Loyalty
It traces the word "loyalty" to the 15th century, noting that then it primarily referred to fidelity in service, in love, or to an oath that one has made.
In combination with six other virtues, which are Righteousness (義 gi), Courage (勇 yū), Benevolence, (仁 jin), Respect (礼 rei), Sincerity (誠 makoto), and Honour (名誉 meiyo), it formed the Bushido code: "It is somehow implanted in their chromosomal makeup to be loyal".
[4] In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus states, "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.
This he attributed to "odious" associations that the subject had with nationalism, including Nazism, and with the metaphysics of idealism, which he characterized as "obsolete".
However, he argued that such associations were faulty and that the notion of loyalty is "an essential ingredient in any civilized and humane system of morals".
Ladd himself characterizes loyalty as interpersonal, i.e., a relationship between a lord and vassal, parent and child, or two good friends.
The problem is that it then becomes unclear whether there is a strict interpersonal relationship involved, and whether Ladd's contention that loyalty is interpersonal—not suprapersonal—is an adequate description.
[12] John Kleinig, professor of philosophy at City University of New York, observes that over the years the idea has been treated by writers from Aeschylus through John Galsworthy to Joseph Conrad, by psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, scholars of religion, political economists, scholars of business and marketing, and—most particularly—by political theorists, who deal with it in terms of loyalty oaths and patriotism.
[9] Kleinig observes that from the 1980s onwards, the subject gained attention, with philosophers variously relating it to professional ethics, whistleblowing, friendship, and virtue theory.
[9] Ladd and others, including Milton R. Konvitz[16] and Marcia W. Baron,[14] disagree about the proper object of loyalty—what it is possible to be loyal to.
[14] She argues in her monograph, The Moral Status of Loyalty, that "[w]hen we speak of causes (or ideals) we are more apt to say that people are committed to them or devoted to them than that they are loyal to them".
He disagrees, however, with the notion that loyalties are restricted solely to personal attachments, considering it "incorrect (as a matter of logic)".
[17] Loyalty to people and abstract notions such as causes or ideals is considered an evolutionary tactic, as there is a greater chance of survival and procreation if animals belong to loyal packs.
[21] Stephen Nathanson, professor of philosophy at Northeastern University, states that loyalty can be either exclusionary or non-exclusionary; and can be single or multiple.
Thus, Nathanson argues, patriotic loyalty can sometimes rather be a vice than a virtue, when its consequences exceed the boundaries of what is otherwise morally desirable.
Wim Vandekerckhove of the University of Greenwich points out that in the late 20th century saw the rise of a notion of a bidirectional loyalty—between employees and their employer.
[24] So-called loyalty programs offer rewards to repeat customers in exchange for being able to keep track of consumer preferences and buying habits.
[28] In the Mahabharata, the righteous King Yudhishthira appears at the gates of Heaven at the end of his life with a stray dog he had picked up along the way as a companion, having previously lost his brothers and his wife to death.
[31] Humanists point out that "man inherits the capacity for loyalty, but not the use to which he shall put it... may unselfishly devote himself to what is petty or vile, as he may to what is generous and noble".
