ABSTRACT
War is a relationship among nations, and it requires impressive loyalty on the part of individuals. This chapter addresses the following questions: When is loyalty noble, and when is it stupid? When is loyalty moral and when just the opposite? How ought one to resolve a conflict between loyalty and morality? It offers material that is pertinent to each of these questions. The chapter considers the interesting analysis of loyalty by Andrew Oldenquist. Patriotism is one value among others, and in the moral economy where right conflicts with right, good with good, and the right with the good, some other value may transcend it. The sociobiologists might respond to E. A. Singer by pointing to the survival value of such patriotism. The familiar Hobbesian arguments for loyalty to the king must be understood as loyalty to an international king.
