The Limits of Loyalty

We prize loyalty in our friends, lovers and colleagues, but loyalty raises difficult questions. What is the point of loyalty? Should we be loyal to country, just as we are loyal to friends and family? Can the requirements of loyalty conflict with the requirements of morality? In this book Simon Keller explores the varieties of loyalty and their psychological and ethical differences, and concludes that loyalty is an essential but fallible part of human life. He argues that grown children can be obliged to be loyal to their parents, that good friendship can sometimes conflict with moral and epistemic standards, and that patriotism is intimately linked with certain dangers and delusions. He goes on to build an approach to the ethics of loyalty that differs from standard communitarian and universalist accounts. His book will interest a wide range of readers in ethics and political philosophy.

• A good introduction to the different debates about the role of loyalty in ethics and politics • Contains the first extended philosophical discussion of disloyalty • Promotes debate about the ethics of patriotism and friendship

1. What is loyalty?; 2. Friendship and belief; 3. What is patriotism?; 4. Against patriotism; 5. Filial duty: debt, gratitude and friendship; 6. Filial duty: special goods and compulsory loyalty; 7. Is loyalty a value? Is loyalty a virtue?; 8. Communitarian arguments for the importance of loyalty; 9. Josiah Royce and the ethics of loyalty; 10. Disloyalty; Conclusion; Postscript: universal morality and the problem of loyalty.

\'Loyalty is at once a non-negotiable value and the root of much suffering. Coming to terms with this duality, Simon Keller argues in his timely and important. The Limits of Loyalty, requires that we recognize not one kind of loyalty, but a diversity of loyalties, some of which merit our allegiance, and some not. The result of this compelling reconsideration is a subtle and shrewd work of philosophical moral psychology, which will not only provoke unsettling reflection on the most vexing and indispensable of human relations - lovers, friends, family, and country - but also revivify central debates in philosophical ethics and political theory. It deserves to be widely resonant.\'

– John M. Doris, Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program, Philosophy Department, Washington University, St. Louis