As indicated in my post of August 21, I am delivering on this site a very short course on the classics of literature on leadership. (See the post for how “classic” is defined.)
The course will draw on my edited volume, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (McGraw-Hill, 2010). Here I can provide only short bursts of texts. My hope is that they will prompt you to dig deeper.
The selections are grouped into three parts. Part I comprises classics About Leadership. Part II is a compilation of Literature as Leadership. And Part III consists of selections by Leaders in Action. Leaders who have used words – written, oral, or both – as instruments of leadership.
In the coming weeks, the entries are in Part I. They are About Leadership.
Today we turn to Plato, to The Republic. Plato is of course one of the most prominent and widely esteemed political philosophers of all time. The Republic, in turn – said to have been written about 380 BCE – is acclaimed as the most widely read of all political texts, even into the 21st century. This is not by any stretch to say that The Republic is usually read in its entirety. It most certainly is not. Still, parts of it remain grist even for our modern mill.
The fact that Plato wrote The Republic in dialogue – as a series of conversations – helps us understand it. The seemingly informal exchanges bring life to his ideas in ways that would otherwise be impossible. Given my own special interest in bad leadership, and the fact that in the contemporary leadership literature “bad” remains widely ignored, Plato’s explorations of bad, or even evil leadership are, to me, of special interest. So, the excerpts below include, briefly, of course, some of Plato’s ruminations on the dark side of the human condition.
- From Book V
Unless philosophers become kings in our cities, or unless those who now are kings and rulers become true philosophers, so that political power and philosophical intelligence converge… I believe there can be no end to our troubles, my dear Glaucon, in our cities or for all mankind….
We must still consider the tyrannical man himself. How does he evolve from the democratic man? What kind of a life does he lead? Is he happy or miserable?
You are right. These are questions we still haven’t answered.
I think we have neglected one thing in particular.
What?
We have still not given a full accounting of human desires….
What desires do you mean?
Those that stir when the soul is otherwise asleep… Then the wild and brutish part, sated with food and drink, becomes restless and goes on the prowl in search of anything that will satisfy its instincts. You know that in such a state it will shrink from nothing because it has been released from reason and a sense of shame.