A recent review in "Books & Culture" of Victor Austin's book, Up with Authority: Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings, states that we are:
"essentially social beings all the way to the end". He rejects the idea that authority rides on that beast, coercion. "When coercion becomes necessary, authority is not able to be all that it could be". My father is in his eighties, and I am in my fifties, and I still respect his authority very highly, but not, I hasten to add, because I am afraid of a spanking.
Austin shows that there is a liberated sort of authority that does not exclude freedom but actually depends upon it: "I am persuaded that the freer we become as human beings the more we will need authority".
-- Douglas Wilson, "Books & Culture" review of Up with Authority: Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings
We are clearly in an age where authority is unfashionable. We have almost come culturally to despise judgment, at the same time when, because of that, we crave it more than ever. Those that we admire are, in fact, those that makes critical, astute, and good judgments. We just don't like it when they're wrong.
But if we abdicate authority completely, what authority have we essentially, and unwittingly, adopted?
