An Evaluation Of Yves Simon’s Argument That Authority Is An Essential Function Of Government

by Gary L. Morella

Yves Simon in Philosophy of Democratic Government argues that authority has an essential function and that it is not simply the result of deficiency or paternal substitution.

The deficiency theory originated in the belief that the greatest good of the greatest number is most safely brought about by the operation of individual initiatives. Simon observes that children are governed to some extent by persons possessed with more mature intellects, stronger wills, and wider experience, which is necessary for their survival. The paternal function of authority aims at the proper good of the governed, e.g., a child needs direction because he is not able to take care of himself in regard to his preservation and perfection. Authority, in this case, is needed for the survival and development of the immature person. It is made necessary by a deficiency. Parents care for their children because their children are unable to care for themselves. Thus, the paternal function of authority is not essential but substitutional.

Simon clarifies the concept of “deficiency,” which admits to degrees and always signifies the lack of a perfection that a subject should possess in order to satisfy fully the demands of its nature. He cautions that deficiency is not necessarily an evil because natures subject to growth go through a period of “not achieving” as a normal course of events. Children cannot be expected to rise to the level of adults in this context because they are “incompletely developed persons.” There is nothing wrong with children acting like children, which is contrary to the gospel of Planned Parenthood who believes that children from K-12 are fully capable of understanding the intricacies of human sexual behavior. This, of course, means only the mechanics of pleasure with no thought whatsoever to the physical and eternal consequences involved. However, there is something very wrong with an adult whose mental age is that of a child, a conjecture apropos to Planned Parenthood’s proponents. Accordingly, Simon correctly concludes that among the deficiencies that make paternal authority necessary, some have the character of evil, and some do not. Some are normal, and some are not. There would be no room for paternal authority in a society free from deficiencies, but there would be plenty of room for it in a human society free from evil, since its members are children before they are adults. Societies free from evil will not be observed in the natural plane as a result of the fall and the concupiscence due to Original Sin. So such considerations are moot.

An important point that Simon makes is that paternal authority is pedagogical, aiming at its own disappearance, which follows from its substitutional character. It is good and necessary for a child to be guided by mature persons, his parents. However, to make the child reliant on parents indefinitely for no good reason makes paternal authority guilty of “abominable abuse.” This can be generalized to a paternal authority concept of colonization. Simon observes that there is no ground for the paternal authority of one community over another, or one state over another, unless the latter is contained in the former as a child in his family. The European colonizers of African tribes acted ethically only insofar that they acted as agents of the human community, then entirely unorganized, i.e., their goal was civilization as opposed to the brutality of anarchy. Once this goal is achieved it is no longer ethical to make the colonized subject to the authority of the colonizers for the same reason that responsible parents must abrogate their substitutional authority toward their mature children if their children have any hope of survival as adults. In a nation context Simon tells us that it is impossible to posit the principle of paternal authority without positing simultaneously a principle of autonomy, as with regard to the proper good either of the individual or the state, the possibility of self-government makes it obligatory for authority to disappear where it is no longer needed. He goes so far as to state that “The annihilation of paternal authority into autonomy, whenever possible, is an affair of justice, not an affair of democracy.” Society has to accept risks to give a subject a chance to be autonomous. Parents feel this anxiety when their children leave home for the first time to go to college. Hopefully, their religious grounding in their faith will be strong enough to distinguish the radical demands of unencumbered freedom for the autonomous self, unlimited freedom to do what we want (license), with genuine authentic freedom to do what we ought.

We will now turn to the question of why authority at all? When united action is called for, united judgment is required. But united judgment comes either from unanimity or from authority. However, unanimity is usually difficult to achieve in practical affairs because practice involves contingent matters and particular circumstances that must be considered. Simon uses the example of science being of the universal, commanding universal assent although not always. For example, no one would argue with the law of gravity even though they may not be able to understand it fully. Practical agreement is hard to come by since ethics and politics demand prudence with practical truth requiring both true reasoning and right desire. Thus, practical judgment is determined by “obscure forces of appetite” and not sheer rational communication. Such “practical judgments” were handed down by our Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey where the “obscure forces of appetite”, i.e., pleasure and convenience, have allowed the butchering of millions of innocents in what should be their safest haven, their mothers’ wombs. Of course, for this darkest moment of our nation’s history, we’re not talking about men and women of good will and right desire who made these judgments. Simon observes that even if that was the case, i.e., the hypothesis that all are on the same page in regard to good will and right desire, there is still a problem for arriving at common judgment. For example, if there are many possible means to a given end, each equally valid, that authority is quite essential or society suffers from a paralysis of analysis. Nothing is done. Freedom requires authority because of the need for common action and determination of the means of action in the midst of greater possibility. Political authority will reach beyond the deficiencies found in a parent-child relationship, as rule is not reducible to the household necessities of life. It is also a function of the fullness of human achievement and mastery. The political forces us to look at many different conventions and opinions about what is just with authority essential to resolve these questions.

Authority’s essential function is to secure unity of action. Common action requires authority to make a determination for the common good in the same manner that such decisions are made in the household with the political being an extension of the pre-political. There are natural processes that generate the polis and the polis must respect these things. Yet the pre-political shows openness to being formed by the political with the polis being a work of reason persuading necessity, which serves an essential function for the survival of the pre-political. In short we see the requirement for a political symbiotic relationship. Generation and preservation begin something that cannot be perfected in the household.

In summation, when the means to the common good is uniquely determined, affective community supplies an essential foundation for unanimous assent; unanimity is, then, the only normal situation, and, if everything is normal, authority is not needed to bring about unified action. Unity of action requires authority in so far as not everything is normal, in so far as wills are weak or perverse and intellects ignorant or blinded. In this case the function of authority remains substitutional.

Considering the function that authority plays as an indispensable principle of united action when there are several means to the common good, we can ask the question whether this function is essential or substitutional. Since the need for authority here is properly caused by the plurality of the means, the real question is whether this plurality of means is itself caused by a deficiency or by the good nature of things. In the latter case alone will the function under consideration prove to be an essential one.

Being endowed with intellect and free will, the members of a society must tend by several means toward a common end; they can choose between these means. Since diverse and opposite means would abolish social unity and destroy the essence of society, it is necessary to have an intelligent principle regulate the minds and impress the same tendencies on all the wills. The power that binds all members of a society is called authority, which is an essential element of society. When we look at the political we are faced with many different conventions and opinions about what is just that is resolved by authority serving an essential function.