Origin of The Concept
The idea of potestas originally referred to the power, through coercion, of a Roman magistrate to promulgate edicts, give action to litigants, etc. This power, in Roman political and legal theory, is considered analogous in kind though lesser in degree to military power. The most important magistrates (such as consuls and praetors) are said to have imperium, which is the ultimate form of potestas, and refers indeed to military power.
Potestas strongly contrasts with the power of the Senate and the prudentes, a common way to refer to Roman jurists. While the magistrates had potestas, the prudentes exercised auctoritas. It is said that auctoritas is a manifestation of socially recognized knowledge, while potestas is a manifestation of socially recognized power. In Roman political theory, both were necessary to guide the res publica and they had to inform each other.
Read more about this topic: Potestas
Famous quotes containing the words origin of the, origin of, origin and/or concept:
“The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.”
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The concept of a mental state is primarily the concept of a state of the person apt for bringing about a certain sort of behaviour.”
—David Malet Armstrong (b. 1926)