A Suspicion of Power
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” wrote Lord Acton in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887. We have learned from Montesquieu and others that power needs checks and balances and that it is best to have a division of power among institutions. When we think of power in the family, or when we think of the family itself as a power structure, our first inclination is to think of something negative, something that needs to be controlled. This is why Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in their 1848 Communist Manifesto, called for the abolition of the family—which they identified as the bourgeois family—an institution that they saw as serving only to perpetuate the power of the ruling class. According to them, children must be saved from exploitation by their parents. Education must be socialized and thus taken out of the hands of the ruling class. For better or worse, we can also observe a connection between family and power in American history, considering the great influence of families on politics, from the country’s Roosevelts to its Rockefellers, Kennedys and Bushes.
But what is power? Is it always negative? How does power differ from authority, a concept that seems to be closely related to it and also highly relevant in the same semantic context: politics, family, education. And, finally, despite the above-mentioned suspicion of power—and possibly also of authority—is there a positive, true, and authentic sense in which these ideas play a role in family life and education?
Turning to Hannah Arendt
To address these questions, I will now turn to the thought of Hannah Arendt, one of the preeminent political theorists of the twentieth century. Born and raised in Germany in the early 1900s, she studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers. As a Jew, she experienced persecution during World War II, but managed to escape to the United States in 1941. Here she was recognized for her work on totalitarianism and became truly well-known for her coverage of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, in the context of which she coined the now famous—though initially highly controversial—phrase “the banality of evil.” Scholars of her thought generally consider her 1958 book The Human Condition to be her most important work, in which she analyzes life under the conditions of modernity, laments what she calls the modern “world alienation,” and introduces her important notion of “natality”: the fact that we are newcomers by birth is the root of our capacity to act and to begin something new.
However, the work that she herself considered her best is another, namely, the collection of essays entitled Between Past and Future, which originally contained six and later eight “exercises in political thought.” In what follows, two of the essays published in this volume, “What Is Authority?” and “The Crisis in Education,” will be my main inspiration, though I will also refer to other writings.
Functions and Distinctions
When Hannah Arendt set out to confront a particular philosophical problem, she rarely gave formal definitions. What she substituted for definitions were distinctions based on a perceptive observation of reality and a profound interpretation of our experience. Hence, if we are to approach the question of power and authority, she believes that we must distinguish these concepts well from each other and from other ideas with which they are easily confused. Indeed, she is very careful to differentiate between power, strength, authority, violence, and expertise.
Authority … never has its source in the person who wields it. There must be a larger reality, a “hierarchy” shared by those in authority and those under authority.
One difficulty in distinguishing among these stems from a certain prejudice that she found among the thinkers of her time, and which is still largely with us today, namely, the idea that if two things perform the same function, then they are indeed the same thing. Arendt addressed this issue as early as 1954, when she wrote a letter to the then-editor of Confluence magazine, a certain Henry Kissinger, to object to Jules Monnerot’s proposal of “secular religions.” Monnerot had argued that ideologies—regardless of their content, and even if, like communist ideology, they explicitly deny the existence of God—play the same role as religions and are therefore religions. The fallacy of this idea is illustrated by Arendt’s somewhat jocular counterexample: she confesses to having occasionally used the heel of her shoe to drive a nail into a wall. Does this make her shoes a hammer, just because they sometimes perform the same function? Can one speak of her walking around with hammers on her feet? Hardly.
By analogy, just because some people use power, strength, authority, violence, and expertise to exert a certain influence over others—giving a “command” in the broadest sense and being met with “obedience” in the broadest sense—it does not follow that all these terms refer to one and the same reality. In fact, as Arendt will argue, they are profoundly different. Let us try to follow her thought here, beginning with the realities that are easier to grasp and then moving on to the more elusive ones.
The Strength of the Individual
Strength belongs to the individual as an individual. The strong man can move things because of his muscles or his intelligence. He may be able to build a house by himself or defeat ten enemies single-handedly. We may think of lone wolves who successfully fight whole armies, as often portrayed in movies by Arnold Schwarzenegger or Chuck Norris. But Arendt points out that the isolated individual is by definition powerless. And it may be that Schwarzenegger’s tenure as “Governator” of California was arguably less successful than his tenure as “Terminator” in the film series of the same name simply because Schwarzenegger the politician may have drawn too much inspiration from the characters he portrayed as Schwarzenegger the actor, relying on personal strength rather than “power” in Arendt’s sense, which we will discuss shortly. Strength is in the body, in the endurance, in the intelligence of the individual. Through his strength the individual can, to a certain extent, make others act as he wishes. The limits are clear: the moment a sufficient number of opponents unite against him, the strong man will be subdued, regardless of his strength or cunning.
From the Barrel of a Gun
Violence, on the other hand, is in the means. Even those who are weak in themselves, in body or intellect, can hold a gun convincingly enough to command the obedience of a Texas Ranger who could kill them with a flick of his hand. Violence in particular is very often, and for Arendt very wrongly, confused with power. But to Arendt’s mind, there is no power in the violence of the barrel of a gun. It can compel obedience. It can also destroy power, but it cannot generate power. The greater the means of violence, from the knife to the thermonuclear bomb, the greater the threat posed by those who possess them. But for Arendt, the moment one must resort to threats to get others to do as one says, one has already lost authority and admitted powerlessness. The person becomes isolated. Indeed, even the greatest tyrant, armed with the most destructive means he can muster, cannot get by completely without power. He must at least be able to rely on his bodyguards. There must be enough subjects willing to carry out his orders to ensure that the means of violence remain under his control. Otherwise, they will simply change hands.
The Ruinous Advice of Experts
Expertise, too, can command obedience, but it is neither power nor authority. Recent events surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic have given new life to the bon mot, variously attributed to Charles de Gaulle or Georges Pompidou, about the three ways that lead a man to ruin: gambling being the fastest; women, the most pleasurable; and the advice of experts, the surest. The expert appeals to scientific knowledge, and yet, as philosophers of science such as Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, or Paul Feyerabend teach us, empirical knowledge is always hypothetical; it speaks of probabilities, not of certainties. Anyone who claims absolute certainty in areas of empirical knowledge speaks unscientifically and has disqualified himself as a scientist and expert.
But even the expert who is aware of the limitations inherent in the enterprise of empirical science, the expert who gives advice on the basis of probabilities rather than certainties, can only give advice from the perspective of his discipline. One thing is the science of infectious diseases, another is the science of economics, yet another is the science of sociology. An expert in infectious diseases may be able to predict, with more or less probability, the effects of certain policies on the spread of a disease. He may not have the same ability to predict the impact of those policies on society as a whole. Even if the probable mortality rate is taken as the sole criterion for the recommended procedures, his advice will be based on only partial knowledge, since people die not only from infectious diseases, but also from poverty-related conditions, from isolation, from a broken heart, or from civil unrest. Public authority must consider the whole community entrusted to its care from every angle. A one-sided adherence to the advice of experts will easily lead to unbalanced policies.
Public officials also differ from experts in another, perhaps even more important, way. The former must take responsibility for their decisions; the latter can hide behind their knowledge. Scientists can always say: “All we did was to present the data available to us at the time and make recommendations based on it.” After all, it was not their job to foresee the outbreak of violence in the city, or the increase in mortality due to growing poverty. They do not have to take responsibility for their advice. They can act like an artificial intelligence, simply processing the available data. But algorithms cannot be held accountable. They are irresponsible. Representatives of public authority, on the other hand, are responsible. No experts or algorithms can take that burden off their shoulders.
The Power of the Promise
So, what is power for Hannah Arendt? Power is a reality that emerges when people come together to act for a single purpose. Power is a capacity to move, to make a difference, to influence what Arendt calls “the common world,” a capacity that is never the property of a single individual. It arises spontaneously wherever people come together for a coordinated activity and work together toward a single goal. In her book The Human Condition, she speaks of the power generated by mutual promises. Consider a soccer game between two teams. On one team, each player has agreed to play a specific role so that the team’s activity is coordinated—by mutual promises, if you will. On the other team, each player plays the role he feels like playing at any given moment. There is not even a designated goalkeeper. There are no agreements, no mutual promises. It is not difficult to predict which team will win.
In her 1973 address to the Society of Christian Ethics, Arendt derives the very notion of law from the power of the promise. The Latin word for law is lex, which she argues originally signified something that binds two parties together. Thus, in the original Roman sense, law refers to the terms of a mutual alliance; it is the basis of a society, a mode of communal life in which people, bound together, have become allies. Power can thus be institutionalized in law and in the public institutions in which laws are made or in which laws are applied, observed, or interpreted. These institutions are alive and vigorous as long as people continue to act together, interested in participating in the “public thing,” the res publica. The moment people withdraw and lose interest in the common world with its parliaments, courts, and similar realities, these institutions themselves are destined to wither, decay, and become hollow facades.
Transmitting the Foundation: Authority and the Common World
We have saved the discussion of the most difficult concept for last. What is authority? As with violence or the force wielded by strength, authority has something to do with commanding and obeying. People who have authority tell a person under their authority to do something, and the person does it. We can think of the parent-child relationship, the teacher-student relationship, and the officer-soldier relationship. When a parent or teacher has authority, the child or student obeys at his mere word. It is the same with all other authority figures and those they command. If a parent or teacher has to use threats to command obedience, he has already lost all authority. Authority is not a form of violence, since the inferior obeys the superior freely. Nor is authority the same as power, which, as we have seen, arises among those who work together and coordinate their actions toward a single goal, enabling them to exert a decisive influence on society. Among themselves, however, they are more or less equal, while authority refers to the relationship between the superior and the inferior.
For Arendt, the word, like the experience to which it refers, has its origins in Roman antiquity. It is closely linked to the event of the founding of the city of Rome. As Arendt explains, the Latin word auctoritas is derived from the verb augere, which means to increase or augment. Those who have authority are those who represent the beginning, who augment it, and who refer us back to it. In fact, for Arendt, authority is always part of a “trinity” composed of religion, which binds us to the past (according to a not-uncontested etymology, “religion” derives from re-ligare, i.e., “to re-bind”), authority, which is the notion under discussion here, and tradition, which is the way in which the past is handed down. The one who commands with authority and those who obey are both united by a bond of shared convictions and a shared concern for the world they live in, a world structured by a sacred order, a hierarchy. Both the one who commands and the one who obeys share this hierarchy and recognize their respective places in it. The command is seen as legitimate in light of their shared concern for the common world. For the ancient Romans, this common world was the city, the empire, the res publica, constituted by an event: the founding of the city of Rome. This founding event was passed on to each new generation and remained the point of reference for all authority.
For Arendt, after the decline of the Roman Empire, it was the Catholic Church that somehow inherited the Roman legacy and remained the only institution still representing authentic authority. For Christians, the foundation of the Church, in a way analogous to the foundation of the city of Rome, was also constituted by an event: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This foundational event is also handed down from generation to generation, and those in authority in the Church are invested with authority to the extent that they bear witness to this event, represent it, and communicate it.
Responsibility for the “Public Thing”
In the case of both the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church, authority is based on something that is at once greater than the individual and common to those in authority and those under it. Authority is based on a public thing, a res publica, a common concern, whether it is the foundation of the city or the foundation of the Church. What distinguishes those in authority for Arendt is their willingness to take responsibility for this common world and its common good. Without the willingness to take responsibility for the common world, there is no authority. This is especially true in the field of education. Here, the willingness to take responsibility for the world is expressed in the willingness of educators to introduce newcomers to the world, whether or not the educators are happy with the world as it is, whether or not they would have wished it to develop differently than it has. It is still our world, the world—the city, the society—that we inhabit. It is the world to which we belong. My words have weight because they do not simply express what I happen to think or prefer. I am transmitting to you something that is greater than I, that does not depend on me, that I did not invent. What I am doing and saying has a source and a point of reference that goes beyond me.
It thus becomes clear that to have authority in education and in any other field, one must live one’s life under the horizon of something greater than one’s own life, and one must be willing to take responsibility for it. In a sense, the person in authority is always under authority, under the authority of the foundational event that constituted the common world, whether it be the founding of the city, the promulgation of the constitution, or, in the case of the Church, the death and resurrection of Christ. Only one who is under authority can have authority, as the Roman centurion whose encounter with Jesus is related to us in the Gospel of Matthew clearly knew:
The centurion answered, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.” (Mt. 8:8–9)
Power and Authority in the Family
Is there power in the family? Is the family itself perhaps a power structure in society? Ideally, yes, under the condition that the family is united. It is united by the power of the promise of marriage, which binds together the husband and the wife, and which also binds together the two families of origin. In fact, the very promise of marriage is such as to turn strangers—husband and wife and their respective families of origin—into kin. With the birth of the couple’s sons and daughters, new kinship relationships are created, making the husband and wife the father and mother of their common children, constituting their respective parents as grandparents, and their respective siblings as aunts and uncles. There are now brothers and sisters and cousins of various degrees. Even the in-laws are joined in a new way that goes beyond the couple’s promise—which may be broken—to become united in the couple’s children, in whom the blood of both original kinship groups is now forever mixed.
The bonds of consanguinity and mutual promise, in turn, can provide a solid foundation for members of the family to act together toward common goals, allowing for the creation of power through which they can, for good or ill, exert decisive influence on society, as the Kennedys or Rockefellers still do on a large scale in the United States today, but as any kinship group beyond the nuclear family can do anywhere at any time, though often on a smaller scale.
But there is no automatism. As our Lord himself puts it, “If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand” (Mk 3:25). A house, that is, a family, can be divided. Brother can turn against brother. In fact, the first murder in human history, as recorded in the Book of Genesis, was a fratricide. At the same time, as Aristotle knew, the bonds of kinship can be the basis of a certain kind of friendship that can be particularly lasting. From this friendship, which always implies activity, i.e., acting for a common goal, power in Arendt’s sense will by definition arise. Aristotle, too, thought that public authority should take a special interest in fostering friendships among its citizens in order to promote the cohesion and stability of the city and, if we wish, its power.
Authority in the family will play its role primarily in the education of children. Having generated their children, parents have both the right and the duty to educate their children as their primary educators. But this right and duty, rooted in the natural relationship of parenthood, must be deliberately embraced. This is where parents can succeed or fail, and the extent of their effective authority over their sons and daughters will depend in large part on their willingness to take responsibility for their children and for their common world. Authority in Arendt’s thought—and with her in the classical Roman sense—never has its source in the person who wields it. There must be a larger reality, a “hierarchy” shared by those in authority and those under authority. Such a reality is indeed first and foremost the family, understood as a kinship group extended in space and time, with its traditions and its history, and with a heritage of which all members see themselves as “trustees” in Carle C. Zimmerman’s sense. But such a reality is also constituted on a larger scale by the city, the nation and indeed “the common world” to use Arendt’s parlance. If parents, as the primary, though not the only educators of their children, can understand and credibly present themselves as part of a larger whole and as representatives and mediators of that larger whole, then they will indeed have authority. The law they lay down for their children does not come from their arbitrary whims. They are not its authors. There is a family tradition. There is a tradition of the larger community, the city and the nation to which they themselves adhere and to which they themselves are subject. There is a way the world, our common world, works. Let us introduce you to it.
Conclusion: A Love of the Common World
We explored the complex relationship between power and authority, drawing on the thought of Hannah Arendt. We began by examining the common suspicion of power, often seen as corrupting, and contrasted it with Arendt’s nuanced distinctions between power, strength, authority, violence, and expertise. Arendt argues that power is not an attribute of an individual, but a capacity that arises among people when they unite as equals for a common purpose. Authority, in turn, is a relationship between superior and subordinate, rooted in a shared commitment to a foundational event and a tradition that communicates this event to the present. For Arendt, authority as a concept and lived reality has its origins in Roman antiquity and can still be found today as a defining principle in the Roman Catholic Church. We then discussed the role of power and authority in the context of the family. For better or for worse, families, understood as kinship groups extended in space and time and united by consanguinity and mutual promise, can indeed be power structures with significant influence on society. Authority in the family, in turn, is brought into play when it comes to raising one’s children. For Arendt, the true authority of parents derives from their commitment to take responsibility for a reality larger than themselves and their willingness to introduce their children to it. To have authority over one’s children, or in any other context for that matter, requires a love for something greater than oneself: the love of the family, the city—a common good quite in general—or, speaking with Arendt, “the common world.”
