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.