Types of Authority and the Limits of Trust
Over the course of human history, human societies have evolved several different types of authority. Religious (or spiritual) authority, secular (or governmental) authority, and scientific authority are the three main types, because they claim our allegiance and shape our daily lives more than any others do. Of these three, scientific authority is the most recent, of course. Secular and spiritual authority were present at the dawn of human society in the form of tribal councils and chiefs, on the one hand, and shamans, on the other. Scientists arrived on the scene much later. Granted, we see faint glimmerings of scientific authority among priests who studied the heavens, the seasons, mathematics, and architecture in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and Mesoamerica. But their scientific knowledge, such as it was, was deeply co-mingled with religious lore, and not really independent or free standing. Scientific authority was on somewhat steadier ground in the Greek, Roman, and Arab civilizations, but still of little consequence, being mostly confined to their elites. Scientific authority only comes into its own as a major social force in the modern era, with Francis Bacon (1561â1626), Galileo (1564â1642), and RenĂ© Descartes (1596â1650) leading the charge.
While their domains of expertise differ widely, we generally like to suppose that religious, secular, and scientific authority are all exercised in the public interest. That being so, in optimal circumstances, one might expect them to co-exist harmoniously. However, religious, secular, and scientific authority clash frequently, especially in times of rapid social and political change. But much as they clash on a variety of fronts, religious and scientific authority have one crucial thing in common. As Freudâs friend, the Reverend Oskar Pfister (1873â1956) observed, religion and science converge impressively in their conviction that âthe truth shall make you freeâ (Pfister 1928). Indeed, historically speaking, religious and scientific authority are both predicated (to a large extent) on their ability to discern and disseminate the truth. Contrast this state of affairs with the role of secular authority, which is wielded by (and embodied in) all branches of government, law enforcement, the judiciary, and the military. Rather than discerning and disseminating the truth, the primary function of secular authority is to enable the population to thrive, to maintain civic order, and to defend society against (internal or external) threats and enemiesâpreferably with the consent of the governed, of course.
However, much as science and religion share a belief in the emancipatory power of truth, they clash often because their concepts of truth differ greatly, and because they have developed different criteria and methods for ascertaining it. Religious and secular authority also clash frequently, sometimes with unexpected results. Consider Pope John Paul IIâs successful campaign to end communist rule in Poland or the Reverend Martin Luther Kingâs campaign to end segregation and racial inequality in the United States. And if, as sometimes happens, secular authorities declare a âwar on science,â as the Bush administration and now the Trump administration have done in the United States, erstwhile adversaries may reappear as unexpected allies. Witness the papal encyclical Laudato siâ (May, 2015), which affirmed the reality of climate change, despite the Trump administrationâs bizarre and hollow disclaimers.
Even when they clash, however, these three types of authority always have one thing in common. They invariably entail differences in status and power that grant a person of higher status the right to evaluate, address, and if need be, punish transgressive behavior. As a result of this fact, perhaps, theories of authority are usually rooted in a mood of skepticism, suspicion, or outright mistrust. So, for example, some theories of authority stress the necessity of religious and secular authorities to constrain, punish, and perhaps pardon our sinful natures, or our allegedly instinctive tendencies to selfishness, lust, and violence (e.g., Plato, Augustine, Hobbes, Freud). These theories are rooted in a deep mistrust of human nature. By contrast, theories that stress the arbitrary, irrational, repressive, and power-seeking aspects of authority (e.g., among utopian, libertarian, and anarchist thinkers) are rooted in mistrust of authority itself. Enlightenment critiques of religious authority were rooted in mistrust of tradition and ârevealed truth.â Postmodern critiques of scientific authorityâlike Nietzscheâsâare rooted in mistrust of scientific âobjectivity,â and so on.
Nevertheless, we are apt to forget that until very recently, it was quite common for people to trust at least one type of authority while mistrusting others. (I refer to peopleâs trust in institutions, not the individuals who compose them.) Even during the first half of the twentieth century, the type of authority you trustedâor trusted most, at any rateâwas often deeply aligned with your sense of personal identity. You might consider yourself to be a man of God or a man of science. Or you might be a civil servant, a lawyer, a soldier, or a law enforcement officer. Sometimes, if you were extremely fortunate, you might combine these disparate identities to varying degrees, for example, by being a âman of scienceâ and a âman of faith.â And one benefit conferred by these identity coordinates, and the institutions that spawned them, was that they provided people with shared templates for discerning meaning in their personal lives, and participating in communities with a shared frame of reference and a larger sense of purpose.
While authority was typically depicted as a âmasculineâ attribute in the West, the twentieth century produced a historic shift when it opened up most of these vocationsâand the authority that comes with themâto women. But on reflection, opportunities for women only arose as trust in these institutions began to wane. Trust in organized religion has been declining steadily since the eighteenth century, and female ordination is only a twentieth century phenomenon, and still not accepted in some religions and denominations. Trust in secular authorityâgovernment, the judiciary, and the policeâhas never been particularly robust in most parts of the world, and has been eroding steadily since the âReagan revolutionâ in the United States, where we have yet to elect a female President, and where the number of anti-government organizations (including armed militias!) sky-rocketed in the Obama years. Meanwhile, trust in scientific authority has been crumbling in many quarters due to the abject failure of public education, the sleazy corporate takeover of science and medicine, and last but not least, the advent of postmodernism.
So, what happens when people lose all trust in authority? For that seems to be our present, postmodern predicament. One consequence of our cultureâs growing distrust of authority is that shared ways of making meaning of personal experience become more tenuous and polarized. The experience of having a shared frame of reference and deeply cherished values diminishes, splintering into a multiplicity of individual perspectives and personal agendas. In circumstances like these, people are prone to what Erich Fromm termed âirrational doubtâ (Fromm 1947)âa tendency to miss the bigger picture, and to see their enveloping social reality through a kind of distorting prism or ideological lens that makes them feel less isolated. In such circumstances, people become highly suggestible and drawn toward (Right- and Left-wing) identity politics and/or to conspiracy theorists, who fill the vacuum left by the trust that evaporated with collective delusions, offering adherents a refuge from loneliness, and providing them with shared templates for interpreting reality. In this toxic atmosphere, demagogues derive their supposed âauthorityâ from the fact that they tell their followers what they want to hear, or whatever flatters and confirms their irrational fears and prejudices. Urban myths abound, leaving many people without a moral compass and with a deeply distorted understanding of their actual situation. This alarming state of affairsâwhich has been deeply intensified by the internet and social media (Mounk 2018; Weisman 2018)âfosters the decline of democratic norms and institutions and promotes the growth of ultra-nationalist and racist movements on the right and the veiled authoritarianism of the Left.
Organized religion seldom remains aloof from these alarming trends. On the contrary, when collective delusions flourish, organized religion may enter the fray as an ally of (or an alibi for) the angry mob, or as a beacon of sanity and tolerance, a bulwark against the prevailing tides of hatred and paranoia. By way of illustration, just consider the disparate attitudes taken by different religious denominations toward the current refugee crisis at our Southern border. Alternatively, consider the deep divisions that sometimes occur within religious denominations, such as Father Aidan Nicolsâ open letter (April 30, 2019) to the College of Bishops accusing Pope Francis of heresy because of his leniency toward gay and divorced Catholics, and for dismissing clergymen who were credibly accused of sexual abuse.1
Modes of Authority and Critical Theory
Almost from the moment of its inception, critical theory was deeply concerned with the nature, limits, and abuses of authority. It focused, in particular, on the critique of irrational authority, which demands unquestioning obedience of its subjects, and blunts the development of the individualâs conscience and critical faculties. The ways in which irrational authority stunts human development and (de)forms human subjectivity were explicitly thematized by Horkheimer, Fromm, and Marcuse in 1936, but they remained an implicit dimension of their (individual and collective) undertakings for some time thereafter (Horkheimer 1936). As witnesses to the galloping Nazification of Germany after 1926, in the late 1920s and 1930s, Horkheimer sought to elucidate how prevailing structures of authority undermine the individualâs ability to think and act in a rational and sociable manner. They sought to synthesize Marx and Freudâs hermeneutics of suspicion to critique the illusions and ideological distortions that precluded the emergence of truly autonomous individuals and prevented the emergence of a just and rational social order.2
However, in most accounts of the Frankfurt Schoolâs history, it is often forgotten that Erich Fromm was an active participant in these early undertakings. Why? Horkheimer and associates valued Frommâs early contributions, but disparaged or ignored his theoretical contributions after his br...