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Unflagging Devotion
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10620 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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7 / 1993 |
3,617 Words |
| Author
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Jerome J. Hanus
Jerome J. Hanus is professor of government at the American
University in Washington, D.C., and is the author of The
Nationalization of State Government and the coauthor of the
forthcoming book Choosing Schools: Vouchers and American
Education (American University Press). |
LOYALTY
An Essay on the Morality of Relationships
George P. Fletcher
New York: Oxford University Press, 1993
211 pp., $21.00
Most people experience crosscutting loyalties or allegiances routinely as they go through life. Usually they deal with such mundane situations as trying to be in two places at the same time: "It's four o'clock and I am supposed to pick up little Johnny at school but a client has just called, and this is the only time that she can meet with me." We usually handle these situations without great qualms of conscience, and no sense of shame is left in the wake of our decision. But, every once in a while, we encounter more serious conflicts that trouble our consciences, and the aftermath of the decision continues to haunt us, perhaps for life. In politics, it may be reflected in the question of supporting or not supporting a government policy that is quite likely to be associated with a moral evil. The challenge to us may be phrased rather crudely in the form of a popular cliché such as "America, Love It or Leave It," or we may be reminded of Samuel Johnson's aphorism, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
While the great questions of war and peace and justice are first encountered through history texts, there are other more personal relationships that can give rise to heart-wrenching decisions. Emigrants must face the fact that they are cutting themselves off from the culture that helped to make them what they are; a child is called upon to decide with which of his divorcing parents he wants to live; my religion may call upon me to disavow the life-styles of colleagues that I otherwise respect. The questions of personal commitments--George Fletcher calls them interpersonal loyalties--are difficult to resolve once we recognize that people are not mere automatons acting on the basis of pure rationality.
Fletcher, a law professor at Columbia University, found himself reflecting upon the concept of loyalty when he ran into a minor problem with a guard at the Canadian border upon returning to the United States after a business trip. But his interest in the concept was also catalyzed by a reconsideration of his past liberal attitudes. Ten years ago, he tells us, "At the very minimum, I would have taken an ethic of loyalty to smack of the rhetoric of anti-communist fanaticism, McCarthyism, and all the excesses that defined the enemies of free thought as I was coming of age." Today, he finds himself much more
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