The Necessity for Authority
 

I'd be interested to see what anyone makes of this (Aside from any stylistic comments. I know it's badly written.) I'm normally fairly anarchistic in my views, so this sort of seemed interesting to me, but you may well find it mundane.) I hope someone can find convincing arguments to the contrary.


Justification of the necessity for authority

1) Either we assume freedom to be an axiomatic necessity (a) or we don't (b)

2) In case (b), there is no need to justify the existence of authority, since restriction of freedom would not be considered
to be a problem

3)In case (a), we must decide what is meant by freedom. It is fairly widely agreed that, within a political context, freedom
exists when nobody imposes their will on anybody else. That is to say that the free will of neither any one person nor that
of any group of people is restricted by any other person or group of people.

4)Whenever there is any large enough group of people who will come into contact with one another, especially in an
environment where there are limited resources, conflicts of interest are certain to occur. Where these cannot be solved
by compromise, one party will have their interests satisfied at the expense of the other party. Thus the will of the first
party has been imposed on the other to the the other party's detriment and their freedom has been infringed. By (a) this is
not a satisfactory situation.

5) In certain situations, such conflicts can be resolved by previously mutually agreed guidelines, such as codes of ethics,
laws, religious rules, etc. For example, if person X wishes to kill person Y and person Y wishes to stay alive, it is
generally considered that the interests of person Y take precedent over those of person X.

6) Unfortunately many such situations are not resolved according to such mutually agreed guidelines as may exist, but rather
in such a fashion that the interests of one party are satisfied at the expense of the interests of the other, due to some
inherent advantage possessed by the first party, such as superior guile, might or popularity.

7) In these cases, it is necessary for an impartial third party to arbitrate and to enforce the mutually agreed guidelines
in such a way that such arbitration and enforcement represents less of a restriction of freedom than would result from a
failure to intervene. Thus we have a necessity for authority in case (a)


To summarise:

If we believe that there is no need for freedom, then there is no need to justify the existence of authority. If we believe
that there is a need for freedom, then there is a need for authority to intervene and arbitrate in those instances where one
party would seek to impose their will on another.

One forum for a topic is plenty, please.

Using this as an example, if I didn't have authority to enforce this rule, members could (and occasionally do) post whatever they feel like, against forum rules.

So having rules is not enough; there must be someone with authority to enforce them.

Very clever. I appreciate what you're saying here, but I really don't feel that I was infringing on anybody's freedom by posting on two boards, so this would seem to me to be an argument against authority, because of its tendency, in some instances, to restrict freedom more than it preserves it.

But then there is the very valid bandwidth/server space/relative exposure argument.

Just for the record, I posted this on both boards because I was interested to see how the philosophy crowd would respond compared to the politics crowd. I felt that it was both a valid piece of political philosophy and a valid piece of philosophical politics.

I had thought that posting the same topic on two fora was within tfp rules and I have to concede that I haven't brushed up on the stickies for a while.

If it was just the fact that I posted this on two fora that was the problem, would it be possible to shuffle it back to philosophy and off politics, as it's abstract and the politics board tends to be more heavily contextual and knowledge-based?

If, however, it's simply not appropriate for the philosophy board, I would appreciate a bit of guidance on what is and isn't suitable.

Thanks very much and apologies for the mix-up.

I don't understand the controversy in your point.

Freedom and authority and power are always linked. Americans enjoy a lot of freedom because we have the most weapons and the biggest armed forces. This has been historically true for every empire.

Freedom without force to back it up is largely a utopian ideal that doesn't exist in the real world.

Oh, and Lebell, I think the belongs more in philosophy, but I don't have the power to change that. :)

You could say that in practical terms, the ability to exercise POWER is related to the capacity of a person or nation to use force of arms but that AUTHORITY provides the means to organize and justify that exercise of power. In a democractic republic, political leaders lay claim to power based on authority derived from the will of the people.

If the Generals do not recognize the derived authority of the President, then the president has no practical power and a coup d'etat ensues. Likewise the soldiers don't recognize the authority of the Generals and the people don't recognize the authority of the soldiers. In each case chaos ensues. Society crumbles because people use force without derived authority.

Maybe then authority is necessary because it provides organization or structure to the use or threat of force against others and within a society. Authority needs force but force needs authority. Freedom ensues because authority creates consistency in the use of force.

John Henry,

We generally try to keep topics to one thread, sometimes with less, sometimes with more success.

Leaving the thread in "Politics" was a judgement call, so I wouldn't worry about it.

The worst thing that would happen if you posted something in the wrong forum is that someone would move it and PM you to let you know.