Abstract
Tradition and authority are so closely linked in writings on political theory and philosophy that it is very difficult to discuss one without taking up the other. Max Weber made tradition one of the sources and hence one of the types of authority and of legitimacy as well, contrasting it with charismatic and rational-legal sources.1 In doing so, he remained in the well-known habit of the Enlightenment which contrasted reason and authority. The implication was that the methods of reason were scientific as contrasted with the methods of authority based upon revelation or irrational belief. And much of that belief had its base in tradition. The possibility that both tradition and authority might themselves be rational was more or less excluded for thinkers of this ‘tradition’. Charles S. Pierce wrote a generation ago that ‘when the method of authority prevailed, the truth meant little more than the Catholic faith’.2 This is a typical statement, although incorrect in itself.
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Notes and References
Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 2nd edn, 1925, chap. I, pp. 145 ff.
An English translation is found in Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trs. by A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, ed. and intro. Talcott Parsons, 1947, pp. 56 ff.
Charles S. Pierce, ‘How to Make our Ideas Clear’ as reprinted in Love, Chance, and Logic, 1923, p. 55.
Adolf Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte 3 vols., 1885, 1897. In English translation by Neil Buchanan under the title History of Dogma reprinted by Dover, 1961 (3rd German edn.), Vol. iii, pp. 207 if. (English edn).
I. Lloyd and Suzanne Hoeber Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition, 1967, P. 3.
Sir Edward Coke, Introduction to the Fourth Book of the Institutes. For background see Roscoe Pound, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law, 1922, and my Man and His Government 1963, chaps. 14 and 15.
Gabriel A. Almond and James S. Coleman (eds.), The Politics of the Developing Areas, 1960, p. 27 (by Almond).
Judith N. Sklar, Men and Citizens—A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory, 1969, esp. pp. 144 if., and J. J. Rousseau, Emile, Book Iv.
Cf. Charles E. Merriam, The Making of Citizens, 1931. The treatment is conventional, though the work was pathfinding. In present day jargon, these matters are discussed under the heading of ‘socialization’.
On anomie, Emile Durkheim, Le Suicide, 1897.
summarized in Sebastian de Grazia, The Political Community, 1948, pp. 3–5. De Grazia’s entire volume is preoccupied with the problem of anomie.
Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, in their American Political Science—A Profile of a Discipline, 1964, esp. pp. 65 ff.
do not stress this distinction, but their general outlook is demonstrably anti-traditionalist. In their more recent The Development of Political Science, 1967, they would date the beginnings to the late nineteenth century. I myself would plead for Aristotle as the basis of tradition in political science; see my Die Politische Wissenschaft 1961.
See on this my work, cited in note 7, chap. XVII, esp. p. 330, and Bentham’s An Essay on Political Tactics, 1816.
Joseph Redlich, The Procedure of the House of Commons (trs. A. E. Steinthal), 1908, a masterly historical treatment showing the interaction between parliamentary procedure and governmental structure and functioning.
Bertrand de Jouvenel, in his The Pure Theory of Politics, 1963, has drawn attention, in chap. 3 of Part vi, to the significance of manners in politics, esp. pp. 193 ff. The almost complete lack of manners among the radical youth of our day is one of the most disconcerting features of their activities and verbal expressions. In Germany, never a country distinguished by good manners, in politics, love, or anything else, these elements have descended into the gutter.
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© 1972 The Pall Mall Press London
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Friedrich, C.J. (1972). Tradition as Fact and Norm. In: Tradition and Authority. Key Concepts in Political Science. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01046-2_1
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