← Back to context

Comment by ashoeafoot

4 days ago

Yes, all of these things do not deserve loyalty. There are values i hold dear, if a philosophy or state holds on to the same values, i support them. If they turn away from them, no reason to be loyal.

8 comments

ashoeafoot

Reply
simpaticoder  4 days ago

Strictly speaking, a philosophy can't turn away from values. A person can, but philosophy itself is, to a first order approximation, an immutable bundle of values.

Of course this naive view quickly falls apart when interpretation comes into play, as it always must. In the extreme, one may assert that "philosophy" is encoded in the behavior of it's adherents, and these behaviors may have little or nothing to do with the "canonical" representation of the philosophy as immutable text. Or more precisely the behavior and words can be profoundly decoupled. Many examples of this decoupling occurs to your thought (and mine). So when you say that a philosophy can "turn away" from values, in this sense that is true.

I prefer to think of philosophies as a kind of Platonic ideal, which are then subject to all the foibles of the humans who associate themselves to them. There are some subtle problems with this view, which I'd rather not confront.

  • ashoeafoot  4 days ago

    Strictly speaking you are right. But words change meanings and philosophies get hijacked, deformed and loaded with barely affiliated concepts or movements.

    So the idea as it was might be a value, but what the word means may decay into something frankenstein wouldn't recognise as his handy work .

lo_zamoyski  4 days ago

Are you perhaps confusing loyalty to an incumbent regime with loyalty to a nation or people?

  • ashoeafoot  4 days ago

    A nation can change, a people can become corrupt, the values stay and if for example a democracy steered by corrupted peoples betrays itself, a democrat with values can just soldier on without getting into any loyalty conflict. A sadness for what has fallen may linger.

  • int_19h  4 days ago

    Not really. Have you ever heard a saying, "right or wrong, my country"? That's exactly the kind of toxic stuff that loyalty to entities leads to.

    • lo_zamoyski  3 days ago

      Your use of language is imprecise. What exactly is meant by "my country" here?

      We have the state; we have the ruling regime; we have the society in question. Who is this "country" that is right or wrong exactly?

      If the state, then in the abstract, it is authority without particular directive. So it can't be that.

      If the ruling regime, then it can undermine its own authority by demanding people commit evil deeds. But it is not betrayal to refuse to commit the evil deeds it demands. It is the ruling regime who betrays the society it rules by demanding evil. Remember: lex iniusta non est lex.

      If society, then we're talking about an aggregate and therefore mob "rule". But who cares what the mob thinks? The mob has no authority.

      Betrayal and loyalty can only be measured in relation to the objective good. I agree with you that "my country, right or wrong" might suggest something very evil, but to reject the suggested relativistic understanding of loyalty is not betrayal. You could interpret it differently: I am loyal to the good of my country, regardless of whether my country is in the right or in the wrong. And the good of my country might involve opposing an evil regime or standing up to the mob. That's true loyalty. Obedience to evil is false obedience and true betrayal.