"On Authority" is a work by Alfonso de Oliveira, commissioned by the 6th Marquise of Alorna, detailing the foundations of the authority of the Empire of Portugal and Brazil
"On Authority" - excepts from Afonso de Oliveira
Authority claims to speak for the moral order as if this were a unitary thing, like Plato’s conception of the Good. Therefore in evaluating the reasonableness of authority, one must ask if it really is meaningful to invoke a coherently unitary and ultimate Good from which all subsidiary goods descend. After all, it would seem, particularly if one accepts liberal metaphysical propositions that authority is basing itself on some very strong, and very questionable, premises. Does one really need to accept these premises to appreciate the claims of authority?
Yes. For authority in the full sense that I’m describing it, I believe one does. Therefore, although this is a treatise in politics rather than metaphysics, it is necessary to briefly describe the worldview in which authority ultimately makes sense. One who considers the nature of goodness or value confronts a problem of the One and the Many that is precisely analogous to the problem of multiple authorities described above. Goodness in this world is irreducibly plural: there is no univocal quality that accounts for the goodness of an ecosystem, a person, friendship, courage, knowledge, music, etc. Furthermore, some goods are not only distinct but seem unable to coexist with other goods: a human can’t have both masculine and feminine virtues; a community can’t have the intimacy of a family, the freedom of the market, and the impartiality of the state. To choose only one quality in this world and assign it absolute value would be a sort of mental tyranny. Nevertheless, goods must have something in common if the word “good” is to have any meaning at all, above the subjective meaning of “whatever I happen to like”. Although not every virtue and perfection can coexist in every subject, to claim that purely good qualities themselves contradict each other would make goodness incoherent; morality would then be the futile attempt to reconcile contradictory values.
Against this monstrous possibility, most men have asserted that goods and perfections do not contradict each other. The purely positive elements of masculinity and femininity, of being a dog and being an angel—that which makes these things good—do not contradict each other. They could in principle coexist. It’s only the limited natures of humans, dogs, and angels that make this coexistence impossible for these subjects. All good could coexist in perfect unity and harmony in a being with no limiting nature, that is, in God. God is the answer to the unity-in-plurality of the world’s goodness, as He is of the world’s being. To Him is the ultimate allegiance that gives one’s life unity and integration. God is, in a sense, the mirror of the soul—the ultimate unitary object to complement the unity of each subject. However, positing devotion to God as the ultimate ground of morality doesn’t reduce finite goods to mere means any more than grounding communities on devotion to Justice reduces them to means. The analogy between the two cases is particularly strong. To the authoritarian mind, moral communities simply are collective affirmations of Justice—serving this end is their inmost essence. To the religious mind, finite beings simply are glorifications of God—serving this end by their inmost actualities and perfections through which they participate in Him. The actual existence of God is a topic beyond the scope of this essay. It is important, though, to appreciate how closely the idea of authority is connected to the idea of God. We can connect the two yet more closely and summarize all that was said above in the following formula: To be in authority is to be God’s representative.
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Authority, therefore, is the solution to the problem of multiple loyalties. By seeing his obedience to the Empress and to the ministers of the crown as all being rooted in an allegiance to a single moral order, the subject secures a unitary identity. Likewise understanding that the Empresses rule is ordained by heaven through the workings of divine providence, he secures purpose within the otherwise artificial rulings and strictures of society and within the transcendent source of goodness that is the divine will. He likewise has an ultimate allegiance by identifying a transcendent source that directly legitimates all authorities to which he is subject.
Authority means that the ruler’s commitment to justice is not a merely partial thing. Fathers and kings and Empresses encourage all of the virtues and discourage all of the vices in their charges, not just those that directly affect the group. Authority figures must even constrain their own subjects if needed to protect the legitimate rights of outsiders. Here, in the function of the sovereign as a moral guide, executor of justice and symbol of virtue is a striking difference between an authoritative ruler such as Her Majesty the Empress and a mere agent of the people’s will. Authority is the answer to the cosmopolitan’s claim that loyalty to particular groups bespeaks a limited moral vision, that it is merely a form of collective selfishness.
A fully developed moral community indeed will have institutional symbols of both aspects of society: the horizontal completion of loyalty and the vertical completion of authority. The former institution expresses the unity-in-mutual-dependence of the group, its bonds of loyalty and compassion. The latter institution expresses the unity-under-judgment of the group and rebukes the group, if necessary, for its moral failings. The two symbols within our Empire are united in the Empress. In the family, the mother is associated more with the horizontal symbol, the father more with the vertical. In the State, the Empress-in-Parliament expresses horizontal unity—the community united in discussion of the common good around its sacred head. The vertical symbol is borne by the Empress alone as a medium between the divine and human spheres. In this vertical function, she speaks to the people in the name of higher authorities: God, past and future generations, and the fundamental laws without which society descends irredeemably to chaos and barbarity. Hence the maxim that where throne and altar exist there civilization is, stands true. For who can deny that where one or the other has been cast down mankind has been reduced to utter savagery and barbarism? It is therefore in service to these two functions, firstly as the living image of divine authority, and secondly as the living representative of the people bound together in loyalty as a society to God Most High remediated through the just exercise of authority and law that our great Empire can truly call itself a bastion of civilized order. The nation as a society can, therefore, be said to live in the Empress herself, who mediates between earth and heaven and secures in herself the moral character of our people.
"On Authority" - excepts from Afonso de Oliveira
Authority claims to speak for the moral order as if this were a unitary thing, like Plato’s conception of the Good. Therefore in evaluating the reasonableness of authority, one must ask if it really is meaningful to invoke a coherently unitary and ultimate Good from which all subsidiary goods descend. After all, it would seem, particularly if one accepts liberal metaphysical propositions that authority is basing itself on some very strong, and very questionable, premises. Does one really need to accept these premises to appreciate the claims of authority?
Yes. For authority in the full sense that I’m describing it, I believe one does. Therefore, although this is a treatise in politics rather than metaphysics, it is necessary to briefly describe the worldview in which authority ultimately makes sense. One who considers the nature of goodness or value confronts a problem of the One and the Many that is precisely analogous to the problem of multiple authorities described above. Goodness in this world is irreducibly plural: there is no univocal quality that accounts for the goodness of an ecosystem, a person, friendship, courage, knowledge, music, etc. Furthermore, some goods are not only distinct but seem unable to coexist with other goods: a human can’t have both masculine and feminine virtues; a community can’t have the intimacy of a family, the freedom of the market, and the impartiality of the state. To choose only one quality in this world and assign it absolute value would be a sort of mental tyranny. Nevertheless, goods must have something in common if the word “good” is to have any meaning at all, above the subjective meaning of “whatever I happen to like”. Although not every virtue and perfection can coexist in every subject, to claim that purely good qualities themselves contradict each other would make goodness incoherent; morality would then be the futile attempt to reconcile contradictory values.
Against this monstrous possibility, most men have asserted that goods and perfections do not contradict each other. The purely positive elements of masculinity and femininity, of being a dog and being an angel—that which makes these things good—do not contradict each other. They could in principle coexist. It’s only the limited natures of humans, dogs, and angels that make this coexistence impossible for these subjects. All good could coexist in perfect unity and harmony in a being with no limiting nature, that is, in God. God is the answer to the unity-in-plurality of the world’s goodness, as He is of the world’s being. To Him is the ultimate allegiance that gives one’s life unity and integration. God is, in a sense, the mirror of the soul—the ultimate unitary object to complement the unity of each subject. However, positing devotion to God as the ultimate ground of morality doesn’t reduce finite goods to mere means any more than grounding communities on devotion to Justice reduces them to means. The analogy between the two cases is particularly strong. To the authoritarian mind, moral communities simply are collective affirmations of Justice—serving this end is their inmost essence. To the religious mind, finite beings simply are glorifications of God—serving this end by their inmost actualities and perfections through which they participate in Him. The actual existence of God is a topic beyond the scope of this essay. It is important, though, to appreciate how closely the idea of authority is connected to the idea of God. We can connect the two yet more closely and summarize all that was said above in the following formula: To be in authority is to be God’s representative.
-
Authority, therefore, is the solution to the problem of multiple loyalties. By seeing his obedience to the Empress and to the ministers of the crown as all being rooted in an allegiance to a single moral order, the subject secures a unitary identity. Likewise understanding that the Empresses rule is ordained by heaven through the workings of divine providence, he secures purpose within the otherwise artificial rulings and strictures of society and within the transcendent source of goodness that is the divine will. He likewise has an ultimate allegiance by identifying a transcendent source that directly legitimates all authorities to which he is subject.
Authority means that the ruler’s commitment to justice is not a merely partial thing. Fathers and kings and Empresses encourage all of the virtues and discourage all of the vices in their charges, not just those that directly affect the group. Authority figures must even constrain their own subjects if needed to protect the legitimate rights of outsiders. Here, in the function of the sovereign as a moral guide, executor of justice and symbol of virtue is a striking difference between an authoritative ruler such as Her Majesty the Empress and a mere agent of the people’s will. Authority is the answer to the cosmopolitan’s claim that loyalty to particular groups bespeaks a limited moral vision, that it is merely a form of collective selfishness.
A fully developed moral community indeed will have institutional symbols of both aspects of society: the horizontal completion of loyalty and the vertical completion of authority. The former institution expresses the unity-in-mutual-dependence of the group, its bonds of loyalty and compassion. The latter institution expresses the unity-under-judgment of the group and rebukes the group, if necessary, for its moral failings. The two symbols within our Empire are united in the Empress. In the family, the mother is associated more with the horizontal symbol, the father more with the vertical. In the State, the Empress-in-Parliament expresses horizontal unity—the community united in discussion of the common good around its sacred head. The vertical symbol is borne by the Empress alone as a medium between the divine and human spheres. In this vertical function, she speaks to the people in the name of higher authorities: God, past and future generations, and the fundamental laws without which society descends irredeemably to chaos and barbarity. Hence the maxim that where throne and altar exist there civilization is, stands true. For who can deny that where one or the other has been cast down mankind has been reduced to utter savagery and barbarism? It is therefore in service to these two functions, firstly as the living image of divine authority, and secondly as the living representative of the people bound together in loyalty as a society to God Most High remediated through the just exercise of authority and law that our great Empire can truly call itself a bastion of civilized order. The nation as a society can, therefore, be said to live in the Empress herself, who mediates between earth and heaven and secures in herself the moral character of our people.
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