released 4/23/2025
In this November 2024 lecture, D. C. Schindler explains why authority, properly understood, is essential to genuinely human life. Authority symbolizes a transcendent order and opens up a space for meaningful human action. Schindler argues that authority and power are not synonyms; it is authority that gives power its significance and legitimacy. Because secular cultures officially shut themselves off from a greater transcendent order, they are unable to take their bearings from the actual truth of reality. Hence, a crisis of legitimacy ensues when their legacy of tradition and real authority collapses. All that is left is the use of coercive power to regulate more and more spheres of their citizens’ lives.
This lecture is provided courtesy of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute. A video of this lecture is available here.
39 minutes
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