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 9 - Josiah Royce and the ethics of loyalty
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
THE IDEA OF AN ETHICS OF LOYALTY
There are only two major philosophical books about loyalty, but they both express great ambitions for the concept. Royce, in The Philosophy of Loyalty, and Fletcher, in Loyalty, both set out to show that loyalty is the foundation of good moral thinking, and they both defend accounts of morality that are built around the notion of loyalty. Royce calls his account “the philosophy of loyalty,” and Fletcher calls his “the ethics of loyalty.”
While Royce's work on loyalty, especially, has been very influential, the idea of an ethics of loyalty has not really taken hold; no such view stands as a familiar option in debates about ethical theory. Still, the project of grounding morality in loyalty is connected with some prominent recent work in moral and political philosophy, and in particular with certain attacks upon impartial, liberal, or – as I will call it here – universalist morality, and with efforts to find an alternative.
Universalist morality is characterized by two central and related commitments. First, it ascribes value to individuals by virtue of properties that they hold inherently, not by virtue of their relations to particular communities, times or places. Second, it says that many of the most important ethical decisions are made, ideally, from a detached perspective, free of allegiances to some individuals over others.
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- Information
- The Limits of Loyalty , pp. 182 - 199Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007