Abstract
The product of twenty years in the library plus five years of writing, this excellent study by emeritus professor Frank Furedi (University of Kent) is now the most detailed treatment of “authority” in English within the covers of a single volume. Its 28-page bibliography serves as the backbone to his comprehensive handling of a tricky subject, one far more often surveyed by political theorists than by a sociologist. Richard Sennett’s Authority (1980) by comparison is a slight contribution when set beside Furedi’s, even though Sennett’s prose is pleasant to digest and more anchored in its time, as Furedi points out (p. 404). Very few sociological accounts can stand beside this one when it comes to comprehensiveness and scholarly balance.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Furedi claims that “this study can also be seen as the outcome of a critical dialogue with Max Weber” (p. 12). While it always makes sense to begin with Weber when studying macro-structural features of modern life, Furedi sees in “Politics as a Vocation” the necessary starting point for advancing our understanding of authority, but with a fresh twist to the argument: “Weber’s discovery that the process of modernisation and rationalisation has tended to diminish authority’s foundation has not stopped social and political thinkers from searching for new ways of validating authority. Our study argues that this quest has frequently led to the conceptualisation of a negative theory of authority. Such negative theories bypass the problem of foundation and through a critique of mass culture and society justify domination through the need to keep in check the irrational and non-rational behavior of the public” (p. 12). So Furedi’s overall question, for the answer to which he returns to history, is whether authority as defined and understood over centuries past can any longer be attained by today’s rulers. As he expressed it, “Our aim is not to provide a history of authority [despite the book’s subtitle?], but to examine the shifting meaning from Ancient Greece to the contemporary era, and the beliefs, customs, and conventions that provide a foundation for justifying authority” (p. 4).
The reader will note that this is not a prose style to rival Sennett’s, but its workmanlike character manages to transmit a great deal of information in palatable form. Furedi begins by recalling Homer’s hated Thersites, “the ugliest man in Troy,” who repudiates Odysseus’s call for heroism as well as Agamemnon’s transparent self-aggrandizement (Iliad, 2:245–325). Thersites could have been read by Marx as a “working-class hero” who blasphemed against Agamemnon and the other generals for their greed and lascivious gluttony, and with humor to boot. But Homer, speaking through Odysseus, castigates him for his blunt speech-making and his dishonoring of the army’s leader. He is what Furedi calls “the personification of anti-authority” (pp. 18–30), an illuminating way to assess authority’s recurring failures when confronted by an uninhibited, outspoken opponent. Betraying more than a casual acquaintance with “the Classics,” Furedi then builds on Alvin Gouldner’s remarkable Enter Plato (1965) by analyzing Socrates’ place in Greek culture, before moving into chapters on Roman concerns with “legitimate authority.” Not surprisingly, he commits another entire chapter to Augustus, “a role model for authority through the ages,” so even before entering the Middle Ages nearly 100 pages of the book have been consumed. Another fifty pages go to medieval political theory, more yet to the Reformation, and finally at p. 181, Hobbes enters the discussion. He, like Machiavelli (who warrants only one paragraph from Furedi), is usually the beginning point of histories such as this one.
Furedi’s book illustrates the value of stepping beyond the standard “big names” within a given body of theorizing. When assaying medieval, Reformation, or early modern ideas, Furedi summons up a genuine dialogue among many interested parties, viewing them in their time and in their language. By using recognized authorities (e.g., Leonard Krieger) as well as original works, he shows that “authority” is always contested, rechanneled, reappropriated, and is never settled because of its obvious importance to everyday life. His colleagues will find Chapter 13 especially intriguing: “Authority Transformed into Sociology’s Cause,” where Giddings, Durkheim, Ross, Tönnies, Simmel, Ward and others are given their due. One could wish that other broad-scale monographs of this kind were so thorough and informative.