Musings on Leadership (2)
‘Authority’ in Science and Art
6. What is true in the world of economics, government, schools, factories and elsewhere is true in science and the arts. We don’t believe all that scientists theorize but we’re more than willing to receive the truth they do uncover since we benefit so much from it. We call these people ‘authorities’ because they have earned the right to teach us the truths they’ve uncovered. While we can’t personally carry out the experiments, we’re content to believe that if we could we would see what they saw. In these matters and to that degree we allow them to have authority over us. In a very few areas, it is not so much that we ‘allow’ them to have authority over us, we have no choice but to receive their witness if we want to make sense of our lives as we experience them.
7. The field of art has a vagueness about it that natural science doesn’t. It is more difficult to dispute a scientific demonstration than it is to dispute: “That painting is utterly beautiful.” Because our internal worlds are different we like and dislike different things, think different things are beautiful and disagree more in assessments. But even two people who disagree whether some piece of sculpture is beautiful are claiming there is such a thing as ‘beauty’. He who says it isn’t ‘beautiful’ admits a standard and says, on his assessment, the sculpture falls short of that standard. I suppose everyone capable of any kind of judgement would recognize the splendour in the work of Pheidias and Michelangelo. In literature there is the ‘authority’ of Shakespeare and in music the ‘authority’ of Bach, Beethoven or Mozart. These men set standards to which all who come after them seek to attain or surpass. When we speak of the ‘authority’ of great literature we are saying that great literature ‘makes demands’ of us, calls us from mediocrity and calls us to greater efforts to write better. We aren’t precisely sure what it is that people like these have done but their ‘power over us’ we recognize. Josipovici, speaking of great books says: “We are drawn to them because they seem to speak to our condition, and we seek to make them more our own; but we are also drawn to them because they seem to be other than us, because they guide us out of ourselves into what we feel to be a truer, more real world.” If we wrote, painted, composed or sculpted as well as these men or women we would find ourselves as inspiring and uplifting as they are. We recognize that such people have more nearly approached an ‘ideal’ than the rest of us and their accomplishments (their reflection of that ‘truth’ or ‘ideal’) are what give them their power (authority) over us.
‘Authority’ in Life and Living
8. We observe this, too, in the ‘authority’ of a remarkable life (even a remarkable incident in an otherwise non-remarkable life). Such a life inspires us and makes us glad we are humans. Mark Rutherford said it like this: “I would like to add a beatitude: ‘Blessed is the person who gives us back our self-respect’.” Such a life sets a standard for us and as William Wordsworth noted: “What a great man accomplishes for us is this: “He does something that was never done before but which once it is done, becomes a standard for the rest of us, below which we can no longer be content.” We’ve all heard of or come into contact with such lives and even if we had difficulty in saying precisely what it is that such a person is or has that leads us to “recognize our betters” we have absolutely no doubt about the fact of it.
9. In all of life, those who have authority over us are those who bring to us the truth of things, the ‘reality’ and ‘beauty’ we esteem. Their power over us exists because they have something we don't have or don’t have enough of. If we regard justice as of paramount importance she who embodies and promotes a glad-hearted justice (often at great cost to her) gains power over us. We esteem Truth as essential to full-bodied and honourable living and he who reveals that to us and encourages in us a love of Truth becomes our leader. The fact is, it is Truth that is ultimately authoritative and attractive to us and the individual who brings it to us becomes its representative and we regard him/her as an ‘authority’. (Whether that Truth relates to life, science or the arts doesn’t seem to make any difference.) The authority of a good man is the goodness he embodies, the authority of a wise man is his wisdom, the authority of a scientist is the truth he tells, the authority of a great teacher is his great teaching. To submit to such people is to submit to what they represent (Truth, Justice or whatever); it is to submit to what we have come to think highly of. This implies, of course, that both leader and follower esteem the same ultimate authority.
10. Biblical theists would insist that God is the ultimate authority. Christians would accept Jesus Christ (as revealed to us by both Old and New Testaments) as the centre of God’s self-revelation and authority. Then, in the light of Christ, they would make sense of the life they experience.
11. But though we and the “authorities” both have a mutually received ultimate authority, we regard the people with authority over us as better representatives of that mutually received ultimate authority. We feel they do it more consistently or more faithfully. They are, perhaps, more articulate or more conscientious; they live it out better than we do, so we acknowledge them as our leaders, as above or over us.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.
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