PODER INSTRUMENTAL VERSUS PODER COMUNICATIVO: O EXERCÍCIO DO PODER NO ÂMBITO DE INSTITUIÇÕES RELIGIOSAS E A PERIGOSA TENDÊNCIA À BANALIDADE DO MAL

Abstract

This research is concerned with the exercise of power in religious organizations. Considering this, the methodological approach of this work was developed with the construction of a dialectical analysis that contra posed paradoxical concepts of power, represented by the instrumental and teleological paradigm, conceptualized by Max Weber, and notion of communicative power, relevant for Hanna Arendt and her political thought. The first approach, consubstantiated in the instrumental and strategic dimension of power, is end-oriented and utilized as an instrument to impose to others the attendance of the interests of powerful social actors. The latter manifests itself in collective actions, as an exhaustive effort to defend freedom and the seek for plurality and diversity, and is permanent and insistently oriented towards the building of dialogue and consensus. This dissertation also highlights that the modus operandi of instrumental power practices, if exacerbated and straightened by the divinization of leadership, something often recurrent in religious institutions, can generate and sustain itself upon the Banality of Evil; that is, the exercise of power sustained on a Floating Responsibility, consolidating itself with the transference of responsibility to a systemic level as a resourceful maneuver and powerful weapon for the liberation of the souls of those who abuses power from any posterior manifestations of guilt or spiritual agony. In such sense, the paradigm of communicational power, presented by Hanna Arendt, is introduced as a positive disruption of traditional models, being discussed as a promoter of dialogical principals, which are guarantors of plurality and consensus. That is logical, from the standpoint of the exercise of ecclesiastical power, avoiding frivolous and alienating authoritarianism. Real power exercise situations, such as repression and violence inside religious institutions, are highlighted, indicating the presence of dogmatisms and intolerances.