I’d be happy to help, but I notice the thread content isn’t showing in your message. I can see the title “On Moral Authority” but the original post and recent replies sections appear to be empty.
Could you share what the original post says and what replies have already been made. That way I can write a thoughtful response that actually engages with the conversation happening in that thread rather than speaking past everyone.
Once you provide the context, I’ll be able to contribute something substantive about moral authority—whether the discussion is focusing on philosophical foundations, institutional legitimacy, personal integrity, or something else entirely.
I would lean in that direction, yes. I tend to think that texts do not have authority apart from their author. Of course it must also be remembered that texts can show forth truth in a way that is not an argument from authority (and in these cases the citation of one’s source would be unnecessary to the argument at hand).
But on the other hand I do think that traditions can have authority. This would mean that authority can derive from not only individual people, but also from groups of collaborative individuals who are engaged in the same project.
Yes, and the rubber tends to hit the road when we get into the question of justifying premises. “The Bible said X, therefore X is true,” is an argument that presupposes the authority of the Bible. The premise that the Bible is authoritative can actually be argued for (and Christians do not in fact believe it for no reason). “Act X contradicts the Utilitarian principle, therefore it is wrong,” is not appealing to an authority, and the truth of the Utilitarian principle can also be argued for.
Note though that both of these premises could be “begged” or asserted without argument and without agreement from one’s interlocutor. If two people beg the question in this way then the two premises begin to look similar, although the similarity is superficial vis-a-vis this question of authority. That’s why I think some people assume that they are the same. For example, I see amateur emotivists assuming that all moral principles are “authorities” (because they reject moral authorities and they reject moral principles, and they assume that they are therefore the same thing).
Yeah, I think so. We are saying, “I believe that the universe began from a singularity because Stephen Hawking said so, and Stephen Hawking knows what he is talking about.” The argument depends on the idea that Hawking knows what he is talking about, i.e. that he has knowledge of this truth that he asserts. If we did not think that he had knowledge proper then the argument from authority would not work (and I say “knowledge proper” because it is arguable whether faith is a form of knowledge).
…The other thing to note here is that when we transition from the speculative sphere to the practical sphere propositionality becomes less important. For example, in the practical sphere we not only assent to practical claims on the basis of authority, but we also imitate the behavior and mannerisms of those we admire (which is why I pointed to celebrities here).
They would accept it on faith (or on authority) if they see Stephen Hawking as a reliable source of information.
There is no real difference between someone giving you counsel and someone telling you what you ought to do. You are splitting hairs for the sake of your value of individual autonomy.
The question is how a person could have the moral authority. Given the fact that moral authority is granted only if he is a knowledgeable person when it comes to morality, we then deal with this dichotomy: he either knows something that others don’t know or not. He loses his authority if he does not know something that others do not know. So we are left with the first option: he knows something that others don’t know. But he can always teach his knowledge to others if possible, or others can learn it by themselves if possible; in both cases, again, he loses his moral authority.
I certainly accept it as a theory. If it were somehow scientifically proved, I would be inclined to accept it as true, even though I would only have a limited understanding of it. I could say that I have faith in the scientific method and a good degree of confidence in the scientific community. If the Big Bang were proved, that would imply a broad scientific consensus based on independent confirmation by many scientists. No one scientist—even the late great Stephen Hawking—can establish a scientific law.
In contrast, any individual can create a religion and be the singular authority of it.
Well if we pay attention to the words you are using here we will find that by “proved” you actually mean something like, “People I take to be authorities come to hold it as true.” There is no qualitative difference between faith in Stephen Hawking and faith in the scientific community. Consensus-based arguments are ultimately faith-based or authority-based arguments.
Apparently you think that the rational exercise of faith requires multiple authorities rather than just one. That’s fine if you think that, but I don’t see that distinction as central to the thread. I would say that moral authorities are often viewed in the same way, where overlap is sought.
Reason would be the ultimate authority, or reason as unitive with and revelatory of the Good.
But it’s probably helpful to start by making a distinction between power and authority. Power is the capacity to compel people towards actions. Authority is the right to direct them toward genuine goods. Hence the distinction, which still is quite common in Anglophone weddings: “by the power and authority vested in me…”
Note however that the two often tend to be collapsed together in contemporary political thought, so that “authority” becomes nothing other than a particular sort of power, i.e., power flowing from a formal title or positive law.
Power and authority don’t always go together. For example, a corrupt ruler can have an office that grants them power, but fail as a proper authority.
An obvious instance of authority still accepted by modern liberalism would be parents and legal guardians. But this only really extends to children’s 18th birthday. Yet it’s clearly something of a fantasy that people simply become fully formed and free upon hitting the 6,571st day of life. In ancient Athens, for instance, one was admitted to the assembly and was to watch debates and trials at age 20, but was not a participating member until one had spent a further decade in this observational role. The biggest argument against such a practice today is that the West is already dominated by geronotocracies (and that voters don’t really do much in the context of the oligarchic rule of the few, chosen by the few, except choose between oligarchic factions via popularity contests rife with demagoguery, while juries have been marginalized) but I digress.
I don’t think the need for authorities is that hard to see. There is a serious epistemic challenge though, where it seems that we need to know what is good, wise, and just ourselves in order to tell if someone is a proper authority. This is a real difficulty. However, as an objection to political or ethical authority tout court, this objection proves too much, because the same thing could be said vis-á-vis medicine, economics, engineering, etc. One does not need perfect knowledge to vet authorities or to “know them by their fruit.”
The regress of: “I need to already know the good in order to recognize proper authority, but I need authority to be formed so as to know the good” is a real issue. However, simply assuming everyone of a certain age can act as their own authority doesn’t resolve this issue. There is rather something of a positive feedback loop. Vice begets vice (and vice cannot recognize virtue as virtue), while virtue begets virtue, and this certainly seems to be something of a pattern in history. This is, however, not all that different from other areas of art and science I would think.
One always enters a tradition through trust, primarily in one’s parents and teachers/mentors (for, as Augustine points out, one couldn’t be sure of much of anything is these people lied to you systematically). One is formed by the tradition/culture, and develops the capacity for discriminating judgment within it. Gradually, from this level of mastery, a person acquires the ability to evaluate and even critique particular authorities from within that framework, or the framework itself (generally through comparison, as the Attic Greeks criticized their own excesses in comparison to the strengths of the Lacadamonians).
This is the standard structure of all learning. One wouldn’t get very far in physics if one refused to accept anything on the authority of one’s textbook and teacher, and one could hardly learn Spanish while refusing to trust Spanish speakers.
By contrast, if every individual is the ultimate arbiter of moral authority (as in values clarification), it’s not like moral formation and the exercise of authority (valid or not) disappears. Rather, it seems to me that it is simply transferred to increasingly invisible and unaccountable “authorities,” which in our current context tend to be driven by market forces. Entertainment media and ideological subcultures seem particularly dominant today. Hence, the person who rejects all authorities does not thereby become self-formed. The call to the rejection of all visible or historically rooted authorities is itself a particular sort of formation.
The real question then is never authority versus its absence (power alone only rules in periods of social breakdown), but rather which authorities are proper authorities, which ends authority is ordered to, and how authority is delegated and divided.
Presumably, a good doctor will answer your questions and educate you about your stomach cancer. That doesn’t mean you now know as much about the disease as the doctor. I think the mistake here is to assume that knowledge and virtue are readily transferable. One might have enough of either to, hopefully, recognize an authority (and their own limits) without having to possess everything they have. It’s not like all of Napoleon’s soldiers and officers had to be Napoleon-tier generals to come to recognize his proper authority as a master general for instance.
Do you think there is a “humility problem” when a doctor assisting with a surgery tells another doctor to stop because what they are doing is liable to maim or kill the patient? I am not sure how you get to a generalizable humility problem for moral authority without the unstated premise that it particularly unknowable. Humility relates to knowing one’s own limits. Refusing to act within those limits can itself be a vice. It’s not like someone witnessing child abuse is thereby excused from acting because it would be a vice to suppose that one knew what was better for the child than the abuser.
Surely not every exercise of authority in matters of positive law, science, or any art is a violation of humility, so what makes ethical and political authority different?
Depending on who you are. If power and authority are combined to tell rapists not to rape and thieves not to steal, and to enforce this, this is presumably desirable for most of the citizenry. And so too for say, racial discrimination. But, in the latter case, a given locale might actually think this is very undesirable and tyrannical. It hardly seems obvious that desegregation of the American South was undesirable and tyrannical though, although it did rely heavily on authoritative actions. So, you have a case where National Gaurd soldiers are mustered and told to prevent black students from entering schools, and then federalized and told to do exactly the opposite. Surely not every soldier agreed with the policy, but I would imagine many did at least accept that the Supreme Court and President had the legitimate authority to answer this question, as opposed to each soldier acting only according to their own judgement.
I believe I understand the direction of your thought, and I’d like to understand it even better, but once again: Please, please, can I have an example that is not an analogy? Or a conceptual analysis? I feel that I can’t give your position the careful attention it deserves until I understand what you’re actually talking about, not by way of comparison with some other kind of authority. What is the “performance” of moral authority that you’re referring to?
Is this too personal? I would respect that, but what I really want is an actual example, from your own life, of how moral authority has been claimed and then exercised – not by you, necessarily, but perhaps you were the recipient or the beneficiary. What do you actually picture or remember, in real life, when you talk about moral authority? We have @Banno 's example of his helpful monsignor friend – not an authority for him, but is this perhaps something like what you mean?
As for what I’m calling the humility problem, it is special to morality. A doctor who has expert knowledge is not at risk of contradicting that knowledge if they recommend I do X; humility is not “baked into” being a good doctor. But it may well be the case that it is baked into being an expert on morality. I’m not sure. I think it would be an interesting conversation, if you can acknowledge the initial question as valid. If it turned out that the right, or moral, thing to do was to refrain from telling me what to do, that would exemplify the problem I’m talking about. Is that much clear, as a question or possibility? (“Humility” is just a handy phrase that I’m using to remind us that many moral traditions frown on people who claim to know what is best for others.)
I’d say not necessarily, not in any traditional sense of these terms. But then again, failing to heed a moral authority (if the moral authority is right about what is good) presumably leads to badness, and badness is often like its own punishment, and choosing to follow a moral authority presumably leads to good, a type of its own reward.
An exercise of moral authority might be telling all the kids to stop kicking the puppies. Was that punitive? Now if the kids disobey the authority and keep kicking puppies, and the authority grabs the kids and makes them stand in the corner - that sounds like punishment, or is it just keeping them away from the puppies?
So yes, exercising authority (telling people what is good, or what to do, or what they ought do, or what all people ought do) can be done without being punitive.
It is worth quoting the whole of that paragraph, to see where Foot is actually going.
Anscombe writes, ‘[G]etting one another to do things without the application of physical force is a necessity for human life, and that far beyond what could be secured by . . . other means.’¹⁸ Anscombe is pointing here to what she has elsewhere called an ‘Aristotelian necessity’: that which is necessary because and in so far as good hangs on it.¹⁹ We invoke the same idea when we say that it is necessary for plants to have water, for birds to build nests, for wolves to hunt in packs, and for lionesses to teach their cubs to kill. These ‘Aristotelian necessities’ depend on what the particular species of plants and animals need, on their natural habitat, and the ways of making out that are in their repertoire. These things together determine what it is for members of a particular species to be as they should be, and to do that which they should do. And for all the enormous differences between the life of humans and that of plants or animals, we can see that human defects and excellences are similarly related to what human beings are and what they do. We do not need to be able to dive like gannets, nor to see in the dark like owls; but our memory and concentration must be such as to allow us to learn language, and our sight such that we can recognize faces at a glance; while, like lionesses, human parents are defective if they do not teach their young the skills that they need to survive.
Faith is a form of belief, one supposes, and its epitome is found in those who believe in extremis; those who believe while all the world holds them to be in error.
So should one have faith in a moral authority despite oneself and the whole world holding their view to be wrong? Should one hold to the command of authority even when one believes it to be evil?
That would simply be to join them in evil.
How could one distinguish genuine faith from culpable moral abdication?
I hoped you’d say that, and I apologize again if I got us onto policemen and such. If there’s something wrong with the idea of exercising moral authority, it can’t be merely that to be authoritative is to punish (or reward). That needn’t be true.
The anti-puppy-kicking moral authority is an interesting example. My first thought, reading it, was, “Do I want to be treated like a kid? In some things? In all things? Never?” In other words, what sort of moral authority is it appropriate for one adult to exercise over another? I suspect this is not cut-and-dried.
Just yesterday, I was having a friendly argument with someone about the Abraham and Isaac story. It epitomizes what you’re talking about. For my money: Abraham is guilty of moral abdication (though maybe not actually “culpable,” since he was insane). If “faith” is indistinguishable from an episode of paranoid schizophrenia that urges you to “sacrifice to God” your child . . . you’d better ask what faith is supposed to be.
I haven’t been following closely, I’m not sure what an appropriate model of moral authority looks like. Advice from a relative might help tweak an approach, but does that count? Is a responsible mother of an eight-year-old a moral authority? Or is that just pinning a philosophical label on parenting? Perhaps getting practice advice from an Aboriginal elder about how to provide cultural safety in working with mob might count?
That’s strong. And it is about how to deal with a community, not how to make some decision as an individual. And it is so difficult to get right - down even to understanding the right question to ask an elder. So is understanding a differing form of life a place were accepting authority is inevitable? Perhaps so. In such situations, it took me too long to learn to shut up and just listen.
Yes, I think this is an authority we should accept. We ought to find better ways of building relationships and providing effective support to improve outcomes in health and housing. You’re right, deep listening is a critical beginning. And in my work with Elders, has often described by them as the first step towards creating cultural safety.
I see this as parallel to the question about how one knows the true good as opposed to the apparent good. In a certain sense the question doesn’t matter, and this is because everyone without exception seeks the good, and this entails that they seek the truly good as opposed to the apparent good, even while knowing at the same time that they judge from appearances. It is a strawman to say, “Gee, if we don’t have a priori Cartesian certainty about what is truly good then we’re screwed.”
The same things holds with authorities. It makes no sense to say, “Gee, if we don’t have a priori Cartesian certainty about which authorities are proper authorities then we’re screwed.” Again, the excessively epistemological question doesn’t matter, and this is because everyone without exception utilizes authorities in their thinking and knowledge. They know that there is a distinction between a true authority and an apparent authority, and that they judge from appearances, but this in no way means that there is no possible starting point (and therefore no possible room for authorities in human life).
Obviously some are unwilling to discuss these questions in good faith due to a fear of apparent authorities (i.e. tyrants). That fear has petrified their reason. At every step along the way, rather than courageously asking about the genuine nature of authority in human life, they let the fear dominate their minds. It is that paranoid voice within the head saying over and over again, “Ah, but we must be cautious of tyrants!” The fear and idea of the tyrant or false authority is the gravitational centre around which every thought must revolve. No thought is allowed to escape the orbit of that consideration!
(The irony is that it is itself tyranny to impose this petrification on everyone you talk to.)
Certainly in the last decade or two the celebrity has been a cultural authority. They are idolized for different reasons, and this leads to an authoritative stature. This in turn means that an advertiser or political party that is able to make a famous celebrity their “face” will garner attention and success (and this applies to the moral sphere as well).
Now someone might say, “Ah, that’s stupid. People shouldn’t let their thoughts be swayed by celebrities.” Stupid or not, the fact of the matter is that celebrities are authorities in our cultural moment (and probably beyond). This is meant to show that authorities are all around us. We are constantly immersed in authority-based reasoning. It may be more primordial than any other form of reasoning. We don’t have to go on a wild goose chase to find authorities or to drum up empirical data for the ways in which authority operates.
