Reviewing "Civilizing Authority"

Here is a review, by Kevin Schmiesing, of our own Patrick Brennan's "Civilizing Authority", which is itself a fascinating collection of essays by a number of first-rate scholars.  Here are the first few paragraphs of the review:

It is safe to say that the problem of authority is perennial.  Questions concerning the validity, location, and sources of ecclesiastical and political authority have roiled theology, philosophy, law, and related disciplines since at least the time of the medieval scholastics. Far from being resolved to wide consensus, moreover, the questions and potential answers to them have proliferated over the centuries, recent decades not excepted.

The editor of this collection, Patrick McKinley Brennan, frames the problem’s persistence neatly in his introduction. Even as the very concept of authority has come under withering attack over the last halfcentury, the theoretical assault has done nothing to change the fact that human society seems to be inseparable from the practice of authority. To summarize bluntly the argument underlying the book, as this author sees it: We must have authority, so we may as well accept it, try to understand it, and make it as benign and effective as possible.