Is Loyalty an Outdated Virtue?

 

We automatically assume loyalty matters and is a virtue. In this posting I will question this automatic assumption and will argue even if this true in the past it might not hold now. I have previously argued tact isn’t. Talk of loyalty comes easily to most of us but ease of use doesn’t make the assumption true. In practice we can only be loyal to certain kind of things. For instance it makes no sense to talk of being loyal to the humanity or being a loyal parent, parents are meant to be loyal naturally. I will argue that if we consider the sort of things we can loyal to then being a loyal x isn’t a useful term and in some contexts loyalty can be a vice rather than a virtue.

Let us accept that if someone has some virtue then she has a disposition to usually act in a way which helps her or others flourish, courage helps her and justice helps others. This is an incomplete definition but will serve our purposes here. Intuitively it seems to make sense to talk about a loyal friend. I will start by considering whether loyalty is a virtue by considering how loyalty and friendship are connected. Before doing so I must define loyalty and friendship. Loyalty can be roughly defined as a commitment to help someone or some cause achieve their aims. Friendship is more complicated. Basically friends care about each other but they do so for different reasons. According to Aristotle there are three types of friends. Friends who care about each other for erotic reasons, friends who care about each other because they are useful to each other and friends who care because they share aims and values. Friends of utility and those who share erotic purpose are fair weather friends and I will only consider the last sort as real friends. Friends share values and are committed to furthering their common aims, if they weren’t then these wouldn’t be aims or values. It should be noted that using this definition some people can be good friends even if they share bad values and have evil aims. Nazis can be friends. A good friend is someone is some who is good at furthering his friend’s aims. A loyal friend is one who is committed to furthering his friend’s aims. If we accept the above then adding the term loyal to f friend serves no useful purpose because friends by definition seek to further each other’s aims whenever possible. Adding loyalty to friendship does no work. A loyal friend is just a good friend. I would suggest that the same applies if we add loyalty to colleagues, team mates and causes. Colleagues and team mates have common aims which they seek to further whilst it would be nonsensical to say someone serves a cause if she doesn’t seek to further the aims of the cause. It might be concluded that in many contexts attaching ‘loyalty’ to someone does no useful work and is simply rhetoric and shouldn’t be considered as a virtue.   

I now want to consider some objections to the above conclusion. First an objector might argue that my definition of loyalty is an inadequate one. My definition focusses on the loyal person sharing the values and furthering the aims of the person or cause she is being loyal to. My objector might argue that these aims and values are the sub focus of loyalty and that the real focus should be on the person or cause involved. The aims and values only matter because they are the aims and values of the person or cause. I am reluctant to accept this conclusion for two reasons. First whilst it is possible to simply respect and accept human beings without referring to any aims and values this isn’t true of feeling positive affect for a person. Feelings of love, admiration and loyalty would seem to depend on the character of the person involved, on her aims and values. Even a Jane Austen heroine doesn’t admire her beloved simply because of his good looks and wealth, even if these help, she falls in love because of his values and sense of honour. It follows that we cannot be loyal to someone without reference to her aims and values.

Another argument can be used to counter my objector’s contention that we can be loyal to someone without reference to her aims and values. Even if this were possible we might question how we acquired our initial loyalty to someone or some cause, surely we must have had some reason to do so. Surely loyalty doesn’t just spring fully formed from thin air. We acquire loyalty because we admire a person or cause, loyalty based on admiration of someone’s beauty or the popularity of some cause would seem to be a shallow sort. Admittedly such loyalty is unconnected to aims and values but it gives no reason to further these. I would suggest that we can only acquire loyalty by admiring aims and values. I would argue that when we become friends, team mates or support a cause that we do so because of the aims and values and saying someone is a loyal friend or is loyal to a cause adds nothing and serves no useful purpose. At this point my objector might accept that aims and values matter in becoming loyal but continue to insist that loyalty is a meaningful idea. She might suggest that my defining of loyalty fails to consider persistence. Someone might become loyal to someone else because of his aims and values but even if his or the other’s aims and values change loyalty persists to a person or cause. She might suggest that it makes sense to talk about being a loyal friend because of the former congruence of aims and values. Once again I am reluctant to accept this objection. True friends share aims and values and once they cease to do so friendship dies as does the suggestion that loyalty can be based on persistence even if persistence matters. Political parties often demand loyalty when times are hard if the times are hard due to poor decision making or incompetence loyalty becomes an excuse for dishonesty.

At this point my objector might raise another argument against my contention that loyalty isn’t a virtue. She might argue that loyalty has a much broader domain than the one I’ve suggested. She might argue that we can be loyal to entities which don’t have particular any aims or values. Entities such as families, tribes and football teams. However being loyal to an entity without any aims isn’t always virtuous. A racist might be loyal to his race and a misogynist to the patriarchy. Such loyalty is a vice rather than a virtue. Nonetheless are there some things without any aims for which being loyal to is a virtue? Perhaps, I admit that the way I’ve used the term loyalty is incomplete.  Let us accept that it matters when we are loyal as well as how we are loyal. Being loyal in easy times is easy and doesn’t matter much. Perhaps loyalty only matters in hard times. It also matters why times are hard. For instance shielding a family member who is a killer isn’t acting virtuously.  Perhaps also being loyal to such entities requires a narrowing of our domain of moral concern. In the twenty first century do we really want loyal to a class or tribe, class traitor would seem to be an outdated idea. In conclusion I would suggest that in most cases using the term loyalty does no useful work because loyalty is already baked into the concept. A loyal friend is just a friend. Friendship incorporates the same characteristics as loyalty. Perhaps loyalty was an important virtue in ancient times but its importance has dwindled as our moral domain has expanded and  we can't restore its former importance without restricting this domain  again something I would be reluctant to contemplate.

Afterthoughts. loyalty is vital to tribes, clans and monarchies if l loyalty is outdated are these outdated? it might be objected that loyalty remains essential to families. loyalty to a murderer, rapist or even a liar?