Authority and Its Enemies

Front Cover
Transaction Publishers, Jan 1, 1995 - Philosophy - 145 pages
Ideological warfare against authority, especially in the world of higher education, broke out in the 1960s, and continues into the 1990s. No source or symbol of authority escaped untouched-neither parents nor teachers nor the cop on the beat. While the hippies have gone underground or disappeared entirely, the assault on legitimate authority continues unabated. As familiar institutions crumble before our eyes, befuddled liberals and conservatives alike throw up their hands in despair. In Authority and Its Enemies, Thomas Molnar asserts that the Western world is reeling from an overdose of freedom without order or authority. "Prof. Molnar's densely written book demands concentration. . . . In the much needed debate over this large, complex problem of authority in family, church, school, and state Prof. Molnar makes a sobering, closely reasoned presentation of a conservative view. That is a contribution." - Edmund Fuller, The Wall Street Journal "Once more Professor Molnar displays the clear-headedness and prescience we have come to expect from him as an analyst of the cultural and political plight of the Western world today." - David Levy, The Alternative: An American Spectator "From the pen of Dr. Thomas Molnar now comes a new and important book on authority in American society. Authority is one of those fundamental realities that we all know perfectly well-until we try to define it and explain it. A brilliant and reliable philosopher, Dr. Molnar has the exceptional ability to do both." -Kenneth Baker. S. J., Homiletic and Pastoral Review

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Contents

Introduction to the Transaction Edition
On Authority
5
The Nature of Authority
13
Authority in the Life of Men
27
The Enemies of Authority
77
The Restoration of Authority
103
The Nature of the Restoration Augustan or Despotic?
121
The Limits of Authority
131
Index
139
Copyright

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Page 46 - A true development, then, may be described as one which is conservative of the course of antecedent developments being really those antecedents and something besides them : it is an addition which illustrates, not obscures, corroborates, not corrects, the body of thought from which it proceeds ; and this is its characteristic as contrasted with a corruption.
Page 107 - This means that there is, by very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act in order to attune itself to the necessary ends of the human being.
Page 43 - The misfortune of our age— in the political as well as in the religious sphere, and in all things— is disobedience, unwillingness to obey. And one deceives oneself and others by wishing to make us imagine that it is doubt. No, it is insubordination: it is not doubt of religious truth but insubordination against religious authority which is the fault in our misfortune and the cause of it.
Page 74 - The interests of the human race are better served by giving every man a particular fatherland than by trying to inflame his passions for the whole of...
Page 115 - Once we realize that the primitive super-ego is merely a makeshift developmental mechanism, no more intended to be the permanent central support of our morality than is our embryonic notochord intended to be the permanent central support of our bodily frame, we shall not take its dictates so seriously (have they not often been interpreted as the authentic Voice of God?), and shall regard its supersession by some more rational and less cruel mechanism as the central ethical problem confronting every...
Page 46 - The important difference between power and authority consists in the fact that whereas power is essentially tied to the personality of individuals, authority is always associated with social positions or roles...
Page 74 - God in such a way that the larger the object of his love the less directly attached he is to it. His heart needs particular passions; he needs limited objects for his affections to keep these firm and enduring...
Page 47 - The owner may not do just what he likes absolutely: his right is limited by the good of the community of which he is a member, and if he is incapable of understanding it, his control should be removed.

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