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
Chapter 10 - Disloyalty
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
INTRODUCTION
I have spent much of this book arguing that loyalty is not an important moral category. There are many different forms of loyalty, and their differences tend to be of more ethical interest than their similarities. For the purposes of moral philosophy, it is often important to treat different loyalties separately, and while some are of great value, others are positively undesirable. Loyalty, considered as a general proposition, is not a value or a virtue.
One reason to worry about this set of views is that in playing down the ethical significance of the notion of loyalty, we may also find ourselves playing down the ethical significance of the notion of disloyalty, and that would seem to be a serious mistake. Disloyalty appears to be a distinctive and profound kind of wrong, and the ideas with which it is associated – ideas of letting someone down, betrayal, abandonment, treason and treachery – are highly morally charged.
Suppose that you tell a friend something personal, something that you would not want shared with others, and later she blurts it out in company. It is one thing to express your displeasure by telling her that she was careless, thoughtless or inconsiderate.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Limits of Loyalty , pp. 200 - 217Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007