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It occurs to me that talk of human beings as such having an office, and thus of one's office as a human being, is entirely of a piece with talk about "the authority of reason or of facts" (Richard T. De George). It is improper, nonliteral, or, possibly, analogical or symbolic talk -- in essentially the same way in which talk of reality in general as a "society," or as a "polis," "commonwealth," or "kingdom," involves using the terms in quotation marks in improper, nonliteral, extended senses. Thus, for example, God is not properly "an authority," not even the highest or supreme authority, because God is properly the primal source of all authority. Likewise, my being a child of God and authorized by God to live as such is not properly or literally a matter of my being appointed to an "office." True, as it is that there can be no office, properly so-called, without authorization, it is not true that any authorization must be an authorization to some office, again, in the proper, literal sense. In other words, there is an exact parallel here
with the statement that, although every authority, properly so-called, is as such also a source of authority, the converse is false: not every source of authority is itself properly an authority.

8 September 1999; rev. 6 January 2010