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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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A concise analysis by Frank R. Simoni, STL, MGA
Introduction The questions, What is leadership? What should a leader know? and, What should a leader do? imply a philosophy of leadership. Stating this, however, is rather vague given the marginal value that Philosophy has in today's market oriented world. The role of philosophy in leadership can be compared to the directions we need to move from one place to another in order to reach a destination in our tridimensional world. The three basic dimensions in which human beings operate can be described as what they think, what they make, and what they do. Philosophy is concerned with the right directions we take in these dimensions to reach our ultimate destination, which philosophy has defined as happiness or self-fulfillment. Since leadership implies the directions a leader follows in what he/she thinks and does, it is evident that it needs to have a philosophy. Philosophy sets directions by demonstrating the first principles, which are the generalized, self-evident determinants or reasons why we think as we think, make what we make, and do what we do. So, philosophy is not a practical science in the sense that it does not directly produce technology and paychecks, but it is very practical in showing what is known as common sense. The directions of its principles are necessary for any concrete achievement. Leaders are individuals who espoused high principles and ideals for themselves, and are capable of transmitting them as means of progress and fulfillment to others. Principles are the product of philosophy, but various philosophers have proposed over the centuries different types of philosophy with different sets of principles, leaving to posterity the task of evaluating them. The intention of this analysis is to show the influence of modern era philosophies on western thinking and culture, and how this influence contributes to build the environment where modern leaders are born and are formed. The Background of the Modern Era It is accepted that the Modern Era in philosophy began with the French philosopher René Descartes (d.1650). His thinking, however, did not come out of a vacuum; it had its roots in the previous periods, which began with the Greek philosophy. Therefore, to understand modern philosophy it is important to consider its roots, and assess what differentiates it from previous periods. With Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Greek philosophy became a system of knowledge that was capable to explain rationally all tangible and intangible aspects of the world they lived in. The system was built on four main blocks: Logic, to explain how the mind operates to find truth; Epistemology, to understand and explain the changing world perceived by the senses; Metaphysics, to understand and explain the intangible, permanent aspect of reality; and, Ethics, the art and science that shows how to rationally match what we know with what we do. The Greeks posed to themselves, and sought answers for, questions, such as, Why is the world as it is and not otherwise? Why does everything change? Who made it so? Through his method of research and his logic, Aristotle was led to realize that this changing world, held together by a chain of cause and effects, cannot account for its own beginning nor can it be its own end, and so, searching for the cause of the chain itself, he rationally arrived to the ultimate conclusion that there must be a First Cause Uncaused. Once the realization of a First Cause was achieved it became more and more evident why there are two aspects to reality, one tangible and transient, and one permanent, intangible, and absolute. It was from this absolute aspect of reality that Greek philosophy derived principles that gave them purpose and assurance of truth. It was because of this clear vision and assurance that Socrates, for instance, could accept an unjust death sentence rather than renounce his principles and escape from prison, and he could bid farewell to his friend Crito by saying with absolute confidence: "Leave me, then, Crito, to fulfill God's will, and to follow wherever he leads." Parenthetically, it is remarkable that, according to the Christians faith, God waited until the human mind had reached the stage of Greek philosophy to take human form and speak to the world in human language in the person of Jesus Christ. While his humanity belonged to an Eastern ethnic group, a critical analysis of his speeches shows the very same logic and philosophical methods discovered by the Greeks. Equally remarkable is that the Greek system of knowledge unified all that there was to be known at that time. There was no division between various sciences, or religion and science, or science and philosophy. All knowledge was about one complex reality waiting to be known. The Renaissance After the Greeks, and through the Roman Empire, the Church became the trustee of Greek philosophy and science in the West. The Renaissance could not have happened if the Church had not preserved and fostered the Greek philosophical heritage. Witnesses to this preservation are the schools and universities that sprang up during the Middle Ages. The teaching of these schools distinguished itself for its dialectical, argumentative method, known as Scholasticism, one of whose main concern was to demonstrate that there is no conflict between philosophy and faith. Scholasticism reached its peak with St. Thomas Aquinas and his monumental works, especially the Summa contra Gentiles, and the Summa Theologiae. It must be noted, though, that the Church eventually became not only the trustee of Greek Philosophy and science, but also the authority that defined for the uneducated masses what is true or false, and especially what is good or bad. Defining truth may give a sense of stability, but it defeats the purpose of human intelligence, which is the personal discovery and interpretation of principles and meaning. And so, Scholasticism degenerated gradually into a practice that was more interested in demonstrating what was already known than in encouraging new research and new ways of expressing truth. Thus, it got lost in logical subtleties that, while they may have served as reasoning drills, they did not satisfy the human need for new and personal challenges. In this atmosphere, while the Church preserved Greek Philosophy and science, it also fostered resentment as more educated people saw the fallacy of a "truth-by-authority" principle, and felt capable of discovering new principles and truths on their own. That resentment eventually broke out in several revolutionary movements, and because of the emotional charge that caused them, the revolutionaries sought to dissociate themselves not only from Church authority, but also from the classical philosophy that had become identified with it. The movement that followed was like a rebirth, the Renaissance. The Philosophy of Descartes It is in this context that the philosophy of René Descartes epitomizes the intellectual revolution of the Renaissance. It would be difficult to explain his determination to rediscover philosophy from its roots without realizing that his Jesuit education left him with great resentment for the Scholastic method in which he had been educated. It is significant that his first book was a "Discourse on Method." In the Jesuit school he had learned a great deal about faith, but he was one of the first to show that faith does not have to be tied to an objective and absolute Church authority. And it was with a personal sense of supernatural mission that he wanted to create a new method to demonstrate to the world how to find truth without relying on Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, patronized by, and identified with, the Church. With the spread of the spirit of Renaissance, Descartes became the apostle of subjectivity, and his philosophy began a trend in which the mind shunned the objectivity as presented by Church authority, and sought truth by its own power. The Modern Era can be categorized as an experimentation in subjectivity in all its various forms, such as, individualism, egoism, or solipsism. All modern philosophies are in one way or another modeled on Descartes' subjectivism and his rejection of the classic Epistemology and Metaphysics associated with a Church defined objective realism. At first glance Descartes' "Cogito, ergo sum," "I think, therefore, I am," looks like an innocent statement, a conclusion from a very sound Aristotelian syllogism: If I think, it means that I exist. I think. Therefore, I exist. In this syllogism the I is rooted in the evident objective reality of my existence. But this is not what Descartes meant. He did not begin with a syllogism, but rather, with universal doubt of everything he had learned. Only then, he thought, could he find his own first principle from which to build his own philosophy. So, the Cogito, ergo sum, is not a conclusion, it's a principle, an absolute. It means that the only thing absolutely real is that I am my own thinking. In this case reality begins with the I of 'I think.' That's why Descartes could never find a logical explanation for God or for the human body; he had to resort to intellectual subterfuges to attribute to them some reality. For him, the only criterion of truth was his new subjectivity principle, namely, the fact that the only thing he could be certain of was that he is a thinking being. For Descartes this was a "clear and distinct" idea, and according to him all clear and distinct ideas are true, and cannot be false because they are the product of a thinking being who is the only thing of which we can be certain. In practice, what Descartes' philosophy did was that, since it is impossible for the human mind to operate without absolute principles, it 'absolutized,' so to speak, its subjectivity principle. |
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