There has been much talk of a “crisis of authority” in the West, especially since the end of World War II.¹ For the most part, the concern has been the fading of authority as an effective principle, not only in politics, but perhaps even more evidently in the various institutions that constitute what is generally known as “civil society.” To some, this loss of authority has seemed to be an inevitable consequence of liberalism as a political form, a consequence that in their judgment is just something we have to endure as the shadow side of all of the evident goods liberalism has appeared to provide.² More recently, concerns have arisen from certain quarters that the experience of this crisis is generating an

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