Tag: Authority
-
Nullius in verba
One especially bewildering experience can serve as the reason for my writing Cultivating Discipline Lightly: A Guide for Philosophical Friends (2013). In 1660, the Royal Society takes as its motto a ‘creative mistake’; it shortens a line from Horace’s Epistles to read simply: nullius in verba. The line can be translated as ‘Take nobody’s word for it’…
-
Rip Van Winkle: A parable
Rip Van Wrinkle, writes Washington Irving, was ‘sorely perplexed,’ and nearly everything about him, including his appearance, had changed. His musket had rusted over, his beard had grown down to his waist, and the public places he used to frequent were no longer there or were in a state of disarray. In place of his old…
-
On murmuring, education, and love
The Ancients Versus the Moderns The question we ask of power has changed tremendously. For the ancients, the principal question was, “Who rules? Who is fit to rule? What makes someone a wise ruler?” Their assumption was that the wise ruler would (or could) do no harm. You can see in Plato’s fantasy of a…
-
On murmuring as a clue to the problem of authority
In Chapter 40 of the Rule of Life, the guidebook that has served as a basis for Christian monastic life for the past 1500 years, St. Benedict discusses how much wine is to be apportioned to each member of the monastic community. Perhaps a “half-measure of wine every day should suffice,” he says, but then he…
-
Why we need good authority
According to The Rule of Life of the Community of Jesus, the handbook of The Community of Jesus, an ecumenical Benedictine monastery located in Orleans, Mass., “Our common life is… sustained and directed through a mutually recognized order of governance, articulated in this Rule of Life and built upon the legitimate exercise of authority and the…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 