Sources & Extracts

Review this excerpt and then go back to the main thread.

Many philosophers have formulated a principle of impartiality or generalizability in ethics. The main idea is that whatever ethical judgment we make in a specific case (such as the judgment that "John ought not to cheat on his income tax") also applies to everyone else in similar circumstances. For example, the historical Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) wrote the following in his Methods of Ethics:

We cannot judge an action to be right for A and wrong for B, unless we can find in the natures or circumstances of the two some difference which we can regard as a reasonable ground for difference in their duties. If therefore I judge any action to be right for myself, I implicitly judge it to be right for any other person whose nature and circumstances do not differ from my own in some important respects....

Or, as we may otherwise put it, 'If a kind of conduct that is right (or wrong) for me is not right (or wrong) for some one else, it must be on the ground of some difference between the two cases, other that the fact that I and he are different persons.' [Sidgwick, Methods, p. 209, 379]

The same principle is used by more recent philosophers such as Marcus Singer in his Generalization in Ethics. Singer writes that:

Accordingly, the assertion that an act cannot be right for one person unless it is right for everyone would be patently absurd, unless some such qualification as "in the same or similar circumstances" is implicitly understood. If an act can be right in one context and wrong in another, a fortiori it can be right for one  person and wrong for another, provided they do it in different contexts. However, if an act is right for A it must be right for B, if the circumstances are the same, or sufficiently similar, just as it must be right for A on any other occasion if there is no significant difference in the circumstances. The generalization principle could therefore be stated in the form: What is right for one person must be right for anyone in the same or similar circumstances. [Marcus singer, Generalizaton in Ethics, p. 13-14]

How does such a principle bear on the questions surrounding the theory of ethical relativism?