COMMUNITARIANISM AND LOYALTY

Loyalty, I have argued, is not a value or a virtue. But there are arguments that seem to many to speak powerfully against that conclusion, and that I have so far ignored. People are not isolated, self-causing moral atoms. We emerge from complex social contexts; we learn about what matters – we learn who we are – by being brought up within a family, a network of personal relationships, and a wider community. It is by seeing others as essentially connected to us – by seeing them as fellow members of a community – that we are able to take their interests seriously, and care about their interests as we might care about our own. Aren't our allegiances to communities then a vital part of our moral lives? Isn't loyalty a crucial moral virtue?

You do not need to be committed to any particular philosophical theory in order to find these considerations compelling, but there is a broad perspective with which they are closely associated: communitarianism. By the broadly communitarian perspective, I mean the view according to which community memberships are of vital importance in generating genuine moral standards and grounding genuine moral motivation, and according to which that importance is neglected within liberal ethical theory and – it is sometimes added – contemporary political life.

I will distinguish between four broadly communitarian arguments for the importance of loyalty, and try to show that each of them is unpersuasive.