Luigi Giussani ( The Risk of Education: Discovering Our Ultimate Destiny ) say that “we experience authority when we meet someone who possesses a full awareness of reality, who imposes on us a recognition and arouses surprise, novelty, and respect.”
Authority in this sense attracts: “There is an inevitable attraction within authority and an inexorable suggestion within us, since the experience of authority reminds one more or less clearly of one’s poverty and limitations. For this reason, we tend to follow him and become his ‘disciples.’ And while the adult will tend to recognize and choose authority out a mature, responsible confrontation wit it, in young people this recognition of authority is fixed more instinctively in the individual’s ‘originating reality.’ The genuine revelation of life and authentic truth reside in developing our dependence on this ‘authoritative’ reality” (64).
To be a true authority in an educational context, he adds, the teacher must above all be coherent , “a continual reminder of ultimate values and of our commitments to them, a steady standard for judging all of reality, and a stable safeguard of the constantly renewed link between the student’s shifting attitudes and the ultimate, total sense of reality” (65).
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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