Loyalties, and Why Loyalty Should be Ignored

Criminal Justice Ethics

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 1993, Pages 36-42

  Ewin, R E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0010880112     PISSN: 0731129X     EISSN: 19375948     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0731129X.1993.9991937     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. G. Fletcher, Loyalty: An Essay On The Morality Of Relationships 5. (Bracketed numbers in the text refer to pages in Fletcher’s book.)
2. John 15:13.
3. For the theory of virtues underlying this, and for argument about whether a virtue must always be a good quality to have, see R.E. Ewin, Co-Operation And Human Values (1981)
4. Virtues And Rights: The Moral Philosophy Of Thomas Hobbes chs. 6 and 7 (1991).
5. Emmison & Western, Social Class and Social Identity: A Comment on Marshal et al., 24 Sociology, 247 (1990).
6. reported in 45 Ipa Review 8 (1992), note that Australians (identified by percentages) regard the following characteristics as very important in determining how they see themselves:
7. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1115ff., is generally accepted as the classic discussion.
8. I have discussed this briefly in Loyalty: The Police, 9Crim. Just. ETHICS, Summer/Fall 1990, starting on p. 11.
9. in more detail in Loyalty and Virtues, 42 Phil. Q. 403-19 (1992).
10. For a useful recent discussion of judgment, see C. Larmore, Patterns Of Moral Complexity ch. 1 (1987).
11. One might think that this is not so, and that a loyal Nazi, say, is at least better than a disloyal Nazi. I have discussed this sort of case in Loyalty and Virtues, supra note 9, especially 418.
12. Cf. my Virtues And Rights, supra note 6, ch. 7.
13. Cf. my Loyalty and Virtues, supra note 9, at 415-17.
14. That is to say, cases such as those of Blunt, Pollard, and Vanonu (see Fletcher, 41 ff) do have to be argued out.
15. Contra Fletcher, 43-44, a theory of loyalty will not do the job of marking off the good loyalties from the bad or the right objects of loyalty from the wrong.