In The Limits of Loyalty, Simon Keller makes a critical enquiry into “the nature of loyalty, and the ethical issues that loyalty raises” (viii). His questions are (1) what is involved in different forms of loyalty; (2) how different forms of loyalty should be regarded from an ethical point of view; and (3) what the ethical status of loyalty is as a general proposition. Throughout the book, he consistently argues that loyalty may be socially essential or functional to maintain group life but it is ethically speaking a fallible part of human life. Loyalty is too limited to be the foundation of morality (xi). Keller argues that “loyalty is not a value” and “loyalty is not a virtue” (144), and he concludes that loyalty “is not an essentially moral concept” (161). The constant underlying tone of the chapters in Keller's book is that loyalty can “be intimately linked with mistakes, dangers and delusions” (218).

In the first chapters of the book, Keller tries to formulate a definition of loyalty. He defines loyalty as “the attitude and associated pattern of conduct that is constituted by an individual's taking something's side, and doing so with a certain sort of motive: namely a motive that is partly emotional in nature, involves response to the thing itself, and makes essential reference to a special relationship that the individual takes to exist between herself and the thing to which she is loyal” (21). Keller then introduces his main thesis, namely, “that the norms of friendship can clash with epistemic norms” (27). Bearing this in mind, Keller provides a rich variety of illustrations of this clash. He points at the social ambivalence, paradoxes, contradictions, bias, moral dilemmas, and diversities of loyalties, which reveal the ambiguity of the concept of loyalty. Keller insists that “there can be good reasons not to be a good friend” (47) and “patriotism is certainly not a virtue, and is probably a vice” (52), because friends and patriots are, like parents, by their very nature biased.

After illustrating his thesis, in six chapters, on the moral limitedness of loyalty in the primary relations of friendship, patriotism, and family life, Keller points at the implications of his critique for the ethical status of loyalty. He articulates a well-written argument against communitarian scholars (his prime target is Alasdair MacIntyre), who, according to Keller, wrongly attribute moral significance to group loyalty as value or as virtue. Keller is at his best in the final chapters, in which he provides a scholarly interpretation of Josiah Royce's Philosophy of Loyalty and gives an insightful account on the meaning of disloyalty. Keller disagrees with Royce's argument that loyalty is the foundation of good moral thinking; yet, he is at pains to show that Royce, in contrast with his communitarian targets, is, in the last analysis, an “ethical universalist.” Loyalty requires “the light of eternal truth,” Keller cites Royce's words (193). Keller argues that ethical universalism can hardly be avoided in moral theory. And yet, to his merit, he adds a postscript to the book in which he argues that such impartialism is in itself not enough, as this moral alternative, at least in its liberal form, makes a biased “claim about human needs” (222). In other words, for Keller, the debate on loyalty is not concluded.

The Limits of Loyalty is a well-written, fascinating, thought-provoking, and unsettling book that certainly deserves to be read. It deserves to be read carefully, as a creative illustration of Keller's thesis. His thesis that friendship can conflict with “epistemic integrity” (145) is, in itself, ambiguous, upsetting, and shocking, if only because philosophy, even in modern times, has always been a passionate search for the union between truth and friendship through Socratic wisdom. By discrediting this union, Keller forgets the ancients, as well as philosophers and sociologists like Jacques Maritain, Leo Stauss, Eric Voegelin, Clinton Rossiter, and Edward Shils. If Socrates is the mythical personification of how the philosopher lives, then it should not be forgotten that the philosopher was always a good friend and an Athenian patriot. In Socratic terms, the search for truth, itself, is a joint intellectual activity of friends. The Socratic dialogues between friends are performed in the Athenian polis—a distinctive political community that cannot be preserved without patriotism. Keller's thesis, accordingly, upsets the philosophical enterprise. Like a sophist.

Though Keller's attempt to criticize loyalty as an ethical concept is admirable as it develops self-knowledge of our potential bias when we are engaged in community life, his critique is based on his own redefinition of primary bonds without which his argumentation cannot stand. More concretely, Keller redefines friendship, patriotism, and filial duty as loyalty to friends, loyalty to country, and loyalty or “a duty to be loyal” (95) to parents. Friendship, patriotism, and filial duty thereby lose much of their deeper or sacred meaning, since, originally, as a neo-Thomist like MacIntyre realizes, such things have been understood as manifestations of love: love of friends, love of country, and love of parents—a love (Plato's eros, the Christian agape) that is seen as higher than amour propre. Keller degrades friendship and patriotism. He redefines a friend as “someone with whom you enjoy spending time, whether she brings out the best or worst in you, and whether you (still) value the shared activities—drinking, perhaps, or snorkelling” (117). He recognizes patriotism as “standing during the national anthem, wearing your country's flag on your lapel or your backpack” (61).

Keller concentrates rather narrowly on contemporary scholarship in his own discipline. Thereby, he disregards political philosophy and related academic fields like sociology and classical studies that may have complemented his discussion and could have revealed how loyalty is essentially a political concept. A less narrow epistemic and more dialectical understanding of truth may have revealed that the world of pop culture—from which Keller borrows many of his illustrative examples—may actually be Plato's cave, a mistake, delusion, or untruth. Such critical notes, however, should not supersede the new impulses and creative insights that The Limits of Loyalty introduces in that great conversation of how and why we are meant to live the good life. That loyalty, as such, does not enable and inspire citizens to live such a life is far too important an issue to be disregarded.