Daniel Malloy
Loyalty is like the Force: it has a light side and a dark side, and it surrounds and binds us all. Each of us, whether Jedi or Sith, Rebel or Imperial, is ensnared in a complex web of loyalties: to family, friends, and coworkers, as well as to institutions, governments, and countries. Each of these loyalties makes claims on us and places us under obligations.
On the light side, our loyalties bind us, turning mere groups of people into something more – families, communities, causes, and so on. Our loyalties tell us who we are and give us our place in the world. A human being without any loyalties is like Aristotle's man without a city – either a beast or a god, but not a man.1 Furthermore, our loyalties can inspire us to great acts. They can motivate us to do the right thing when we may be inclined otherwise. They can even motivate acts that go above and beyond anything that could be reasonably expected of us.
On the dark side, those same loyalties can trap us and restrict us. They can inspire us to awful acts in the names of those to whom we're loyal. They can incline us to do wrong when we wish to do right. Those who are completely loyal may be convinced to do anything.
It's thus hardly surprising that philosophers have never come to any sort of consensus about loyalty. Attitudes range from Josiah Royce's (1855–1916) belief that loyalty to “loyalty itself” is a sufficient basis for a system of ethics2 to Philip Pettit's contention that whatever value we place on loyalty is based on its ability to motivate people to immoral acts that favor us, nothing more.3 Philosophers can't even agree on what loyalty is, much less whether it's a good thing. I will argue that the value of loyalty itself is exaggerated, and that its true value is derived from other valuable personality traits.
The first question we confront is what exactly loyalty is. Is loyalty a moral concept, or simply a way of describing an emotional connection between individuals or groups? If it's a moral concept, is there a duty to be loyal? Or is loyalty a virtue of good character? In everyday speech, we treat it equally as both. We say that Lando should've been loyal to his friends instead of selling them out to the Empire, or that Luke was right to remain loyal to his friends rather than join the Emperor, implying that loyalty is a duty. But we also praise Chewbacca for his loyalty to Han over many years, implying that loyalty is a virtuous character trait.
One thing that's clear about loyalty is that it's relational: loyalty is always the loyalty of one thing to another. But what kinds of things can be loyal? And what kinds of things can they be loyal to? As to the first, a basic level of cognition and feeling seems necessary for something to be loyal. Han is loyal to the Millennium Falcon, but the Falcon is incapable of reciprocating. What basic level of cognition and feeling is required is subject to some debate, though. Whether, for example, a droid could be loyal would depend on answers to a variety of questions – starting with whether droids are sentient at all.4 Within the Star Wars universe, however, most of the on-screen characters, human and nonhuman, are the kinds of beings that can be loyal or disloyal. Certainly, no one would question Chewbacca's loyalty – not twice, anyway.
On the low end of the scale of cognition and feeling required for loyalty, we might consider pets. Although pets, particularly dogs, are often considered paragons of loyalty, they're actually too low on the scale of cognitive ability to be actually loyal. Consider Talon Karrde's pair of canine vornskrs, Sturm and Drang, from Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy. When Sturm or Drang disobeys Karrde, is it being disloyal? Hardly; it's just being a vornskr. And since no action on its part would be considered disloyal, it shouldn't be considered loyal either. It should be considered a vornskr, and kept well fed.
This test could likewise be applied to whether droids can be loyal. If a droid could act in a way we'd call disloyal, then a droid can also be loyal. But this test implies something controversial about loyalty: that acts of loyalty are voluntary. Josiah Royce claims that all loyalty is voluntary. Likewise, what George Fletcher calls our “historical self” – the past ties that forge our identities – has some influence over what we may be loyal to, but the choice is ultimately ours.5 On the other hand, Fletcher argues that at least some loyalties tied to our “historical selves” aren't voluntary but still impose obligations. I agree with Royce: the historical self provides the basic materials of our loyalties – it determines what we can be loyal to. But it doesn't determine what we will be or what we are loyal to. That determination is our choice, which may be more or less difficult depending on the context. What we align ourselves with is up to us, at least to an extent. Luke, for example, isn't a disloyal person because he feels no special attachment or loyalty to his home planet of Tatooine – telling Obi-Wan, “I'm never coming back to this planet again.” Despite being his home planet, Tatooine has no claim to Luke's loyalty.
But it's plain that the choice of what we're loyal to isn't completely unrestricted. When Grand Moff Tarkin threatens to destroy Leia's home planet of Alderaan unless she tells him the location of the Rebel base, she's caught between conflicting loyalties to Alderaan and the Rebel Alliance. What does it mean to be loyal to either of these? Alderaan is (was – sorry!) a planet, but also a people, a culture, a government, a history, a collection of traditions and customs, an ecosystem, and many other things besides. The Rebel Alliance is a cause, but it's also an organization, a collection of assets, and a group of people. In each case, it's legitimate to ask what the object of Leia's loyalty is.
Royce argues that loyalty is always loyalty to a cause. If Royce is right, then Leia's conflict is between her loyalty to the cause of Alderaan (the interests of her people and government) and the cause of the Rebel Alliance (the overthrow of the Empire). In her mind, it seems safe to say, the two were linked, until, as a prisoner of the Empire, she's confronted with the reality of the Death Star orbiting Alderaan. The idea that loyalty is always to a cause seems to limit it to being political in some fashion. Royce, though, defines “causes” broadly enough that essentially anything can be a cause: even lovers aren't really loyal to one another, but to the “cause” of their love.
Royce's analysis has been criticized for being too abstract.6 Perhaps, on the contrary, all loyalty is really loyalty to persons, whether individuals or groups. Andrew Oldenquist claims that Royce's notion of a cause fails to distinguish between a loyalty and an ideal. If Leia is committed to the ideal of freedom, then she's committed to it in all times and places. On the other hand, if she's committed to her home planet of Alderaan, that commitment is particular to her. She's loyal to it because it's her home planet. Luke, not even loyal to his home planet of Tatooine, can neither be loyal to Corellia, Alderaan, or Coruscant, because he has no connection to them.
This is how our historical selves limit the options for our loyalty. Loyalty is based not just on any sort of relationship but also on a connection the loyal person feels to the object of her loyalty. The things and people to which we can be loyal must be ours in order for our actions toward them to be based on loyalty, rather than just affection or general goodwill toward them.
Simon Keller has proposed a “thin” theory of loyalty, in which loyalty should be primarily understood in terms of motive. An action is motivated by loyalty if three conditions are met: it's at least partially emotional; it involves a response to the object of loyalty; and it's defined by reference to a particular relationship that the subject believes to exist between herself and the object.7
Consider Luke's decision to leave Dagobah and go to Bespin to try to rescue Han and Leia. It was a partially emotional, and not wholly rational, decision. The rational course of action would've been to complete his training so that he could defeat the Emperor and, as Yoda said, “honor what they fight for.” Instead, Luke left because he was pulled by his feelings for Han and Leia. The fact that it was Han and Leia who were in danger is important. Luke, being a good person, wouldn't want to see anyone hurt unnecessarily. But while he was training on Dagobah, many people were being hurt all over the galaxy. It was only the peril faced by his friends that could motivate him to action. He responded to their suffering, not because it was greater than others' or because they were more important, but because they're Han and Leia. They shared a particular connection with Luke: they were his friends.
What makes Keller's view unique is that it strips loyalty of moral content. Loyalty is an emotional connection, but not one that obliges us in any way. If Keller is correct, then the place of loyalty in morality can be limited solely to a tool for understanding the motivations behind certain actions. Let's look at the complex role that loyalty plays in motivating the actions of a particular group of Star Wars characters: the Sith.
The Sith represent an interesting paradox: in order for a Sith Lord to be loyal, she must betray. A Sith Lord – following Darth Bane's Rule of Two – who refuses to betray her master isn't a loyal Sith. But there are any number of reasons why an apprentice might not betray her master, and not all of them represent a betrayal of the Sith code. A Sith apprentice who defends her master's life, when she could just as easily kill him and assume the mantle of “master” herself, might do so for perfectly good Sith reasons. Similarly, not every Sith apprentice who betrays her master remains a loyal Sith. Vader's final betrayal of his master was also a betrayal of the Sith.
Perhaps discussing loyalty among the Sith puts too much strain on the concept of loyalty itself. Can a relationship founded on the idea that one party must eventually betray the other be a relationship of loyalty? Consider Anakin Skywalker and Darth Sidious. From the very day that Sidious took Anakin as his apprentice, the newly christened Darth Vader was plotting his master's downfall. After revealing his relationship to Luke, Vader's first thought is that they should unite and overthrow Sidious. Betrayal is built into Vader's relationship with his master, as it is in every Sith bond. The apprentice may be obedient to the master, but it would be a stretch to say that she is loyal. The apprentice's interest in the master is mostly in her own interest in the master's ability to teach her dark side skills. Once the master has fulfilled that purpose, the apprentice no longer has any use for him.
The betrayal of a Sith master by his apprentice, then, isn't a violation of loyalty, since you can't violate what doesn't exist. In fact, it remains an act of loyalty, provided the betrayal is based on proper Sith motivations, such as the desire for power. As Darth Bane's Rule of Two states, the role of the master is to have power, the role of the apprentice to crave it. The apprentice who kills her master to acquire power, as Darth Sidious did when he killed Darth Plagueis, or as Darth Vader proposed both to Padmé and to Luke, remains a loyal Sith: not to her master, but to the Sith itself. Betrayal of one's master involves loyalty to the master, not as a person, but as a member of the Sith Order.
And then there's the final betrayal by Darth Vader. In the end, Vader did what he'd been scheming since his Sith apprenticeship began: he turned on his master. But he also turned on the ideals of the Sith. His betrayal was motivated by un-Sithlike loyalty. That's the odd thing about the Sith – in order to be a loyal Sith, one can't be motivated by loyalty. Even betraying one's master out of loyalty to the Sith is to betray the Sith. The betrayal must be motivated by a craving for power, not by loyalty or principle.
It may seem that loyalty is a good thing. After all, Vader's betrayal of the Sith was motivated by loyalty to Luke and Leia, and it was the right thing to do. But remember that Vader also joined the Sith out of loyalty. Anakin Skywalker agreed to become Darth Sidious's apprentice out of loyalty to Padmé, in hopes of saving her life. We generally hold loyalty to be a good thing, but what if loyalty is misplaced? What if we are loyal to something we shouldn't be? Stormtroopers, for example, are supposed to be fanatically loyal; but does that make them good?
To begin with the most severe criticism, Philip Pettit argues that loyalty is either redundant or immoral. If I'm loyal to a person or cause insofar as it fits my morality, then loyalty is redundant – it simply tells me to do what my conscience has already told me. On the other hand, if my loyalty goes beyond my morality, then it makes me an accomplice to actions or causes I should consider immoral. Pettit's argument gets to the core of moral philosophers' discomfort with loyalty. Other critics of loyalty focus on its partiality.8 A central tenet of most moral theories is that we should judge and act impartially, without prejudice or bias. When Obi-Wan tells Yoda that he can't kill Anakin, who's like a brother to him, even after witnessing Anakin's betrayal of the Jedi, he's revealing his partiality toward Anakin despite the fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance.
Furthermore, similar cases should be treated similarly, without regard to one's personal connections or relations. But loyalty is a bias – a loyal person favors the thing to which she's loyal because of her particular relation to it. Imagine a scenario where Chewbacca has to choose between saving Han and saving a droid carrying a key piece of information for the Rebel Alliance. He can't save both. If he saves Han, he'll have lived up to the terms of his life-debt while possibly handing ultimate victory to the Empire. If he saves the droid, the Empire will surely fall. If it were anyone but Han, Chewie would certainly save the droid. But it's Han. So Chewie's loyalty to Han may prevent him from doing the right thing.
Loyalty can conflict with morality, and thus loyalty isn't always a good thing. However, there are reasons to think that we need loyalty. As Royce and Fletcher argue, being loyal is at the core of our identities, especially loyalties linked to our “historical selves.” In fact, loyalty may be a necessary condition for a moral life. Oldenquist contends that loyalty isn't so much a virtue or a duty, but is the condition for even being virtuous or having duties, insofar as they require us to first have a connection with a certain community. Only within a community can we be virtuous or owe duties – outside of it, there's no right or wrong.
We see acknowledgement of this viewpoint in the Sith tradition of taking on a new name with the title “Darth.” It's a common rite of passage for potential Sith apprentices to rid themselves of all connections to their past lives – to shed the loyalties of their former identities. Palpatine had to kill his family to become Darth Sidious. Anakin only became Vader after brutally severing his ties to the Jedi. But those connections are only part of loyalty. Boba Fett was connected to the Mandalorians, but only became loyal to them late in life when he took on the role of Mandalore.9 There's an act of will that turns a connection into a loyalty – and thereby obliges us to the object of that loyalty. It's thus easy to see why betrayal of any sort invites our unease. Even if a person were to betray a corrupt institution like the Empire, the act of betrayal itself would make her a constant object of suspicion. No one trusts a traitor, even if the traitor betrayed our enemies. The traitor has done something almost impossible to imagine ourselves doing: she's given up a part of who she is.
While conflicts between loyalty and morality are real and difficult, they're rare in comparison to conflicts between loyalties. These two kinds of conflicts aren't mutually exclusive, since a single decision can involve a conflict between distinct loyalties, or between loyalty and morality. Since we've already seen that morality isn't always our best guide when it comes to issues of loyalty, let's focus here on conflicting loyalties. They are, after all, plentiful in both Star Wars and everyday life.
Unfortunately, while philosophers acknowledge this problem, they have very little to offer by way of practical advice or guidance to resolve it. Royce argues that, when confronted with conflicting loyalties, we should be loyal to “loyalty itself.” What Royce means by this rather cryptic statement is that, in choosing between loyalties, we should opt for the one that strengthens the ability of others to be loyal to their respective causes. Since loyalty, according to Royce, is a central value in human life, we ought to act to preserve and enhance it wherever possible. If a Force-adept must choose between the light side and the dark side, the Jedi and the Sith, and feels equal loyalty to both, she has good reason to choose the light side because it encourages order and discipline without unduly interfering with the freedom to choose one's loyalties. The dark side, on the other hand, sows chaos and conflict and is, at least in Bane's line of the order, founded on betrayal. But in this case, loyalty needn't even enter into the decision. Simple morality can dictate the choice, without any reference to loyalty at all.
What should we do when the causes vying for our loyalty have equal claims? Consider the events that led to the Second Galactic Civil War in the Legacy of the Force series. At its start, there are competing sides in Corellia and the Galactic Alliance, each with what appear to be valid political claims. Corellia wishes to maintain a military for defense purposes, while the Galactic Alliance has called for disarmament. To complicate matters further, the Solo family is caught in the middle. Leia and the twins are loyal to the Alliance, while Han can't help but support his native Corellia. None of them can simply avoid the conflict. So we have a situation in which each member of the family has to choose between loyalty to family or to cause.
Unfortunately, Royce's loyalty to loyalty offers no guidance here. There seems to be no right decision for anyone involved. But since choosing between loyalties inevitably involves being disloyal to (if not outright betraying) the other, a better approach in thinking about conflicting loyalties might be to look at the morality of disloyalty and betrayal. It's a strange fact about discussions of loyalty that even those, like Keller, who think that it's not a moral concept still accept that disloyalty and betrayal are moral concerns.
Given evident conflicts between competing loyalties, or between loyalty and morality, it seems that betrayal and disloyalty of various sorts are not only inevitable but also commonplace. Our reactions to betrayal, however, are anything but commonplace. To be disloyal is generally treated as the worst of crimes. But why should that be? Some betrayals are certainly disastrous for the party betrayed – just think of Bane's betrayal of the Sith or Anakin's betrayal of the Jedi. In both cases, betrayal led to the near annihilation of the betrayed party.
But that's not always the case. Some betrayals inflict little to no damage on the betrayed and may even prove beneficial. Think of Darth Bane's later attempt to betray his apprentice, Darth Zannah,10 or Darth Teneberous's similar attempt to betray Darth Plagueis.11 In both cases, the betrayed party came out better for the confrontation, with Darth Zannah assuming the mantle of Sith master and Darth Plagueis acquiring Darth Venamis as a subject for his experiments. These are nevertheless viewed by the betrayed in the same way as more egregious betrayals. So, the wrongness of betrayal isn't simply found in the harm it does to the betrayed, because the betrayed isn't always harmed by disloyalty. But something is harmed: the relationship between the two parties. When a loyalty has been betrayed, it can never be returned to its original state. An act of betrayal may not destroy a relationship, but it will alter it inevitably and irrevocably.
These thoughts can guide us when confronted with conflicting loyalties. In a situation where I must betray one loyalty or another, I have to weigh the loyalties against each other. Several factors can be taken into account. First, are the loyalties equally obligating? Loyalty to family generally takes easy precedence, for instance, over loyalty to a sports team. Second, what would be the relative severity of each of the respective betrayals? If betraying A will lead to A's death, while betraying B will lead to B losing some money, then I should betray B. Third, assuming the loyalties are equally obligating and the harms caused by the betrayal are equally severe to the betrayed, are the loyalties of equal importance to me, or is preserving one worth sacrificing the other? Finally, connected to this last concern, I should consider the relative strength of the respective relationships involved in the conflicting loyalties. Some relationships are strong enough to withstand betrayals, while others aren't.
Judged by this measure, Lando's decision on Bespin to betray Han was the right one.12 If he hadn't done so, the Empire would've taken over Cloud City, subjecting all of its residents to the tender mercies of an Imperial military governor – and that's the best-case scenario! It's also conceivable that Lord Vader's annoyance would've taken the more direct form of simply blowing up Cloud City. Furthermore, Lando and Han's relationship was strong enough to cope with the betrayal – they're both scoundrels, and they both know it. They've double-crossed each other before and remained friends. On the way to Bespin, Han even admits that he doesn't entirely trust his old friend. He's just the best bet in a bad situation.
Loyalty, it seems, isn't very valuable. It can't resolve moral dilemmas for us, and in fact it creates more than a few of its own. Its usefulness in determining the correct course of action is negligible, in no small part because loyalty is just as likely to be felt toward bad causes and bad people as toward the good.
Still, there's an argument to be made that loyalty is valuable for the effect it has on its subjects. Loyal people seem to be better people all around than nonloyal people. Loyal people commit themselves to causes and to other people. They value the good of something other than themselves. Luke is disappointed when Han is “turning his back on” the Rebellion just before the Battle of Yavin, preferring to take his reward to pay off some old debts. When Han returns to save the day, Leia exclaims, “I knew there was more to you than money!” When Han's decision catches up with him and he falls victim to his unpaid debt to Jabba the Hutt, his friends risk everything to save him out of loyalty. Alternatively, the entire philosophy of the Sith is inimical to loyalty, and thus betrayal is the definitive act of a Sith.
Loyalty itself may not be all that good, but it represents a combination of other factors that generally are good. Commitment, dedication, and selflessness are all valuable traits for a person to have. This is why, where the Sith are incapable of loyalty, the Jedi are defined by it. Realizing that his friends were in danger, Luke could no more remain on Dagobah than Threepio could quit whining. To do so would've been to give up Luke's very essence, and that of the Jedi. When Yoda and Obi-Wan urge him to abandon his friends, it's out of their own sense of loyalty – not to Han and Leia, of course, but to the Jedi Order and all the friends they've already lost in the fight against the Emperor. Luke doesn't have those loyalties – there is no Jedi Order anymore for him to be loyal to. But his friends and his Rebel Alliance demand his loyalty.