Yves Rene Marie Simon - Nature and Functions of Authority (Aquinas Lecture 4)
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Nature and Functions of Authority (Aquinas Lecture 4)
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Nature and Functions of Authority : Under the Auspices of the Aristotelian Society of Marquette University Aquinas Lecture ; 1940
author
:
Simon, Yves Ren Marie.
publisher
:
Marquette University Press
isbn10 | asin
:
0874621046
print isbn13
:
9780874621044
ebook isbn13
:
9780585223049
language
:
English
subject
Authority.
publication date
:
1948
lcc
:
JC571.S6 1948eb
ddc
:
323.4
subject
:
Authority.
Page i
The Aquinas Lecture, 1940
Nature and Functions of Authority
Under the Auspices of the Aristotelian Society of Marquette University
By Yves Simon
SECOND PRINTING
MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PRESS MILWAUKEE 1948
Page ii
Nihil Obstat Gerard Smith, S.J., censor deputatus Milwaukiae, Die 7 mensis Maii, 1940
Imprimatur Moyses E. Kiley Archiepiscopus Milwaukiensis Milwaukiae, Die 8 mensis Maii, 1940
COPYRIGHT, 1940 BY THE ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY OF MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY
PRINTED AT MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PRESS MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN
Page iii
To Paule Simon
Page v
Prefatory
The Aristotelian Society of Marquette University each year invites a scholar to deliver a lecture in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas. Customarily delivered on the Sunday nearest March 7th, the feast day of the Society's patron saint, these lectures are called the Aquinas Lectures.
In 1940 the Aristotelian Society had the pleasure of recording the lecture of Yves Simon, then associate professor of philosophy at Notre Dame University. Born at Cherbourg, France, 1903, M. Simon pursued higher studies at the Catholic Institute of Paris and at the University of Paris from 1920 to 1929. He taught philosophy at the Catholic University of Lille, France from 1930 to 1938, and at the University of Notre Dame from 1938 to 1947. He is at present teaching at the University of Chicago.
Editor of the collection Cours et Documents de Philosophie (Paris, 1934-1938); contributor to several philosophical and political magazines, in particular to the Revue de Philosophie, Paris, and to the Review of Politics, Notre
Page vi
Dame, M. Simon is the author of the following works: Introduction L'Ontologie du Connaitre (Paris, 1934); Critique de la Connaissance morale (Paris, 1934); La Campagne d'Ethiopie et la Pense Politique franaise (Paris, 1936); Trois Leons sur le Travail (Paris, 1938); Travaux d'approche pour une Thorie du Dterminisme, in tudes philosophiques, cole des Hautes tudes of Ghent, Belgium (1939).
Page 1
Nature and Functions of Authority
This paper intends to set forth the present state of an investigation which is still far from being complete, although it was started many years ago. In order to characterize the purpose and the spirit of this research, I should like to specify the problems which stimulated it. These problems arise from commonplace observations. Radical anarchists excepted, no social thinker ever questioned the fact that social happiness is based upon a felicitous combination of authority and liberty. However vague and ill-defined our concepts of authority and liberty may be, we realize at once that authority and liberty are at the same time antinomic and complementary terms. By saying that they are antinomic terms, I do not mean that their antinomic character is absolute and unqualified. I mean
Page 2
only that, in a certain sense and to some extent, those terms are undeniably opposed to one another. As to their complementary character, it is quite clear that authority, when it is not fairly balanced by liberty, is but tryanny, and that liberty, when it is not fairly balanced by authority, is but abusive license. Each of these terms destroys itself at the very moment when it destroys the other term by its excess. Therefore, both unrestricted liberty and boundless authority are fictitious conceptions, each of which implies its own negation together with the annihilation of society. There would be hardly any exaggeration in the statement that the essential question, for every social group, is that of combining rightly the forces of authority and liberty.
In the practical solution of such a question, the social virtues of the responsible persons play the decisive role. Whatever the considered community, small or large, familial, economic or political, its happiness depends on the ability of its head to determine exactly the right limits of his authority, to-
Page 3
gether with the ability of those who must obey to recognize that their claim for freedom cannot reasonably exceed certain limits. Inquiring into the nature of this ability to delineate the boundaries of one's field of action, let us say that it consists in a particular form of the virtue of prudence, in a wisdom which is practical in the full sense of the term, and proceeds from the virtuous dispositions of the will, justice, moderation, and charity.
Like any kind of prudence properly so-called, this prudence of the head and this prudence of the subject have to utter, in reference to singular and unrenewable circumstances, indemonstrable judgments. Owing to the contingency of their object, and to the fact that they are finally determined by the mysterious forces of the appetite, those judgments remain inevitably obscure. Now prudence is not self-satisfied with its obscurity. Although the proper mystery of the prudential determination cannot be discarded, the truly prudent man, the true man of action, wants to have his prudence enlightened by principles.
Page 4
Knowing very well that universal necessities are involved in the contingencies of existential occurrences, and that a sound understanding of those necessities can helpfully reduce the field of his uncertainties, the true man of action proves very anxious to receive, from those who are acquainted with the laws of the universal and necessary objects, principles enabling him to guide himself in his action.
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