That said, and to underscore what we have just implied, the large body of literature on leadership and followership is not entirely devoid of works from a philosophic perspective, or that discuss philosophers and their ideas in some way. Many of these sources center on theories of ethical decision making, while others explore directly what certain philosophers can explain to us about leadership.3 Why, then, another book in this particular vein? What do we intend to offer in this book that is fresh, so that it can claim to have a suitable place within the wider literature? In our book, we have chosen to highlight three representative texts from the history of philosophy, an examination of which will make up the lion’s share of our presentation. These works are Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince. Unlike most other works on philosophy and leadership, ours self-consciously provides an in-depth and careful reading of each of these texts, sticking to the writings themselves as closely as possible so as to establish a firm ground for our interpretation. We believe that there are certain books that can rightfully be considered “great,” not so much because they were written by such-and-such a person, but because they contain profound discussions of the most important problems that humans confront in leadership. The Republic, the Nicomachean Ethics, and The Prince are three such books, as we intend to show. We are particularly interested in clarifying how the philosophers themselves would have wanted to be understood, articulating that perspective on leaders and followers to a contemporary audience concerned with these issues.
In most cases, moreover, it is absolutely necessary to stick closely to the texts themselves in order to fully understand what the philosopher has meant to say. Doubtless, this procedure can seem daunting. In some quarters, works of philosophy have developed the reputation of being impossible to penetrate, or being long, grueling, and fundamentally boring slogs to get through, with the end result being only more confusion in the mind of the reader. How many potential readers have been turned away, however unfortunately, from philosophy by the sight of weighty tomes like Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Georg Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, or Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time? The truth, though, is that the vast majority of writers in the march of western philosophy were not only profound thinkers but also artful, even beautiful, writers, certainly on par with some of the best authors of literature we have. Some of these authors – and Plato, Aristotle, and Machiavelli (not to mention Hegel and Heidegger!) fit this characterization perfectly – did not set their deepest thoughts on the surface of their writings. Rather, they skillfully composed works that are intended to draw readers in with their charm, wit, and beauty. The philosophers hold out the promise of liberally repaying serious attention to their words, as well as to multiple readings of their words. Our approach, which pays careful and sustained attention to the three texts themselves, should pay significant dividends.
In order to make our interpretations of these writings more accessible to readers, not to mention more applicable to the concerns of leaders and followers, we have provided a number of relevant case studies in the following pages. The cases will benefit teachers, insofar as they contain analyses of pertinent examples that can be used when making the practical application of philosophy to leadership. Our hope is that readers will find them useful for another reason too, since it may be possible to see the details of what Plato, Aristotle, or Machiavelli is saying more lucidly by reference to contemporary cases of leadership – cases that are, of course, more widely known. Yet our intention with the material on specific cases is to come at it with an even wider scope. Not only have we included, in Chapter 5, an example that one can plausibly associate with the leadership ideas from each philosopher, we have also written brief case studies of individuals who are, in some manner, historically related to the philosophers themselves: Dion of Syracuse, Alexander the Great, and Cesare Borgia. In doing this, we hope that readers with a strong interest in history will find such sections both engaging and useful. Moreover, we hope that all readers will come to see the timeless quality of the leadership insights we are exploring.
Philosophy as a discipline and philosophy as love of wisdom
It is only natural that this discussion, so far, has begged a number of important questions. What precisely is meant by the term “philosophy”? Where does this thing called philosophy come from, and what does it aim at? In short, what are we really talking about when we attempt to associate works of the “philosophers” to the practical project of leadership, as well as to our understanding of leadership in all of its remarkable dynamics? The answers to these questions are not always straightforward, but it is essential to move ahead with as clear a definition of the terms as we can muster.
Earlier, we noted that philosophy is a humanities discipline, a simple truth that leads to an even more basic observation: philosophy has come to be one of the traditional academic disciplines, such that most colleges and universities in the United States are home to a designated department of philosophy. The composition of these units is made up mostly of scholars who have earned a doctoral degree in a similar university department. If a particular institution does not have a stand-alone department of philosophy, it likely still offers a major in the subject.4 As is the case with most academic disciplines, philosophy houses a number of subfields supported by scholars working in those areas. According to the website of the American Philosophical Association, the “broadest subfields of philosophy are most commonly taken to be logic, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and the history of philosophy.”5 Logic is the study of argumentation and reason, whereas ethics concerns questions of morality and character. Students of metaphysics examine the structure of being, and epistemology investigates knowledge and the process whereby we come to know things. The history of philosophy, finally, considers what philosophers have said and done in the past, both for its own sake and for supporting the other fields of philosophical inquiry.6
Now, despite our singular focus so far on departments of philosophy, it is true that many of these same subjects are treated in other areas of academia. For instance, one of the major subfields of the discipline of political science is political theory or political philosophy, in which scholars pursue a great many of the same questions, as well as study and teach many of the same texts, as one finds in departments of philosophy.7 Yet this quick and seemingly idle observation leads to another – one that may sound strange but is not intended to be controversial in any real way. In an important sense, the overwhelming majority of scholars working at academic institutions, both in the United States and across the world, conduct their work in philosophy. This understanding of philosophy is perhaps more spacious, but it is not necessarily flawed – indeed, it is likely closer to the original meaning of philosophy, as we will go on to describe in our chapter on Plato’s Republic. Here is one very simple example to illustrate the point: at almost all colleges and universities, in order to be a full member of the teaching and research faculty, one must have the terminal degree in her or his field. And for the most part, that means that professors have been awarded a Ph.D. by an institution, a degree title that stands for the Latin term philosophiae doctor, or doctor of philosophy. Despite the fact that most people think only of medical doctors when hearing the term “doctor,” the word derives from the Latin docere (to teach) and means, most simply, one with the knowledge to teach a discipline. But that discipline is, in this case, philosophy: philosophiae doctor. In other words, regardless of whether such-and-such a Ph.D.-holding professor is in a department of English, or Biology, or Classical Languages, or Leadership and American Studies, or Psychology, the professor is and should be a “philosopher,” meaning a lover of wisdom, a term that derives from two Greek words: philia (love) and sophia (wisdom). This person...
