Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 What is loyalty?
- Chapter 2 Friendship and belief
- Chapter 3 What is patriotism?
- Chapter 4 Against patriotism
- Chapter 5 Filial duty: debt, gratitude and friendship
- Chapter 6 Filial duty: special goods and compulsory loyalty
- Chapter 7 Is loyalty a value? Is loyalty a virtue?
- Chapter 8 Communitarian arguments for the importance of loyalty
- Chapter 9 Josiah Royce and the ethics of loyalty
- Chapter 10 Disloyalty
- Conclusion
- Postscript: universal morality and the problem of loyalty
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 What is loyalty?
- Chapter 2 Friendship and belief
- Chapter 3 What is patriotism?
- Chapter 4 Against patriotism
- Chapter 5 Filial duty: debt, gratitude and friendship
- Chapter 6 Filial duty: special goods and compulsory loyalty
- Chapter 7 Is loyalty a value? Is loyalty a virtue?
- Chapter 8 Communitarian arguments for the importance of loyalty
- Chapter 9 Josiah Royce and the ethics of loyalty
- Chapter 10 Disloyalty
- Conclusion
- Postscript: universal morality and the problem of loyalty
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In its psychological and ethical dimensions, loyalty is complicated and often confusing. It is not morally pure, and it is not morally reliable. It is not the foundation of moral thinking, and it should not be given a fundamental role in ethical theory. Different kinds of loyalty involve different ways of thinking and behaving, and make different demands. There are good loyalties, and obligatory loyalties, but loyalty, and indeed many of the good things about loyalty, can also be intimately linked with mistakes, dangers and delusions. Some forms of loyalty are virtuous, but loyalty is not a virtue.
We need loyalty. We do not need it, though, in order to construct or understand ourselves as individuals, or in order to be moral agents. The source of our need for loyalty is less grand, though no less significant; we need loyalty because it makes our lives better. In all sorts of ways, life is richer, more enjoyable and less frightening when we have loyal relationships. The various reasons why we need loyalty are the various reasons why it is good to have friends, close family ties, a favorite football team, and so on. The value of loyalty is to be understood by way of the value of particular kinds of loyalty, not through the bare notion of loyalty itself.
There exists what we might call “the ethical discourse of loyalty”: a way of thinking and judging that treats loyalty as a self-standing value and has a distinctively moralized tone.
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- Information
- The Limits of Loyalty , pp. 218 - 219Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007