Values and Personal Identity

    Josiah Royce, a classic American philosopher writing around the turn of the twentieth century, argued that values are basically the property of social groups. As a member of a group, we can share the standards of that group: its sense of excellence, of moral right and wrong, of the relative value of goods. Royce rejected the idea that an individual could adequately, or consistently, formulate his or her values because as an individual one can base values only on desires, yet desires are fickle, changing with mood. If we base our values on our desires, we lose stability in our lives and become, in effect, the servants of our own emotions.   Top

Philosophy of Loyalty

    Royce argues that a person is defined by his or her pursuits -- we are what we consistently and seriously do -- but for pursuits to have stability, they must go beyond individual desire. Stable standards and a stable sense of personal worth come when a person loyally pursues some cohesive group activity. Royce insists so strongly that values and standards come from group identification that he calls his moral theory the philosophy of loyalty. Once we are loyal and dedicated to the goals of a stable social enterprise, we can adopt an objective and more or less permanent set of standards: the standards of the group.
    People do get values from the religions they join or from professions they adopt. Students and teachers accept the standards of their pursuits, as do police officers and accountants. People are members of a nation, of a culture and a subculture, and we may adopt values consistent with loyalty to those groups.   Top

Loyalty to loyalty

    Being loyal gives security and definition to a life, provides ready-made standards, and ways to influence those standards. But Royce faces a problem. Often different loyalties cause conflict and instigate hostile and sometimes warring camps, as we see around us every day. Since loyalty is a value for Royce, acting in a way that is destructive of someone else's loyalty is a disvalue. Royce answers this problem with his notion of loyalty to loyalty. We should act so as to preserve, enhance, and defend the right of everyone to adopt his or her sense of loyalty. Socially speaking, we should adopt laws, and political and social structures, that defend and enhance the mutual adoption of loyalties.  Top

Royce and W.E.B. DuBois

    W.E.B. DuBois, one of America's greatest African-American intellectual and social leaders, a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the founding editor of The Crisis, and author of many books, including The Souls of Black Folk and Dusk of Dawn, was a student of Royce at Harvard. Before Royce published his philosophy of loyalty, DuBois published a call to racial loyalty in a pamphlet, "The Conservation of Races." He argues that each race has a unique cultural mission; through the contribution of each, human ability and achievement is enhanced. His position, written over century ago, was an attempt to support unique cultural standards for the enhancement of all. Since DuBois believed that racism stemmed from ignorance, he thought that racism would be diminished by knowledge of the achievements of others.
    DuBois and Royce are examples of people who believe that values are bound up with social group identity. Nevertheless, both thought that some common values were needed to ensure against mutual hostility, and to secure social support for effective group membership. Royce found that support in loyalty to loyalty, while DuBois found it in mutual knowledge. DuBois eventually rejected his early confidence in knowledge, and turned to social activism and to attempts at economic development because he came to believe that knowledge was not as effective as he previously thought. He eventually believed that social power and social laws are required to insure against mutually conflicting loyalties.
    DuBois, Royce, and multiculturalists face a similar problem: in a pluralistic society, we are influenced by members of many groups simultaneously. If group identity gives us consistency and purpose, then the membership in many groups, with different standards, will throw us back to our own sense of value and culture. A common sense of loyalty to loyalty is not enough to keep us from being set adrift in competing standards: family versus profession, group versus nation, nation versus world community. A sense of common values within plural commitments needs to be more firm, more structured, than either DuBois, Royce, or the multiculturalists suggest. The question is, how do we get those shared values?  Top