Comments on: Loyalty Is Not a Virtue

By: BHodges

BHodges — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:05:55 +0000

Loyalty is a virtue with an asterisk.

By: John Doe

John Doe — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 21:56:09 +0000

This is a really interesting concept. I do find a few holes in it however.
I will take just the instance of a convert needing to be disloyal to his or her former religion, thus proving that disloyalty is not a vice. Is that person indeed being disloyal to their old way of life? Well, perhaps, but I see it more so as they have found a new purpose to life, God, and following Christ, and that is where their new loyalty, with much clearer vision lies.
When considering loyalty and virtue it is very important to look at both ends of the spectrum.

By: Chris H.

Chris H. — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:07:13 +0000

“love my family, but between my loyalty and alligience to my family, my alligience to Christ is much more important.”

I understand where you are coming from. At the same time, I find this sentiment horribly disturbing.

By: John Doe

John Doe — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:23:24 +0000

I’m of a mind that loyalty is a virtue. But like so many virtues it is contingent on our priorities. I’m very loyal to my brother for example. But if my brother committed a serious crime and asked me to cover up his actions, my loyalty would be superceeded by another value: honoring and obeying the law. Loyalties are very important, and I think that we would all want to have friends and family memebers who would be loyal to us in times of distress. But we have priorities too. I am also a Christian, and, as sited above, Jesus said that those who love family more than Him are not worthy of him. I love my family, but between my loyalty and alligience to my family, my alligience to Christ is much more important. So I think that the real question is how do we decide which loyalties are worth our alligience and which have to take second place?

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:00:49 +0000

Personally, I have to disagree, Geoff. I do think Loyalty is a virtue and an important one at that. One of our main purposes is to learn to be Christlike, and the way I read the scriptures, I see Christ as a very loyal person (see for example, Matt 28:20). Now, perhaps we are splitting hairs or playing with definitions, but that is the way I see it. As has been said before, like any virtue, it can naturally be twisted to unhealthy (and unChristlike) ends. Being generous is a virtue, but, as Elder Nelson says, it needs to be done "In the Lord's Own Way." It's not so much a matter of Loyalty not being a virtue because it can be used to motivate immoral actions. Any single virtue can be used to motivate immoral actions, if implemented while ignoring the other virtues. Virtues mus be taken as a whole, grown together, not independently nor one at a time. Whenever a single virtue is isolated, taken by itself, and placed on some sort of pedestal as the only virtue that needs to be considered, it can, with very few exceptions, easily lead to some very immoral acts. Loyalty is a virtue. The fact that some people have used it to motivate immoral actions does nothing to affect that.

By: jmb275

jmb275 — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:55:29 +0000

Great post Geoff. Actually, I think I had been slowly coming to this realization but had not quite made it this far or been able to articulate it this nicely. It has been clear to me for a while now that there is nothing special about being loyal aside from the fruits that may result from it.

I suppose this is why I have no problem analyzing the church, or its leaders. It’s not that I am disloyal, but rather that I want to do what’s right even if it means calling out the bad while praising the good.

By: Geoff J

Geoff J — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:31:58 +0000

Mark,

I don’t think your examples of loyalty pre-empting higher virtues work. I’ll address them.

there are cases where kindness to others (as in concern for their welfare) may motivate someone to break a confidence.

This sounds like higher virtues trumping loyalty, not the other way around.

In the name of kindness, you might leak this news to the customer.

Yet the employee probably has a contractual agreement to not injure the company so there is more than loyalty at play. Plus the employee might be leaning on kindness toward the company or fellow employees. So this example is pretty flimsy.

The same basics apply to the legally-required sort of “loyalty” an attorney shows. Those sorts of things are probably more an issue of integrity and fidelity to contracts, oaths, and covenants associated with the role; all of which would trump personal loyalties.

By: kristen j

kristen j — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:39:31 +0000

Darn! I wish I had tickets for this summer’s “Kickspit Underground Rock Festival”. See comment 41.

By: Mark D.

Mark D. — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:50:31 +0000

Jacob, there are cases where kindness to others (as in concern for their welfare) may motivate someone to break a confidence.

Admittedly, this particular combination does not occur very often with marital confidentiality, but it is common with other forms of confidentiality. Suppose someone is about to purchase a very expensive computer system from your employer. Meanwhile you know that there is a much improved model coming in a couple of months, but it hasn’t been announced yet.

In the name of kindness, you might leak this news to the customer. But it is the sort of thing that is a breach of confidence in this case, because of all the bad things that might happen if models are announced prematurely. Sales might stop, the company could get in financial trouble, go out of business, the new model might be delayed, the companies reputation might be injured, and so on.

Conflicts between kindness to third parties and attorney client privilege happen all the time too. What if your client really is in the wrong and you can save a third party an enormous amount of pain and heartache (if not financial loss) by disclosing privileged information? If there wasn’t such a rule, why would anyone who had done anything wrong (or didn’t know whether they had done something wrong) trust an attorney to represent them?

By: Jacob J

Jacob J — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:03:53 +0000

Mark,

I think your comparison to rule consequentialism is a good one. However, I am not clear on how those examples you provided illustrate loyalty pre-empting kindness, or compassion, or any other higher virtue. The examples you gave are not situations I have thought deeply about, so I may be easily persuaded I am wrong, but my first impression is that these are cases where we enforce by law an obligation of confidentiality which goes well beyond what would really be best if all people involved could be trusted to behave according to the higher moral virtues.

Laws often overstep the bounds we’d like them to specifically because it is impossible to legislate the exceptions. The reason we cannot legislate the exceptions is due both to our inability to formalize morality in rule form and also the fact that people will maliciously look for ways to exploit, twist, and evade the meaning of the words we write to capture the exception. Thus, using examples from fiduciary obligations seems like a bad way to go since they are guaranteed to be a crude shadow of the real moral law adapted to the policing of the immoral.

Is there an example where marital confidentiality trumps kindness that I’m not thinking of?