These words refer to a willingness to listen to all sides of a case without prejudging it. Disinterested does not imply a lack of interest, as is sometimes mistakenly thought, but a receptive interest that does not take sides in a dispute, at least until the truth can be discovered: disinterested judges and jurors on which a just trial depends. To be disinterested , in fact, requires attentiveness to detail and an evenness of temper, though it by no means implies coldness or lack of feeling. Fair is much more informal than disinterested and would be more appropriate to describe a decision or a decision-maker once a verdict has been rendered: I could tell by the disinterested attitude of the judge that he would give a fair verdict. Also, where disinterested stresses keeping an open mind, fair suggests the taking of a stand based on ethical considerations: striving to remain disinterested until he could arrive at a fair solution to the problem.

Impartial and unbiased are more closely related to disinterested than to fair in emphasizing open-mindedness. Impartial suggests literally taking no one’s part; it implies perhaps, a greater impersonality than disinterested : a judge free of all political pressures and thus aloof enough to remain impartial . While very closely related, unbiased suggests someone who is inherently free of any predispositions towards conflicting sides or parties. A person who has such predispositions might still, by putting them aside, succeed in being impartial , but being unbiased suggests he has none to start with: a lack of contact with minorities that left him completely unbiased for or against them. In reference to reporting, impartial might suggest uninvolvement, while unbiased would suggest a fair treatment of all sides, even though a definite point of view emerges: I don’t ask a newspaper to be impartial but I do expect it to be unbiased at least to the extent of distinguishing between fact and opinion.

Dispassionate and unprejudiced both emphasize the control of emotions rather than of thoughts. Dispassionate suggests someone unswayed by extraneous appeals designed to excite sympathy or indignation: remaining dispassionate amidst wild accusations of treason and favouritism. It is even more strikingly different from disinterested , however, in being applicable not only to a impartial judge, but to an involved contender who remains low-keyed, even-tempered and factual in argument: countering the hysteria of his opponent with a dispassionate presentation of the evidence. Unprejudiced , in this emotional context, relates most closely to unbiased , but unprejudiced seems more fundamental and thoroughgoing, more inclusive in stressing the absence of any irrational, deeply ingrained emotional blind spot. Unprejudiced , furthermore, might suggest an inward state, while unbiased would suggest the result or proof of this state in action. One could learn to behave in an unbiased way even though he were not wholly unprejudiced : a new law that requires unbiased employment practices, whether the owners of a business are unprejudiced or not.

Neutral and objective both suggest an even greater distance than any of the foregoing words. Neutral emphasizes the taking of no sides even to the point of rendering no final judgement whatsoever: jury trials which the judge may remain neutral to the very end; neutral countries that refuse to be drawn into the cold war. Objective suggests an interest only in cold fact as distinct from belief, opinion or attitude; unlike disinterested , it may also suggest lack of feeling: the objective attitude of scientists that would be fatal if extended to the sphere of human responsibilities. Some writers would argue that objective is necessarily a relative rather than an absolute quality: no one can argue he is wholly objective about anything. Most of these words, furthermore, are approving in tone ?but only within the context of weighing and judging. They could all describe a moral weakness in other situations.

• Who but a depraved person could remain unmoved and objective at the thought of a third world war?