The capacity to act upon other persons or the world. Power is in itself neither good nor evil — its moral quality depends on whether it is exercised in the service of the person (in accordance with the Personalist Norm) or against the person (as instrumentalization).
Power and Responsibility
Power presupposes freedom and grounds responsibility. Whoever holds power over others stands under a special duty toward their dignity and personhood. Power without responsibility leads to the oblivion of the person: where human beings are treated as mere means to the preservation of power, the Personalist Norm is violated.
Forms of Power
- Political power: The capacity to decide over the living conditions of others. Legitimate only when it serves the unfolding of personhood.
- Economic power: The disposal over money and resources. Dangerous when it reduces persons to their “market value.”
- Technological power: The capacity, through technology, to alter the conditions of personhood — for instance through artificial intelligence or surveillance technology.
Power and Oblivion of the Person
The gravest danger of power lies in the temptation to subject the person to one’s own will. War is the most radical form of this temptation: organized violence that reduces persons to enemies and systematically negates their dignity in killing. Yet subtler forms too — instrumentalization, manipulation, surveillance — are expressions of person-forgetful power.
Ontological classification:
- Superclass: entity
- Moral evaluation: dependent on its relation to the Personalist Norm
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 96 (on the legitimacy and limits of state power)