Examination of Authoritarianism as a Source of Knowledge

Abstract

This paper examines authoritarianism as a source of knowledge in critical form. Knowledge as the conscious acquisition and comprehension of believed facts that are truly justified comes from many sources like perception, reason, memory, testimony, senses, intuition, instinct, revelation, anamnesis, experience, spiritualism and authority. However, the type of knowledge the philosophers are interested in is propositional knowledge which answers the name only when belief, evidence and truth according to Hospers and Scheffler are satisfied as conditions. Authority is the reference point of pronouncements, laying down what is right or wrong and deciding what to be done. In education, authority refers to an individual regarded with such power and right to make pronouncements sequel to his mastery, records and achievements in an area of knowledge. Authoritarianism is, therefore, making use of the force authority; blind subjection and submission to authority in terms of knowledge without verification and objection. It sources knowledge of course, as in revealed and textbooks plus verbal utterances but results to conventionalism, conformity, lack of self-reliance, closed mindedness, docility, inconsistency and ruling out the three conditions of knowledge. So, authoritarianism should only guide individuals to become authority not subject them to.