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Biography:
John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834-1902), The first Baron Acton, was a British
historian and philosopher whose work had a great deal of influence upon modern
conception of liberty and governmental power. According to Acton, the concentration of
power in any one organization - be it a secular government or a religious institution
- was harmful to all involved. For this reason he made famous the phrase Power tends
to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Acton was a devout Catholic when, at the time, the Roman Catholic Church was continually asserting ever more authority over Catholics in both a religious and temporal sense. Thus, his own views about the sovereignty of individuals and the nature of power brought him into conflict with his church.
For example, he succeeded John Henry Newman as editor of the English Roman Catholic periodical The Rambler, but he resigned in 1864 because its liberal views were condemned by church authorities. According to Acton, he neither wanted to change his views nor flout the authority of his church.
Acton was particularly influenced by liberal Roman Catholic scholar Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger while studying in Germany. Both he and Döllinger opposed the 1870 decree of papal infallibility, something which brought them into even greater conflict with various Catholic authorities.
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Related Resources:
What are Political and Legal Philosophy
The Philosophy of Politics and the Philosophy of Law are often studied separately, but they are presented here jointly because they both come back to the same thing: the study of force. Politics is the study of political force in the general community, while jurisprudence is the study of how laws can and should be used to achieve political and social goals.What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?
