Decades ago I asked an Irish Benedictine from Valyermo where authority lies. His answer rather surprised me but has stuck with me these many years so much that I still can quote it very close to verbatim:
"If you ask any Catholic theologian, and if you demonstrate to them that you are serious and sincere, any Catholic theologian will say that authority lives in the hearts of the believers."
That was a Lutheran-esque answer: That is Christian -- i.e., authoritative -- ob sie Christum treiben.
That is Christian which deals with, concentrates on, or drives toward Christ, the intense presence of essential reality (Para-ousia … Divinity), the Prophetic Imperative, the Effusion of Love.
I agree with your last para, but it looks to me like you're taking too many things together at once, including mixing of authority and authoritatianism. For example, I doubt any of us would claim that autocracy is not an authoritanism, yet, the authority there - "divine authority to rule", was a very random and arbitrary selection process of the final authority (cf Nicholas II of Russia to name a recent example, IMO much better than the dubious yet often used Marie-Antoinette).
I also disagree with the Liberalism = destruction of any authority, as historically Liberals - as you yourself point in the previous post - have the Reason as the ultimate authority (and schooling was always important to them). One could look towards Nihilism, although of course Jacobi argued that rationalism in reducio ad absurdum goes to Nihilism. I'd argue that the Russian Nihilism of mid 19th century was not dissimilar, if on a much smaller scale (of course, as the people who could afford to be nihilist then in mid 19th century Russia were a much smaller group than the current West).
All that said, I'd go a bit further than authority. The problem IMO we have, as a Western society, is not so much authority, as the lack of purpose. A poor person can cope better if they believe that they are part of some greater purpose (divine or otherwise). A middle class person in the rat race will also live better life if they believe that there's a purpose.
The authority and all comes IMO as a vehicle via which the society becomes a society, and a society cannot IMO thrive unless it has _some_ purpose. The unbridled individualism, taken into extreme by Thatcher and Reagan, deny not only society, but purpose, because the only truly individualistic purpose can be extreme narcisim (a fun comparison here would be "ideal man" of Vybegallo from Strugacky's Monday Begins on Saturday, although their target was something else).
Decades ago I asked an Irish Benedictine from Valyermo where authority lies. His answer rather surprised me but has stuck with me these many years so much that I still can quote it very close to verbatim:
"If you ask any Catholic theologian, and if you demonstrate to them that you are serious and sincere, any Catholic theologian will say that authority lives in the hearts of the believers."
That was a Lutheran-esque answer: That is Christian -- i.e., authoritative -- ob sie Christum treiben.
That is Christian which deals with, concentrates on, or drives toward Christ, the intense presence of essential reality (Para-ousia … Divinity), the Prophetic Imperative, the Effusion of Love.
I agree with your last para, but it looks to me like you're taking too many things together at once, including mixing of authority and authoritatianism. For example, I doubt any of us would claim that autocracy is not an authoritanism, yet, the authority there - "divine authority to rule", was a very random and arbitrary selection process of the final authority (cf Nicholas II of Russia to name a recent example, IMO much better than the dubious yet often used Marie-Antoinette).
I also disagree with the Liberalism = destruction of any authority, as historically Liberals - as you yourself point in the previous post - have the Reason as the ultimate authority (and schooling was always important to them). One could look towards Nihilism, although of course Jacobi argued that rationalism in reducio ad absurdum goes to Nihilism. I'd argue that the Russian Nihilism of mid 19th century was not dissimilar, if on a much smaller scale (of course, as the people who could afford to be nihilist then in mid 19th century Russia were a much smaller group than the current West).
All that said, I'd go a bit further than authority. The problem IMO we have, as a Western society, is not so much authority, as the lack of purpose. A poor person can cope better if they believe that they are part of some greater purpose (divine or otherwise). A middle class person in the rat race will also live better life if they believe that there's a purpose.
The authority and all comes IMO as a vehicle via which the society becomes a society, and a society cannot IMO thrive unless it has _some_ purpose. The unbridled individualism, taken into extreme by Thatcher and Reagan, deny not only society, but purpose, because the only truly individualistic purpose can be extreme narcisim (a fun comparison here would be "ideal man" of Vybegallo from Strugacky's Monday Begins on Saturday, although their target was something else).