19–20). As a cause it is something that transcends the individual, "an eternal reality." Apart from familiar metaphysical and logical objections to this concept of a superpersonal reality, this view has the ethical defect of postulating duties over and above our duties to individual men and groups of men. The individual is submerged and lost in this superperson not only ontologically but also morally, for it tends to dissolve our specific duties and obligations to others into a "superhuman" good.
Opposing the idealistic position is the view, characteristic of social atomism (empiricism or utilitarianism, for example), that denies any distinctive status to loyalty on the grounds that metaphysically there can be no such superpersonal entity to serve as its object. Insofar as the concept of loyalty has any validity at all, it reduces to other kinds of relations and dispositions, such as obedience or honesty. Most empiricists are inclined to agree with David Hume, however, that loyalty is a virtue that holds "less of reason, than of bigotry and superstition."
Thus, it is generally assumed that we must either accept the notion of a superperson or some other abstract entity as the object of loyalty or reject the notion of loyalty altogether as founded on an illusion.
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