VII
It is odd that, despite the important role loyalty has
played in the religious, moral, and political life of men
over the centuries, only one philosopher has given the
concept serious and sustained study; namely, Josiah
Royce, one of America's half-dozen leading philoso-
phers, in The Philosophy of Loyalty (1908). Royce saw
in loyalty “the heart of all the virtues, the central duty
amongst all duties.” He made “loyalty to loyalty” the
categorical imperative, “the central spirit of the moral
and reasonable life of man” (p. 118).
Royce defined loyalty loosely as “the willing and
practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to
a cause.” His description of loyalty to a cause is remi-
niscent of the biblical commandment to love God:
something that “appears to you worthy to be served
with all your might, with all your soul, with all your
strength.” For the loyal man, his cause provides an
answer to the question: “For what do I live?” Loyalty
tends “to unify life, to give it centre, fixity, stability.”
The cause becomes one's conscience, and unifies one's
ideals and plans. Against his cause a man can contrast
his transient and momentary desires.
Royce recognizes the fact that there may be loyalty
to an evil cause, and also that men's loyalties may
conflict. The principle of loyalty to loyalty provides
a solution, according to Royce: in choosing his cause
a man should choose one that will further, rather than
frustrate, the loyalties of other men, as well as his own
multiple loyalties. Accordingly, “Murder, lying, evil
speaking, unkindness, are all... simply forms of dis-
loyalty,” and a cause is predatory when it lives by
overthrowing the loyalties of others; it is an evil cause
when it involves “disloyalty to the very cause of loyalty
itself.” Again reminding us of the biblical view, Royce
notes that “speaking the truth is a special instance of
loyalty,” and that “Justice means, in general, fidelity
to human ties in so far as they are ties” (p. 138).
As leading philosopher in the neo-Hegelian school
of idealistic thought in the United States, Royce natu-
rally developed his ideas with an eye on the role of
loyalty in the spiritual unity or the Absolute in which
all values are preserved; but a discussion of this aspect
of his thought, which involves also his notion of com-
munity as developed in The Problem of Christianity
(1913), would take us beyond the scope of our under-
taking. Let us note, however, that the compulsion of
his system of thought to experience ever higher levels
of meaning, pushing one's life “to get into unity with
the whole universe,” points in the direction of the Stoic
belief that in some way the world is a state with a
common law that binds all men as fellow men in a
common loyalty.
