Loyalty

NOMOS LIV

Sanford V. Levinson, Paul Woodruff, Joel Parker

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780814737897
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Few topics are more ubiquitous in everyday life and, at the same time, more controversial in practice, than that of one’s moral obligation to loyalty. Featuring essays by scholars working in a variety of subjects from law to psychology, Loyalty presents diverse perspectives on dilemmas posed by potential conflicts between loyalties to specific institutions or professional roles and more universalistic conceptions of moral duty. The volume begins with a philosophical exploration of theories of loyalty, both Eastern and Western, then moves to examine several problematic situations in which loyalty is often a factor: partisan politics, the armed forces, and lawyer-client relationships. A fair and balanced analysis from a wide range of disciplinary and normative viewpoints, Loyalty infuses new life into an oft-tread avenue of scholarly inquiry. Contributors: Ryan K. Balot, Paul O. Carrese, Yasmin Dawood, Bernard Gert, Kathleen M. Higgins, Sanford Levinson, Daniel Markovits, Lynn Mather, Russell Muirhead, Nancy Sherman, Paul Woodruff

PART I
CONCEPTIONS OF LOYALTY

1
LOYALTY AND MORALITY

BERNARD GERT

I am interested in exploring the relationship between “loyalty” and “morality” in what I take to be the most common senses of these terms. If I am correct that these are the most common senses of these terms, then my exploration may have important results, but even if I am not correct about this, the senses that I take to be the most common are still ordinary senses, and so the results should be of some interest. In order to present a clear account of the relationship between loyalty and morality, it is necessary to provide a clear account not only of loyalty but also of morality. Given the very different views about the relationship between loyalty and morality, it might be thought that there must be significant disagreements about the nature of loyalty; however, these different views about the relationship might be due to significant disagreements about the nature of morality. Regardless of the source of the disagreements, the views about the relationship between loyalty and morality can be put into three categories: (1) loyalty and morality are always incompatible, (2) loyalty and morality are never incompatible, and (3) loyalty and morality are sometimes incompatible.

LOYALTY

The Oxford English Dictionary provides two definitions for the term “loyalty”: (1) “Faithful adherence to one’s promise, oath, word of honour, etc.” and (2) “Faithful adherence to the sovereign or lawful government.” Thomas Hobbes would claim that the first definition entails the second, for he holds that everyone has promised to obey the sovereign. However, the dictionary does not provide an account of the most common use of the term “loyalty,” which does not limit faithful adherence to the lawful government but includes faithful adherence to any group of which one is a member. Of course, this includes faithful adherence to one’s country, but it also includes faithful adherence to much smaller groups, such as one’s colleagues, fellow doctors, lawyers, or policemen. It also includes faithful adherence to a company for which one works. People even talk of brand loyalty, but this is clearly a marginal and parasitic sense of “loyalty,” and I shall not be concerned with it at all.

A serious problem with this more common and inclusive account is the unclarity of the phrase “faithful adherence.” While it is clear what “faithful adherence to one’s promise” means, namely keeping one’s promises, and “faithful adherence to the lawful government” can simply mean obeying the law, it is not clear what “faithful adherence” means when talking about loyalty to a group that consists of one’s colleagues. Rather than talking about faithful adherence to a group, I think it clearer to regard loyalty to a group as involving acting in a way that shows that one regards its members as warranting more consideration than people not in the group. Particularly important is that someone who is loyal to a group regards avoiding or preventing harm to members of the group as more important than avoiding or preventing similar harm to people not in the group. Loyalty to a group does not seem to require acting to further the interests of the group or its members. Such action seems to go beyond what most hold that loyalty requires, although it would certainly show loyalty to a group to promote its interests.

Loyalty requires an individual to be willing to make some significant personal sacrifices to avoid causing harm to the group or to prevent or relieve harm suffered by members of the group. However, it is a matter of controversy whether loyalty to a group requires a refusal to harm the group or a willingness to prevent or relieve harm to members of the group when this involves causing greater harm to others not in the group. People sometimes cite as examples of disloyalty actions that involve doing something, such as snitching or whistle-blowing, that harms the group or some of its members, even though failure to take the action in question would result in greater harm for those not in the group. Members of a group may even be urged to show loyalty by acting to prevent harm to the group or its members, for example, not only by refusing to testify but also by lying, when this not only involves breaking a moral rule, but also involves a significant risk of greater harm to those not in the group. Although loyalty requires one to act as if harm suffered by members of one’s group is more important than harm suffered by people who are not members of one’s group, it is controversial whether loyalty requires harming others or violating commonly accepted moral rules.

There is another significant kind of loyalty that might be called “professional loyalty.” This is the kind of loyalty that lawyers owe to their clients and is the kind of loyalty that was the primary focus of one of the essays presented at the NOMOS meeting on loyalty.¹ Lawyers have a duty of loyalty to their clients; the code of ethics for lawyers requires that they be zealous advocates for their clients. Accountants, engineers, and physicians also have duties of loyalty to their clients or patients; however, lawyers’ duties of loyalty to their clients have attracted far more attention than the duties of loyalty of other professions. This may be due to the fact that the duties of loyalty of lawyers seem not only to allow but also sometimes even to require that they violate moral rules prohibiting deception and harming others. However, this moral controversy concerning the limits of professional loyalty is best thought of as a conflict between what is required by one’s professional duty, regardless of whether it is a duty of loyalty, and what is prohibited by other moral rules. Professional loyalty may be an instance of the first definition of “loyalty,” “faithful adherence to one’s promise, oath, word of honour, etc.,” consistent with definition quoted on page 3, but it is not an example of the kind of loyalty that I take to be what is most commonly meant by “loyalty.” I shall not be concerned with it when I investigate the relationship between loyalty and morality.

Insofar as loyalty requires only personal sacrifice in order to avoid harming the group or to prevent harm to the group, no one takes loyalty to conflict with morality, and I shall not be concerned with this aspect of loyalty. In this chapter, I shall be concerned only with that aspect of loyalty to a group that involves acting as if harms suffered by members of the group to which one is loyal are more important than harms suffered by those not in the group. It is because loyalty involves taking the harm suffered by members of the group to which one is loyal as more important than the harm suffered by those not in the group that loyalty seems to conflict with the impartiality required by morality. Loyalty to a person’s group may involve her spending time and effort aiding members of her group when, with that same investment of time and effort, she could prevent and relieve far more harm for people not in her group. Loyalty to a fellow doctor may involve failing to report his problems to the appropriate authorities even though one knows that several patients will die or suffer serious injuries they would not suffer if this physician were no longer allowed to practice. It is because loyalty seems to require these kinds of behavior that some hold that loyalty and morality are incompatible.

Acting as if harm suffered by one’s group or its members is more important than harm suffered by those not in one’s group is not acting out of loyalty if one acts in this way because one is motivated by fear or greed. A person who acts as if harm suffered by his group or its members is more important than harm suffered by those not in his group, but only because he fears retaliation from his group or its members if he does not, is not acting out of loyalty to that group. Also, someone who acts as if harm suffered by his group or its members is more important than harm suffered by those not in the group only because he is paid to act in that way is not acting out of loyalty to that group. A gang member may act as if he is loyal to his gang, but, if he acts loyally only because he fears retaliation from the gang, he is not acting out of loyalty. A hired killer may act as if he is loyal to those who hired him, but, if he acts in that way only because they are paying him more than others would, he is not loyal to that group. A test of loyalty is whether, when one refuses to harm the group or its members or acts to prevent harm to the group, one would still act in that way if one believed that no one knew or would find out how one was acting. Another test of loyalty is whether one would refuse to harm or act to prevent harm to a group even if so refusing or acting would carry significant personal costs.

Although fear and greed may result in behavior toward the group that is indistinguishable from genuine loyalty, they do not count as motives for loyalty. Motives for loyalty must not depend upon beliefs about the consequences for oneself of showing loyalty. However, gratitude, that is, a belief or feeling that one has benefited in significant ways from being a member of that group, is a proper motive. A person who is loyal can believe that he will continue to benefit from being a member of the group, but, if it is only this latter belief that motivates him, he is not loyal. In order for his loyalty to count as genuine, his primary motive for loyalty must be gratitude for past benefits; his belief about future benefits cannot be the primary motive for his actions. But gratitude is not the only motive for being loyal. A person may also be loyal because he has come to bond with other members of the group, to regard them as similar to family members. This kind of bonding often occurs when people face significant and recurring dangers together, as with members of the same gang. As indicated earlier, members of a biological family often develop the kinds of bonds that result in their being loyal to the family and its members.

Loyalty can also result from sharing common religious beliefs, from being citizens of the same country, or from belonging to the same race or ethnic group. People can even feel loyalty to the company for which they work. Although this may involve gratitude for the benefits of working for that company, it may simply come from a feeling of belonging to something like a family that works together to achieve common goals and results. Similar reasons may prompt loyalty to people involved in some task, especially when this involves cooperating in facing serious risks of death or injury, as with firefighters, police, and soldiers. People can also feel loyalty to members of the same profession, for example, doctors to other doctors and lawyers to other lawyers, simply because they identify with others in their profession. People may identify so deeply with their profession that they want to protect it and all members of it from anything that might damage the profession. However, it may simply be that one feels a bond to other members of the same profession in the same way that firefighters, police, and soldiers do.

The motives for genuine loyalty to a group must be motives that are sufficient for the person to be loyal in situations where they believe that no one will know how they are behaving. A person need not consciously believe that harms to the group or members of his group are more important than similar harms to people not in the group; he need only act as if he believes this when people in his group are at risk of harm. It is not surprising that many people value loyalty and regard it as a virtue, for everyone is a member of some group toward which loyalty is appropriate and so benefits from the loyalty of other members of the group. Loyalty is similar to morality in that both often give rise to hypocrisy. Even if one does not act morally oneself, one is likely to encourage moral behavior in others; likewise, even if one is not loyal oneself, one is likely ...