General Theory of Authority, A , livre ebook

University of Notre Dame Press - Yves R. Simon

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177 pages

English

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A General Theory of Authority was first printed in 1962 and is a classic treatment of authority and its relation to justice, life, truth, and order. In recent years, authority has been seen as an enemy of freedom, autonomy, and development. In this book, the renowned philosopher Yves R. Simon, himself a passionate proponent of liberty, analyzes the idea of authority and definds it as an essential concomitant of liberty. Simon sees authority as the catalyst necessary to bring together the seemingly disparate demands of liberty on one hand and order on the other.

Simon’s perceptive discussion of how authority differs from law enables him to highlight the effective and personal role that authority can play in the life of the individual and for the good of the community.

Sujets

Philosophie

Philosophie politique

Éthique et morale

justice

Social Theory

Political

PHILOSOPHY

Philosophie et théologie

Sociology

Politics

Informations

Publié par	University of Notre Dame Press
Date de parution	28 février 1991
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780268182106
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	8 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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A Generl Theo of r
AUTHORITY A General Theor of y
AUTHORITY
by
YVES R. SIMON
With an Introduction by
VUKAN KUIC
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS
NOTRE DAME University of Notre Dame Press
Copyright© 1962, 1980 by University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 • undpress.nd.edu
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Simon, Yves Rene Marie, 1903-1961.
A general theory of authority.
Reprint of the ed. published by University of Notre
Dame Press, Notre Dame, with a new introd.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Authority. 2. Liberty. I. Title.
HM271.S45 1980 303.3'6 80-11477
ISBN 978-0-268-00531-3 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-268-01004-1 (paper)14
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction 5
I. The Bad Name of Authority 13
Authority in Seeming Conflict with: Justice
Life
Truth 16
Order 19
Hypothesis: Authority Embraces a Complex of Functions 20
II. Common Good and Common Action 23
Grounds and Forms of Sociability 23
The Needs of the Individual 23
The Common Good 26
Partnership and Community 29
The Unity of Common Action 1 3
Rational Communication and Afective Communion 33
Knowledge and Freedom 41
An Essential Function of Authority 47
50 The Form and the Matter of the Common Good
The Most Essential Function of Authority 57
The Function and the Subject 60
The Person 67
The Subject and the Person 72
1
14 2 Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
III. The Search for Truth 81
The Witness 84
The Teacher 94
The Freedom of the Intellect 100
115 Truth and Community
IV. The Communication of Excellence 133
On Paternal Authority 133
Beyond the Essential Functions of Authority 134
Doing What the Common Good Demands 143
Freedom from the Self 148
V. Afterthoughts on the Bad Name of Authority 157
Appendix:
ON THE MEANING OF CIVIL OBEDIENCE 163
168 Index � It seems most ftting to dedicate this book
to the two institutions in America which aforded my hus
band the great opportunity of teaching and research in an
atmosphere of intense intellectual stimulation and friend
ship: The University of Notre Dame and the Committee
on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. The pres
ent work is to a large degree the result of the opportunities
provided by these universities.
-MRS. YVES R. SIMON
October I 962 INTRODUCTION
With her sure insight into the human condition,
Hannah Arendt suggested some years ago that the
reason why we no longer understand the idea of
freedom is that we no the meaning
of authority. She was right, of course, and what is
more, this situation cannot be said to have improved
since. If anything the confusion surrounding the rela
tionship between authority and liberty may well have
receded even further into what Robert Nisbet has re
cently described as the "Twilight of Authority."
Nevertheless, thanks to a few contributions like this
book, the vision of political philosophy has not
dimmed beyond hope of recovery.
Unlike so many contemporary social thinkers, Yves
R. Simon steadfastly refused to dwell upon the all
too familiar symptoms of the political-intellectual
crisis of our time. Instead, in a style wonderfully
matched to his purpose, he devoted his considerable
talents to penetrating its causes. Thus as Mortimer
Adler points out in his freword to Simon's Freedom of
Choice, even readers without a background in
philosophical literature should have no difficulty en
joying the "felicitous combination of detailed con
creteness with abstract precision" in Simon's exposi
tion of this subject "in the context of all relevant
psychological, ethical, and metaphysical considera
tions." In fact, Adler goes on to say, Simon's interpre
tation of free choice represents "the perfect antidote
fr the errors, the misunderstanding-or worse, the
ignorances" that beset the modern discussion of
5 6 Introduction
human freedom. The present volume, which Simon
missed seeing in print by about a year, can be said to
have exactly the same potential with regard to the
modern discussion of authority.
The reissue of this first of six-so far
posthumous volumes edited from the transcripts of
Simon's lectures and other manuscripts may thus be a
sign that at long last the unique contribution of this
great philosopher and teacher is about to be more
widely recognized. Simon was always interested, as he
once put it himself, in the meaning of things hidden
from us by virtue of their familiarity, and he did not
object to spending a lifetime improving his-and
our-understanding of them. For example, in addi
tion to authority and freedom (and a number of other
vital subjects), Simon also carried on a lifelong study
of "work," expanding and improving his interpreta
tion in several successive treatments. Thus it is defi
nitely not by accident that in a recent survey of cur
rent literature, Sebastian de Grazia found Simon's
Work, Society, and Culture to be the least timebound,
"in the sense that ... it could have been read a decade
ago or can be read a decade hence with equal profit."
This was written six years after the book first came
out, sixteen years after Simon's untimely death in
1961. In an earlier review of the same book, William
P. Nutting, who had known Simon personally, put it
somewhat more strongly: "And so, I would repeat,
you will find that you will understand any problem
better if you can read something that Yves Simon has
written on it. 'He touched nothing that he did not
adorn'."
Simon addressed the problem of political authority
fr the first time in English in his Aquinas lecture at
Marquette University in 1940. The published version
of this lecture, The Nature and Function of Authority, has 7 Introduction
long been out of print, but those familiar with it unan
imously agree that it is a small masterpiece. Simon
nevertheless managed to improve on it in his Wal
green lectures given at the University of Chicago
eleven years later. These lectures, published under
the title Philosophy of Democratic Government, have been
translated into Portuguese, German, Japanese, and
Korean and reprinted many times in paperback edi
tions. They are th us his best known work. Yet as far as
authority is concerned, the present volume, which
took another ten years to complete, clearly represents
Simon's last word on the su�ject.
What distinguishes this book from Simon's pre
vious contributions to our understanding of au
thority and its relation to liberty-is its all
inclusive scope. This is not just another version of a
theory of government. This is truly a general theory
covering the nature and functions of authority in our
pursuits not only of political ends but also of scientific
knowledge and moral excellence.
In this study Simon again demonstrates why with
out "authoritative allocation of values," as David East
on might put it, there simply can be no political sys
tem. Simon is especially good at showing how this
need fr authority springs not so much from what a
community might lack as from the good things it al
ready has and still might achieve. Rather than pen
ury, it is really plenitude, material, intellectual,
spiritual, that calls for the operation of political au
thority. In taking care of any kind of deficiency, the
government of a community performs but a substitu
tional function. Its essential function is to formulate a
common policy when there is a genuine choice among
several equally feasible courses of action. This, inci
dentally, is one of the reasons why there is more gov
ernment in advanced than in primitive societies. But 8 Introduction
whether prim1t1ve or advanced, when it comes to
identifying and willing its common good, no commu
nity can do without authority. For this, Simon insists,
is the most essential function of political government:
to decide on goals, befre it chooses the means. True,
Simon avoids calling either personal or public ends
"values." But whoever is interested in the meaning of
"authoritative allocation of values," as an essential as
well as existential condition of political systems, will
benefit by consulting Simon's profund and realistic
interpretation.
What we first learn from Simon, then, is that with
out the operation of authority, daily life in common
would be impossible even for a community of per
fectly intelligent and virtuous people. But what about
the life of the mind and the life of the soul? Do they
also depend on the operation of political authority,
and if so, how? Now we all know that the various
social dimensions of science and the political con
straints on morality have been popular topics for
quite some time. In fact, the prevailing academic view
seems to be that all "values" depend on their social
environment and necessarily change with it. But
notice how many who subscribe to this view officially,
so to speak, also profess in private the belief that an
individual's conscience and mind are strictly his own
and that society ought not to interfere with our per
sonal strivings for beauty, goodness, or truth. In
other words, despite being strongly attracted to
sociology of knowledge, many intellectuals are reluc
tant to concede that their "values" might not be their
very own. Thus, even though many "feel" that such
expressions as "liberty under law," or "the truth shall
set one free," are no mere ideological slogans, some
seem almost intellectually ashamed of these feelings. I ntrod uc tion 9
They should not be, and after reading Simon they
should fel better. For in the pages that fllow Simon
does us a great service by covering all relevant consid
erations pertaining to these matters. With his custom
ary combination of abstract precision and detailed
concreteness, he deals with our search for truth and
goodness not only in the political, historical, and
psychological but also in the ethical, epistemological,
and metaphysical contexts.
In a review I wrote when this book was fir