ABSTRACT
Reciprocal loyalty is implicit in almost all serious friendships. This chapter explores both friendship (mostly via Aristotle) and loyalty before investigating their connection more closely and then probing some of the limits to the obligations of loyalty that flow from their connection. Does loyalty in friendship sanction immoral acts and, if so, what, if any, moral constraints are there on acts of friendship and expressions of loyalty? Both loyalty, as an executive virtue, and friendship, as an element in a good life, are subject to moral limits even as they are expressive of our agential deference to a relational other.
