Book - Power and Responsibility by Romano Guardini

Introduction

Romano Guardini is a towering 20^th century Christian theologian. His critical and incisive reflections of diverse aspects of humankind continue to inspire and attract attention. Drawing from his European experience, human relationship with power offered a display of his philosophical and theological erudition in this book. Today that concern has an amplified global footprint. His thesis is that power without responsibility is toxic. He saw the modern age as that of power, of specifically intellectual-technical power. Increase in this power is contradicted by defiant absence of human responsibility, ultimate meaning and value of existence. Why?

Summary

Technology is good in itself. However he saw that technological advances only confirm human dissatisfaction and increasing evidence of threat therefrom. It threatens humankind particularly weapon systems including nuclear weapons. Guardini asks, how can power grow without destroying humankind? How can humankind superintend power without collective-destruction? For Guardini, power has "real energies capable of changing the reality of things, of determining their condition and interrelations; and awareness of those energies, the will to establish specific goals and to launch and direct energies towards those goals."[1]

Guardini saw power as a non-neutral potential enabled knowingly from a point/source by a responsible agent. Power is an act of the will, a function of the spirit, a spiritual act hence is rooted in spirituality. This could be either authentic or inauthentic. All human power must be answered for, there's always personal responsibility. There is a moral imperative. Actions deployed in processes for specific outcomes as further action under human direction define power. Authentic power comes out of freedom while inauthentic or corrupt power emanate from absence of freedom.

Denial of responsibility doesn't eliminate the status of power or convert it to natural force. Since a person can't stop being a person or exhaust his/her ontological value, therefore responsibility is inherent in the execution of power. This situates corruption of power with disequilibrium, degeneration, destruction and evil as natural results. Since sin corrupted man (power) through disobedience, disorder took over because humankind redefined power as both service and resource stolen against truth by agents independent of God. Freedom of knowledge, power over self/things and fulfilment of life are lost to presumption.

Increased production as a result of precise methodological and theoretical input expands products, preponderance of machines and transform the relationship between producer and products. New powers arise from increased demand and intimacy with profits. Guardini is reticent on this point. Either he avoided it deliberately or lacked clarity of profit as a driver of power-induced production. Creative responsibility isn't refracted by customer satisfaction or product excellence. No, irresponsibility follow the new power filed in "non-human humanity". Focus lock on the production process with disinterest and undiluted attention devoid of ethics, morality and feelings. Growth, profits and innovation call regardless of consequences.

Another point of contention is Guardini’s methodology-averse refrain that the purpose of Revelation/Christianity is to purify and align cultures/peoples to God’s will. How is this done? By what means is this realised? History highlight collusion of Christian leadership (after 4th century) and power without responsibility to dehumanise the other apriori. Christian leadership is culpable in curating and nourishing power without responsibility. The fate of nations in the so-called Global South is evidence. Collaboration of powers without responsibility unleashed via pre-emptive violence on the innocent, epistemic destruction of peoples, nation’s civilisations-stripping, industrial genocide of nations in God’s name with intergenerational consequences which is the present reality of billions. Christian leadership is as much part of the problem as it is a potential candidate for relevant solutions.

Guardini stressed that modern era’s infective footprints of regression conveyed by totalitarian (state) power can't be strictly interpreted through the unsoiled beauty of a nostalgic past or hopelessness of the present.[2] Each era is embedded with positive and negative possibilities. The issue is how disposed are people and leaders toward positive possibilities according to Christian/Spiritual/Wisdom teachings. The acceleration of power to dehumanize, dehistoricize, homogenize and uniformalize is undeniably global.

Early 20^th century unveiled Bolshevik communism poised for global revolution, devastating military technology reached its climax with destructions of the Japanese by US atomic bombs, 2008 saw the global explosion of virulent free market, this century elevated woke cancelling on the altar of stupidity and real-time industrial-scale destruction of peoples is normalised. Uniqueness, heritage, originality, traditions, sacredness and ethics are eviscerated just for people to "belong" under false guises. In this regression; truth, justice, love, mystery, knowledge, dignity, integrity, honour, goodness etc have no place. Rather a dynamic tumbling of spiritual decline on spiritual (cultural) death is playing out.

Humankind became the highest law while power without responsibility act as its able viceroy accompanied by growing global consciousness of uncertainty. Guardini reflected that power without responsibility be it political, economic, technological, religious and cultural will never give humankind satisfaction any more than its protagonists obtain enduring serenity. Human bid for dominion have gone awry as power without responsibility became autonomous and is almost controlling humankind. If humankind refuse to subdue power, then self-destruction is inevitable.

Conclusion

What does it mean for tomorrow? Power in itself has positive potential. Its subordination under human sovereignty is the key. For Guardini only a genuine spiritual renewal or metanoia suffices. History is replete with past examples. Spiritual ascendance implicates humankind to put power in its proper place. Power must be reasonable, responsible, attentive and intelligent under human superintendence. This is the crux of Christian doctrine which finds resonance with other spiritual and wisdom traditions. An excellent book, it is highly recommended.

Life is beautiful!

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[1] Romano Guardini, Power and Responsibility – A Course of Action for the New Age (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1961) ,3.

[2] Totalitarian state is inclusive, unlimited and unrestricted to include all states irrespective of ruling systems committed to monologic justification of unbridled power, clutching power without responsibility that mythicize freedom and is allergic to spontaneity.