Reconciling Partiality and Impartiality: How Morality Separates Good Partial Reasons from the Bad

Morality generally requires us to act impartially with respect to certain criteria, such as race and gender (excluding cases of affirmative action). But morality also requires us to act partially. For example, parents are usually required to care for their children, but not others. Why is this the case? How can morality direct us to act impartially in some cases and partially in others? Following Samuel Scheffler, I argue that morality gives us three kinds of partial reasons: project-dependent, relationship-dependent, and membership-dependent reasons. At the same time, I draw on Brad Hooker and argue that morality also requires us to act impartially in the application of good (first-order) moral rules and impartially in the assessment of (first-order) moral rules