Put the phrase "moral authority" into a Google search, and you will get back something over 670,000 hits.  Clearly the expression gets used a lot.  But what do people mean when they use it?  Many people seem to think that it means the right to weigh in on discussions involving what to do about some tough issue.  Other uses suggest that it is a measure of virtue; those who live exemplary lives have moral authority.  Or, that one can gain moral authority by having been put through a trial: the John McCain effect.  One simple definition is that moral authority is the capacity to convince others of how the world should be.  This distinguishes it from expert or epistemic authority, which could be defined as the capacity to convince others of how the world is. 

What do these simple definitions leave out? 

Discuss

User_rqwj_db64d9327

a a on January 20, 2008, 8:30 PM

Power over what is considered right and wrong?

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James Imnotgonnatellyou on January 20, 2008, 9:10 PM

@DonnyMac—
Unfortunately, this is a good definition.

NO ONE should have that power, though. People need to decide what is right and wrong for themselves, not have someone tell them.

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Rob Del Vecchio on February 15, 2008, 5:29 PM

@I AM; The counter point to that argument is, what if someone wants someone else to tell them what is right and wrong? What happens when someone CANNOT make a decision between right and wrong, due to a mental disorder, or even more interestingly, the deficiency of a frontal lobe.

Extending this idea, I believe it is not possible to compare what the world ought to be, and what the world is. One can have a goal or an idea to move towards in order to have some sort of hope to mold the world in how they see the world ought to be, but the truth lies in what the world is.

There is no exact definition of a moral authority, because there is no exact definition of what a moral is. One can assume that a moral is “something good”. However, what is good in one culture may be outrageous in another.

Hence, I say there are two moral authorities: one which comes from self-discovery, trial and error, ones own experiences, etc., and one which comes from another.

We switch from one moral authority to another, the first of course, being our parents.

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