Leadership Model for a New Millennium: Jesus as a Leader, Part 2
Before specifically addressing the role of Jesus as a leader, we must address the underlying basis of the model we seek to formulate. An effective leadership model must reflect the values of our society. The United States is a democratic republic based on Western traditions and one that places high value on the worth of the individual. The leadership model proposed must reflect those virtues that we most value, those which Socrates identified in the Republic and which Thomas Aquinas called the four cardinal virtues: prudence (or practical wisdom), temperance, courage and justice. These values are to be found in Western tradition , and reflect the intellectual and moral virtues that Americans seek to emulate and promote in societal intercourse, whether in public or private life. Temperance, courage and justice may be considered moral virtues in that they are concerned with behavior and moral qualities. Prudence unlike the other three moral virtues is an intellectual virtue.
Temperance, according to Aristotle, consists of ordering or controlling certain pleasures. The words temperance and self-mastery are synonymous. Temperance implies a cool head that does not allow a person to do what he or she ought not to do.
Courage does not consist only in conquering fear and not fleeing from danger. It also consists of steeling the will and reinforcing its resolution. It gives a person the ability to face truth however painful that may be. As such, courage may be summarized as doing what ought to be done.
Justice involves the accommodation of individual interests and the interests of the community because justice is political in nature. Aristotle says “Justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the order in political society.” For Aristotle, the virtue of justice is a habit of conduct. Justice is doing what ought to be done consistently out of habit: doing good, harming no one, rendering to each his own, and treating equals equally. It differs from courage in that it is a habit of action and not of passion. With respect to the objective of justice as a balance of individual and social interests, in a 1971 dissenting opinion to Lowe v. Quinn, 27 N.Y.2d 397, Judge Scileppi of the New York Court of Appeals noted ” The ideal, therefore, is to accommodate both, that is, to forsake equity in a particular case only when to accord it recognition would be to do violence to the recognized public policy of this State.” In sum, justice occurs when individual and general social interests are balanced, thus both interests are advanced.
Prudence, unlike the other virtues, is an intellectual virtue more precisely defined as practical wisdom. However, prudence is not knowledge in the ordinary sense of the term but rather is the product of experience and a reason, which cannot be expressed. Experience is the foundational element in prudence. St. Thomas Aquinas calls prudence a combination of remembering the past, understanding the present, thus providing direction for the future. In sum, prudence requires the application of moral principles—aimed at the general good—to particular cases.
An effective leadership model should be based on these values because persons brought up under their guidance are better able to internalize and adapt such concepts to their daily life. A major problem with models based on warrior leaders, is that what is useful and desirable in war does necessarily apply well to a time of peace, for the moral and intellectual values that we value in war are not necessarily the virtues that we ought to value in peace. For this reason a model of leadership for war does not necessarily or adequately reflect how we ought to model our professional lives as leaders in a time of peace, nor how we should deal with our subordinates and peers. If this were so, then we should model ourselves after Sparta, or its modern day counterpart, North Korea.
To Be Continued
Temperance, according to Aristotle, consists of ordering or controlling certain pleasures. The words temperance and self-mastery are synonymous. Temperance implies a cool head that does not allow a person to do what he or she ought not to do.
Courage does not consist only in conquering fear and not fleeing from danger. It also consists of steeling the will and reinforcing its resolution. It gives a person the ability to face truth however painful that may be. As such, courage may be summarized as doing what ought to be done.
Justice involves the accommodation of individual interests and the interests of the community because justice is political in nature. Aristotle says “Justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the order in political society.” For Aristotle, the virtue of justice is a habit of conduct. Justice is doing what ought to be done consistently out of habit: doing good, harming no one, rendering to each his own, and treating equals equally. It differs from courage in that it is a habit of action and not of passion. With respect to the objective of justice as a balance of individual and social interests, in a 1971 dissenting opinion to Lowe v. Quinn, 27 N.Y.2d 397, Judge Scileppi of the New York Court of Appeals noted ” The ideal, therefore, is to accommodate both, that is, to forsake equity in a particular case only when to accord it recognition would be to do violence to the recognized public policy of this State.” In sum, justice occurs when individual and general social interests are balanced, thus both interests are advanced.
Prudence, unlike the other virtues, is an intellectual virtue more precisely defined as practical wisdom. However, prudence is not knowledge in the ordinary sense of the term but rather is the product of experience and a reason, which cannot be expressed. Experience is the foundational element in prudence. St. Thomas Aquinas calls prudence a combination of remembering the past, understanding the present, thus providing direction for the future. In sum, prudence requires the application of moral principles—aimed at the general good—to particular cases.
An effective leadership model should be based on these values because persons brought up under their guidance are better able to internalize and adapt such concepts to their daily life. A major problem with models based on warrior leaders, is that what is useful and desirable in war does necessarily apply well to a time of peace, for the moral and intellectual values that we value in war are not necessarily the virtues that we ought to value in peace. For this reason a model of leadership for war does not necessarily or adequately reflect how we ought to model our professional lives as leaders in a time of peace, nor how we should deal with our subordinates and peers. If this were so, then we should model ourselves after Sparta, or its modern day counterpart, North Korea.
To Be Continued
posted by Ignacio | 7:09 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home