ultimate authority

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Ultimate AuthorityAuthor(s): Zoltán BalázsSource: Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Jul., 2001), pp. 219-239Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical PublicationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40441295 .

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ULTIMATE AUTHORITY

Public Affairs Quarterly Volume 15, Number 3, July 2001

Zoltán Balázs

I

has been given a fair hearing in moral and political philosophy, though usually with an emphasis on the authority of

law, considered necessary for several reasons even in liberal societies. Authorities that have a formative influence on individuals' lives and characters, like moral, religious, or political authorities are, however, more contested issues. Conservatives tend to accept a wider scope of authority in such matters, and liberals tend to stress the possible dangers of authority interfering with personal autonomy. The question is not whether such authorities in fact control individuals' choices and lives, but whether they should continue doing so. What has not been thoroughly examined so far is whether such authorities really constrain individuals' choices, whether it is part of their nature that they oppose individual autonomy. For conservatives and liberals seem to be in agreement that individual autonomy and social (moral, religious, political) authority oppose one another. Con- servatives might welcome authority as a means to remedying the shortcomings of individuals. Liberals may concede that authorities have important functions in learning, resolving conflicts, and promoting social cooperation, nevertheless, they always suspect it, especially if its boundaries are obscure. But it is unclear how such authorities really op- erate; how they constrain individuals subjected to them; and whether imposing such constraints on them is all that they do.

The present discussion will analyze the nature of these ultimate authorities and their operation. (They are ultimate, and not final, authorities, because it is the nature of every authority that it has the final word.) It will be argued that ultimate authorities are justified if they meet three conditions: (1) they are intrinsically limited by the ground on which they rest, (2) they hold over subjects who are free, and (3) they are effective in directing the subjects.

219



220 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLY

II

Joseph Raz's conception of authority is an obvious starting point. He has identified two basic characteristics of authority. The first is the dependence of authority "on reasons which already independently apply to the subjects of the directives and are relevant to their action in the circumstances covered by the directive" (Raz 1990, p. 125). What are these reasons? Raz gives the examples of arbitration and legislation. The arbitrator is expected to decide an issue on which the parties conflict. He must consider the reasons that have been raised and presented to him, and his decision must take them into account. Similarly, if a legislative body introduces a new tax or creates a legal obligation, it must take account of the reasons that apply to the situation in which the problem arose or a proposal was made. Thus, according to Raz, authorities depend on reasons that are not necessarily reducible to a single basis or ground.

The other characteristic of authority Raz discusses is its preemptiveness. In his words: "The fact that an authority requires performance of an action is a reason for its performance which is not to be added to all other relevant reasons when assessing what to do, but should exclude and take place of some of them" (p. 124). By this Raz takes note of the fact that when an authority commands or directs us to do something, we usually do not deliberate over the reasons that led the authority to issue its command or directive. Rather, the command or directive is taken as a reason in itself to act.

Raz makes it clear that the two characteristics of authority are not independent of one another. The preemptive thesis presupposes the ful- fillment of the dependence thesis: "Since the justification of the binding force of authoritative directives rests on dependent reasons, the reasons on which they depend are ... replaced, rather than added to by those directives" (p. 135). This entails that the preemptiveness of authority hinges on justificatory reasons. Raz is at pains to explain that the very essence of this thesis is that assessing these reasons cannot be carried out case by case, yet the right to do so should be retained. It is merely for prudential reasons that we delegate our right to decide to the authority, but prudence requires that we do not lose sight of the authority's actions and assess its competence on the matters it has to decide. But then how should one understand the notion of replacement? For Raz clearly wants us to obey an authority even if - occasionally - it makes a mistake or it fails to take into account a relevant reason. This means that the authority's binding force cannot stem exclusively from the reasons it depends on. But since Raz does not distinguish clearly between



ULTIMATE AUTHORITY 2 2 1

reasons on which authority depends, he remains vulnerable to the ob- jection that the binding force of authority is in his definition too weak to overrule the subjects' independent reasons. Raz is right in saying that the directive of authority cannot be an additional reason for an action. But unless we assume that the dependence of authority entails something more, the binding force of authority will not be really binding, and the notion of replacement will make not much sense.

In the preemptiveness of authority, therefore, the replacement of reasons should be understood as implying, not the dependence of authority on the subjects' reasons pertaining to the issue, but its dependence on the subjects' acceptance of the authority. That acceptance, however, does not necessarily have to do with reasons and arguments at all, hence Raz's conception might be criticized for its rationalism, which is alien to certain important kinds of authorities. But this also means that the preemptiveness thesis does not presuppose the dependence thesis in its initial formulation. The two theses stand in a much looser relationship with one another than Raz stipulates. They jointly constitute what is called authority.

It is crucial to understand exactly what this means. In this respect, Raz's his position is ambiguous. He says that he wants to offer a normative analysis of authority. Both of his theses concern what an authoritative directive should look like. It should depend on independently applying reasons and it should replace those very reasons. On the other hand, when he refers to de facto authorities and derives these theses from an analysis of them, he observes: "The crucial question is whether the arbitrator's is a typical authority, or whether the two features picked out above are peculiar to it and perhaps a few others, but are not characteristic of authorities in general" (p. 122). The answer is that these features obtain in other cases as well and are characteristics of authorities that do not fulfill an arbitrator's function. By implication, however, the two features, put in two theses, are not normative but factual conditions of authority. They are conditions that describe authority, not conditions that justify it. Authorities must be grounded and have to be followed in order to qualify as authorities. Since this claim has an important bearing both on the present account of ultimate authority and on the customary distinction between an authority being accepted and an authority being justified, further explanation is in order here.

Roughly speaking, the account advanced here states that an authority exists only if it is accepted and justified. The customary distinction between the normative and the descriptive accounts of authority is too sharp. It is perhaps useful in evaluating an authority from a wholly impartial (e.g., the anthropologist's) point of view, but this is not our concern. What has to be explained is why people accept an authority,




and it is impossible to explain it without referring to their reasons. It is crucial to understand what it means that they have their reasons. For the assumption behind the distinction between justified and unjustified, le- gitimate and illegitimate authorities is that such reasons may be good or bad. While good reasons justify the acceptance of authority, bad reasons do not. The typical procedure for deciding whether a reason is good or bad is to list the conditions that have to obtain to make the reasons good. But this decision is made by those who accept or reject the authority in question and hence decide whether or not the authority is justified and, hence, genuine or false. The situation is even more complicated, for in many cases their decision is aided by other authorities. If they decide that the authority is genuine, they may accept it and the authority begins to exist as an authority. If they nevertheless reject it, the question has to be asked whether this rejection is temporary and exceptional (e.g., a child disobeys his parents on a particular occasion), or whether its is motivated by irrationality or immorality. This can happen, but it is most unlikely that authorities could survive long rejection. Further, in such a situation the reasons for their acceptance cannot be defined, which makes their establishment and survival even more unlikely. Therefore, it is not only the reasons whose goodness is decided by the participants of authority relations, but also the conditions that make these reasons good. Of course, there can be different kinds of discrepancy between the subject and the authority, such as a factual error about the basis of the authority: e.g., a patient may believe not in the doctor's medical knowledge, but in her mystical healing power; or an erroneous interpretation of one's motivation for accepting the authority: e.g., asserting that one accepts the authority of one's mother out of love; or to mention the most typical mistake, claiming that one accepts the authority of another person because of that person's power. But these cases do not, on the whole, invalidate the claim stated above, namely, that authorities that are disobeyed, misunderstood, deceptive, and unjustified cannot endure.1 Raz himself notes that "there is an in- terdependence between conceptual and normative argument," and refers to the embeddedness of authority relations into "the philosophical and political tradition of our culture" (p. 137), which is but another way of realizing that such relations cannot exist independently of recognition.

The modified version of Raz's conception is, therefore, acceptable: in order to qualify as an authority, the institution or person must be con- strained by reasons or by other considerations; and be effectively preemptive. Raz's conception of authority has been very influential. Many writers have defined their positions with regard to it. Basic modifications of the two defining conditions of authority, however, have not been proposed. The dispute revolves around the balance of the two conditions.2



ULTIMATE AUTHORITY 223

It needs to be stressed that besides the two conditions that positively define authority, there is an important negative condition that has to be met in each authority relation: the exclusion of force and coercion. This feature of authority was described by Hannah Arendt in several writings, and it has been illuminatingly discussed by Meir Dan-Cohen (Dan-Cohen, 1994). An authority's commands are to be obeyed voluntarily, i.e., without being coerced, only for the sake of authority. He argues by analogy that when a request is addressed to us, we do not deliberate over the reasons behind the request, not in the typical case of simple requests in everyday life, at any rate. We do not regard them as compulsions, yet, in normal circumstances, we feel "obliged" to act accordingly. This allows us to see how a request or a command issued by an authority replaces reasons that might or might not apply. The main difference from Raz's account is that, according to Dan-Cohen, in the absence of authority we may not have a reason to act at all, whereas in the presence of authority we do have a reason.

Having confirmed the independence of authority from the immedi- ate reasons that apply to a given situation and having made clear that exerting authority entails that its command is obeyed for the sake of authority itself, Dan-Cohen must also account for the reasons that lead the subject to defer to authority. His position is that coercion or com- pulsion must be excluded from both the authority's and the subject's considerations. In fact, authority - to qualify as such - must want to elicit voluntary obedience, i.e., obedience out of deference or respect, not obedience as such. Dan-Cohen draws here an analogy with gift- giving or gift-receiving: if I want something as a gift, it is not only the object that I desire, but also that it be given to me freely (possibly out of love or respect). Even if I could take hold of the object by force, that would be self-defeating, if part of the object is that it be given to me freely. Thus, an authority cannot employ force or coercion because it would cease to be an authority.

The upshot of these arguments is that any conception of authority must account for the authority's effectiveness, dependence, and incom- patibility with coercion.

Ill

Let us consider, then, how customary authority relations meet these conditions. So far only a few, rather arbitrarily selected, cases have been mentioned, like that of arbitration or legislation. I propose three general types of authority relations. The basis of the distinction between them is the source of dependence of authority.




The first includes cases in which an authority is followed or obeyed on the basis of its superior knowledge, expertise, or excellence. This can be illustrated by patient-doctor, client-lawyer, and disciple-master relations, among others. Authoritative directives are usually followed and prescriptions observed unreflectively, as long as the difference in knowledge or expertise holds. This means that authority is highly effective, its basis is well-defined, its scope clearly drawn, its dependence on applicable reasons meaningful.

It may be thought that moral, religious, and political authorities belong to this type, since they generally claim to be or are claimed to be based on a superior knowledge about their respective issues (or about morality, religion, and politics in general). However, despite the similarities between acquiring technical and moral, religious, or political knowledge and experience, it would seem that they should not be treated under the same rubric, because such authorities are often very controversial. But the truly compelling reason for the separate treatment of ultimate moral, religious, and political authorities is not their essential contestedness, since for certain groups of individuals they act like any other source of knowledge. Crucial features that distinguish them from other sources of knowledge are, first, their relationship to knowledge. Law for a lawyer or physics for a physicist represents a body of knowledge that exists quite independently of the particular person who represents it as an authority, whereas the relationship between, say, "morality" and the virtuous person is more intricate. Second, moral, religious, and political authorities tend to be comprehensive. They re- quire much more from an individual than more instrumental authorities do. My broker's authority over me regarding finances and my tailor's authority over me regarding dressing are obviously partial; my father's authority over me regarding moral matters, including where to spend my money and how to avoid vanity, is more comprehensive.

The second type of authority relation involves cases of voluntary submission. Most organizations and institutions in which we work, live, entertain ourselves, or study, have authority over us because we have joined them consciously and voluntarily, i.e., we have freely accepted their authority. We may join an organization or an institution because we want to pursue some pre-selected goal, reinforce a tradition, make our lives easier or more comfortable, gain power, serve other people more effectively, facilitate coordination, and so on. Once joined, however, the decisive reason for following the directives of the relevant authorities is the choice that we have made. Similarly, in cases of conflicts or disputes we might have with others, we may appeal to a third party that both of us trust for various reasons. We may think that any




action is better than stalemate, that our cause is more likely to win, that it is better to be directed by an authority than to be overcome by the other party, and so on. What matters here is, again, that the chief reason for complying with authority is our choice to accept it.

Empirically, between the two major types of authorities no sharp boundaries can be drawn. They are analytically distinguished from one another. Becoming a student in a university means not only choosing to obey university authorities, but also acknowledging the superiority of the professors' knowledge and expertise. By a single decision, a student becomes subject to different authorities. The student's decision is, accordingly, supported by reasons pertinent to both types of authority.

The dependence of the second type of authority on reasons is a more complex issue than that of the first type. Figuratively speaking, the basis of the first type of authority is something behind the authority, something that it possesses, whereas in the second type the basis is in front of the authority. In some cases, such as juries and courts, authority is bound by the reasons with which it has been presented. In other cases, a particular goal is shared by the authority itself, making it dependent on that goal, too. For instance, the authority of the chairman of a political party over its members does not derive only from the chairman's position, but also from the chairman's personal political abilities to achieve the common goal. In other cases the free acceptance of authority is really the only thing that matters (as far as the subject's freedom and dependence is concerned), as in employment relations. On the whole, the sort of dependence created by voluntary submission is less specific than the one created by experience, allowing authority a much broader scope to act and decide as it will.

Before turning to the third type, it is necessary to take note of two general facts about authorities. First, authority relations overlap. Some- one may be in authority over another person in one respect, while subjected to that person's authority in another respect. The complexity of authority relations is itself a fact of life that one can be more or less familiar with, hence in a derivative sense one may be an authority on coming to terms with authority relations. This is a much less explicit or conspicuous type of authority, yet a vital one. Knowing where the boundaries lie, knowing how they can change, including the boundaries of one's own authority, is a result of much work and long experience.

The second fact has already been touched upon. Especially in cases belonging to the first type, the dependence of authority is itself often expressed in terms of authority. Persons in authority claim to be con- strained by another authority: a physician by the authority of medicine,




a judge by that of law. Still, they themselves are genuine authorities, for the interpretation of the usually silent authority behind them, often embodied in texts and canons, is a special skill that presupposes special expertise.

Another point is that while it is obvious that persons or bodies of persons can be authorities, it is less obvious whether material or conceptual objects can be authorities. Texts are often called authoritative, but it is an interesting and contested point about them how their authority is related to that of their authors. Constitutions, writ- ten laws, sacred religious texts, testaments, and even commentaries on them are the most prominent examples. Science, morality, and politics are also usually considered to be authoritative, and ultimate authorities are to be found among them. It would seem, however, that they are essentially different from personal authorities in that they cannot issue directives or give orders, and cannot sanction or coerce their subjects. But this difference is only an apparent one. First, even if there is no single oracle of science, the complex system of rules, standards, and conventions of science represent, as a whole, an authority. Second, behind such conceptual authorities there are communities of individuals who can effectively sanction and coerce. Third, even in cases of personal authority, coercion and sanction need not be of a physical nature. Authority can work by means of admonition, reprehension, warning, threats, and so on. Sanctions of morality can work without persons, too. Kantians maintain that reason ought to motivate us; Humeans deny it. But even the latter acknowledge that by means of shame, internal unrest, fear, and the like, morality is an effective authority. Thus I conclude that there is no serious obstacle to treating material or conceptual authorities in the same way as personal authorities.

IV

The third category of authority relations involves the most complicated, yet the most intimate, relations. Moral, political, and religious authorities are its prominent examples. Notwithstanding the differ- ences between the first two types and the third type, the two defining features of authority in general must be constitutive for the third type as well. However, while authorities that belong to this third type are usually considered highly effective, the basis of their dependence is difficult to identify.

To a certain extent, these authorities function similarly to authorities based on expertise. There can be moral, political, and religious expertise




that is widely acknowledged even in modern pluralistic societies. People appreciated for their moral standing act as moral authorities, and people who are supposed to know more about people and their behavior through having been exposed to many and various experiences and situations may also be considered authorities. It is important to note this, so as to avoid over-dramatizing every moral disagreement. Personal political authority is similar to this sort of moral authority, based less on excellence and more on experience. Further, the inner structure of ultimate authorities is usually hierarchical, which implies that agents acting with authority on lower levels submit themselves to those on higher levels. Moral, political, and especially religious authorities practically never consider themselves as not being subject to a higher authority. Since basic moral knowledge is equally distributed among individuals, relations of moral authority tend to be very unstable: subjects can easily turn into authority and vice versa.

Again, to a certain extent such ultimate authorities are similar to authorities that depend on voluntary submission, where the adop- tion of a certain tradition, value system, or political ideology is a matter of choice. It can be doubted, of course, whether there can be a completely free choice in these matters. But the point is, again, an empirical one: the influence of tradition and upbringing should be neither under- nor over-estimated. Those who feel they have chosen their convictions freely may be right. Most probably, however, people are unlikely to have chosen their most fundamental beliefs and personal relationships in the same manner as they have chosen their hobbies, jobs, or doctors.

Notwithstanding the similarities and empirical considerations, it is necessary to discuss these cases of authority relations in their own right. The basis of such authorities troubles especially those who fear that we lose too much freedom and autonomy by subjecting ourselves to these authorities. We accept such authorities for the reason that we identify ourselves with them. They are so important to our identity that getting rid of them is practically incomprehensible to us. We think we must act according to what these authorities prescribe, yet we protest against the interpretation that our compliance is coerced. We think that the authority can at least partially be defended by reason. Still, it is hard to see in what sense these authorities are dependent on any ground, since the reasons for accepting the authority are not the reasons on which the authority depends. From the subjects' point of view, the trouble is that whereas authority relations captured by the first two types can be viewed as instrumental to shaping their characters and forming their conceptions of life, authority relations of this type have a non-instrumental,




constitutive role in their lives and characters. They do not choose them after due deliberation, freely and wholeheartedly. Instrumental authority relations can also shape their characters, and predetermine certain choices that they later realize as having been crucial to their identity, but their influence is limited. Not so with authorities to whom they are subject in the way, for instance, Luther was: "Here I stand and can do no other." By this he surely did not mean merely, as Harry Frankfurt thinks, that "he was trying to convey something about himself (Frankfurt 1999, p. 80), implying that on pain of losing his identity as Martin Luther he was unable do otherwise. That is only part of the message. The other part is that "I can do no other" because / am not allowed to. But this restriction, external as it may appear, is not something coercive. The essential paradox in this type of authority is that it is somehow dependent on the subjects' assent to it, yet uncontrolled by them. They perceive it as something out of their control, yet they hold it freely. But this does not mean that ultimate authorities are potentially always tyrannical.

To show this, let us contrast Abraham's decision to sacrifice his son for the sake of God with Sophie's decision to sacrifice her daughter in favor of her son. Sophie's choice is as tragic as Abraham's.3 But in another sense it is something profoundly different: through her choice she could in fact convey her preferences, but not herself. Abraham, on the other hand, was put into a situation in which he could manifest himself entirely and act from the very depth of his personality. Sophie had to face sheer and brutal force that gave her a choice for its own perverse sake; Abraham faced an authority that gave him a choice for Abraham's sake.

Thus, we have a clear sense of freedom in the former, but not in the latter case. It is not as if Abraham's choice was something he would have agreed to face, had he been able to anticipate it. As a matter of fact, in this case counterfactual arguments do not make sense at all, unlike in Sophie's case. Abraham becomes someone through his choice, he comes closer not only to God but to himself as well; Sophie, on the other hand, is alienated from herself to such an extent that Frankfurt's fear that an inner split may destroy a person, in Sophie's case, does threaten to become reality.

Neither the choice situation itself nor the act of choosing was merely offered to Abraham. He was required to comply with God's wish. On the other hand, although Sophie could not avoid the choice situation, she was not commanded to make a certain choice. For- mally seen, she was left more freedom than Abraham. But the conclusion that she in fact enjoyed more freedom is offensive and unacceptable. How can we account for that? The explanation has to do with the nature




of the relationship that linked Abraham with God. Though he was called to do something, he could have resisted and, perhaps, with good reasons. He could have begun to speculate over God's real will, over God's possible reasons for His request, and perhaps he could have identified himself wholeheartedly with God's wish. But not necessarily. One could argue that had Abraham in fact resisted, he would have been doomed to an inferior life, laden with remorse and regret for not having been able to live up to God's wish. God, however, does not threaten him with such a sanction. Threats play no role here. Abraham was left the freedom to choose between himself as he has been so far and a future self that unfolds only after he does what God wanted him to do. As a matter of fact, he did not think of the situation in terms of freedom; freedom enters only when it comes to the ex post facto interpretation of the case. It is anticipated, so to speak, in Abraham's behavior. The choice he faced as a choice was, obviously, between sacrificing Isaac or letting him live. But he was commanded to choose the former action. Thus, the relationship between him and God was an authority relationship.

In Sophie's choice there was no such relationship involved. The freedom that brute power enforces can hardly be called freedom at all - the contrast with freedom that authority can grant could not be sharper. She was forced to reveal a preference that was not questioned or challenged. She was left to judge which choice reflected her preferences. There was no ultimate authority involved, except her own.

It is a strong argument supporting the interpretation of Abraham's "choice" as obeying an authority and not sheer power that both the notion of freedom and the notion of the effectiveness of the command play a role in it. The defense of this interpretation, however, requires showing the reasons for the dependence on authority.

V

One obvious approach is to show that every ultimate authority is de- rived from some even more fundamental authority, and depends on it. In the context of contemporary Western societies, it is morality that is deemed to be such an all-establishing authority. Quite embarrassingly, however, morality itself is torn between different moral theories, many of which attempt to discover one single principle on which morality can be built. Other political and moral thinkers have pointed out the tyrannical consequences flowing from the enforcement of single principles. They have proposed emotions, virtues, personal engagements, commitments, and affections as possible safeguards against these consequences.




Let it be noted first that, since authorities of the first two types can be useful, if not necessary, for attaining certain desirable, justifiable, or simply good, ends, therefore in an instrumental sense they all can be morally good, or at least permissible. For instance, desire for knowledge is generally held to have good moral reasons to support it; and the same is true of the desire to teach others. To be healthy is, ceteris pari- bus, a morally good end, hence subjecting ourselves to the authority of the doctor is morally warranted. Correspondingly, to want to heal others is a noble intention, although its corollary is to have authority over patients. On the other hand, morally bad ends can make authority relations bad in the same derivative sense. It depends both on the particular moral theory and practical deliberation when and under what condition morality may override the desire for health, knowledge, teaching, or healing. Thus, it is not only the moral value of the end behind the authority relationship that needs to be examined from a moral point of view, but motivations and intentions, too.

Does morality have a similar comprehensive and full authority over ultimate authorities? Or, is morality's authority only one among them? If it is only the latter, it does not prohibit morality from forming a judgment about the commands of love or those of faith in its own terms. Far from it: moral judgements not only can but ought to be made; this is the strongest imperative of any morality. It is another question whether reason, love, utility, duty, universalizability, or something else is the true guiding principle of morality; what matters here is the question whether the authority of morality overrides any other ultimate authority. Since morality applies to the entire scope of human action, emotion, and motivation, there is a prima facie case for its overridingness. Yet many authors maintain that morality itself or its authority has its limits or is somehow restricted. Prominent representatives of this position are Slote (1983), Williams (1981, 1985), Kekes (1993), and Frankfurt (1999). The usual way of arguing for this assertion is to distinguish between cases in which moral considerations reasonably override other considerations and cases in which either non-moral or immoral considerations override moral ones. Sometimes it is also argued that there are cases which are simply exempt from any moral consideration.

For instance, the decision between lying and telling the truth is clearly a matter for morality, even if different moral theories suggest different answers to questions as to whether or not lying is permissible, justifiable, or even required in a particular case. But it may happen that someone lies for the sake of something other than the greater good of other people. Also, there are decisions in one's life that fall outside the scope of morality, for instance, how to spend one's free time or whom



ULTIMATE AUTHORITY 2 3 1

to love. These are two different ways of demarcating morality from other values, and as Thomas Nagel puts it, "it is not always clear whether Williams' argument is about the content of morality or about its authority" (Nagel, 1986, p. 191), and this has caused some misunderstandings concerning the problem. Very briefly, there are three levels of conflict that should be distinguished.

First, moral theories sometimes prescribe different and often contra- dicting ways of action and behavior. Thus, even morality, as framed in different moral theories and ethical systems, based on different inter- pretations of what leading a morally good life requires, is profoundly torn between them.

Second, a distinction can be made between private and public good. What is good to do for the individual, on the basis of his conception of a good life, may not be good for the public, and hence, not right to do. This is the conflict that Nagel has in mind, and that Williams labels as the conflict between the ethical and the moral. But since both conceptions employ the notion of the good, it could be argued that those who want to defend the individual conceptions of a good life from a potential intrusion of the social or collective good, are merely advancing a rival conception of morality, based on another principle. Hence, the conflict is interpreted as arising in terms of the first level.

Yet thirdly, even if it is accepted that the notion of the good is the cornerstone of each morality, distinguishing morality from other ultimate authorities, establishing the potential for conflicts among them, is still possible. For politics, the ultimate value could be called endurance; for religion, love and sanctity; for art, beauty. It is always arguable that love, or loving, is a good thing; the endurance of a particular political community is another good thing; and beauty, or being positively related to beauty, is another good thing. But their relationship to goodness is reciprocal and equal. Enjoying beauty can contribute to one's having a good life, and having a good life has something beautiful on it. However, they are not interchangeable values. It should be noted that this argument stands unaffected by whether or not it is true that the value on which morality rests is in fact goodness or something else.

The three levels of conflict have been distinguished by what Nagel calls the content of morality. But as he observes, it is another question whether or not the authority of morality is or should be overriding. For even if one can point out that some of our decisions are not made from the universal and impersonal point of view that morality prescribes, and even if there are cases to which moral reasons do not seem to apply, it does not follow that morality's authority is restricted. Thus, once one acts out of considerations other than moral ones, however reasonably,




trying to justify the unjustifiable, one simply performs an immoral action. This is, for instance, Shelly Kagan's view (Kagan, 1991).

To this, the reply is already at hand. Of course, by appreciating the importance of values other than goodness, and refusing to subordinate them to the latter, one has not shown that the authority of morality is limited. But that it indeed is, follows just from the notion and the operation of authority. Of course, that ultimate authorities are as dependent as those belonging to the first and second type, is still to be demonstrated. Before turning directly to this task, let us first consider how limited the capacities of ultimate authorities are, i.e., how their operation casts doubt on their overridingness.

God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son and did not say that it was a morally good thing, neither that it was a morally bad thing. God did not refer to morality's authority at all. Again, Job had to suffer, without being morally reprehensible, without having deserved it, and he was called to remain faithful. Philoctetes had to suffer partly as a result of his comrade's decision to leave him alone on an island, and he was ordered by the gods not to seek retaliation, retribution, and final justice. Dostoyevsky thought that not even one child's death is a price worth paying for the survival of the world. Agamemnon agreed to sacrifice his daughter - his love, i.e., not one person - for the sake of others. In von Kleist's tragedy, the Prince of Homburg acted against the order of the king to win the battle for him, but success did not save him from the punishment for violating the order. In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln praised the soldiers who died at the battle for the sake of the nation, that the nation and its government "shall not perish from the earth."

In each example, the final reference by which the imperative, actual or virtual, to be followed by the subject is justified, has nothing to do with the notion of goodness as a moral value. Even if each of these cases has an unmistakable and strong moral aspect, this is not to what the authority that issues the imperative alludes. One could perhaps argue for the moral Tightness of Agamemnon's decision in a consequentialist manner; or support Dostoyevsky's emotional incapacity by a Kantian argument. Kierkegaard's comments on the nature of Abraham's faith also make room for moral reasoning (Kierkegaard, 1985). In each case, however, there is much to be said against the validity of the respective moral reasoning. This is, to repeat, a sign of morality's incapacity of overcoming the complexity of the cases. And it is a sign of the presence of another ultimate authority.

The conflict of mutually excluding ultimate authorities is sometimes interpreted in terms of tragedy. There is, however, a crucial difference




between tragedy and personal tragedy. What seems to be a tragic choice to the outsider, may not necessarily be perceived as such by the one who makes the choice. Even if the decision of obeying one authority is difficult and a source of pain and suffering, there is a strong conviction that, even after making the choice, nothing will be lost.

Morality is not a sworn enemy of love, and from love's perspective morality is not intrinsically "bad." From a practical point of view, personal engagements, affections, commitments are justifiable from morality's perspective, either by utilitarian or Kantian principles, not to speak of Aristotelian ethics or eudaimonism. Morality could be help- ful in facilitating love and its necessities. Love, for instance, can be corrupted, turn into a passion that blinds one and makes one incapable of judging impersonally when impersonality should prevail. But in another sense perhaps that is just an advantage of love, since moral theories are required to demonstrate that the principle on which they are built is the ultimate one. However, it is a plausible assumption that such a demonstration can be done only with the aid of something different from morality itself. In like manner, theology asserts that God's moral goodness can be deduced from other theological premises, although many people believe that morality as a fact about humanity is itself an argument for thinking that God is good.

But there is something deeply alarming about Dostoevsky's apparently absurd claim, about God's indifference to or neglect of morality, about sentencing the Prince of Homburg, or about the ethos of political loyalty and dedication as exemplified many times in the history of Rome, and praised by President Lincoln.

These are, then, choices that cannot be fully explained in each other's terms. Why should reason/passions govern morality? Why is it that we can accept, or even respect, someone's genuine and not sentimental "in- ability" to bear the burden of sacrificing a child? Why is it good to live a political life or to belong to a particular political community? Why does God permit evil?

Many people believe that such questions, difficult as they appear to be, have real answers, however painful they may be. This itself is an important fact about these questions, but such a belief does not appear to be justified. For if one finds no viable solution, no way out of the dilemma except arbitrarily opting for the one or the other alternative, then one is in a deep sense coerced, like Sophie was. Anyone in such a situation may think that after making the choice much has been lost. For instance, Frankfurt claims that after deciding to sacrifice his daughter, in a deep sense Agamemnon ceased to be the person he had been before. But his position is ambiguous. He stresses that such conflicts may




threaten one with losing one's identity, but wants to maintain that love and reason may have profoundly different necessities. Apparently, both beliefs seem to be well grounded, as both reveal something essential about the nature of the problem.

It seems, then, that there are cases where normal people with sound mind have to wrestle with authorities that claim to be ultimate and equally demanding, yet seriously challenging one another. Those facing such demands will find that they must choose between them. On the other hand, they cannot and do not thereby reject the one not chosen. Further, they do not claim to be the ultimate authorities, far from that. They simply follow the chosen one, still acknowledging the claim of the other one. But this is not a tragic choice, after all. Abraham does not have the feeling that something valuable has been lost. He does not continue his life in the new belief that God is a bloodthirsty tyrant, who just had mercy on him. Rather, he thinks that something precious has been gained.

The lesson is, therefore, that one may acknowledge that morality is a competent judge over our entire life, including all cases, without com- mitting oneself to the claim that it is a fully competent one. In other words, the question is not whether every human action, motivation, and emotion, that make up the "cases" to be evaluated, should be judged by morality, but whether morality is capable of doing justice to each of their aspects. It is arguable that it is not, and that this not only can be illustrated by examples, but also demonstrated by considering morality to be an authority.4

VI

If the case is such that we are, or can be, subject to several ultimate authorities, the problem of dependence cannot be resolved by finding a single ultimate authority. This solution would rely on adapting the notion of difference between subject and authority, by which the first type of authority relations were defined. The content of such a difference is, as was argued, very obscure.

Again, an adaptation of the notion of voluntary submission that defined the second type of authority relations seems to miss the point. For ultimate authorities are most typically not accepted in the sense of having been freely chosen. However, before dismissing the notion of voluntary submission, a possible modification of this solution is worth considering. There is a strong argument for their dependence on the person who is subject to them, if not on the person's act of submission.




To develop this argument, let us first consider a special feature of the first two types of authority relations. As was pointed out, they fre- quently overlap, but we usually do not find this profoundly disturbing and do not regard this as a threat to our self-identity. We come to terms with multifaceted authority relations, navigating between them more or less skillfully. Notwithstanding such overlaps, we do not make such authority relations related to one another: my doctor's authority depends on her superior knowledge, my lawyer's authority depends on her superior knowledge, but they are not interchangeable. Both belong to the first type of authority relations, whose ground is a superior knowledge, yet they are distinct ones. Medicine and law are clearly distinguishable fields.

In this respect, ultimate authorities are different. Unlike the other two types, they are being constantly cross-checked. If, unlike in the case of the manifold authority relations of the first and second type, it is not navigational skills, then it is skills of arbitration and reconcilia- tion that are required. And these are personal skills.

Thus, it appears that we do make ultimate authorities related to one another. Unless we do so, according to Frankfurt, we are in a danger of losing our identity. Being torn, being ambivalent to the depth of our personality, amounts to not being a person at all, as he sees it. Is it required that we wholeheartedly identify ourselves with our will, or with our character. To want to be wholehearted is itself a precondition of personal unity, and we cannot "be wholeheartedly ambivalent,',' so if "someone accepts his ambivalence [it] can mean only that he is resigned to it" (p. 106). "Wholeheartedness," of course, may not be the only conceptual possibility. David Velleman (Velleman, MS) believes that we should be less demanding. He recommends self-understanding as being the sufficient and necessary condition that makes us persons. Wholeheartedness is not essential to that, for it allows for temporary ambivalence and inner confusion.5

One may be tempted to conclude from this that, after all, it is the individual who represents the final authority in resolving the conflicts of ultimate authorities. And indeed, to cite the authority of our philosophical and theological tradition, the Kantian individual is considered to be endowed with such an authority; Nietzsche's self-creating and autonomous individual has the same prerogatives; and the Christian conception of individual conscience is another serious candidate for the single ultimate authority, being available to every person.

However plausible this accounts appears, it is not satisfactory. First, to make an empirical point, ultimate authorities usually do not tolerate re- taining the kind of critical attitude or standpoint that would be necessary




to arbitrate between them or reconcile them with one another. Reason cannot tolerate irrationality and "a-rationality," faith cannot tolerate doubt and indifference, morality cannot tolerate immorality and amo- rality. Luther's assertion "I stand here, and can do no other" shows that the conclusion that everyone is the final authority over oneself is im- plausible. Indeed, it would be odd to want to correct Luther and say that he simply deceived himself in believing that he was subject to something more powerful than himself.

Second, it is very difficult to see how the concept of authority could work in this case. One should have to show in what sense the individuals' authority is dependent, as well as how the effectiveness of one's command over oneself would make sense. To show this, one would have to distinguish, as Christine Korsgaard in fact does, between a "thinking self and an "acting self (Korsgaard, 1996). There are, however, strong reasons to suppose that intra-personal relations, if they exist at all, are substantially different from relations between persons, among which authority relations clearly belong. Thus, from the fact that sometimes the individual has to choose between the commands of different ultimate authorities, it does not follow that the individual has any authority over them.

VII

The conclusion that one may draw from all this seems to be entirely negative. That ultimate authorities are somehow dependent on something is still to be shown, unless we want to give in and admit that Abraham's case is an example of tyranny, of obedience paid to sheer power, though much more gentle and reserved than the one involved in Sophie's case. If, however, we want to resist this conclusion, we have to show how it can be resisted.

There is a way to do this. If we stick to Abraham's story, it is plain that God did not compel Abraham to sacrifice his son to Him, nor did He threaten him with any sanctions. The imperative stands without any justification, explanation, and reference to anything else save the inti- macy of the relationship between the participants. Yet Abraham's freedom is in a strong sense presupposed, taken into consideration by God. Therefore, the way to define the dependence of ultimate authorities would be this: they depend on the freedom in general and on the good in particular, of the subject. Their dependence consists in clearly demarcating themselves from power and coercion. Hence, their dependence can be expressed by a negative assertion. Even if they are perceived as "groundless," they are clearly and recognizably not dependent on power and coercion.




Since, however, it is the relationship between the subject and the ultimate authority -in which the dependence of authorities consists, it is somehow a matter of both sides. This brings the argument back to the account of authority discussed in the first section of this paper. As was argued there, an authority relationship obtains if two conditions are met: the authority is accepted and justified, or, in other words, it is obeyed and dependent. However, whether or not these conditions are actually met is partly decided by the subject. For the first two types of authority relation the ground on which authorities depend is usually clearly visible. That is why independent observers are able to determine whether or not in a particular case obedience is justified and, hence, an authority relationship obtains. In the case of ultimate authorities, however, the ground in question is the relationship itself, which makes it more difficult for independent observers to determine whether or not obedience is justified and an authority relationships obtains. It is, thus, more up to the perception and interpretation of the subject whether what he obeys is an authority or sheer power. Ultimate authorities presuppose the freedom of the subject, and make a promise that in due time they will reveal - or it will be revealed - to the subject why it was in the subject's interest to follow the orders of authority and how the authority acted for the good of the subject, never violating his freedom. But the subject makes a promise, too. He promises to take authority to be an authority. Unless he does so, authority cannot be an authority. Thus, even if the notion of individuals' having the single ultimate authority had to be abandoned, individuals do have a constitutive role in setting up authority relationships belonging to the third type. The ten- sion arising from the the fact that these relationships are much more future-oriented than those of the first and second kinds underlies Abraham's story. Kierkegaard felt this, and spent much time on specu- lating what might have happened in Abraham's mind afterward. And indeed, any contemporary reader of it will surely feel this and reflect on what kind of a person he could have become as a result of the test.

It is, to be sure, a very strong claim that subjects decide whether or not they are obeying an authority and nothing else. But this is not, in the first place, an empirical point. There certainly are cases of true authority where some sort of threats - psychic or moral - do interfere with the subjects' freedom, especially if they are overcautious, overanxious, or in any other way ill-disposed to entering the authority-relationship. What is required is that such motivations do not overwhelm the subject, and that the authority does not suppress the subject.

There is a final consideration. Ultimate authorities do not refer to one another, they do not derive their authorities from one another. They




simply tell us what to do and do not care about whether or not we can do what they tell us to do. If, however, they refuse to unify themselves, then they give us the freedom to try to do so. This freedom may not be palpable, yet it is present. We can only pretend not to have it or to refuse to take note of it. But this freedom is dangerous. Ultimate authorities resist being unified. They constantly present us with surprising cases, exceptions, counter-examples, unexpected imperatives. Reality as determined by ultimate authorities is, so to speak, drastically and mercilessly pluralistic. As we may want to deny to ourselves the freedom to unify them, we may also be mistaken in thinking that we have accomplished this task. In this lies the danger of self-deception. As always, the human condition consists in having to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis.

Central European University

NOTES

1. Steven Lukes calls such incongruencies different perspectives on authority, and concludes that it is always a matter of interpretation whether a particular authority relation is what it is said to be or not. My position is less relativistic. See Lukes (1987).

2. See two recent discussions, Christopher MacMahon (1994) and Thomas May (1998).

3. I do not follow the Kierkegaardian analysis of Abraham's story, for I wish to employ it for the purposes of analyzing authority, whereas Kierkegaard's main target was the nature of faith. But let me note here that the particular story Kierkegaard chose to study faith (or rather, concentrating exclusively on it) was not altogether fortunate: Abraham's faith was tested when he was called to sacrifice Isaac; but it was established when he followed God's call to leave his family and kinship and start a new life. This is why I described his decision as an act for the sake of God, rather than as an act of faith. Acting for the sake of someone by violating another person's rights, up to taking his life without saving another one's is, however, still very questionable from a moral point of view (Kierkegaard, 1985).

4. It falls beyond the scope of this paper to consider whether politics, or other ultimate authorities, can do more successfully as being the single ultimate authority over the rest. It is doubtful, however, that they can. Religion is another matter; it would need a very careful and sophisticated analysis to show in what sense it is merely one among the other ultimate authorities.

5. Despite the clear divergence from Frankfurt's view, however, Velleman is somewhat unfair to Frankfurt in overlooking Frankfurt's concessions to empirical reality (Velleman, 1999).




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