Lecture 4: Loyalty and Conflicts of Interest

Issues of loyalty are often decided not on altruistic considerations, but on economic ones.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679): English philosopher who introduced the concept of competing loyalties. A mechanistic rationalist who believed that life

was simply the motions of an organism and man is by nature a selfishly individualistic animal constantly at war.

Josiah Royce: Early 20th-century Harvard theologian and philosopher who believed loyalty alone could be used as a single unifying ethical principle.

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