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On Becoming and Being an Ethical Leader: A Platonic Interpretation
The question of whether ethical individuals have a disadvantage in becoming leaders is an important one that has not been adequately discussed in the business ethics/leadership literature. In this paper, drawing on Plato's middle dialogues and particularly on the Republic, I develop a Platonic framework of the constraints that might hinder the emergence of what the dialogues term 'philosopher kings'. Subsequently, I use this framework to elucidate the emergence of ethical leaders in todays' organizations and conclude with a discussion of this paper's implications for the ethical leadership literature.
Journal Article
Plato as critical theorist
Is there any point in thinking about the best possible society? Over the last decade or so, a number of political philosophers have argued that such \"ideal theory\" is a dangerous distraction from the concrete power struggles that make up \"real politics.\" Jonny Thakkar takes a different view, arguing that each and every one of us has a duty to engage in ideal theory. To make that case he turns to Plato's Republic, which depicts an ideal society within which ideal theory itself plays a vital role, thanks to the institution of philosopher-kings. The first half of the book offers a careful but creative reading of the notion of rule by philosophers. The second half of the book argues that in today's liberal democracies what we need is not philosopher-kings but philosopher-citizens--citizens who reflect, both individually and together, on how they could work together to produce an environment conducive to flourishing. Plato as Critical Theorist argues that the notion of philosopher-citizens is not only compatible with Rawlsian political liberalism, but an advance on it.-- Provided by publisher
Book
The Post-Truth About Philosophy and Rhetoric
This fiftieth anniversary reflection begins by recalling a debate on its pages about the origins of rhetoric, which queried the relationship between Plato and the Sophists. I argue that contrary to the shared assumption of the scholars in this debate, Plato and the Sophists differed less over what counts as good philosophical/rhetorical practice than over whether its access should be free or restricted. An implication of this proposed shift in interpretation is that Plato and the Sophists are both reasonably seen as “post-truth” thinkers, concerned more with the mix of chance and skill in the construction of truth than with the truth as such. Focusing on Plato's hostility to playwrights, I argue that at stake is control over “modal power,” which is ultimately about defining the sphere of what is possible in society. I end with a brief discussion of the problematic of public relations as an ongoing contemporary version of much the same story.
Journal Article
The Problem of Praise: Plato's Protagoras Against Free Society
Plato's Protagoras is often read as an argument about the nature of virtue and the proper practice of philosophy. But Plato is also advancing a political argument. Working from the Protagoras' theory of socialization and critique of competitive conversation, this article rereads
the Simonides episode and Socrates' praise of an imagined Philosophical Sparta to explain the text's neglected political claim: that free society will be corrupted by unscrupulous clever speakers and that cities would be and that cities would be better off unfree and ruled by philosophers.
In the Protagoras, then, Plato argues for something like the Kallipolis of the Republic
Journal Article
Philosopher-Kings of Antiquity
One of the most celebrated of Plato's ideas was that if human society was ever to function successfully then philosophers would need to become kings, or kings philosophers. In a perfect state, therefore, philosophic wisdom should be wedded to political power. In antiquity, who were or aspired to be philosopher-kings? What was their understanding of wisdom and the limits of knowledge? What influence have they had on periods beyond antiquity? This volume focuses on Plato and his contemporaries; Alexander the Great and his Hellenistic successors; Marcus Aurelius and the 'good emperors'; Moses, Solomon and early Hebrew leaders; and Julian the Apostate, the last of the pagans. In conclusion it looks at the re-emergence of the Platonic ideal in important moments of European history, such as the Enlightenment. The theme of the philosopher-king is significant for Greco-Roman antiquity as a whole, and this work is unique in detailing the development of an idea through major periods of Greek and Roman history, and beyond.
eBook
Marcus Aurelius
The life story of the renowned stoic philosopher--and the last Roman emperor who presided over the empire's golden age.Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) is one of the great figures of antiquity who still speaks to us today, more than two thousand years after his death.His Meditations has been compared by John Stuart Mill to the Sermon on the Mount.
eBook
TRANSFORMING PLATO: \LA CITTÀ DEL SOLE\, THE \REPUBLIC\, AND SOCRATES AS NATURAL PHILOSOPHER
Revisiting La città del sole in light of recent scholarship on Campanella's naturalism and with recourse to key works of his philosophy, this article examines how his utopia systematically re-writes Plato's ideal city from the Republic by simultaneously drawing on and naturalizing a set of key Platonic figures. This transformation serves as an implicit response to criticisms of the utopian project made by Aristotle and Machiavelli; it is as a means of taking distance from the hermetic impulse at work in much of Renaissance Neoplatonism. The City of the Sun can thus be seen as replicating Kallipolis' rigid order and its connection to absolute truth but simultaneously grounding that order in an empirical naturalism that allows the ideal society to become open.
Journal Article
KING MEETS DOG: THE ORIGIN OF THE MEETING BETWEEN ALEXANDER AND DIOGENES
The article questions some scholarly assumptions about the famous anecdote on the meeting between Alexander and Diogenes the Cynic. While scholars have rightly placed the story within the topos of the opposition between wise man and king, its interest in the two figures amounts to more than generic exempla and its depiction of Alexander is not necessarily hostile. It seems probable that the original form was not a chreia; rather, later versions were extracted from an extended literary version of such an encounter. An early work satisfying these criteria is the Education of Alexander by Onesicritus, the pupil of Diogenes who accompanied Alexander on his Asian campaign.
Journal Article