80-606: The Green Knight is a figure in Arthurian romance. Green Knight or The Green Knight may also refer to: Green Knight The Green Knight ( Welsh : Marchog Gwyrdd , Cornish : Marghek Gwyrdh , Breton : Marc'heg Gwer ) is a heroic character of the Matter of Britain , originating in the 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the related medieval work The Greene Knight . His true name
160-680: A Middle French narrative embedded in the anonymous First Continuation of Chrétien de Troyes ' Perceval, the Story of the Grail , another similar challenge is issued. In this story, a notable difference is that Caradoc's challenger is his father in disguise, come to test his honour. The French romances La Mule sans frein and Hunbaut and the Middle High German epic poem Diu Crone feature Gawain in beheading game situations. Hunbaut furnishes an interesting twist: Gawain cuts off
240-603: A disloyalty to an object if one of those loyalties is exclusionary , excluding one of the others. However, Nathanson observes, this is a special case. In the general case, the existence of multiple loyalties does not cause a disloyalty. One can, for example, be loyal to one's friends, or one's family, and still, without contradiction, be loyal to one's religion, or profession. In addition to number and exclusion as just outlined, Nathanson enumerates five other "dimensions" that loyalty can vary along: basis, strength, scope, legitimacy, and attitude: Nathanson observes that loyalty
320-466: A penitent . The Green Knight ultimately, in this interpretation, judges Gawain to be a worthy knight, and lets him live, playing a priest, God, and judge all at once. The chapel is considered by Gawain as an evil place: foreboding, "the most accursed church", "the place for the Devil to recite matins "; but when the mysterious Knight allows Gawain to live, Gawain immediately assumes the role of penitent to
400-502: A sports team , fictional character, or fictional series. Devoted sports fans continue to remain fans even in the face of a string of losing seasons. The Old Testament speaks of "loyal ones", which would be those who follow the Bible with absolute loyalty, as in "Precious in the eyes of God is the death of his loyal ones" ( Psalms 116:15 ). Most Jewish and Christian authors view the binding of Isaac ( Genesis 22 ), in which Abraham
480-572: A "Chevalier Vert" appears in the Chronicle of Ernoul during the recollection of events following the capture of Jerusalem in 1187 ; here, he is identified as a Spanish knight who earned this nickname from the Muslims due to his eccentric apparel. Some researchers have considered an association with Islamic tales. The figure of Al-Khidr ( Arabic : الخضر ) in the Qur'an is called the "Green Man" as
560-462: A "Grene Knyght" named Sir Partolope. The three who survive the encounter eventually join the Round Table and appear several further times in the text. The stories of Saladin feature a certain "Green Knight"; a Spanish warrior (maybe from Castile, according to an Arab source) in a shield vert and a helmet adorned with stag horns. Saladin tries to make him part of his personal guard. Similarly,
640-433: A Christian "pagan" symbol – the personified Devil . The medievalist C. S. Lewis said the character was "as vivid and concrete as any image in literature." Scholar J. A. Burrow called him the "most difficult character" to interpret. The earliest appearance of the Green Knight is in the late 14th-century alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , which survives in only one manuscript along with other poems by
720-432: A cause. Misplaced or mistaken loyalty refers to loyalty placed in other persons or organisations where that loyalty is not acknowledged or respected , is betrayed , or taken advantage of. It can also mean loyalty to a malignant or misguided cause. Social psychology provides a partial explanation for the phenomenon in the way "the norm of social commitment directs us to honor our agreements... People usually stick to
800-428: A conflicting multiplicity of loyalties, where the traditional loyalty of the employee to the employer conflicts with the loyalty of the employee to his or her community, which the employer's business practices may be adversely affecting. Vandekerckhove reports that different scholars resolve the conflict in different ways, some of which he does not find to be satisfactory. Duska resolves the conflict by asserting that there
880-653: A connection with Hutton Manor House in Somerset . Gawain's journey leads him directly into the centre of the Pearl Poet's dialect region, where the candidates for the locations of the Castle at Hautdesert and the Green Chapel stand. Hautdesert is thought to be in the area of Swythamley in northwest Midland, as it is in the writer's dialect area, and matches the land features described in the poem. The Green Chapel
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#1732801908285960-534: A dog who returned to the place he used to meet his master every day for nine years after his death ; and Foxie, the spaniel belonging to Charles Gough , who stayed by her dead master's side for three months on Helvellyn in the Lake District in 1805 (although it is possible that Foxie had eaten Gough's body). In the Mahabharata , the righteous King Yudhishthira appears at the gates of Heaven at
1040-525: A feudal lord. Hence the 1911 Britannica derived its (early 20th century) primary meaning of loyalty to a monarch . "Loyalty" is the most important and frequently emphasized virtue in Bushido . In combination with six other virtues, which are Righteousness ( 義 gi ), Courage ( 勇 yū ), Benevolence, ( 仁 jin ), Respect ( 礼 rei ), Sincerity ( 誠 makoto ), and Honour ( 名誉 meiyo ), it formed the Bushido code: "It
1120-525: A great horse, No one here could match me with their feeble powers. Therefore, I ask of the court a Christmas game... The Knight features next as Bertilak de Hautedesert, lord of a large castle, Gawain's host before his arrival at the Green Chapel. At Bertilak's castle, Gawain is submitted to tests of his loyalty and chastity , wherein Bertilak sends his wife to seduce Gawain and arranges that each time Bertilak gains prey in hunting, or Gawain any gift in
1200-466: A judge and tester of knights, and as such, the other characters consider him as friendly but terrifying and somewhat mysterious. In Sir Gawain , the Green Knight is so called because his skin and clothes are green. The meaning of his greenness has puzzled scholars. Some identify him as the Green Man , a vegetation being of medieval art ; others as a recollection of a figure from Celtic mythology ;
1280-647: A large fissure ( "an olde caue,/or a creuisse of an olde cragge" v2182–83). Marvel Comics has its version of the Green Knight. While his history with Gawain is still intact, this version is depicted as having been merged with the Green Man who was an aspect of Gaea . The film The Green Knight depicted the titular character (performed by Ralph Ineson ) as a wood-skinned character. The part with him showing up in King Arthur's court and being beheaded by Gawain using his uncle's sword remains intact. Unlike
1360-532: A priest or judge, as in a genuine church. The Green Chapel may also be related to tales of fairy hills or knolls of earlier Celtic literature . Some scholars have wondered whether "Hautdesert" refers to the Green Chapel, as it means "High Hermitage"; but such a connection is doubted by most scholars. As to the location of the chapel, in the Greene Knight poem, Sir Bredbeddle's living place is described as "the castle of hutton", causing some scholars to suggest
1440-413: A relationship between a lord and vassal, parent and child, or two good friends. Duska states that this characterization leads to a problem that Ladd overlooks. Loyalty may certainly be between two persons, but it may also be from a person to a group of people. Examples of this, which are unequivocally considered to be instances of loyalty, are loyalty by a person to his or her family, to a team that he or she
1520-433: A sacred text to subdue it. The Green Knight eventually gains so much control over the sprite through this text that he convinces it to take a sword and strike off its master's head. The name "Bertilak" may derive from bachlach , a Celtic word meaning "churl" (i.e. rogueish, unmannerly), or from "bresalak", meaning "contentious". The Old French word bertolais is a form of "Bertilak" in the Arthurian tale Merlin from
1600-589: A sense of professionalism or a belief in the sanctity of contracts . A patriot, in contrast, may be motivated by affection, concern, identification, and a willingness to sacrifice. Nathanson contends that patriotic loyalty is not always a virtue. A loyal person can, in general be relied upon, and hence people view loyalty as virtuous. Nathanson argues that loyalty can, however, be given to persons or causes that are unworthy. Moreover, loyalty can lead patriots to support policies that are immoral and inhumane. Thus, Nathanson argues, patriotic loyalty can sometimes rather be
1680-526: A single moral principle that freely chooses to use the other virtues for moral ends. Stephen Nathanson, professor of philosophy at Northeastern University , states that loyalty can be either exclusionary or non-exclusionary ; and can be single or multiple . Exclusionary loyalty excludes loyalties to other people or groups; whereas non-exclusionary loyalty does not. People may have single loyalties, to just one person, group, or thing, or multiple loyalties to multiple objects. Multiple loyalties can constitute
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#17328019082851760-598: A vice than a virtue, when its consequences exceed the boundaries of what is otherwise morally desirable. Such loyalties, in Nathanson's view, are erroneously unlimited in their scopes, and fail to acknowledge boundaries of morality. The faithless servant doctrine is a doctrine under the laws of a number of states in the United States, and most notably New York State law , pursuant to which an employee who acts unfaithfully towards his employer must forfeit all of
1840-530: Is "to certain people or to a group of people, not loyalty to an ideal or cause". She argues in her monograph , The Moral Status of Loyalty , that "[w]hen we speak of causes (or ideals) we are more apt to say that people are committed to them or devoted to them than that they are loyal to them". Kleinig agrees with Baron, noting that a person's earliest and strongest loyalties are almost always to people, and that only later do people arrive at abstract notions like values, causes, and ideals. He disagrees, however, with
1920-457: Is a devotion to a country , philosophy , group, or person . Philosophers disagree on what can be an object of loyalty, as some argue that loyalty is strictly interpersonal and only another human being can be the object of loyalty. The definition of loyalty in law and political science is the fidelity of an individual to a nation , either one's nation of birth, or one's declared home nation by oath ( naturalization ). Classical tragedy
2000-443: Is a member or fan of, or to his or her country. The problem is that it then becomes unclear whether there is a strict interpersonal relationship involved, and whether Ladd's contention that loyalty is interpersonal—not suprapersonal—is an adequate description. Ladd considers loyalty from two perspectives: its proper object and its moral value. John Kleinig, professor of philosophy at City University of New York , observes that over
2080-445: Is good" (similar to Nathanson). Vandekerckhove calls this argument "interesting" but "too vague" in its description of how tolerant an employee should be of an employer's shortcomings. Vandekerckhove suggests that Duska and Corvino combine, however, to point in a direction that makes it possible to resolve the conflict of loyalties in the context of whistleblowing, by clarifying the objects of those loyalties. Businesses seek to become
2160-459: Is often based on a conflict arising from dual loyalty . Euthyphro , one of Plato 's early dialogues, is based on the ethical dilemma arising from Euthyphro intending to lay manslaughter charges against his own father, who had caused the death of a slave through negligence. In the Gospel of Matthew 6:24 , Jesus states, "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love
2240-419: Is often directly equated to patriotism. He states that this is a false equality; while patriots exhibit loyalty, it is not conversely the case that all loyal persons are patriots. He provides the example of a mercenary soldier, who exhibits loyalty to the people or country that pays him. Nathanson points to the difference in motivations between a loyal mercenary and a patriot. A mercenary may well be motivated by
2320-415: Is really only one proper object of loyalty in such instances—the community —a position that Vandekerckhove counters by arguing that businesses are in need of employee loyalty. John Corvino, associate professor of philosophy at Wayne State University takes a different tack, arguing that loyalty can sometimes be a vice, not a virtue, and that "loyalty is only a virtue to the extent that the object of loyalty
2400-465: Is revealed to be Bertilak de Hautdesert (spelled in some translations as "Bercilak" or "Bernlak") in Sir Gawain , while The Greene Knight names him " Bredbeddle ". The Green Knight later features as one of Arthur's greatest champions in the fragmentary ballad King Arthur and King Cornwall , again with the name "Bredbeddle". In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , Bertilak is transformed into
2480-484: Is somehow implanted in their chromosomal makeup to be loyal". Josiah Royce presented a different definition of the concept in his 1908 book The Philosophy of Loyalty . According to Royce, loyalty is a virtue , indeed a primary virtue, "the heart of all the virtues, the central duty amongst all the duties". Royce presents loyalty, which he defines at length, as the basic moral principle from which all other principles can be derived. The short definition that he gives of
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2560-472: Is that Encyclopaedia ' s only article on a virtue, . Ladd asserts that, contrary to Royce, causes to which one is loyal are interpersonal, not impersonal or suprapersonal. He states that Royce's view has "the ethical defect of postulating duties over and above our individual duties to men and groups of men. The individual is submerged and lost in this superperson for its tends to dissolve our specific duties to others into 'superhuman' good". Ronald F. Duska,
2640-434: Is the first to be green. Because of his strange colour, some scholars believe him to be a manifestation of the Green Man figure of medieval art, or as a representation of both the vitality and fearful unpredictability of nature. That he carries a green holly branch, and the comparison of his beard to a bush, has guided many scholars to this interpretation. The gold entwined in the cloth wrapped around his axe, combined with
2720-585: Is then forced to follow the Turk until he decides to return the blow. Through the many adventures they have together, the Turk, out of respect, asks the knight to cut off the Turk's head, which Gawain does. The Turk, surviving, then praises Gawain and showers him with gifts. Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle contains a scene in which the Carl, a lord, orders Gawain to strike him with his spear, and bends over to receive
2800-420: Is thought to be in either Lud's Church or Wetton Mill , as these areas closely match the descriptions given by the author. Ralph Elliott for example located the chapel the knight searches for near ( "two myle henne" v1078) the old manor house at Swythamley Park at the bottom of a valley ( "bothm of the brem valay" v2145) on a hillside ( "loke a littel on the launde, on thi lyfte honde" v2147) in
2880-566: The Britannica gives as primary, it attributes to a shift during the 16th century, noting that the origin of the word is in the Old French loialte , that is in turn rooted in the Latin lex , meaning " law ". One who is loyal, in the feudal sense of fealty , is one who is lawful (as opposed to an outlaw ), who has full legal rights as a consequence of faithful allegiance to
2960-477: The Celtic tradition , green was avoided in clothing for its superstitious association with misfortune and death. Green in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is ambiguous as it could have a variety of meanings: signifying a transformation from good to evil and back again, or displaying both the spoiling and regenerative connotations of the colour. Of the many characters similar to him, the Green Knight of Sir Gawain
3040-648: The Lancelot-Grail Cycle, Hunbaut , and The Knight of the Sword . The Green Knight parallel in these stories is a King testing a knight as to whether or not he will remain chaste in extreme circumstances. The woman he sends is sometimes his wife (as in Yder ), if he knows that she is unfaithful and will tempt other men; in The Knight of the Sword the king sends his beautiful daughter. All characters playing
3120-701: The Lancelot-Grail cycle. Notably, the 'Bert-' prefix means 'bright', and the '-lak' can mean either 'lake' or "play, sport, fun, etc". "Hautdesert" probably comes from a mix of both Old French and Celtic words meaning "High Wasteland" or "High Hermitage". It may also have an association with desirete meaning "disinherited" (i.e. from the Round Table). Characters similar to the Green Knight appear in several other works. In Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur , for example, Gawain's brother Gareth defeats four brothers in different coloured armour, including
3200-581: The "literary wild man" represents the "hostility to knighthood," "the demonic" and "death." The Knight's green skin connects the green of the costume to the green of the hair and beard, thus connecting the green man's pleasant manners and significance into the wild man's grotesque qualities. The Green Knight is also compared to the English holiday figure Jack in the Green . Jack is part of a May Day holiday tradition in some parts of England, but his connection to
3280-505: The Christian Messiah , at once representing both good and evil and life and death as self-proliferating cycles. This interpretation embraces the positive and negative attributes of the colour green and relates to the enigmatic motif of the poem. The description of the Green Knight upon his entrance to Arthur's Court as "from neck to loin… strong and thickly made" is considered by some scholars as homoerotic. C.S. Lewis declared
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3360-410: The Green Knight "as vivid and concrete as any image in literature" and further described him as: a living coincidentia oppositorum ; half giant, yet wholly a "lovely" knight"; as full of demoniac energy as old Karamazov , yet in his own house, as jolly as a Dickensian Christmas host ; now exhibiting a ferocity so gleeful that it is almost genial, and now a geniality so outrageous that it borders on
3440-401: The Green Knight , with a few differences. Notably, the knight, here named "Bredbeddle", is only wearing green, not green-skinned himself. The poem also states the knight has been asked by his wife's mother (not Morgan in this version) to trick Gawain. He agrees because he knows his wife is secretly in love with Gawain, and hopes to deceive both. Gawain falters in accepting a girdle from her, and
3520-514: The Green Knight by Morgan le Fay , a traditional adversary of King Arthur , to test his court. However, in The Greene Knight , he is transformed by a different woman for the same purpose. In both stories, he sends his wife to seduce Gawain as a further test. The King Arthur and King Cornwall ballad portrays him as an exorcist and one of the most powerful knights of Arthur's court. His wider role in Arthurian literature includes being
3600-476: The Green Knight can also be seen as a compromise between both humanity and the environment as opposed to Gawain's representation of human civilisation. Often, it is used to embody the supernatural or spiritual other world. In British folklore, the devil was sometimes considered to be green which may or may not play into the concept of the Green Man/ Wild Man dichotomy of the Green Knight. Stories of
3680-451: The Green Knight's purpose is fulfilled in a small sense. In the end, he acknowledges Gawain's ability and asks to accompany him to Arthur's court. In King Arthur and King Cornwall , the Green Knight again features as Bredbeddle, and is depicted as one of Arthur's knights. He offers to help Arthur fight a mysterious sprite (controlled by the magician, King Cornwall) which has entered his chamber. When physical attacks fail, Bredbeddle uses
3760-577: The Green Knight's role kill unfaithful knights who fail their tests. Pwyll, in the First Branch of the Mabinogi , faces a similar chastity test. In English folklore and literature, green has traditionally been used to symbolise nature and its embodied attributes, namely those of fertility and rebirth . Critics have claimed that the Green Knight's role emphasises the environment outside of human habitation. With his alternate identity as Bertilak,
3840-578: The Knight is found mainly in the Derbyshire tradition of Castleton Garland . In this tradition, a kind of Jack in the green known as the Garland King is led through the town on a horse, wearing a bell-shaped garland of flowers that covers his entire upper body, and followed by young girls dressed in white, who dance at various points along the route (formerly the town's bellringers, who still make
3920-584: The Lamont Post Chair of Ethics and the Professions at The American College , extends Ladd's objection, saying that it is a perversion of ethics and virtue for one's self-will to be identified with anything, as Royce would have it. Even if one were identifying one's self-will with God, to be worthy of such loyalty God would have to be the summum bonum , the perfect manifestation of good. Ladd himself characterizes loyalty as interpersonal, i.e.,
4000-514: The Percy Folio manuscript. Its date of composition is uncertain, as it may be a version of an earlier story, or possibly a product of the 17th century. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , the Green Knight appears before Arthur's court during a Christmas feast , holding a bough of holly in one hand and a battle axe in the other. Despite disclaim of war, the knight issues a challenge: he will allow one man to strike him once with his axe, with
4080-568: The Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology) in disguise. He challenges three warriors to his game, only to have them run from the return blow, until the hero Cú Chulainn accepts the challenge. With Cú Chulainn under his axe, this antagonist also feints three blows before letting the hero go. In the Irish version, the cloak of the churl is described as " glas ", which means green. In the Life of Caradoc ,
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#17328019082854160-442: The blow. Gawain obliges, the Carl rises, laughing and unharmed, and, unlike in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , no return blow is demanded or given. Among all these stories, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the only one with a completely green character, and the only one tying Morgan le Fay to his transformation. Several stories also feature knights struggling to stave off the advances of voluptuous women, including Yder ,
4240-415: The castle, each shall exchange his gain for the other's. At New Year's Day , Gawain departs to the Green Chapel, and bends to receive his blow, only to have the Green Knight feint two blows, then barely nick him on the third. He then reveals that he is Bertilak, and that Morgan le Fay had given him the double identity to test Gawain and Arthur. The Greene Knight tells the same story as Sir Gawain and
4320-524: The character of the Green Knight may be a literary descendant of Al-Khidr, brought to Europe with the Crusaders and blended with Celtic and Arthurian imagery. The beheading game appears in a number of tales, the earliest being the Middle Irish tale Bricriu's Feast . The challenger in this story is named "Fear", a bachlach (churl), and is identified as Cú Roí (a superhuman king of Munster in
4400-580: The compensation he received during the period of his disloyalty. Several scholars, including Duska, discuss loyalty in the context of whistleblowing. Wim Vandekerckhove of the University of Greenwich points out that in the late 20th century saw the rise of a notion of a bidirectional loyalty—between employees and their employer. (Previous thinking had encompassed the idea that employees are loyal to an employer, but not that an employer need be loyal to employees.) The ethics of whistleblowing thus encompass
4480-402: The condition that he return the blow the next year. At first, Arthur accepts the challenge, but Gawain takes his place and decapitates the Green Knight, who retrieves his head, reattaches it and tells Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel at the stipulated time. No, I seek no battle, I assure you truly: Those about me in this hall are but beardless children. If I were locked in my armour on
4560-446: The deal even though it has changed for the worse". Humanists point out that "man inherits the capacity for loyalty, but not the use to which he shall put it... may unselfishly devote himself to what is petty or vile, as he may to what is generous and noble". Animals as pets may display a sense of loyalty to humans. Famous cases include Greyfriars Bobby , a Skye terrier who attended his master's grave for fourteen years; Hachiko ,
4640-521: The descriptive features of the Green Knight suggest a servitude to Satan such as the beaver-hued beard alluding to the allegorical significance of beavers for the Christian audience of the time who believed that they renounced the world and paid "tribute to the devil for spiritual freedom." Another possible interpretation of the Green Knight views him as combining elements from the Greek Hades and
4720-495: The end of his life with a stray dog he had picked up along the way as a companion, having previously lost his brothers and his wife to death. The god Indra is prepared to admit him to Heaven, but refuses to admit the dog, so Yudhishthira refuses to abandon the dog, and prepares to turn away from the gates of Heaven. Then the dog is revealed to be the manifestation of Dharma , the god of righteousness and justice, and who turned out to be his deified self. Yudhishthira enters heaven in
4800-419: The ferocious; half boy or buffoon in his shouts and laughter and jumpings; yet at the end judging Gawain with the tranquil superiority of an angelic being The Green Knight could also be interpreted as a blend of two traditional figures in romance and medieval narratives, namely, "the literary green man" and the "literary wild man." "The literary green man" signifies "youth, natural vitality, and love," whereas
4880-573: The garland, also performed this role). On the top of the King's garland is the "queen", a posy of bright flowers. The King is also accompanied by his elegantly dressed female consort (nowadays, confusingly, also known as the Queen); played by a woman during recent times, until 1956 "the Woman" was always a man in woman's clothing. At the end of the ceremony, the queen posy is taken off the garland, to be placed on
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#17328019082854960-506: The green, gives him both a wild and an aristocratic air. Others consider him as being an incarnation of the Devil . In one interpretation, it is thought that the Green Knight, as the "Lord of Hades ", has come to challenge the noble knights of King Arthur's court. Sir Gawain, the bravest of the knights, therefore proves himself equal to Hercules in challenging the Knight, tying the story to ancient Greek mythology . Scholars like Curely claim
5040-534: The idea is that loyalty is "the willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause". Loyalty is thoroughgoing in that it is not merely a casual interest but a wholehearted commitment to a cause. Royce's view of loyalty was challenged by John Ladd, professor of philosophy at Brown University , in the article on "Loyalty" in the first edition of the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967). Ladd observed that by that time
5120-426: The latter takes precedence. The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition defines loyalty as "allegiance to the sovereign or established government of one's country" and also "personal devotion and reverence to the sovereign and royal family". It traces the word " loyalty " to the 15th century, noting that then it primarily referred to fidelity in service, in love, or to an oath that one has made. The meaning that
5200-412: The man's head, and then pulls off his magic cloak before he can replace it, causing his death. A similar story, this time attributed to Lancelot , appears in the 13th century French work Perlesvaus . The 15th-century The Turke and Gowin begins with a Turk entering Arthur's court and asking, "Is there any will, as a brother, To give a buffett and take another?" Gawain accepts the challenge, and
5280-423: The medieval period also portray the colour as representing love and the amorous in life, and the base, natural desires of man. Green is also known to have signified witchcraft , devilry and evil for its association with the fairies and spirits of early English folklore and for its association with decay and toxicity. The colour, when combined with gold, is sometimes seen as representing the fading of youth. In
5360-458: The notion that loyalties are restricted solely to personal attachments, considering it "incorrect (as a matter of logic)". Loyalty to people and abstract notions such as causes or ideals is considered an evolutionary tactic , as there is a greater chance of survival and procreation if animals belong to loyal packs. Immanuel Kant constructed the basis for an ethical law via the concept of duty . Kant began his ethical theory by arguing that
5440-400: The objects of loyalty in order to retain customers. Brand loyalty is a consumer's preference for a particular brand and a commitment to repeatedly purchase that brand. So-called loyalty programs offer rewards to repeat customers in exchange for being able to keep track of consumer preferences and buying habits. A similar concept is fan loyalty , an allegiance to and abiding interest in
5520-411: The only virtue that can be unqualifiedly good is a good will. No other virtue has this status because every other virtue can be used to achieve immoral ends (for example, the virtue of loyalty is not good if one is loyal to an evil person). The good will is unique in that it is always good and maintains its moral value even when it fails to achieve its moral intentions. Kant regarded the good will as
5600-492: The only man to have drunk the water of life, which in some versions of the story turns him green. He tests Moses three times by doing seemingly evil acts, which are eventually revealed to be noble deeds to prevent greater evils or reveal great goods. Both the Arthurian Green Knight and Al-Khidr serve as teachers to holy men (Gawain/Moses), who thrice tested their faith and obedience. It has been suggested that
5680-502: The other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth ". This relates to the authority of a master over his servants (as per Ephesians 6:5 ), who, according to Biblical law , owe undivided loyalty to their master (as per Leviticus 25:44–46 ). On the other hand, the " Render unto Caesar " of the synoptic gospels acknowledges the possibility of distinct loyalties (secular and religious) without conflict, but if loyalty to man conflicts with loyalty to God,
5760-428: The poem Gawain , when the Knight is beheaded, he tells Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel, saying that all nearby know where it is. Indeed, the guide which is to bring Gawain there from Bertilak's castle grows very fearful as they near it and begs Gawain to turn back. The final meeting at the Green Chapel has caused many scholars to draw religious connections, with the Knight fulfilling a priestly role with Gawain as
5840-519: The poem, there was no connection between the Green Knight and Bertilak de Hautdesert in this film. Instead by the final scene after Gawain envisioned that he became a reviled king after King Arthur's death and removed the protective green sash so that the Green Knight can strike him, the Green Knight just quotes "Well done". After moving his finger across Gawain's neck, he points his finger past Gawain where he sends him on his way while comically quoting "Now, off with your head". Loyalty Loyalty
5920-637: The proper object of loyalty—what it is possible to be loyal to . Ladd considers loyalty to be interpersonal: the object of loyalty is always a person. In the Encyclopaedia of the History of Ideas , Konvitz states that the objects of loyalty encompass principles, causes, ideas, ideals, religions, ideologies, nations, governments, parties, leaders, families, friends, regions, racial groups, and "anyone or anything to which one's heart can become attached or devoted". Baron agrees with Ladd, inasmuch as loyalty
6000-457: The same author, the so-called Pearl Poet . This poet was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer , writer of The Canterbury Tales , although the two wrote in different parts of England. The later poem, The Greene Knight , is a late medieval rhyming romance that likely predates its only surviving copy: the 17th-century Percy Folio . The other work featuring the Green Knight, the later ballad " King Arthur and King Cornwall ", also survives only in
6080-460: The subject had received "scant attention in philosophical literature". This he attributed to "odious" associations that the subject had with nationalism , including Nazism , and with the metaphysics of idealism , which he characterized as "obsolete". However, he argued that such associations were faulty and that the notion of loyalty is "an essential ingredient in any civilized and humane system of morals". Anthony Ralls observes that Ladd's article
6160-460: The town's war memorial . The Garland King then rides to the church tower where the garland is hauled up the side of the tower and impaled upon a pinnacle . Due to the nature imagery associated with the Green Knight, the ceremony has been interpreted as possibly deriving from his famous beheading in the Gawain poem. In this case, the posy's removal would symbolise the loss of the knight's head. In
6240-511: The work of Josiah Royce , the "grand exception" in Kleinig's words. Kleinig observes that from the 1980s onwards, the subject gained attention, with philosophers variously relating it to professional ethics , whistleblowing , friendship , and virtue theory . Additional aspects enumerated by Kleinig include the exclusionary nature of loyalty and its subjects. Ladd and others, including Milton R. Konvitz and Marcia W. Baron, disagree about
6320-425: The years the idea has been treated by writers from Aeschylus through John Galsworthy to Joseph Conrad , by psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, scholars of religion, political economists, scholars of business and marketing, and—most particularly—by political theorists, who deal with it in terms of loyalty oaths and patriotism . As a philosophical concept, loyalty was largely untreated by philosophers until
6400-470: Was called by God to offer his son Isaac as a burnt offering , as a test of Abraham's loyalty. Joseph 's faithfulness to his master Potiphar and his rejection of Potiphar's wife's advances ( Genesis 39 ) have also been called an example of the virtue of loyalty. According to the New Testament , attempting to serve two masters leads to "double-mindedness" ( James 4:8 ), undermining loyalty to
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