AGNIESZKA KOŁAKOWSKA, A Few Words on the Idea of Authority in Culture

SUMMARY

This article explores some aspects of the idea of authority in culture. It considers the various meanings and uses of the word “authority” and briefly looks at aspects of the history of the concept of authority, especially under the Roman Republic, and at the way in which the word later lost its range of meanings and became associated with power and influence. It considers some passages of Aquinas and Augustine on the relationships which can obtain between authority, knowledge and opinion, and ventures a partial definition of culture as a sphere of opinion rather than knowledge. It discusses the ways in which the manipulation of the concept of authority, and the pseudo-authority exerted by culturally influential figures, especially when these are accepted as “moral authorities,” can be culturally and socially damaging. It concludes that authority in the proper sense can play no role in those aspects of culture which belong to the sphere of opinion.