Moral authority

An individual or a body of people who are seen as communicators of such principles but which does not have the physical power to enforce them on the unwilling are also spoken of as having or being a moral authority. An example is the Catholic Church.

In the latter sense, moral authority has also been defined as "the capacity to convince others how the world should be", as opposed to epistemic authority, "the capacity to convince others of how the world is".

The phrase has also been used in Australia to describe the situation when the head of a Royal commission expands the subjects being investigated, beyond the narrow focus of the commissions terms of reference.

Changing focuses

Since the Age of Enlightenment, traditional sources of moral authority such as church or state have been viewed with increasing suspicion in Western culture: perhaps indeed all claims to moral authority. Instead of guides, entertainers; in place of ideals, stimulation.

Expertise, or alternatively what Emmanuel Levinas called the tyranny of opinion, or else an appeal to science, may be looked to for alternative sources of moral authority; or there may be a postmodern revulsion from all grand narratives which might ground such narratives in favour of moral relativism.

Talking of the poet, O'Donoghue argued in 2009 that Seamus Heaney still wielded some degree of moral authority, attributed in large part to his modernist reticence, lack of dogma, and capacity for self-doubt – as opposed for example to the unchallenged moral authority for centuries attributed to Virgil as a norma vivendi, i.e. a norm of living.

In reaction to the erosion of sources of moral authority, Late Modernity has also seen the appearance of various forms of fundamentalism, from a range of religious types to market fundamentalism.