Loyalty to Loyalty: Josiah Royce and the Genuine Moral Life By Matthew Foust

Author(s): Claudio Viale

Source: Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Winter 2013), pp. 117-
120
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/trancharpeirsoc.49.1.117
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 R E V I E W S Volume 49 Number 1
Matthew Foust
Loyalty to Loyalty: Josiah Royce and the Genuine Moral Life
New York: Fordham University Press, 2012. 236 pp., index.

In Loyalty to Loyalty: Josiah Royce and the Genuine Moral Life, Matthew
Foust richly examines the nature of a controversial virtue: loyalty. It is
well known that for Royce loyalty was not only a fundamental moral
concept but an anthropological one since, in his view, loyalty to a cause
allows individuals to become selves, creatures with unity of purpose in
life. However, this ground level of loyalty is not the only one existing
for him. Simultaneously to a particular cause one must adhere to loy-
alty to loyalty, a universal cause that is a moral obligation for each hu-
man being. Foust attempts to recover this dual aspect of the Roycean
conception of loyalty with the purpose of defending his contemporary
relevance and making a comparison between Royce’s philosophy and
the traditional versions of ethics: deontological, consequentialist and
virtue ethics.
Accordingly, the seven chapters of the book are grounded in the idea
that Royce’s conception of loyalty is relevant to the present. Taking the
words of McDermott’s introduction to Royce’s The Philosophy of Loy-
alty (McDermott conceives loyalty as a treacherous and ambivalent vir-
tue) Foust sustains that “if treachery connotes a lack of security and
ambivalence connotes a lack of clarity, we should indeed be impelled to
pay close attention to this virtue.” (2) Thus, denying that treachery and
ambivalence are vital features of loyalty is a necessary task for Foust’s
project. To carry out this task, in Chapter 1 he focuses on loyalty in
contemporary debates, particularly in the contraposition between loy-
alty as partial and justice as impartial. Chapters 2 and 3 refer to the
nature of loyalty and to the Roycean idea of loyalty to loyalty respec-
tively. Meanwhile, in chapter 4 Foust argues that learning loyalty, the
psychological aspect of morals, is relevant to Royce’s philosophical con-
ception against the recent statements of Dwayne Tunstall. After that,
chapter 5 deals with the relationship between loyalty and community,
emphasizing Royce’s idea of wise provincialism. Chapter 6 analyzes the
vital conception of disloyalty and links it with the Roycean conceptions
of grace and atonement. In chapter 7 Foust entertains the idea of
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 R E V I E W S Volume 49 Number 1 contemporary applications of loyalty. Finally, he concludes with some
pages dedicated to the need for loyalty.
There are several issues that are fundamental in order to analyze the
importance of this book, namely an accurate reconstruction of Royce´s
moral philosophy; the integration of Royce’s morals with other philo-
sophical traditions; and the relevance of Royce’s moral psychology to
moral philosophy, among others. In my view, however, there are two
that are essential: first, the idea that loyalty to loyalty is a genuine way
to make moral philosophy universalizable, entailing that this expression
is not a vacuous one; second, the importance of the redemptive charac-
ter of loyalty.
Regarding the first idea, chapters 2, 3, and the conclusion are cru-
cial. Foust accurately analyzes Royce’s preliminary description of loy-
alty as “the willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a
person to a cause” (34). Royce’s The Philosophy of Loyalty deals with this
notion of loyalty through the first eight chapters of the book until a
comprehensive definition of loyalty is given: “loyalty is the will to man-
ifest, so far as is possible, the Eternal, that is, the conscious and super-
human unity of life, in the form of the act of an individual Self.” (45)
In chapter 3 Foust develops two arguments regarding the plausibility of
the Roycean idea of loyalty to loyalty: first, that Royce’s loyalty to loy-
alty is right to the extent that it integrates the intuitions of what is cur-
rently called consequentialism, deontological and virtue ethics; second,
that loyalty should occupy a central role since virtues are crucial to
ethics. In his words: “Nonetheless, Royce insists, loyalty to loyalty is a
guide in the face of such ignorance, for “it now becomes the principle,
Have a cause; choose your cause; be decisive.” In other words: Decide,
knowingly if you can, ignorantly if you must, but in any case, have no
fear.” (52) Regarding Royce’s idea of a cause, Foust quotes his confer-
ence “Loyalty and Insight” where the definition of a cause is given: “. . .
And by cause I mean . . . some sort of unity whereby many persons are
joined in a common life.” (36) Though it is not a simple task, one can
accept that loyalty to loyalty can bring us a criterion through which our
moral problems can be solved.
A more fundamental issue, however, arises from Royce’s conception
of loyalty to loyalty: he entertains the idea that unity is a fundamental
moral category—for his conception of cause—and that when union is
broken, reconciliation is always possible. Thus, every single fact can
have its place (and meaning) in the Absolute. An example of this posi-
tion can be seen in Royce’s The Sources of Religious Insight when he re-
fers to the problem of evil:

And because they are often very deep and tragic ills [griefs], which we
face only with very deep and dear travail of spirit, they hint to us how,
from the point of view of a world-embracing insight, the countless and
118

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 terrible ills of the other sort [sorrows], which we cannot now understand,

R E V I E W S Volume 49 Number 1
and which, at present, appear to us merely as worthy of utter destruction,
may still have their places, as stages and phases of expression, in the larger
life to which belong (Royce 1940 [1912], 236, my italics).

Both ideas (unity and reconciliation) are central to both Royce’s

morals and Foust’s interpretation of it. Against this idea, I think that
Richard Bernstein is right when, inspired by Hannah Arendt, he sus-
tains that the Holocaust, for example, is an irreconcilable fact. In Ar-
endt’s terms: “Something happened there to which we cannot reconcile
ourselves. None of us can.” (Arendt, 1994: 134; quoted in Bernstein
2002, 1) and “After Auschwitz, it is obscene to continue to speak of evil
and suffering as something to be justified by, or reconciled with, a be-
nevolent cosmological scheme” (Bernstein 2002, 228).
Here one has to deal with two different Roycean issues: the idea of
loyalty to loyalty, as a universal criterion to be applied to concrete situ-
ations, on the one hand; and the idea that every single fact can be
reconciled through the creative action of community, on the other.
Foust refers to the last issue in some parts of chapters 6 and 7 following
Royce’s views. In other words: Foust adheres to two different theses
defended by Royce: loyalty to loyalty as a moral criterion, on the one
hand, and the idea of the healing or creative task of the community,
which implies that reconciliation is always possible. I think that the
latter is mistaken. In this point, and taking the name of Auschwitz in
a Bernsteinean way, I think that Royce’s moral philosophy can be seen
as trapped within two contradictory tendencies: a clear “pre-Aus-
chwitz” vein, on the one hand, and relevant aspects of his moral phi-
losophy, on the other. Regarding the first, despite his rejection of what
he calls external theodicy, Royce is still looking for a reconciliation
that Arendt (and Bernstein) accurately rejects. Thus, within this vein
of Royce’s thought, theodicy poses a threat. Meanwhile, a second ten-
dency refers to the significant aspects of Royce’s philosophy, particu-
larly considering his conception of evil: first, his emphasis on the
actuality of evil; second, his statement that evil is not totally intelligi-
ble; and third, his conception of the irrevocability of deeds and espe-
cially of evils.
Summing up, I think this book offers a precise reconstruction of
Royce’s moral conception and therefore it is a good contribution to the
growing literature on the American philosopher. My main criticism is
that the book remains too attached to Royce’s view and, consequently,
it fails to disclose some shortcomings that can be found in his
philosophy.
Claudio Viale
National University of Córdoba, Argentina
cmviale@gmail.com
119

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 R E V I E W S Volume 49 Number 1 REFERENCES
Bernstein, Richard. 2002. Radical Evil. A Philosophical Investigation. Cambridge,
MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Royce, Josiah. 1940 [1912]. The Sources of Religious Insight. New York, USA:
Charles Scribner’s Sons.

I would like to thank Rita Karina Plascencia for improving the English.

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