The Moral Value of Communal Loyalties

CFS Lecture by Bernard Yack, Lerman Neubauer Professor of Democracy and Public Policy, Brandeis University, USA.

Abstract:

In the second lecture I defend the moral value of communal loyalties, as I have conceptualized them in the first lecture.  Communal loyalties, I argue, provide both a check on moral excess and an irreplaceable source of good will.  They figure prominently in a form of moral pluralism that is a familiar part of everyday moral life, but hard to find in the theories of moral philosophers.  This “positive” form of moral pluralism, unlike better-known “negative” forms that encourage us to accept moral disagreement, urges us to honor multiple and sometimes competing sources of moral value in our own lives.