Impartiality frameworks breed indifference to concrete need

Evidence

This treatment of particularity, the devaluation of personal relationships and of an identity tied to particular parts of the natural world as opposed to an abstractly conceived whole, the cosmos, inherits the rationalistic preoccupation with the universal and its account of ethical life as oppositional to the particular. Fox (1989:12) reiterates (as if it were unproblematic) the view of particular attachments as ethically suspect and opposed to genuine, impartial ‘identification’, which necessarily falls short with all particulars. The framework of detachment, impartiality and impersonality which this form of deep ecology takes over so uncritically from rationalist ethics and from some eastern thought, has been seen by many feminists as deeply problematic since, as Gilligan puts it, ‘it breeds moral blindness or indifference—a failure to discern or respond to need’ (1987:24). — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 686

Categorization

• XREF: Close parallel to the ecofeminism/ethics-of-care thread and the course’s listening/observation-as-method: impartiality as a form of not-seeing, echoing the backgrounding and not-seeing themes from ch12. — connects to: Kantian universalisation secretly depends on empathy and cannot stand alone — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 785; Social disapproval of impartiality serves group welfare beyond mere cowardice-suspicion; Impartiality’s false symmetry neutralizes opposition and suppresses class content (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the third deep-ecology position (expansion of self to transcendence) by its debt to rationalist universalisation.

Broader Connections

• Social disapproval of impartiality serves group welfare beyond mere cowardice-suspicion #complicates (0.85)
• Perfect impartiality dissolves the self-attribution that makes action meaningful #expands (0.85) — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 134
• Impartiality’s false symmetry neutralizes opposition and suppresses class content #expands (0.82)
• Indifference to others treats them as obstacles and functions rather than subjects #expands (0.80)