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Examples Of Authority In Antigone

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What makes authority legitimate or illegitimate?

When putting your life and trust into someone else or a government and submitting to their authority, you better make sure they are legitimate. I believe that authority is legitimate when it is knowledgeable, has the ability to coerce people in unity, and to be morally just when doing so. The Secret Sharer, Antigone, and Gattica all have examples of a legitimate or illegitimate authority. The first aspect of a legitimate authority figure is that they are knowledgeable. Without being knowledgeable, authority could not be legitimate, for it could not know how to lead. We as society look to our authority figures to tell us what to believe and what to do, for example a marine biologist is an authority on what to believe about fish and an engineer is an authority on how to build a bridge. This concept is seen in The Secret Sharer, as the captain is very knowledgeable about directing the ship through waters. Even when the crew questions his leadership and abilities as they sail through an increasingly difficult area, he is confident and knows what to do and pushes on. After …show more content…

If the laws they create and impose are all morally just then there is no problem with citizens following the laws when there aren’t any morally ambiguous laws. Look at the story of Antigone for this concept, in Antigone the king enforces a law that morally does not seem right. Because of this, Antigone refuses to follow the law, and the king even goes through many measures to not punish her. A society with any citizens not following the laws, and the authority not punishing them for that crime means that they are not a legitimate authority. It is not enough for an authority just to be able to get people to blindly follow the laws, but those laws must be morally right and the people in understanding of

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