One can see it more and more often claimed these days that what we need now, in education and in society in general, is people who exert authority. Frequently, the adjectives “real” or “natural” are attached to the claim thereby implying that it is possible to have authority that is unreal and unnatural. What is meant by these qualifications, is rarely explained. The most interesting distinction being made, however, is not that between real and unreal, or between natural and unnatural authority but that between having authority and being an authoritarian. For some reason it has now become common knowledge – i.e. something that everyone automatically believes, something not calling upon further reflection – that the former is mostly if not entirely benign while the latter is inherently and irreparably evil. How has this certainty come about? And is it true, or have we here merely an instance of the creation of a convenient antilogy? Convenient for whom? Creation for what purpose?
I will return to these questions. For starters, let’s just note that the two words have the same origin. ‘Authoritarian’ is derived from ‘authority’ which has its roots in the Latin ‘auctoritas’ meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence or command. ‘Auctoritas,’ in turn, stems from the Latin word ‘auctor’ which denotes master, leader or author. So etymologically, there is no distinction between the two concepts. Also, from a grammatical point of view, there seems to be little difference. Just as it makes perfect sense to say of a comedian that it is a person who performs comedy and of a librarian that it is a person who works in a library, it makes sense to say of an authoritarian that it is a person who exerts authority. Indeed, so intimate are the conceptual ties in these examples that we would not hesitate to name them circular since there is no variance in denotation between the explanandum and explanans; they are semantically very similar if not identical.
Dictionaries, however, (I have here used quotes from http://dictionary.reference.com) do confirm that there is a marked distinction between the two concepts. Having authority here entails “possessing the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes” while being authoritarian means “exercising complete or almost complete control over the will of another or of others.” The former, in other words, is the sagacious magistrate, the latter a wicked tyrant and oppressor. But if we look at the etymology we find that this clear-cut distinction is a rather new invention. Until the end of the 19th century the word ‘authoritarian’ didn’t even exist. When the phrase was coined it denoted a person or system that favoured “imposed order over freedom.” Interestingly, the term ‘authoritative’ had originally this very meaning. And if we go back half a millennium, to the late 14th century, the word ‘authority’ itself denoted the “power to enforce obedience.” So historically, that is to say, over the last four or five hundred years, there seems to have been a more or less conscious cultural drive towards the purification and amelioration of the concept of ‘authority,’ an urge to rid it of its nasty connotations culminating in the construction of a new, derived, “scapegoat” concept in the 1870s – ‘authoritarian’ – a concept, by the way, much favoured and wholeheartedly embraced by the steadily growing number of anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-traditionalist Marxists and socialists after World War I. For those groups ‘authoritarian’ was a wonderful weapon with which they could blame and shame not just the violent tyrants and oppressors of their day (including parents and teachers) but more importantly, by association, the concept of authority itself.
No wonder then that contemporary common sense holds that there is a sharp division between having authority and being authoritarian. This is the air in which we all breathe these days. Nonetheless, a lot of people today are open to the idea that authority has undeservedly been tarnished by too close an association with its despised cousin, ‘authoritarian.’ Common sense has, over the course of the last fifty years or so, finally discovered (initially to its great chagrin one might add) that a society devoid of distinct authority figures and with an intellectual elite that uses every opportunity to discredit behaviour and character traits that carry the remotest resemblance to authority or authoritarianism – for example hierarchical thinking, self-restraint, self-governance, and the wilful and dutiful exertion of power – turns into a deeply malfunctioning society, a society marked by serial victimhood, severe under-achievement, blatant narcissism, widespread shamelessness and a general lack of purpose and meaning.
Therefore, as the societal disintegration becomes visible for all to see and thus more and more incontestable, even the elites are forced to admit that the anti-authoritarian movements, reaching a climax in the nineteen sixties and seventies, might have gone just a little bit too far in its ideologically motivated witch-hunts against any remnant of the old society and its classical virtues. Indeed, it is as if the metropolitan chattering classes have suddenly come to the sobering realisation that in tossing traditional values away in favour of the wholesale embracing of a series of politically correct stratagems – most notoriously “equality,” “diversity” and “human rights” – one is throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. And what could possibly be worse for these classes that entertain no greater wish and no greater desire than to protect and care for the proverbial (symbolic) child that is thought to reside within all of mankind? Until now, one has lived securely and self-assuredly in a mental sphere of “neverlandish” proportions created upon the ideological foundation provided by Romantic philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, most importantly, his notion that the young child is intrinsically good and that society, civilisation and hence education are to blame for all its consequent deviations and misfortunes. Not any more. Grave societal ills – definitely not attributable to the “deviousness” and “despotism” of the societal institutions themselves which are more prone to bend over backwards in a sincere attempt to help and please and support anyone with a grievance, be it justifiable on a larger scale or not – bring deadly smoke into the rabbit holes of the intellectual definition-makers and render unbearable a continuation of their previous lives in comfortable illusion.
So, they are in for disillusion and disenchantment. The intellectual elites are faced with the following option: either return to the old-world conception of authority – which does not think that a person who exercises authority is very much different from an authoritarian – or generate a new conception of authority where it means something entirely different (the opposite) than ‘authoritarian.’ Being already experts in Orwellian newspeak they find this an easy choice: they go for the re-writing. Thus, a person with authority is competent, intelligent, always just and proper, self-confident and courageous and he never succumbs to the temptations of power, or even experiences no temptations at all. He is pure. In fact, he is very much like Jesus without the religious and metaphysical baggage: hard-hitting and tough but always acting under the auspices of generosity, friendliness and love. The authoritarian, on the other hand, is the mirror image of the authority figure: sadly lacking in skills, prejudiced and intellectually less well endowed, unfair and whimsical in moods and attitudes. But first and foremost he is – and this in the starkest contrast to the true authority – in love with power; he enjoys the power to dominate his fellow human beings by ridiculing, harassing and creating fear. The authoritarian is a plain tyrant, an unloved shadow, a nefarious Cain green with envy of his kindhearted brother who is loved by God and man alike.
The image and its shadow are of course interdependent as antithetical imaginary constructs. But they have both precious little to do with reality as perceived by most people. In the real world we see either the presence of authority or we do not. If there is authority there must be somebody who is authoritarian, that is, who exercises authority. And no one can be an authoritarian without exercising authority on some level and of some type. Really, it is as simple as that. And where there is authority there is also hierarchy and the exercise of power, to a greater or lesser degree, of course. The social hierarchy established by authority – for example between teacher and pupils – may be rather robust or more on the lenient side, it may allow more interventions from pupils than it forbids or vice versa, it may give more or less responsibility to pupils, but a social hierarchy it certainly is, regardless of how we label it. Also, an authoritative or authoritarian teacher must possess a great deal of power, otherwise he will just not have the guts to make the necessary decisions there and then (be they of a practical or dialectical nature), nor the guts to give the necessary orders and make sure they are carried out according to instructions. He must, quite simply, have a will, and also a will to exercise his will, that is to say, he must know what he wants and then set about achieving it. But knowing this and setting about this is exactly what is meant by having power. It is inconceivable that a person who knows what he wants and who manages to do what it takes to achieve his desire has no power.
