Loyalty

Loyalty is faithfulness or a devotion to a person, country, group, or cause. Philosophers disagree on what can be an object of loyalty as some argue that loyalty is strictly interpersonal and only other human being can be the object of loyalty.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. The subject had received ""scant attention in philosophical literature"". 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"". He argued that such associations were, however, faulty, and that the notion of loyalty is ""an essential ingredient in any civilized and humane system of morals"". Kleinig observes that from the 1980s onwards, the subject gained attention, with philosophers variously relating it to professional ethics, whistleblowing, friendship, and virtue theory.