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Moral authority is
authority Authority is commonly understood as the legitimate power of a person or group of other people. In a civil state, ''authority'' may be practiced by legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government,''The New Fontana Dictionary of M ...
premised on principles, or fundamental
truth Truth or verity is the Property (philosophy), property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth, 2005 In everyday language, it is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise cor ...
s, which are independent of written, or positive laws. As such, moral authority necessitates the existence of and adherence to truth. Because truth does not change the principles of moral authority are immutable or unchangeable, although as applied to individual circumstances the dictates of moral authority for action may vary due to the exigencies of human life. These principles, which can be of metaphysical or religious nature, are considered normative for behavior, whether they are or are not also embodied in written laws, and even if the community is ignoring or violating them. Therefore, the authoritativeness or force of moral authority is applied to the
conscience A conscience is a Cognition, cognitive process that elicits emotion and rational associations based on an individual's ethics, moral philosophy or value system. Conscience is not an elicited emotion or thought produced by associations based on i ...
of each individual, who is free to act according to or against its dictates. Moral authority has thus also been defined as the "fundamental assumptions that guide our perceptions of the world". An individual or a body of people who are seen as communicators of such principles but which does not have the physical power to enforce them on the unwilling are also spoken of as having or being a moral authority. An example is the
Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
. In the latter sense, moral authority has also been defined as "the capacity to convince others how the world should be", as opposed to epistemic authority, "the capacity to convince others of how the world is". The phrase has also been used in Australia to describe the situation when the head of a
Royal commission A royal commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue in some monarchies. They have been held in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Malaysia, Mauritius and Saudi Arabia. In republics an equi ...
expands the subjects being investigated, beyond the narrow focus of the commissions terms of reference.


Changing focuses

Since the
Age of Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a Europe, European Intellect, intellectual and Philosophy, philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained th ...
, traditional sources of moral authority such as church or state have been viewed with increasing suspicion in Western culture: perhaps indeed all claims to moral authority. Instead of guides, entertainers; in place of ideals, stimulation. Expertise, or alternatively what Emmanuel Levinas called the tyranny of opinion, or else an appeal to science, may be looked to for alternative sources of moral authority; or there may be a postmodern revulsion from all grand narratives which might ground such narratives in favour of
moral relativism Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several Philosophy, philosophical positions concerned with the differences in Morality, moral judgments across different p ...
. Talking of the poet, O'Donoghue argued in 2009 that
Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish Irish poetry, poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is ''Death of a Naturalist'' (1966), his first m ...
still wielded some degree of moral authority, attributed in large part to his modernist reticence, lack of dogma, and capacity for self-doubt – as opposed for example to the unchallenged moral authority for centuries attributed to
Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most fa ...
as a ''norma vivendi'', i.e. a norm of living. In reaction to the erosion of sources of moral authority,
Late Modernity Late modernity (or liquid modernity) is the characterization of today's highly developed global society, societies as the continuation (or social progress, development) of modernity rather than as an element of the succeeding era known as postmo ...
has also seen the appearance of various forms of
fundamentalism Fundamentalism is a tendency among certain groups and individuals that are characterized by the application of a strict literal interpretation to scriptures, dogmas, or ideologies, along with a strong belief in the importance of distinguis ...
, from a range of religious types to market fundamentalism.Sim, p. 272


See also


Notes

{{Reflist, 30em Concepts in ethics Morality Authority