Loyalty as rationality

"...if by rationality we mean simply the sort of activity which Walzer thinks of as a thinning-out process—the sort that, with luck, achieves the formulation and utilization of an overlapping consensus, then the idea that justice has a different source than loyalty no longer seems plausible.19 For, on this account of rationality, being rational and acquiring a larger loyalty are two descriptions of the same activity. This is because any unforced agreement between individuals and groups about what to do creates a form of community, and will, with luck, be the initial stage in expanding the circles of those whom each party to the agreement had previously taken to be “people like ourselves.” The opposition between rational argument and fellow feeling thus begins to dissolve. For fellow feeling may, and often does, arise from the realization that the people whom one thought one might have to go to war with, use force on, are, in Rawls’s sense, “reasonable.” They are, it turns out, enough like us to see the point of compromising differences in order to live in peace, and of abiding by the agreement that has been hammered out. They are, to some degree at least, trustworthy."

Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism: https://a.co/f3dN4r6