The term “authority” has had an expanding range of associations since ancient times, and it may be useful to examine its classical meanings in order to grasp its conceptual evolution. The Greek words that come closest to “authority” are ekzousia and timē, one term referring to power and the other to honor. Although in both Thucydides and Xenophon ekzousia generally designates the exercise of brute force, in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics this quality becomes linked to honor as well. Thus (see 1163b) while a son or debtor has no claim to ekzousia (precedence and power) in relation to his father or creditor, the latter two possess this attribute in dealing with those who are under their command. We are also told that ekzousia (1161a) is necessarily weak in a democracy, a form of government that resembles a household without a master (en tais adespotois ton oikeseon). Where all are equal, the magistrate’s sphere of control is accordingly limited.
In the New Testament (Romans 13) St. Paul links ekzousia to the divine will. The magistrate, when he restrains the wicked, is exercising what, according to the Vulgate, is “auctoritas,” a quality of leadership that goes beyond mere might. The Pauline magistrate, whether a Christian or not, is given the sword for the purpose of maintaining a divinely established order. By Roman times, ekzousia and timē were becoming fused in the notion of auctoritas, which in Cicero and in later Roman authors suggests moral dignity. Roman auctoritas moves conceptually from authorization, as in the formula “senatus consulti auctoritas,” to a second and more lasting association with ethical value. Thus one finds Cicero declaiming in his invective against the corrupt Sicilian proconsul Gaius Verres “aequitate causae et auctoritate sua commovere,” by which he stresses the moral urgency of the plea for justice that he is making.
The dual understanding of authority, as power combined with dignity, guided Christian theologians from Augustine through Aquinas to the Protestant Reformers. All of them argue for the need for “Christian magistrates” who avoid tyranny and govern with prudence, according to divine precepts and established customs. While for Augustine and Luther it was enough that princes avoid evil and be well disposed toward the Christian religion, for Aquinas (De regimine principium) political authority is raised to an almost pagan centrality. For him, political authority would supposedly be present to perfect man’s nature, in conformity with the “light of reason,” even if Adam had not fallen. Aquinas dwells on the fortune of those who live under “good kings” who diligently tend to their subjects’ welfare, and he notes “that it would require particularly strong malice for those who are thus blessed to repay their benefactors with hate.”
From early modern times on, the concept of authority would wander among varying reference points, from Thomas Hobbes’s “sovereign” who maintains civil order against all challengers to communal structures of command to papal and monarchical dispensations among nineteenth-century counter-revolutionary theorists. The rise of the modern state, the breakdown of ecclesiastical unity, and the growth in prestige of scientific methods all contributed to the growing difficulty of finding a single source or definition of authority. The German legal theorist Carl Schmitt called attention to a critical distinction in trying to understand the essence of authority when he uncoupled “legitimacy” from “legality.” Unlike the mere acceptance of what is legislated or decreed, what is “legitimate” is presumed to enjoy moral force, which is derived from its point of origin (auctor). When those who rule elicit respect and natural obedience, what they command will evoke the same. In modern constitutional regimes, in which traditional leadership no longer exists or has grown weak, legality, according to Schmitt, must create its own legitimacy; that is, authority must be vested in laws rather than be attached to any hereditary ruling class.
Even more significant than this distinction, however, is the one between a type of constitutional government that permits a flourishing communal and family life and a regime that is committed to looking after and, if possible, creating autonomous individuals. This second development has become for Western traditionalists and classical liberals the key political problem, one that continues to becloud our conceptions of both state and authority. Robert Nisbet, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Michael Oakeshott, Eric von Kühnelt-Leddhin, and Wilhelm Röpke have all tried to distinguish traditional sources of command and socialization from the power wielded by the modern administrative state. Such traditionalists or quasi-traditionalists have challenged the age-old relation between power and moral rank and have usually treated the second but not the first as worthy of deference. They have focused their efforts on shoring up intermediate institutions between the isolated individual and the ruling bureaucracy and on defending the frequently battered remnants of older, more traditional societies.
Celebrity has also taken the place of politically situated authority. Celebrity, a creation of entertainers and journalists, has had the effect of riveting public attention and moral approval on TV and movie personalities. Political careers can assist the rise to celebrity status, but such success depends on expressing the ideological preferences of the celebrity-creators and on being photogenic—or at least on having a glamorous appearance. What the cult of celebrity illustrates, beside obvious cultural decadence, is another phase in the depoliticization of authority. Those who hold public office can only succeed by becoming movie stars or else by imitating them.
Further Reading
Paul Gottfried, After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Administrative State
Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth
Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community
Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics
This entry was originally published in American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia, pp. 52–53.
