Description
Book SynopsisVoices of Enlightenment have long counseled modern men and women to flee authority, including authority claimed by the church. Aspiring to substitute rock-ribbed law for human, or even divine, authority, today''s legal minds pursue a rule of law, not of men. Any possibility of authority is almost everywhere assimilated to the threat of authoritarian abuse. Civilizing Authority counters the flight from authority with the claim that it is precisely authority itself that offers a barrier against authoritarianism. The book''s authors share the insight that humans cannot increase, or even long survive, without authority, and they observe, from along a broad spectrum of perspectives, that all phases of our human living depend on authority. Families, churches, clubs, monasteries, unions, cities, and states human living would be unrecognizable without them, and they all depend upon authority and authorities. Still, what is the authority experience? What are we obeying when when we give w
Trade ReviewAn education and a delight, Civilizing Authority is like participating in a rich and provocative conversation, about questions that are both timely and timeless, among learned friends. -- Richard Garnett, University of Notre Dame
These elegant essays offer a bold and bracing new understanding of the province and power of authority in Scripture and tradition, conscience and community, church and state—as well as a sage rebuke of the growing numbers of authoritarians and antinomians among us. -- John Witte Jr.
In an era in which authority seems to be slipping away (or to be emerging in the pathological form of authoritarianism) this welcome volume gives us ten distinguished authors addressing from their distinct perspectives the nature of authority, its loss, and its perversion, topics that are crucial not only to the law, but to the legitimacy of the social order itself. -- James Boyd White, University of Michigan
Table of ContentsPart 1 Foreword Part 2 Introduction Part 3 Part I: The Spectrum of the Authority Experience Today Chapter 4 Authority and Reality Chapter 5 The Disappearance of Authority and the Elusiveness of Nonnatural Authority Chapter 6 Authority in the Church Part 7 Part II: Philosophies of Authority Chapter 8 Authority and Liberty Chapter 9 Does Authority Invite or Command? Chapter 10 A Rock on Which One Can Build: Friendship, Solidarity, and the Notion of Authority Chapter 11 Society, Subsidiarity, and Authority in Catholic Social Thought Part 12 Part III: Authority in Law? Chapter 13 How a Constitution May Undermine Constitutionalism Chapter 14 Locating Authority in Law Chapter 15 "Hollow Men?" Law and the Declension of Belief
