Exploring Moral Authority: Understanding Guidance and Obligation
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Before we discuss the subject of moral authority, we need to say something of a more general nature about authority. The term is used in at least two distinct, though related, senses. First, there is authority of a purely theoretical kind. In this sense, then, an authority is an expert, someone who is usually a reliable source of information. But there is a different meaning of the word, brought out well in the distinction between “being an authority” and “being in authority”. The historian is an authority, but an army drill sergeant is in authority (however nonsensical the procedures that placed him in this position). To be in authority entails having the right to obedience. It is different from power, which is simply the ability to enforce your wishes regardless of your right to do so. At the same time, the position of being in authority does not necessarily bring with it wisdom, justice or any particular expertise. A foolish person may be in authority over others, through being placed in that position by some agreed procedure, for instance, by being put there (“Authorized”) by somebody already in authority. Whether the authority he claims is genuine usually depends more on the legitimacy of the procedures which put him in this role than on his own personal qualities.
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One who is in authority, then, has a legitimate claim to the obedience of others in some particular context. It is perhaps this idea of having a claim to others’ compliance that explains the revulsion some people feel to the idea of moral authority. In fact, it is better to construe the idea of moral authority in the way mentioned first rather than the second. To speak of moral authority is really to speak of individuals whose moral guidance may reliably be sought. This does not mean your compliance is a duty owed to them. To see this point, it is useful to distinguish two ways in which the guidance of authority may be said to oblige you to act in a particular way.
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When people demand reasons why they should act in some particular way, they may be met with the impatient riposte “Because x says so”. But this conceals an important contrast between two ways in which the utterance of x is relevant to what should be done. In one, simple way, the obligation to perform some action is created by the utterance of the supposed authority. But there is another, more subtle and acceptable way in which listening to an authority makes one aware of an obligation. Perhaps there is, quite independently of the fact that x issues such guidance, a reason why this course of action should be followed. Such a reason would exist whether or not x told you to act in that way. At the same time, perhaps you would not be aware of such a reason unless x had told you about it. To speak of x being an authority, in this case, is only to say that he is a reliable guide as to what you are morally obliged to do. It is not the fact that he urges the action that makes it obligatory; on the contrary, he urges it because it is already obligatory.
