Literary notes about prerogative (AI summary)
In literature the term "prerogative" is often employed to denote an exclusive right, privilege, or power vested in an individual or institution. Authors use it to underscore authority that is considered inherent or divinely sanctioned, whether in the context of state apparatus or personal attributes. For example, Dickens uses it to describe the vital functions of an official establishment that upholds a nation’s glory ([1]), while political and historical writers such as Tocqueville and Burke associate the royal prerogative with sovereign strength and the exercise of power ([2], [3]). Philosophical works extend the meaning further by linking it to the unique capacity of reason and personal dignity, making it a metaphor for the privileges inherent in human nature ([4], [5]).
- Insert the wedge into the Prerogative Office, and the country would cease to be glorious.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - On the other hand, the great strength of the royal prerogative in France arises from circumstances far more than from the laws.
— from Democracy in America — Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville - They have totally abandoned the shattered and old-fashioned fortress of prerogative, and made a lodgment in the stronghold of Parliament itself.
— from The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) by Edmund Burke - Thus he uses his prerogative of reason to the greatest possible advantage.
— from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer - Is it not a commonplace of the schools that to form abstract ideas is the prerogative of man's reason?
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana
