In the main body of the book, I have avoided taking a stance on the most well-known ethical question that loyalty raises: the question of whether any impartialist, universalist moral theory can say the right things about how we can and should treat those with whom we share special relationships. I have made some claims that are relevant to the problem, though, and I want to finish by bringing them together.

Here, again, is the problem. Loyalty involves a deeply partial attitude; when you are loyal to something, you favor it because of its special relationship with you, and you (often) care about it for its own sake, not in order to follow some universal principle. But moral theories like utilitarianism and Kantianism seem to demand that we be impartial; they say that how an individual should be treated depends upon how he is inherently, not how he is related to you.

Sometimes, the lesson drawn is that we should reject universalist morality – or at least restrict its scope – and say that loyalties just do not need to be legitimated in external moral terms. The idea is that if you are loyal to something, then you are justified in acting as your loyalty demands (perhaps unless there is some overwhelming reason why you should not); there is no additional question to be asked about whether your loyalty is permissible or desirable.