Power Corrupts Idea
Power Corrupts Idea is an idea that having authority and influence over others tends to promote wrongdoing.
- Context:
- This concept suggests those with great authority and control face increased temptation for unethical acts.
- It refers to power over people and society through leadership roles.
- It can promote arrogance and self-interest.
- It can affect well-intentioned leaders.
- It can be checked by transparency and ethics laws.
- It can be influential in analyzing abuse of authority in politics, business, society.
- ...
- Example(s):
- A politician abusing authority by accepting bribes after gaining office.
- A CEO misusing power to manipulate earnings for personal bonuses.
- A dictator misusing absolute authority to violently suppress dissent.
- ...
- Counter-Example(s):
- An incorruptible leader driven by ethics over self-interest.
- Trustees who refuse to abuse power entrusted to them.
- A parent who resists the corrupting influence of authority when disciplining children.
- ...
- See: Abuse of Power, Ethics, Corruption.
References
2023
- (Wikipedia, 2023) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton#Acton's_dictum Retrieved:2023-7-18.
- In 1870, along with his mentor Döllinger, Acton opposed the moves to promulgate the doctrine of papal infallibility in the First Vatican Council, travelling to Rome to lobby against it, ultimately unsuccessfully.[1] Unlike Döllinger, Acton did not become an Old Catholic, and continued attending Mass regularly; he received the last rites on his deathbed.[2] The Catholic Church did not try to force his hand. It was in this context that, in a letter he wrote to scholar and ecclesiastic Mandell Creighton, dated April 1887, Acton made his most famous pronouncement:
But if we might discuss this point until we found that we nearly agreed, and if we do agree thoroughly about the impropriety of Carlylese denunciations and Pharisaism in history, I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means. You would hang a man of no position like Ravaillac; but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III of England ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greatest names coupled with the greatest crimes; you would spare those criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice, still more, still higher for the sake of historical science.[3]
Thenceforth he steered clear of theological polemics. He devoted himself to reading, study and congenial society. With all his capacity for study, he was a man of the world and a man of affairs, not a bookworm.Template:Sfn His only notable publications were a masterly essay in the Quarterly Review of January 1878 on "Democracy in Europe;" two lectures delivered at Bridgnorth in 1877 on "The History of Freedom in Antiquity" and "The History of Freedom in Christianity"—these last the only tangible portions put together by him of his long-projected "History of Liberty;" and an essay on modern German historians in the first number of the English Historical Review, which he helped to found (1886). After 1879 he divided his time between London, Cannes, and Tegernsee in Bavaria, enjoying and reciprocating the society of his friends. In 1872 he had been given the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Munich; in 1888 Cambridge gave him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, and in 1889 Oxford the Doctor of Civil Law; and in 1890 he received the high academic accolade of being made a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.Template:Sfn
- In 1870, along with his mentor Döllinger, Acton opposed the moves to promulgate the doctrine of papal infallibility in the First Vatican Council, travelling to Rome to lobby against it, ultimately unsuccessfully.[1] Unlike Döllinger, Acton did not become an Old Catholic, and continued attending Mass regularly; he received the last rites on his deathbed.[2] The Catholic Church did not try to force his hand. It was in this context that, in a letter he wrote to scholar and ecclesiastic Mandell Creighton, dated April 1887, Acton made his most famous pronouncement:
- ↑ Tonsor, Stephen J (1959). "Lord Acton on Dollinger's Historical Theology". Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (3): 329–352. doi:10.2307/2708113. JSTOR 2708113.
- ↑ Template:Cite CE1913
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
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