It’d serve no purpose to bring up example after example of more of the same: the entire Chapter IV of the Inquiry is replete with many such and it stands open to the reader’s scrutiny. I’d be remiss, however, if I failed to show the lengths to which Heilbroner is willing to go in order to press on with his argument. Again, after making a number of concessions concerning the abundance of objective, "more 'positive' reasons for the acceptance of political authority," "the presence of force, overtly or covertly employed by the ruling elements to establish and maintain their authority" being of course the most important, we are treated to this gem:
Nevertheless, a ready admission as to these...[and other] reasons for the acceptance of political authority does not explain the phenomenon to which my speculations are addressed. This is the perplexing readiness, even eagerness, with which authority is accepted by the vast majority. An acquiescence, in, or search for, a hierarchical ordering includes not only the lower and middle reaches but also the upper levels of society, who regularly look for "leadership" to someone still higher in the world. Indeed, it finds striking expression in the habit of rulers, including the most dictatorial and absolute, to declare their own submission to a will higher than their own, whether it be that of God, of the people, of some sacred text or doctrine, or of voices audible to themselves alone.
Now, it is one thing, I submit, to suggest that most of us desire to better ourselves, and further, that part of this desire is to be looking up to those we consider our betters; it’s another thing, however, to claim that we may be in "search for...a [social] hierarchical ordering" (see the passage above). In the first instance, the desire to better ourselves translates to “our sense of identification,” along with the attendant predisposition to loyalty; a kind of bonding that is predicated on positive valuation of people we’re about to bond with and to remain loyal to; in the second, in the absence of a qualifier to specify what it is exactly that’s being postulated as our basic human need, the resulting quest for social order and hierarchy, if it doesn’t smack of a deep-seated insecurity, is at best value neutral. In the first case, the kind of authority, political or otherwise, that is apt to emerge in the course of our thus formed relationships is likely to be regarded as legitimate and just; in the second, questions regarding justice and legitimacy are bracketed. In the first instance, with loyalty at the helm as the basis of political and social relations, the accent is on the positive and the effect is uplifting (since the appeal which underpins the loyalty concept is to the best in us, the best in human nature); in the second, since obedience is the presumed source of, and motive behind our desire for, fixed social order and hierarchy, the corresponding appeal is to our deepest fears and insecurities. According to the first scenario, our political and social relations emerge, as it were, organically, as a byproduct of both our natural affinity towards one another and the underlying function, and the bond of loyalty which cements said relations is freely formed; according to the second, however compelling the argument which purports to ground our predisposition to obedience in human nature and the conditioning process, we can’t help but regard those very relations as somehow coerced and artificial, (super)imposed from without.
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