<i>The Scope and Limits of Partiality</i>

This is a wide-ranging yet thorough investigation of the justification and limits of partiality. The author’s engaging style makes the book a pleasure to read. However, I wish she had told us how this book relates to her earlier book Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons.We are all partial to those we love—our friends, our families, and even our pets. We feel justified in paying for a family trip even though we know that we could have done more good by spending that money on the impoverished family down the street. We spend more on our children than on other people’s children even if the latter are much worse off. Indeed, we would criticize parents who left their own sick child untreated in order to help their neighbors’ three sick children.But how can we justify our partiality? We have fundamental—that is, nonderivative—reasons to care for our intimates, but we also have fundamental reasons to care for other people. When should our reasons to care for other people take priority over our reasons to care for our intimates?Consequentialist theories hold that we ought to try to maximize intrinsic value, hence our reasons for being partial must be justified as a means to such maximization. According to act-consequentialism, every action ought to be justifiable by this principle. But this is certainly not how we justify our partiality toward our intimates. Nor is the attitude needed for such justification compatible with the intimacy of loving relationships. Jeske rightly complains, “If one were to behave and deliberate [like a consequentialist] … it seems that one would not to be able to form or to sustain intimate relationships. Intimacy seems to require emotions and attitudes of special concern and also actions that express that special concern” (50).Peter Railton (1984: 149), however, has argued that sophisticated (or objective) act-consequentialism is compatible with the pursuit of intimate relationships and the dispositions it requires. He argues that we can and should develop the ordinary attitudes of special concern for intimates, because actions motivated by these attitudes in fact typically result in the greatest good. It is only if our partialist dispositions cease to promote the overall good that they cease to be justified and must not be acted upon.Jeske notes that the objective consequentialist’s friendship is justified only “insofar as it brings about the best consequences in the long run” (59). For the consequentialist, the only fundamental reasons are agent-neutral reasons to promote the good.I agree with Jeske, having myself argued that on Railton’s theory “whether I ought to be true to my friendship or betray it, preserve my dispositions of friendship or sacrifice them, depends on which choice produces the most good in the long run” (Badhwar 1991). Hence, if I accept consequentialism, the moral justification I must give for acting like a friend and preserving my friendship is instrumental. And this is incompatible with regarding my friendship as an end in itself—that is, as intrinsically good and justified because it is intrinsically good. As a consequentialist friend, I must think two logically incompatible thoughts: “As your friend, I place a special value on you out of friendship and not out of consequentialist considerations—but as a consequentialist agent I do so only so long as … valuing you thus promotes the overall good” (Badhwar 1991: 493).Jeske thinks I’m confused, objecting that (1) “I can continue to subjectively care more about my friend and my relationship with her even if … I am required to make a choice contrary to [her] … well-being,” and (2) the intrinsic good of a friendship is part of the overall good, not an instrumental means to it (58).However, (1) valuing a friend is not just a matter of having certain thoughts and feelings, but also of acting like a friend. And acting contrary to a friend’s well-being, or betraying her, is not exactly acting like a friend. And (2) while the intrinsic goodness of my friendship is, indeed, part of the overall good, if I can justify it only if it promotes rather than detracts from the overall good, then my justification of it is instrumental.What, then, is the best justification for being partial to our intimates? Jeske’s answer proceeds within the framework of three different kinds of reasons for action: “the objective agent-neutral (grounded by objective intrinsic value), the subjective agent-relative (grounded by subjective value relative to the agent), and the objective agent-relative (grounded by special relationships of the agent)” (39).We all have objective agent-neutral reasons for helping people in certain situations, such as during natural disasters; objective agent-relative reasons of intimacy with our friends; and subjective agent-relative reasons, such as those grounded in our projects. Jeske examines three views of why we have reasons of intimacy with our friends: the projects view, the individualist view, and the view she defends, the relationships view.The projects view holds that our reasons of partiality are grounded in our most important intrinsic (noninstrumental) goals, those that are commonly called ‘projects’. These are goals that “are embedded in and permeate our lives,” goals to which we have long-term commitments (86). Our intimate relationships are among our projects. So they give us fundamental, agent-relative reasons to care for our intimates, which “provide counterweight to the consequentialist reason” (90).But, Jeske argues, our intimate relationships can’t be understood simply as projects, because projects don’t have to be objectively valuable to give us reason to pursue them. They might be only subjectively valuable, their value entirely dependent on the fact that we care about them. But friendships also give us objective agent-relative reasons—that is, what most of us would call moral reasons or obligations—to care for our friends. Hence, although giving up a project when it interferes with other projects we are more interested in can be painful, doing so does not (usually) violate a duty to anyone. But neglecting or abandoning an intimate relationship when it becomes inconvenient or somewhat burdensome does. We have objective, agent-relative reasons not to do so. So the projects view is not a sufficient explanation for our reasons of intimacy. “Our friendships give us reason to try to maintain them as projects beyond the point at which our subjective attitudes cease to do so” (105). Thus, it is because Marnie and Anne are old friends that Marnie has an obligation—an objective, agent-relative reason—to care for her when she falls ill, even at the cost of giving up many of her own interests and pleasures.The individuals view of partiality articulated by Simon Keller and others claims, by contrast, that Marnie’s obligation is based on the fact that Anne has objective intrinsic value. Marnie’s reasons to care for Anne would exist even if Anne were not Marnie’s friend (112). But if Anne were not Marnie’s friend, Marnie’s reason to care for Anne would not be a reason of intimacy. It would be an objective, agent-neutral reason.Keller tries to show that friends have special agent-relative reasons to care for each other because their friendship is an enabler; that is, it enables them to act on the reason that the friend’s value gives them. Others who hold the view that the reason to act for the friend’s sake is based on her objective intrinsic value give similar reasons in order to secure agent-relativity.I find these views somewhat mysterious. In what sense does friendship “enable” one to care for a friend? How does a lack of friendship disable one from doing so? Obviously it doesn’t, since without the friendship you would still have objective, agent-neutral reasons to help, depending on your circumstances. So I agree with Jeske’s relationships view that it’s friendship that gives us a fundamental, objective agent-relative justification to care for our friends even when, subjectively, we no longer value them as much. In everyday language, friendship requires that we continue to care for our friends as a matter of loyalty.However, Jeske now argues that even when we do value a friend subjectively, we don’t have subjective, agent-relative reasons of care, because friendship is a historical relationship of mutual caring, in which the acts of mutual caring are motivated by subjective states but are not reducible to these states (111).I find this argument puzzling. A caring act is necessarily an act that expresses love, concern, loyalty, regard, or some other positive subjective attitude, even though it is not reducible to any of these subjective attitudes (since no act is reducible to a subjective state or attitude). Motivation by these subjective attitudes gives us subjective agent-relative reasons for acting in caring ways toward our intimates, reasons that those who don’t have intimates lack. Jeske recognizes this in her discussion of intimate relationships as projects and again in chapter 5, so it’s hard to understand why she changes her mind here.The relationships view itself comes in two varieties: the values-based view and Jeske’s non-values-based view. But since the arguments for and against the value-based view are similar to the arguments about the individuals view, I will not rehearse them here.In chapter 5, Jeske provides a rich picture of close friendship, the sort that gives us reasons of intimacy without glossing over the difficulties and flaws of even such a friendship. In a close friendship, the two friends have mutual affection and concern, and deep mutual knowledge—both knowledge-that and knowledge-how—thanks to their shared history. Our relationships with our companion dogs and cats have much in common with our human friendships, although perhaps they cannot love us for who we are, but only instrumentally (chap. 6). In both these chapters, Jeske draws from her own human and animal friendships, thus giving authenticity to her discussion.In chapter 7, Jeske argues that the legal and cultural importance given to marriage is unjustified, because although many people find a good marriage necessary for their happiness, the intimacy that makes it valuable can be found in close friendships also. Marriage is not uniquely valuable.In the last chapter, Jeske returns to the issue of the demands of intimacy versus the demands of people in general. She argues that if I have reason to save Marcy from drowning rather than a stranger, I also have those reasons in more complex real-world cases (266). I find this argument both original and compelling. Of course, having good reason to prefer your intimates over strangers doesn’t tell us how much preference is rational. Do those of us with flourishing lives have an obligation to spend less time and money on ourselves and our intimates, both human and animal? Jeske rightly argues that what it is rational for any given agent to do is a function of her causal placement vis-à-vis the promotion of intrinsic value and her intimate relationships. Philosophy helps us raise questions about the weight we place on those we love vis-à-vis others, but it can only give a general answer.Jeske worries that “continuing our current patterns of partiality is likely … to continue to widen the gap between the rich and the poor, thereby making the poor even worse off” (62; cf. 263). But a widening gap doesn’t by itself make the poor worse off if, while the rich get richer, the poor become less poor. This has indeed been the case with economic growth in poor countries. In 1990, 2.31 billion people lived in extreme poverty; in 2025, 808 million do.1 Likewise, spending a lot on our children’s development and thus giving them a “competitive advantage” over children whose parents can’t afford to do the same is not, contrary to Jeske, a harm to the latter (269). This zero-sum outlook ignores the fact that not all worthwhile jobs or careers in life require the support of rich parents. Again, the claim that having children means creating more people with needs overlooks the fact that people have not just needs but also capabilities: as the slogan goes, we come with two hands for every mouth.But these are small problems in the context of the book’s many virtues. Everyone interested in intimate relationships and their justification will benefit from reading it.