[Wellsy]

Whose authority do you submit to or respect?

What undermines authority? What strengthens it?


https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/enlightenment.htm

Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority. Minority is inability to make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another. This minority is self-incurred when its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! [dare to be wise] Have courage to make use of your own understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment.

It is because of laziness and cowardice that so great a part of humankind, after nature has long since emancipated them from other people’s direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless gladly remains minors for life, and that it becomes so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor! If I have a book that understands for me, a spiritual advisor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who decides upon a regimen for me, and so forth, I need not trouble myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay; others will readily undertake the irksome business for me.

https://archive.org/details/4.Macintyre/mode/1up

To answer this question consider what kind of authority any principle has which it is open to us to choose to regard as authoritative or not. I may choose for example to observe a regime of asceticism and fasting and I may do this for reasons of health, let us say, or religion. What authority such principles possess derives from the reasons for my choice. Insofar as they are good reasons, the principles have corresponding authority; insofar as they are not, the principles are to that same extent deprived of authority. It would follow that a principle for the choice of which no reasons could be given would be a principle devoid of authority. I might indeed adopt such a principle from whim or caprice or from some arbitrary purpose-I just happen to like acting in that way-but if I then chose to abandon the principle whenever it suited me, I would be entirely free to do so. Such a principle-and it may even be stretching language to call it a principlewould seem clearly to belong to Kierkegaard's aesthetic realm.

But now the doctrine of Enten-Eller is plainly to the effect that the principles which depict the ethical way of life are to be adopted for no reason, but for a choice that lies beyond reasons, just because it is the choice of what is to count for us as a reason. Yet the ethical is to have authority over us. But how can that which we adopt for one reason have any authority over us? The contradiction in Kierkegaard's doctrine is plain. To this someone might reply that we characteristically appeal to authority when we have no reasons; we may appeal to the authority of the custodians of the Christian revelation, for example, at the very point where reason breaks down. So that the notion of authority and the notion of reason are not, as my argument suggests, intimately connected, but are in fact mutually exclusive. Yet this concept of authority as excluding reason is, as I have already noticed, itself a peculiarly, even if not exclusively, modem concept, fashioned in a culture to which the notion of authority is alien and repugnant, so that appeals to authority appear irrational. But the traditional authority of the ethical, in the culture which Kierkegaard inherited, was not of this arbitrary kind. And it is this traditional concept of authority which must be embodied in the ethical if it is to be as Kierkegaard describes it. (It is not surprising that just as it was Kierkegaard who first discovered the concept of radical choice, so it is in Kierkegaard's writings that the links between reason and authority are broken too.)

[url] https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunde ... review.htm
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It seems to me that the counterfactual element of everyone’s word having equal sway and the force of argument only carrying weight needs to be given some consideration. In real life, the word of people who have greater experience or a proven record in some domain counts for more. Is this inherently elitist? I don’t think so. For example, I have a right to make claims about activities with which I am intimately concerned over the word of others who have no such involvement.

[Rancid]

Whose authority do you submit to or respect?

I submit my agency and autonomy to Trump.

What undermines authority? What strengthens it?

Depends on what this authority is based on. Is it fear based authority, or trust based authority?

[Unthinking Majority]

The most just authority is that which the rules are decided by those living under those rules (democracy). So i follow the rules of my country, even if I don't like some of the rules. Trading some freedom for security and less violence is a good thing IMO. But liberal democracies aren't the most democratic they could be, there's corruption and the fact that people only vote for parties/candidates and not individual policies, so you have to accept the good with the bad, which I wish would change.

[ckaihatsu]

They [the public] at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes. Behind the barricade there may be much that is noble and heroic. But what is there behind the leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant, and twaddle? And when these four are joined together they make a terrible force, and constitute the new authority.

People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous. It has been stated that under despotisms artists have produced lovely work. This is not quite so. Artists have visited despots, not as subjects to be tyrannised over, but as wandering wonder-makers, as fascinating vagrant personalities, to be entertained and charmed and suffered to be at peace, and allowed to create. There is this to be said in favour of the despot, that he, being an individual, may have culture, while the mob, being a monster, has none. One who is an Emperor and King may stoop down to pick up a brush for a painter, but when the democracy stoops down it is merely to throw mud. And yet the democracy have not so far to stoop as the emperor. In fact, when they want to throw mud they have not to stoop at all. But there is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

It has been pointed out that one of the results of the extraordinary tyranny of authority is that words are absolutely distorted from their proper and simple meaning, and are used to express the obverse of their right signification.

It is impossible for the artist to live with the People. All despots bribe. The people bribe and brutalise. Who told them to exercise authority? They were made to live, to listen, and to love. Someone has done them a great wrong. They have marred themselves by imitation of their inferiors. They have taken the sceptre of the Prince. How should they use it? They have taken the triple tiara of the Pope. How should they carry its burden? They are as a clown whose heart is broken. They are as a priest whose soul is not yet born. Let all who love Beauty pity them. Though they themselves love not Beauty, yet let them pity themselves. Who taught them the trick of tyranny?

https://www.marxists.org/reference/arch ... /soul-man/