Philosophy of Leadership

The Power of Authority

Jean-Etienne Joullié,Robert Spillane

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137499202
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Estrategia empresarial

Philosophy of Leadership has been written to arouse curiosity, not to satisfy it. The authors point out ideas about leadership which draw upon both ancient and modern wisdom. This book develops a philosophy of leadership by tracing the evolution of Western ideas from philosophical perspectives, ancient and modern.

1

Heroic Leadership: Authority as Power

The name of Homer is associated with two great epic poems – the Iliad and the Odyssey – which were required reading for well-educated people for more than 2,500 years. While scholarly debate about the true authorship of these poems continues to this day, our interest is confined to the Iliad, which dates from around 750 BCE, and describes the war between the Trojans and the Greeks (or ‘Danaans’ or ‘Achaeans’) that had occurred about 400 years earlier. This places the action in the heroic age which is associated historically with the Mycenaean civilisation of around 1600–1100 BCE.

Although the Iliad is epic fiction rather than history, it conveys a comprehensive worldview which comes down to us as ancient heroism. We are presented with an aristocratic society where heroic warriors lord it over camp-followers who count for nothing in war. Aristocratic warriors respect those people, like themselves, who are the ‘best’ because they are men of power and courage. In heroic societies, power and courage on the battlefield are valued for obvious reasons, but so are noble oratory, beauty and excellence in living. To be the ‘best’ is to pursue personal glory through warlike achievement and a deep feeling for the tragedy of human life. But personal glory has to be earned and recognised by others and so the fierce behaviour of aristocratic warriors is regulated by the uncompromising judgements of their peers. The striving to be the best ceases only in a noble death. If shame is berating oneself for an incompetent act, and guilt is berating oneself for an immoral act, the warriors of the Iliad know little of guilt. Theirs is a ‘shame culture’ governed by unceasing striving for power and glory.

The values, actions and foibles of the mortal warriors are at one with those of their immortal gods who live on Mount Olympus. As aristocrats themselves, the gods support the warrior heroes with whom they have a special affinity. These anthropomorphic gods enter and leave the action in a manner which infuriates modern readers because, in acting as a deus ex machina, a god brings an air of improbability to the plot. Gods are important for Homer because their interventions are used to explain the eccentric behaviour of warriors in a language that does not permit ‘psychological’ explanations. Homer’s gods are not spiritual and his language is innocent of spiritual and psychological terms, such as ‘soul’, ‘mind’, ‘psyche’ or ‘ego’. Reading Homer, therefore, represents a challenge for modern readers who are used to stories about individuals with psychological powers. It is as if the gods on Mount Olympus have left the mountain and taken up residence inside human individuals: they appear in psychology books as personality traits which allegedly cause individuals to behave in certain ways, thus by-passing the fact of human choice. We shall leave the gods to their own devices in the knowledge that after about 600 BCE they were, with one exception, retrenched.

The Iliad begins with the wrath of Achilles. Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief of the Greeks, has violated the heroic code by depriving the great warrior Achilles of his just rewards after his success in battle. Having been dishonoured, Achilles withdraws his labour and refuses to fight. Without Achilles and his forces, the Greeks are nearly defeated by the Trojans. Concerned at the Trojan success, Agamemnon sends Ajax and Odysseus to persuade Achilles to return to the battlefield. Even though Achilles is offered one of Agamemnon’s daughters as a bride, Achilles rejects Agamemnon’s overtures. The fighting resumes without Achilles and under Hector’s inspiring leadership the Trojans cause the Greeks to retreat. Achilles’ closest friend, Patroclus, returns to battle at the behest of Nestor who asks him to disguise himself in Achilles’ armour to frighten the Trojans. The two armies fight a bloody battle on the beach in sight of the Greek ships which, if destroyed, would bring an end to the war. Patroclus receives permission from Achilles to wear his armour as the first ship is set on fire. Believing that Achilles has returned to the battlefield, the Trojans retreat to their city wall where Patroclus, who has ignored Achilles’ warning about advancing too far too quickly, is killed by Hector. Hearing of Patroclus’s death, Achilles is stricken with grief and burns with revenge. He establishes a truce with Agamemnon, puts on his new armour, and attacks the Trojans with a ferocity that sentences to death every warrior who confronts him without the assistance of the gods. The Trojan retreat is hindered by a river which runs red with the blood of Achilles’ victims. Inevitably, as befits their status as great warriors, Achilles and Hector meet in single combat. Achilles kills Hector and desecrates his body by dragging it behind his chariot while Hector’s father, King Priam, watches from the walls of Troy. While Patroclus is buried with heroic ceremony, Hector’s corpse lies unburied for many days. Finally, Priam visits Achilles and begs for a dignified end to the slaughter and the return of his son’s body. Achilles is moved by Priam’s lamentation and Hector is returned to Troy where his widow, Andromache, presides over the funeral. Thus ends the Iliad.

Traditionalists will be horrified at a summary of the plot of the Iliad which ignores the intrusions of the gods. Without the gods, many of the twists and turns in the plot are incomprehensible. However, we beg the indulgence of our readers since our interest is in the men and women of the natural world that is depicted in the poem. But, it may be objected, does it make sense to try to extract a philosophy from an epic poem, let alone draw psychological implications from a language that lacks psychological concepts?

Perhaps the best we can hope for when reading such a strange poem with marauding gods and men who are larger than life is to attend to the values exemplified through their actions, even if their actions are interfered with by immortal beings. Fortunately, the Homeric warriors valued oratory and through their dialogues and inspiring speeches they tell us about their values. As modern readers, we feel more confident in understanding their values than their actions as affected by gods. It is, therefore, to the ethical underpinnings of the Iliad’s characters that we address ourselves in the hope of avoiding the charge of undue distortion.

Insofar as the Iliad offers a coherent view of aristocratic warriors living and dying, it enables readers to compare and contrast ancient heroic values and today’s unheroic values. In ancient times, heroism was a way of life embedded in a results-orientated culture; today it is sporadic and embedded in a hedonistic culture. Ancient heroes expected to live short and glorious lives; today’s heroes hope for long lives as celebrities. Heroism is grounded on power, nobility, courage, honour; the present era prefers happiness, pleasure, compassion, humility, equality.

For Homer’s noble warriors, to live heroically is to live honourably. The great warrior Sarpedon, who was to be killed by Patroclus, emboldens his men:

Ah, my friend, if you and I could escape this fray and live forever, never a trace of age, immortal, I would never fight on the front lines again or command you to the field where men win fame. But now, as it is, the fates of death await us, thousands poised to strike, and not a man alive can flee them or escape – so in we go for attack! Give our enemy glory or win it for ourselves.¹

Judged by today’s Western standards there is a frightening lack of compassion in the exchange between Achilles and his defeated enemy Lycaon, son of King Priam, who, when begging for his life, received the following reply:

‘Fool, don’t talk to me of ransom. No more speeches. Before Patroclus met his day of destiny, true it warmed my heart a bit to spare some Trojans: droves I took alive and auctioned off as slaves. But now not a single Trojan flees his death, not one the gods hand over to me before your gates, none of all the Trojans, sons of Priam least of all! Come, friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so? Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you ... But even for me, I tell you, death and the strong force of fate are waiting. There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon when a man will take my life in battle too – flinging a spear perhaps or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow.’ Drawing his sharp sword Achilles struck his collarbone just beside the neck and the two-edged blade drove home, plunging to the hilt – and down on the ground he sprawled, stretched face first and dark blood pouring out of him drenched the earth. Achilles grabbed a foot, slung him into the river, washed away downstream as he cried above him savage words to wing him on his way.²

The central theme in heroic societies is power expressed through noble action. In the beginning was the deed: heroes are what they do. And what they do is regulated by their role and the rules that bind the various roles: elder, warrior and camp-follower. Heroes know who and what they are by reference to the roles, rules and rewards which govern their lives. Knowing their role, they know all that they have to know. They know what they owe others and what others owe them. They know their place in the hierarchy of power and the authority that accrues to them. They know what they deserve and what others deserve. If, after a battle, enemies surrender, they also surrender their rights as noble warriors and human beings. They effectively consign themselves to the status of dogs and are treated accordingly. There is nothing as unseemly as running from a fight or begging for one’s life.

Scholars have noted that in Homer arché – authority – signifies initiative which ‘gets things done’ and is manifested especially as ‘a cause of activity in others’. Such initiative resides in a person qualified by birth or abilities. Authority could not be conferred on an ordinary man in Homeric society where princes are born of semi-divine families. Authority was thus regarded by the Homeric Greeks as referring to those who were in some way qualified to initiate social or political action, in the sense that Achilles had, together with his considerable personal powers, authority over his warriors. Authority figures in the Iliad are characterised by their possession of special qualifications, including symbolic objects which designate a particular social status, like Achilles’ magnificent shield, and special abilities which result in demonstrable achievement.

Used in this sense, authority is indistinguishable from the personal power which is revealed in a hierarchical relationship where rulers or commanders motivate subordinates to act. It was to be several centuries before the Greeks adopted a more sophisticated approach to the understanding of authority which would separate conceptually authority and power. By referring to people in positions of power by the term arché and by concentrating on the implementation of action, and ignoring its achievement, Homeric thought conflated power and authority. ‘Authority’ was, accordingly, used to designate ‘rule’ or ‘government’ but, as we shall see, authority came to be regarded as a concession, not a possession.

Similarly, in matters of psychology, Homer’s world is considerably less complicated than ours. For example, many people today claim that they judge others by objective performance and thus identify with Homer’s warriors. But a moment’s reflection tells us that Homer’s world is much more foreign to our psychology than it at first appears. We do not as a rule judge our friends and colleagues according to Homer’s criteria. That is to say, we do not normally believe that individuals are merely the sum of their actions. Like the person who mistakenly attributes the flash in the sky to lightning, and so does not appreciate that the flash is the lightning, people today are inclined to the view that individuals are more than their actions: behind the actions there is an actor pulling the strings of action, so to speak. We have inherited a number of words to describe this actor: soul, mind, self, ego, psyche, personality, character, and more. These words are given the status of an internal power which determines what individuals do. In proportion as people accept these powers, they devalue the importance of roles, rules and rewards as determinants of human behaviour. A language, such as Homer’s, which makes no reference to these psychological powers, is indeed far removed from the psychological language of motivation and personality that dominates thinking today.

Homer made no distinction between actor and action: there is no soul, no mind and therefore no Freudian unconscious mind, no psyche and so no psychology, no hierarchy of psychological needs, no personality traits. Heroes are described according to their powers, which are related to their bodily organs. Combining physiology with feelings, Homer attributed particular behaviours to bodily organs, notably the lungs and the heart. When we say that a person’s heart is not in his job, and he lacks the brains to do better or the guts to resign, we are echoing Homer’s idea of a relationship between body and behaviour. The problem with attributing behaviour to bodily organs is that there are more behaviours than organs and so Homer needed elastic concepts that could be applied to different behaviours. Inevitably, these concepts became more abstract and moved Greek thinking away from Homer’s naturalism to spiritualism.

Although Homer’s characters do not speak in terms of personal choice, they choose courses of action and it is Achilles’ choice to withdraw his labour that sets in motion the plot and tension of the Iliad. Yet, there is a sense in which Achilles had no choice in this matter since Agamemnon had violated the heroic code by depriving him of his just reward and thus dishonoured him. The tension between a ‘free’ choice and an ‘obligated’ choice is characteristic of closed communities, such as those of heroic societies. We see this today in vendetta societies in which the murder of a relative obligates a family member to balance the books by an act of murderous revenge. It is in this sense that the characters of the Iliad are obliged to act in certain ways with fateful consequences. Modern readers imagine Achilles struggling with his conscience and with his commander-in-chief. But it is doubtful that he had any awareness of an individual conscience which stands apart from the heroic conscience. Achilles does what he must: the heroic code has been violated and he acts accordingly. Addressing Agamemnon in a blazing fury, Achilles calls him a burnt-out coward and refuses to trust or obey him. After Agamemnon sees the error of his ways and sends an embassy to Achilles, his spokesmen receive a reply which shows that Achilles recognises his power of choice and yet acknowledges the futility of exercising it since warriors are sentenced to a short heroic life or a long mediocre one. Thus readers are confronted with the heroic paradox: the greatest warriors must continue to fight since they cannot rely on past glories. But the more they fight, they quicker they die.

The same honour waits for the coward and the brave. They both go down to Death, the fighter who shirks, the one who works to exhaustion. And what’s laid up for me, what pittance? Nothing – and after suffering hardships, year in, year out, staking my life on the mortal risks of war ... Shameless, inveterate – armored in shamelessness! Dog that he is, he’d never dare to look me straight in the eyes again ... He cheated me, did me damage, wrong! But never again, he’ll never rob me blind with his twisting words again! Once is enough for him. Die and be damned for all I care! ... Mother tells me, the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet, that two fates bear me on to the day of death. If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies ... true, but the life that’s left me will be long, the stroke of death will not come on me quickly.³

Does Achilles have a choice between a short heroic life and a long mediocre one? If the gods determine Achilles’ fate, he obviously has no choice in the matter. But if the choice were left to him, is it conceivable that he would choose the life of mediocrity? If heroic life is dedicated to the pursuit of arête – virtue, excellence, power, courage, nobility – and if Achilles is dedicated to the heroic code, it would appear not. Achilles accepts the heroic code and thus his fate. Life is nasty, brutish and short but it can be lived nobly. Heroes rise above the status of animals by sublimating their primitive and barbaric impulses through a code which establishes standards for battle and oratory, for friendship and leadership. But the code is demanding, for warriors and their families and friends.

Because heroes strive to excel and cannot accept loss of face, they stubbornly risk their lives to increase their status. There is therefore a worrying tension between the necessities of battle and the welfare of family and friends since all parties know that heroic striving may do damage to the family. Heroic self-assertion often compromises the well-being of kinship and while heroes do their best to defend their loved ones, there is ultimately no way for them to avoid being placed in situations where the future of their family depends on their ongoing success in battle. This is a particular problem for ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Heroic Leadership: Authority as Power
• 2  Rational Leadership: Arguing to Authority
• 3  Cynicism: Confronting Managerial Leadership
• 4  Stoicism: Managing Adversity
• 5  Religious Leadership: Two Faces of Authority
• 6  Political Leadership: Contractual Authority
• 7  German Romanticism: The Power of the Will
• 8  Heroic Individualism: Anarchistic and Aristocratic
• 9  Existentialism: Autonomy and Authority
• 10  Leadership: The Power of Authority
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Names