 The idea that impartiality is a defining feature of the moral outlook raises obvious questions and difficulties in relation to our ordinary beliefs and behaviors. Most of us live in ways that exhibit considerable partiality toward relatives, friends, and other loved ones, and to others with whom we are affiliated or associated. The existence of vast global disparities in the distribution of wealth and access to resources may not seem to accord well with the characteristically modern view that all people are in some fundamental sense equal from a moral point of view. Although general and abstract moral principles requiring impartiality tend to strike many of us as fairly plausible, our more particular views and practices often seem to place considerably less significance on it.