Is Favouring Those Close to Us Unjust?

Suppose you have one free evening. You could accompany your ill father to a medical appointment, or help a stranger who equally needs company. Is choosing your father unfair? Moral theories that stress equal consideration ask why kinship should make one person's interests count for more. Defenders of special obligations reply that parenthood, partnership and friendship do not merely exclude strangers. Commitments, dependence, shared life and sustained care can generate additional responsibilities. Some forms of special concern are partly constitutive of the relationship itself: parenthood would lose something essential if parents never gave priority to their own young children.

The central question is not whether partiality is ever allowed, but what kind it is. Accompanying your father usually fulfils a responsibility that someone close to him is especially placed to bear. Using public office to let a relative bypass a fair hiring process shifts the cost of favouritism onto others. My judgement is that relationships can supply reasons for priority, but not moral immunity. They can justify additional care; they cannot erase strangers' basic rights or excuse serious harm. Justice and care are not simple alternatives. Sound judgement allows special obligations to operate within universal moral limits.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/special-obligations/
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/impartiality/