, instead of a lever, there was a fat man with you whom, if
pushed in front of the trolly, would stop it? Would you do it? If you were a doctor with
four fatally ill patients one needing a liver, one a kidney, one a lung, and one a
pancreas and a healthy patient was lying asleep next door, would you kill the patient
and harvest his organs to save the four sick ones? Would you, a man with a wife and
children, lost at sea with a bachelor in his fifties, kill the bachelor and eat his flesh if not
doing so would mean starvation and certain death?
Ha! says the brilliant impartialist, presenting these quandaries. While certainly
interesting thought experiments, they are games with marginal real-life value. They hold
little practical applicability because they oversimplify the human experience in such a
way that we would never behave. Assuming that one is not overcome with terror given
any of these scenarios a completely acceptable and human response the choice that
they would make is rarely within the boundaries of the thought experiment. They become
a test of game theory, seeing who can outsmart the experiment, rather than tests of moral
philosophy. Give your infant C. P. R., it will both smother them into silence and ensure
they remain breathing. Shout to the workers on the tracks Watch out, theres a trolly!
If the fat man is with you, have him shout too. Wait for the first sick patient to die,
harvest their organs and save the other three. And, well, eat the bachelor.
These scenarios are vague, impersonal, and totally without context, and any poor excuse
for added complexity usually verges on absurdity what if the fat man is Hitler? which
is not accidental. Impartialism asks us to think simply, impersonally, and noncontextually. Is it any surprise then that the way we test it reflects the same? How ought
we think of a system predicated on death-obsessed dilemmas? Death is thought to be a
sort of expertimentus crucis because it reveals systems in the clearest light. 6 But this is
exactly the problem. Systems, like ships, should not be tested in the clear waters but in
the stormy. Life, thank goodness, is not a series of death-obsessed ultimatums. If these
systems attempt to teach us about ourselves, to answer Socrates question, then viewing
them only in the context of death is absurd. Perhaps more damningly, it provides a poorresolution outcome. In something as a dramatic and extreme as death, the moral intellect
is nothing in comparison to the more primal elements of the human psyche. Even if the
Utilitarian or Kantian choice is made, it is rarely made for the reasons these systems
prescribe, but rather for a litany of personal biases, desires, fears, etc. etc.
This confusion stems directly from impartial morality. Because with impartial morality
philosophy becomes a study of describing the scales of the impartial judge an entirely
two dimensional concept we are made to simplify into terms befitting a two
dimensional character. We do not live in dilemmas, we do not make every action asking
ourselves how we would be viewed by an impartial judge, we are not free from error,
from sentimentalism, from bad judgement, from cowardice, from greed. We simply do
not fit the impartial framework. Nothing less of a computer program would.
Let me propose a dilemma of my own, the ultimate death scenario. You are the
commander of a nuclear submarine, and your government has fallen to a nuclear strike.
What course of action do you take? Under an impartialist framework, you should take a
course of action which an impartial judge would find admirable. The decision to do

6 Lewis 1943, p. 45

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nothing and the decision to retaliate are so utterly incongruous indeed millions of lives
separate them that an impartial judge could not rationally find both positions admirable.
The choice then becomes a question of which ideal to apply. A utilitarian framework
regresses into error-laden probability because any cost-benefit analysis is incomputable to
a human, and thus essentially comes down to guesswork. A deontological framework
requires the assertion of an absolute universal principle, the difficulties of which I have
already discussed. Both, as Bernard Williams points out, undermine the way [ones]
actions and decisions have to be seen as flowing from the projects with which he is most
closely identified.7 Indeed in none of this philosophical discussion under an impartialist
framework are you, the commander, discussed or even considered!
This dilemma is not a fiction. The United Kingdom has four operational nuclear
submarines, each of which carry a letter of last resort written by the Prime Minister to
the commanding officers, and kept under lock and key aboard the vessels. In the event of
British destruction by nuclear strike, the letters are opened, and the commanders are
given four optional actions which, once one is taken, would be the last official act of Her
Majestys government. They allow the commander to: (1) retaliate with nuclear weapons,
(2) do nothing, (3) place the submarine under the command of the United States or
Australia, or (4) use his own judgement.
Is granting this choice to a lowly commander immoral? The impartial judge could not
possibly see each of these actions as admirable after all, they are incongruous with
millions of lives standing between them. I trust that the British Government would not
knowingly authorize immoral action even in the event of its own destruction and yet
to an impartialist, there must be an immoral action among the options given. The British
Government, then, has officially authorized an immoral course of action on a massive, or
rather nuclear, scale, given certain conditions. This isnt so, however, because in giving
this open-ended order indeed that final option is use your own judgement the
British Government understands that context is everything. Without understanding the
context of the real scenario rather than the fiction, we cannot possibly deem one option
moral or the other immoral, we can merely guess at what these contexts may be. The
British Government understands that an individual sense of morality that of the
commander is enough to guide moral action. If the British Government is willing to
defer to individual judgement in the nuclear case, why is the impartialist not in the trivial
one?
B
The most grievous offense, for me, of impartial morality is how it defines the relationship
between individual and society. There are several elements of this relationship Id like to
explore
Firstly, impartial morality attempts to make individuals malleable. Because it takes no
account of individual character, persons are expected to bend themselves to meet external
standards. This is expected of us, and by doing so, one is seen as paying ones due to
society. As Emerson put it, Men do what is called a good action as some piece of
courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine . . . these works are done as an apology
or extenuation of their living in the world. 8 The impartialist asks individuals to act in
accordance with the impartial and not the personal, to forgo their personal projects. Thus
good actions become a tithe of living. This causes us to take act not because we are
compelled, but rather because we feel obligated. This confuses us as to what we can do to
better society. That is, we can do much, but are satiated by the tithes we pay.

7 Williams 1973, p. 116 - 117

8 Emerson 1841, p. 89

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In assuming impartiality, we go from being an I to a one, as previously discussed.

The consequence of this is immeasurable. What can I do? and What can one do? are
two very different questions. We are trained to ask the latter, and to make generic efforts
toward the betterment of society, rather than to explore how we as unique and personable
individuals can better it. Each person has something unique to offer society, yet we satiate
ourselves with what we are viewed as the correct charitable actions that which an
impartial judge would find admirable. Volunteerism, for example, is the method by which
the impartialist might dictate that one ought to better society, yet, of all the great men and
women who have made their marks upon bettering society, few of them were doing so on
volunteer hours. The composer should not be spending her time pouring soup when the
work she does by her own personal inclination is an equally valid contribution. Yet she,
like us all, is taught that her inclinations are selfish. Yet more often than not, when we
follow our inclinations rather than our sense of impartial duty, we find ourselves partners
in the betterment of society, not servants to it. As Emerson correctly said, I do not wish
to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.
It is not that volunteerism or duty are bad or immoral quite the opposite but rather that
our ingrained sense of impartial morality would compel us to these actions. They then
become disingenuous and satiating. (Would the impartial judge view my Saturday
morning at the soup kitchen to be admirable? Yes? Good-quota filled.) Complacency is
the nemesis of mankind. We should never be satisfied with the good we do, we should
never feel that we have done our duty, we should never feel complacent in our goodness.
Like a drug, positive feedback from an impartialist framework sedates us into
complacency with our lot and our role. Good acts become tithes, and great acts become
rare for what is to compel an individual to a great act when his duty to society has
already been demanded and paid with goodness? I ought not be complacent, I ought not
be satiated, I ought not be pleased by doing what one can do, but rather what I can do.
In addition to forcing us into satiation, impartial morality may even cause us to act
immorally under its own framework! Impartial morality, as previously enumerated, is a
system which is blind to the individual ipso facto. The impartial judge has no stake in the
outcome of the action, nor intimate understanding of the individual, and yet they are
supposedly able to make a truer assessment of the morality of the action than the
individual. By deferring this judgement, however, the individual is stripped of their
individualism. For this reason alone it is detestable. When our actions are judged by an
impartial judge, we may allow none of our predispositions, or prejudices, or relationships,
or desires, into our action calculus. Essentially, we must not allow our identity to
interfere with our lives. Some morality that.
This context blindness may lead impartial morality to ask us to break our own standards
in favor of impartial ones. When given this ultimatum, one must either act against their
own instincts or act, as the impartialist would deem it, immorally. Which is more likely,
that we will continue to break our own standards in favor of the impartialists, or given
no option other than impartiality abandon adherence to the moral project altogether?
Indeed, we are often unable to adhere to the strict weights and measures of impartial
morality. This is no surprise, we are humans not machines, after all. Unable to adhere
for the impartialist acts us to strive for impossible moral sainthood we might abandon
any sense of obligation toward each other and even ourselves. This is because impartial
morality is inflexible; any pressure applied to it causes the system to break rather than
bend and return. It is in our nature to either adhere to something fully, or to disregard it.
Because our modern concept of morality is based upon an impartialist framework,
unable to adhere to impartialism we may throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Secondly, impartial morality by definition lessens moral diversity. All living things are
aided by diversity. A species is aided by a diversity of genes so that it can withstand a
litany of challenges. An ecosystem is aided by a diversity of species which aid each other

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in a complex system of relationships. Like these, societies are aided by a diversity of

individuals. Luckily, individuals are made diverse. Impartial morality, however, would
strip this diversity. By relying upon a single impartial judge to guide the moral hand of
all, we bring individuals closer and closer to conformity and moral unanimity. This is not
healthy, this does not progress to the betterment of all, rather it stagnates to a happily
complacent, yet ignorantly vulnerable state.
With a sense of personal morality instilled, individuals are freed to better society by
pursuing their own passions and projects. A society is nothing greater than the sum of its
parts, and individuals enabled to make moral choices on account of their projects
ultimately aid the greater system. A society of moral saints, as the impartialist would have
it, is no society at all, but rather a beehive. We are aided, not condemned, by our selfish
desire to preserve our personal projects. I might sooner see an entire country slip into the
ocean than a single one of my siblings drown. This is an impartialist flaw, and yet it is
this very flaw which makes the bond of siblings so sweet. Such flaws paint in wild hues
the skies of our happiness and spice violently the oceans of our discontent. To be good, to
contribute, to be wonderful, to be moral these are not synonymous matters. As Susan
Wolf correctly identifies, A person may be perfectly wonderful without being perfectly
moral.9
But what of frivolity? the impartialist may ask. Might diversity just mean frivolity or
capriciousness instead. Doesnt it stand to reason that without overarching impartial
judgement we are simply left to our own devices; that personal morality gives us license
to do whatever we wish? The impartialist argues, understandably, that morality can
benefit society as a whole, whereas personal morality seems geared toward the benefit of
the individual.
Just because we allow ourselves to live to the benefit of our own character and projects
does not mean we unduly set moral standards by our own whims and frivolity.
Remember, morality becomes a barometer of the affect on our projects. Our relationships
to other people being foremost, for most of us, among our projects. If a person wishes to
pursue an action that he believes to be moral, and that action will affect ten people, all of
whom would condemn it, is this action moral? Such a scenario would rarely occur
because the relationship with these ten people would be projects upon which our personal
morality is based. However, if such a scenario were to occur, we must trust the individual
to take action on account of their own moral assessment of the situation. How could we
do otherwise? We know nothing compared with this man, for we are impartial. To use an
example, imagine there is a woman who believes that he must leave her family and live
as a recluse in pursuit of her art. To the many that this action might affect it seems
immoral, but if this project the pursuit of art is so necessary to her life that she must
sacrifice the other projects for it, this is her moral prerogative. We, as outside observers
unversed in her own senses, cannot justly apply our own sense of morality and truly
cannot apply a so-called impartial sense! I might also add, as an aside, that a woman
whose own sense of morality would have her abandon her family is perhaps not the type
of person one would want in a family anyway; and then perhaps it is better that she is
freed to pursue art, and thus become contented, rather than continue her current project,
which she so clearly does not regard well. There is nothing more devastating, more like a
disease, to a person than to be bound to certain unfailing projects because of a sense of
impartial morality.
Rather than frivolous and capriciousness, personal morality is stricter and more
compelling than the more intellectual impartial framework. As C. S. Lewis correctly
observed, No justification of virtue will enable man to be virtuous. 10 Impartial morality

9 Wolf 1982, p. 436

10 Lewis 1943, p. 73

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attempts exactly this to intellectually justify moral action by removing the judgement
from the individual, and giving it to an impartial and disinterest judge. When removing
partiality one really removes emotion, desire, and bias, in favor of a purely intellectual
non-choice. The intellect is not enough to fuel moral action, and as I have previously
argued we are more likely to disregard morality altogether when our motive is purely
intellectual. Emotion is a far more powerful tool than intellect. We ought to stop deluding
ourselves into thinking that emotion has no place in moral decision making. The partial is
a necessary motivator to drive virtuous action. Men without emotion can do not good, for
our emotions are the very basis of what we consider to be moral. We did not
intellectualize our way into refraining from infanticide when an infant is unhealthy.
Rather, this is abhorrent to us emotionally, and thus we have developed a moral doctrine
which abhors it. Why then do we disregard emotion on the other end of the process? Why
then, when emotions form the basis of our moral doctrine, do we will them away through
impartiality when confronted with moral decisions? Without the aid of trained
emotions, Lewis continues, The intellect is powerless against the animal organism.
Lastly, I would be remiss without responding to the religious element that impartial
morality holds in society. Many inclined toward religion argue that society requires Gods
morality. The religious adherent is not allowed to do whatever they sense to be right,
rather they are asked to adhere to Gods sense. Who is this impartial judge that we have
been discussing if not God? Impartial morality was developed in a very Christian context
indeed why have we so readily adopted it into secular society? Many cling to impartial
morality, I believe, because it so closely adheres to the religious framework. To deny it
would be a denial of God the judge. Without Gods judgement, some argue, wouldnt we
fall into immortality? Doesnt society require a common divine law? Without the reward
of heaven and the punishment of hell, what would become of man? I have no better
answer to this than to echo Matthew Arnolds The Better Part.
So answer thou; but why not rather say:
Hath man no second life?Pitch this one high!
Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see?
More strictly, then, the inward judge obey!
Was Christ a man like us? Ah! Let us try
If we then, too, can be such men as he!
Or perhaps more belligerently, William Ernest Henleys Invictus.
It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Indeed we are the captains of our souls! and yet we so readily hand the vessel over to
the impartial. We must take more responsibility for our morality than simply adhering
uncritically to some impartial perspective. The impartial framework views individuals as
pieces of a society which, if in moral opposition, will fall apart. Rather, societies are the
amalgamation of individuals. The individuality and uniqueness of persons within that
society breathe life into it. Impartial morality brings individuals into a single archetype.
While it can never truly force individuals into the mold, for they will revolt beforehand, it
can certainly damage good and healthy elements in society. Impartial morality brings
individuals to view good actions as tithes to society which must follow impartially
admirable prescriptions. Rather than asking what can I do? we are lead to ask what
can one do? So strict too is this framework that we are brought often into choosing
between it and our projects a decision which may lead to the abandonment of the moral
project altogether.

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C
My final critique of impartial morality is significantly less significant, but all the same,
worthy of note. Impartial morality views actions as independent not only from the context
that surround it, as previous discussed, but from other actions.
Imagine one of the impartialists death-scenarios. You live between two families, each
with five children; one household of geniuses, the other of dunces. One day while
walking in the park you see a child from each house drowning, and you can only save
one. Barring all other context, the impartialist would likely lead the individual to save the
genius under any cost-benefit calculus. This is all very well until viewed in the context of
other actions. Lets say that the next day, impossibly, the same situation arises! Would
you again rescue the genius over the dunce? How about a third time? Would you one-byone choose from the genius household over the dunce household until there were no more
dunce-children? Or would you eventually come to choose a dunce child, not wanting to
rob the dunce household of all its children but then of course, punishing the genius
child only because her siblings had lived? Each individual choice is identical out of
context, but in the context of past action, they are worlds apart. The impartialist considers
none of this, actions are viewed singularly, unrelated to other actions.
If a luxury-yacht salesman accidentally hits Mrs. Wealthington while driving home from
work, should he offer a steep discount to Mr. Wealthington when he happens to walk into
his yacht dealership the next day? Even though he would make this offer to no other
costumer? Out of context of previous actions, this is a simple black and white choice, but
once the history of actions is taken into account we begin to sharpen the resolution, we
begin to see life for what it is, a series of incomprehensibly complicated set of contexts
and circumstances the likes of which can never justly be navigated by an impartial
judge.
III
In proposing and advocating for the idea of personal projects, and their legitimacy in
affecting moral decision-making, Bernard Williams does a great service to us. He opens a
crack in the twin pillars of Utilitarianism and Kantianism into which we can see
something rotten within.
Impartial morality starts at the wrong place; it is an answer to Socrates question which, I
would contend, is a question of little relevance. How should one live? I couldnt care less
how should I live? From this initial error, the faults and crack snowball until the
system, as I see it, is utterly wrecked. It is no wonder then that the impartialist approaches
moral philosophy using a set of non-contextual and simplistic dilemmas, and builds their
systems from these. In viewing us as archetypical and impersonal, it is no wonder that the
efforts we are told to make toward bettering society are similarly generic. That, in these
generic efforts, we are satiated and fail to realize our full potential. That in confronting
these overbearing fault-lines we are apt to abandon them and, given no alternative, the
moral project altogether. Luckily, individuals are not so easily fooled. Indeed society is
ahead of moral philosophy in this regard.
The overbearing eye of the impartialist judge can do us no good. Any system that views
us as generic moral agents, rather than incomprehensibly complex individuals, must be
met with serious scrutiny ipso facto. For it errs in its very assumption that one can be
corralled with another. For I am not one rather, I am.

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IV
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Self Reliance, 1841. Print. The Harvard Classics, Vol. 5. New
York: Colier & Sons.
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