What Authority Is Not

Authority is a subject indispensable to politics. No other word carries its basic sense of legitimate power, power exercised over those who have willed its exercise. Cut off from the vocabulary of political theorists it comes back in other guises. Playing hide-and-seek with words would not in itself be so important were it not that it takes time merely to recognize that a game is being played and to realign the new words, each bearing a fraction of the old meaning, into the framework of facts and ideas with which the original concept was associated. It can be urged, on the positive side, that a re-shuffling of words, breaking them up and giving them slightly different connotations, might stir up not only clouds of dust but also some original thinking. This has not happened with the principle of authority. Rather it has been forgotten and is now remembered. The interval has seen little gain. Perhaps “power” has profited in attention, but at the expense of being confused with authority and thus of giving new life to the Thrasymachian conception of politics and its study. Instead, the subject matter of the political scientist is earthly authority and its relation to the divine.