Abstract
In her essay “What is authority” Hannah Arendt wonders whether “What was authority?” would have been the more appropriate title. This paper aims to show that authority is indeed a contemporary phenomenon and one that is taking on ever greater significance. Arendt’s work on authority is used to support conclusions that she herself did not draw. These can be useful for the understanding of authority within today’s political and civil realms. With respect to the political system of representative democracies, the paper challenges Arendt’s claim that authority has vanished from contemporary societies and points to two new figures of authority, namely the expert and the populist. It diagnoses the comeback of the old antagonism between a metaphysical and a democratic justification of authority.
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