How to Create Virtuous Leaders

Josh Landy
Do good leaders have to be good people?

Ray Briggs
What qualities should we expect in our politicians?

Josh Landy
How can we build character in our next generation of leaders?

Ray Briggs
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
….except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. We’re coming to you from the studios of KAL San Francisco Bay Area.

Josh Landy
Continuing conversations that begin at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus where, Ray teaches philosophy, and I direct the Philosophy and Literature Initiative.

Ray Briggs
Today, we’re thinking about how to create virtuous leaders.

Josh Landy
That’s a great idea, Ray?.We sure could use some leaders who tell the truth, accept basic science, and ,you know, do their jobs instead of lining their pockets.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, you know, I agree we need all of those things. But do we really need our leaders to be good people on top of that? Like, I don’t care if they cheat on their partners or go on shopping sprees with their own money, or party hard on the weekends, as long as they just do their jobs. Asking them to be virtuous in addition—that’s kind of a high bar, isn’t it?

Josh Landy
I don’t know. Why would you trust someone who’s dishonest and corrupt in their private life to behave any differently when they have access to huge amounts of public money? Okay, they don’t have to be saints, but I think they should at least be decent human beings. Is that really too much to ask?

Ray Briggs
Okay, fine. There’s a minimum bar, sure, but there really have been amazing leaders with serious flaws. Like people say that Martin Luther King cheated on his wife. But you know, even if that’s true, it doesn’t take away anything from his leadership in the civil rights movement. And you know, you can be a nice person, but a lousy leader. Al Gore really cared about the environment—but he was so dorky and awkward that he couldn’t get enough votes to actually get elected.

Josh Landy
Well, maybe there are some exceptions to the rule. But I still think in general, you have to be a good person to be a good politician.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, I don’t think that’s true at all, Josh. A good politician needs confidence verging on arrogance, and strategic truth-telling verging on dishonesty, and decisiveness to the point of being tyrannica,l and the kind of charisma that can just easily lead into narcissism.

Josh Landy
Well okay, maybe those are the kinds of people who get elected. But the leaders we actually need they’re the people who don’t campaign for power—like T’challa in the movie “Black Panther.” He didn’t really want to lead the world outside what kind of a he was a good person and he rose to the occasion when he saw that the world needed help.

Ray Briggs
We’re talking about real people, Josh, not comic book superheroes.

Josh Landy
Okay, but philosophers back me up too, Ray. Think about Plato’s Republic. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates says the best leaders, they’re not the ones who are motivated by an interest in power—they’re the ones who are motivated by a sense of duty.

Ray Briggs
Yeah. How did that work out for Plato Josh? You know, he tried to train King Dionysius the Elder of Syracuse and that guy sold him into slavery. And then after his friends freed him, he came back and he tried to train King Dionysius the Younger and he taught little Dionysius all about virtue and philosophy, but it did absolutely no good. That kid betrayed his uncle mismanaged his kingdom and ended up getting exiled by his own people.

Josh Landy
That’s not Plato’s fault. He did his best and no teacher in the world could have turned little Dionysius into a decent ruler—he just wasn’t cut out for it. As Immanuel Kant would say, out of such crooked timber, nothing straight can be made.

Ray Briggs
Okay, what’s the good of education if it’s not going to make people better, though? Even if it’s not harmful, it seems like trying to teach people to be virtuous is kind of pointless.

Josh Landy
I don’t think we should give up too soon. I mean, you look at you: you’re teaching our future leaders all about virtue and responsibility. Well, why would you do that if it didn’t make any sense?

Ray Briggs
Okay, I’m not training them as future leaders—I’m treating them as citizens. If some of those citizens gain political power, I really hope that I’ll have done them some good, but I’m not really sure how much I can expect.

Josh Landy
Well, maybe your guests will persuade you to be a little more optimistic. It’s our old friend Massimo Pigliucci, from the City University of New York. And he’s got a new book called “The Quest for Character,” which is all about leaders in virtue.

Ray Briggs
But first we sent our roving philosophical reporter Holly J. McDede, to find out how leaders from conquering kings to President Jimmy Carter have cultivated their images as virtuous people. She files this report.

Shawn Lang
It’s very easy to get a list of rulers who are villainous or greedy or whatever.

Holly McDede
Shawn Lang is a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University, and he compiled a list of rulers who are bad leaders, but pleasant people—you know, solid dinner companions.

Arthur King of the Britons
I order you to be quiet!

Holly McDede
His roundup of eight of the nicest kings in history includes King Louis the 16th of France, who was sent to the guillotine during the French Revolution.

Shawn Lang
I’m not saying that niceness leads to your being executed, but it begins to look that way when you’re the ruler.

Holly McDede
Lang says Louis the 16th took his duty as king very seriously. But he also wanted to be loved by everyone. During his rule in the second half of the 18th century, France faced an economic crisis and people were starving. A string of finance ministers told him to tax the nobles and the church.

Shawn Lang
And when the nobles say, “Don’t you dare tax us!” What does the king do? Does he sort of say, “No, I stand by my minister?” He says, “Oh, well, no, quite rightly, I don’t cause any trouble.” And so he sacked the minister.

Holly McDede
The king’s eventual fate is shown on that TV show “Family Guy.”

Family Guy
Look Louis, the French people really want to thank you for your services as king, but it’s just not working out and we’ve decided to go another way.

Holly McDede
Other people on Lang’s list?

Shawn Lang
Nicholas II of Russia, and if you thinking is he the one who gets overthrown in the revolution? Yep, he was. And Charles I of England—was he the one who got to overthrown in the Civil War? Yes, he was.

Holly McDede
So that’s kings and czars for you. Next up: US presidents—or one US president in particular.

Amber Rosner
Honestly, I’d never really heard that much about Jimmy Carter, other than perhaps the fact that he was becoming a great ex-president.

Holly McDede
Amber Rosner is author of the book “Jimmy Carter and the Birth of the Marathon Media Campaign.” If you ask people who was the nicest US president, they may well answer Jimmy Carter. Rosner says when Carter ran for president in 1976, his campaign team crafted his image

Amber Rosner
In particular, a peanut farmer turned nuclear physicist that promise to never tell a lie and to deliver a government as good as the American people.

Donald Trump
Jimmy Carter knows what it’s like to work for a living. Until he became governor, he put in 12 hours a day in his shirtsleeves during harvest at his farm. Can you imagine any of the other candidates for president working in the hot August sun?

Holly McDede
Carter ran during a credibility crisis in American politics in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate. He appeared in carefully-staged events.

Amber Rosner
Some of the central backdrops to the campaign were Plains Baptist Church where Carter taught the men’s Sunday school class, and also they spent a lot of time at the local softball field there, actively playing games with the press, and then also at fishing ponds.

Holly McDede
But maintaining a virtuous image is tricky. In a 1976 interview with Playboy magazine, Carter famously described lusting for women and said he committed adultery in his heart many times.

Amber Rosner
Some scholars and cultural observers of that campaign would say almost lost Carter the election.

Holly McDede
But it didn’t—Carter won! By 1979, though, the country was experiencing high unemployment, inflation and an energy crisis.

Jimmy Carter
It’s clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper—deeper!—than gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession.

Holly McDede
That year, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, US diplomats and citizens were taken hostage in Iran, and there was the incident with the killer rabbit. Jimmy Carter was in a boat fishing in Plains, Georgia, when he said a rabbit leaped in the water and swim towards him. This incident is mocked on Saturday Night Live in a scene where he meets with Fidel Castro

SNL
I can see being attacked by a dog. Or a fox. Or a hedgehog. A chicken can become quite angry. Even a wild pig. But a rabbit? That’s crazy!

Holly McDede
Carter’s staff didn’t buy this story. And that went against his image as an honest president. But photos show it really did happen.

Amber Rosner
This is a moment in which the film “Jaws” had just premiered. And so one of the most famous images is of Paws.—so this rabbit that’s attacking Carter. And it became kind of a larger metaphor for Carter’s failed presidency.

Holly McDede
I haven’t met Jimmy Carter, but he seems genuinely virtuous. He’s done a lot of good things for the planet and mankind since his presidency, like set up the Carter Center to eradicate disease, promote free and fair elections across the globe. He’s given back to the public through Habitat for Humanity,

Amber Rosner
Really kind of practicing what he preaches. You don’t really see that a lot, certainly not in American politics.

Donald Trump
Jimmy Carter, look, he was a nice man. He was a terrible president.

Holly McDede
But maybe we can try to have both. For Philosophy Talk. I’m Holly J. McDede.

Josh Landy
Thanks for that fascinating report. Holly. I’m Josh Landy with me as my Stanford colleague Ray Briggs and today we’re thinking about how to create virtuous leaders.

Ray Briggs
We’re joined now by Massimo Pigliucci. He’s Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York and a prolific author, most recently of “The Quest for Character: What the sSory of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches Us About Our Search for Good Leaders.” Massimo, welcome back to Philosophy Talk.

Massimo Pigliucci
Oh, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Josh Landy
Last time you were here last night, we were talking to you about physics. Now you’re writing about leadership. Why is that been in your mind lately?

Massimo Pigliucci
Well, in the meantime, I went through a little bit of a midlife crisis. And in the process of dealing with it, I rediscovered the Greco Romans. And then I remember, Oh, these people still have a lot to teach us two millennia later. And one of the things that they teach us is about character and leadership. So here we are.

Josh Landy
So nothing to do with recent leaders.

Massimo Pigliucci
Not at all what why are you asking?

Ray Briggs
So you say that the Greeks have a lot to teach us. Why should we look to the past to solve the problems of today?

Massimo Pigliucci
Yeah, that’s an excellent question. And it’s a very fair one. So I would say, as a scientist, if you want to learn about physics or biology, don’t pick up on his title. If you’re interested in the history of physics and biology, that’s fine. But but not if you want to do current stuff. On the other hand, if you’re interested in ethics, and justice and politics, then the Greco Roman still have a lot to teach us. Because human nature has not changed that much in the intervening 2000 years. It’s the same reason, we have still a lot to learn from other ancient traditions such as Buddhism, or Taoism, or Confucianism.

Ray Briggs
So if I wanted to be sort of obstreperous and object, I might say, look, society has changed so much in the last few 1000 years. You know, we have giant nation states, we have technologies that the Greeks and the Romans could not have imagined. But it sounds like there’s some like enough commonalities that we can still learn from their ethics and politics. So so why is there still enough commonalities, even with all this, like technological and societal change?

Massimo Pigliucci
Because I think we tend to overestimate the importance of those changes technologically Absolutely. Right. I mean, if, let’s say, Socrates weren’t coming back today, and we’re looking at the way in which the three of us are communicating right now, you know, close to us and some miles. And with electronic gadgets, you would say, What the hell is going on here. But on the other hand, as soon as then he settled down and started listening to what we were saying he would definitely recognize our conversation and would have something to say, and the reason for that is that yes, we have nation states instead of city states. But guess what, we still go after each other for resources for fame for glory, and we still have the same basic fears and wants and needs. And that’s, that’s why this whole thing is still relevant.

Josh Landy
And so you think that the what made a good leader, a good leader in the ancient world? That’s so it’s the same thing today, what makes a good leader a good leader today? Same thing?

Massimo Pigliucci
Well, pretty much because the challenge is essentially the same. You know, how, what does it mean to be a leader? You’re leading whom and where?

Josh Landy
Okay, and then, so, who would be if you wanted to pick your number one, you know, successful and virtuous leader from the ancient world, who would that be?

Massimo Pigliucci
Probably Marcus Aurelius, who was also a stoic practitioner. And you know, he was one of the so called five good emperors that lived during the peak of Roman power. And he had a pretty difficult time he had to face a series of floods and earthquakes that, you know, affected Rome and some other major cities, he had to frontier defensive wars to fight he had an internal rebellion. His wife was cheating on him. And he had a plague that killed more than 2 million people. Even so he tried his best to manage these issues, and pretty much succeeded by and large.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about leadership and virtue with Massimo Pigliucci. From the City University of New York.

Ray Briggs
Have you ever been in a leadership role? What qualities were important to your success? Do you have to be good to be effective

Josh Landy
Virtue, vigor or vision—along with your comments and questions, when Philosophy Talk continues

Neil Young
We’re lookin’ for a leader with the great sprit on his side.

Josh Landy
In a world gone wrong, how do we create leaders with great spirit? I’m Josh Landy, Mrs. Philosophy Tong the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs, and we’re thinking about how to create virtuous leaders with Massimo Pigliucci from the City University of New York, author of “The Quest for Character.”

Josh Landy
Got questions about what makes a good leader, email us at comments at philosophy talk dot o r g, or comments on our website. And while you’re there, you can also become a subscriber and gain access to our library of more than 500 episodes.

Ray Briggs
So Massimo, you’ve told us that political leaders have to be virtuous people in order to be good leaders. What specific virtues do you think they should have?

Massimo Pigliucci
Well the basic ones are the so called cardinal four, which are practical wisdom, courage, justice and temperance.

Josh Landy
Okay, I think I understand what courage and justice are, temperance is something like self control—don’t drink too much, and things like that. What’s practical wisdom?

Massimo Pigliucci
practical wisdom, which in Latin is Prudencio, prudence, or and in Greek is phronesis basically refers to the knowledge of what is really truly good and what is not good. So that you can use that knowledge as a compass to navigate the world and also to knowledge of how to best navigate your way to the good. So it’s really knowledge or what is valuable and how to get there.

Ray Briggs
Okay, so there are two parts, and it seems like they’re kind of separate. So knowledge of how to navigate my way, it seems like I could be a real selfish jerk and be really great at getting my way and manipulating people, like controlling objects, but like knowledge of, of what is good. How do I get that? Does it have anything to do with the other one?

Massimo Pigliucci
Yeah, it does, according to the Greco Romans, because most of them believe beginning with Socrates believed in something called the unity of virtues. That is, you really can’t be, for instance, courageous and unjust at the same time, because both courage and justice have an inherent ethical component to it. So courage is not just, you know, bravery in battle, it’s bravery in battle, when you know that you’re fighting for the right cause. That’s that sort of stuff. So all of the four cardinal virtues are actually connected to each other. And that means that in terms of your other question, yeah, there is a deep connection between knowing where you want to go and how to get there, because you don’t only want to go somewhere that is good. You also want to get there in a way that is good, that is virtuous.

Ray Briggs
I’m really curious about the unity of the virtues, partly because it seems like I can observe counter examples, but but maybe they’re not counter examples. Like I think the, you know, the world has had like brave Confederate soldiers or people who got drunk a lot, but were really generous to their friends. And it seems like the unity of virtue says that shouldn’t happen. Am I misinterpreting those examples? Or is there some way to reconcile them?

Massimo Pigliucci
Both. So no, you’re not misinterpreting the examples. But there is a way I think, to reconcile them. And that is exactly notice that you use the word bravery there, right? I use the word courage, and then I qualified it, it has to be moral courage. So in other words, you can be brave by pursuing the wrong cause, in which case, you’re not being virtuous. You’re just being brave, you’re displaying a certain kind of attitude and character, but that is not a moral one. So you cannot be in a sense, brave or courageous by in fact, pursuing the wrong cause, not in the way in which the Greco Roman is defined courage.

Josh Landy
But what about temperance, okay, so we think about folks who maybe drink a little too much, or maybe they’re unfaithful to their partner or things like this. Surely there have been lots of politicians, including benign ones, perhaps even, you know, forces for good. RAID mentioned one of them when we were having a conversation at the beginning of the show. Is it really true that there’s a unity of virtues such that you know, a person who is good in the rest of their life and effective leader bringing about a better life everyone else, they’re definitely going to also be temperate, not drink very much and abstemious. Always self control when it comes to romantic relationships and things like having to really have to go together?

Massimo Pigliucci
Well, so the the unity of virtues is not an empirical matter. It’s an aspirational matter. So yes, absolutely. You’re right. There are people who are certainly imperfect and yet partially virtuous, right, somewhat virtuous, and will take them that’s fine. But partial virtue is better than no virtue at all. But the one

Josh Landy
that matters? I mean, when I think about what I want from my leaders, I certainly want moral bravery, as you were saying, and I want justice. Absolutely. Right. They should really care about other people in bringing about a better world for for as many people as possible. I would also I wouldn’t mind if they were honest. My both of my countries were recently run by people who had a bit of a problem around telling the truth.

Ray Briggs
Politicians lying? Say it ain’t so, Josh!

Josh Landy
It’s shocking, shocking. Never heard of that yawn, just the usual spin. Right. So but I don’t think I know I maybe this is the part of me that, you know, I spent a lot of time in French department. So maybe that’s that this part of me speaking, but I don’t think I need my politician to be a family person. Right. I don’t necessarily need to care what they do in their private life, how many partners they have things like that. But aren’t there are some virtues that are just more important than others when it comes to the kind of politician that we need the kind of person we need our politicians to be?

Massimo Pigliucci
Yeah, actually, even the Greco Romans agreed that some virtues are more fundamental than others. For instance, the stoic was on his roof was flat, that temperance actually is the most important because if you’re not temperate, you’re not going to be able to do anything else, because you’re always going to be going around drinking and eating, to your heart’s content. And played, on the other hand, thought that practical wisdom is the most fundamental one. So yes, they’re not all created equal. But the general idea is that there is a spillover effect. That is, if you have somebody who is a leader, and he cheats on his wife, or otherwise doesn’t pay taxes or something like that, well, statistically speaking, you can bet on the fact that that sort of behavior will spill in other areas, we don’t compartmentalize things that that clearly, if we’re not good in our private lives, chances are we’re also going to make similar kinds of mistakes in public life.

Ray Briggs
Okay. So ideally, I would like to have perfectly virtuous politicians. But looking at the pool that we have to draw from. I mean, if we’re going to have politicians, we’re going to have politicians who aren’t, like perfectly virtuous people, because there just aren’t enough virtuous people. Like, realistically how much a virtue Can I hope for

Massimo Pigliucci
more than we have a little bit at least, because I think we have been, I mean, one of the arguments in the book is that we have actually led things to the point where our bar has gotten so low, that now we at least in semi democratic societies, like the United States, we deserve what we get, I mean, we have the kind of politicians that we put in there in the first place. So no one is looking for a saint or for somebody who is absolutely perfect. You know, even the stoics themselves thought that the sage, the ideal stoic, only appears once every 500 years. So it’s not like, you can’t count on that to run regular society, right your life, but a little bit better than what we’ve been doing recently. Yeah, that’s that’s not unreasonable.

Josh Landy
I agree. But I also worry, I mean, why are we in the predicament? Really? And obviously, there are many reasons. But I worry that it’s partly to do with the system and not I mean, I agree with Ray that there aren’t maybe that many folks to choose from, but But I also think it has to do with the incentive structure within the realm of leadership, particularly political leadership, so that the wrong people run for office, right, because there’s strong exists incentives for good people to run. And there are strong incentives for less good people to run.

Massimo Pigliucci
Correct. So it’s more of an issue of priorities in us, the voters, the people and also structural issues. This research that shows for instance, that the two professions with the highest frequency of sociopathic characters are politics and high finance, may come as a shock. Right? So yeah, those are structural, that we really have the wrong people running for these positions, especially in politics. But it’s also a question of our choices and our priorities. For instance, we do not teach virtue to our kids, with very, very few exceptions. And one of the best exceptions I’ve seen recently is a documentary actually called Young Plato, which is set in Belfast in Northern Ireland, where these these principle of elementary school is using day to day occurrences that that are relevant to these kids to teach them philosophy and ethics in particular, and guess what it must mostly draws from the Greco Roman Socrates and the Stoics. And it’s fascinating to see. So the question is, well, why don’t we do that on a regular basis, everywhere.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about leadership and virtue with Massimo Pigliucci, from the City University of New York. And we have an email from Harold. Harold says, we’re trying to instill virtue in our youth, but by the time they reach the age of majority, they realize exactly how competitive they need to be to make a life virtue slips away as an anachronism, nice to talk about impractical in a fast paced modern world. So that that seems like a direct challenge to what you’re just saying, you stick the students in these young Plato academies, but then they get out of the academies, and they enter the world and that slips away. What do you think, Massimo?

Massimo Pigliucci
Well, I guess I’d reject the empirical premise. I mean, when that when the emails that starts out by saying we teach virtue to our kids, now we don’t. When was the last time we seen that most of the times we don’t. So if the empirical premise is incorrect, then the rest as you know, doesn’t follow.

Ray Briggs
I am curious to know what teaching virtue to our kids ought to look like?

Massimo Pigliucci
Oh, that’s a great question. So there are certain things that work and other things that don’t work not only that were proposed by the ancient Greco Romans, but also that are confirmed by modern empirical science. For instance, one thing that doesn’t work is virtual labeling, to tell people that they’re good and brilliant You know, kids that, Oh, you’re so good, you’re so brilliant when they are not actually it doesn’t work, in fact, in long terms undermines the whole point. But one of the things that does work is to expose people on purpose to situations that train them to be responding in a more virtuous way, in a in a way that actually is similar to an analogy that was made by Protagoras. So first of all people in a dialogue with Socrates, where he says, Look, teaching virtual is like teaching a musical instrument, it is a matter of understanding a little bit of theory, you know, Music Foundation and stuff, it is a matter of having a good teacher, because you can, she can confirm your, your technique or corrected. And then mostly it’s about practice, practice, practice, practice, right? And ingesting this in like, in the case of music, you know, some of us are more prone by nature, to play musical instruments, and some of us are not, but we can only improve by practicing.

Ray Briggs
My brother has kids, and I sort of watch him and his wife bring up the kids. And I noticed that they do seem to be doing some like trying to teach virtue, so so, you know, they’ll say things like, Oh, we share our toys, you can’t hit your sister, um, and just practice ways of treating others with respect. And they sort of they correct when when the kids do something that they shouldn’t be doing. And they kind of demonstrate how to respect each other. Isn’t that a way of teaching virtue?

Massimo Pigliucci
Oh, it sure is. And sure enough, I actually believe I’m a little bit more of an optimist, I suppose. But I do believe that most people are decent people when they become adults. As I said, it’s sociopaths who go on into into politics. So I think that you’re right, that does work. But of course, parents themselves don’t have a particularly deep understanding or, or training in virtually themselves, because what did they get it? They got it from their own parents. So there is nothing seems like extraordinary in proposing that we could do better for the next generation by training the parents, not just the kids.

Josh Landy
Okay, so I totally want to believe you. But in your book, a couple of cases where it didn’t go so well, right. Ray earlier mentioned the case of Plato going to Syracuse, and, and trying, you know, you can’t say Plato didn’t know what was going on with virtues. And he tried pretty hard to instill some virtues into these two rulers of Syracuse, and you’ve got the case of Seneca with Nero. So, you know, if those folks can’t succeed, what hope is there for the rest of

Massimo Pigliucci
us? Yeah, that’s an that’s an excellent question. It is kind of surprising the plate or even try with the two Dionysus because he ought to know better. I mean, the ancients knew that the best time for intervening in that sense is when somebody is much younger than the two, Denise’s is where when Plato got access to them, by the way, Plato did succeed with a third person, Dion, who also became a reader in Syracuse, after the fall of Dionysus, the second Indian actually did much better. But the difference with Dion is that Dion actually was a student of Plato, since he was very young, and he wanted to become virtuous. He wanted to be a better person. And so things went a little bit better.

Ray Briggs
So I’m worried about people like this, this being a pretty good but not failsafe method, and that it’s not going to get everybody. And so I guess another question is, like, can you identify the people who are not going to be virtuous and just prevent them from becoming like politicians with a great deal of power?

Massimo Pigliucci
Oh, that’s a good question. I mean, like, to some extent, nothing is failsafe, right? I mean, we’re talking about human nature and human psychology and sociology. So this is not fundamental physics, we’re not going to get precise answers to our questions. Unfortunately, it certainly we’re not going to get 100% of anything that we want to do. But yes, I do think that we can identify potentially problematic people early on, as I said, there is pretty good empirical evidence that the number of sociopaths or sociopathic kind of personalities in certain areas is way above the statistical average. And there is nothing that prevents us unless we don’t want to do it. To screen these people ahead of time and say, Yeah, you know, I don’t think you’re actually you should go there.

Josh Landy
Well, yeah. Should we should send them into finance instead of politics. Isn’t that what you were saying? Those are the two options—keep em out of politics, we’ll be better.

Ray Briggs
Can we teach them basket weaving or something? Something harmless.

Josh Landy
email from Lucy at San Francisco. Lucy says I would contend that the vast majority of politicians seek office because they’re power hungry attention seekers who want to further their own careers. There may be some exceptions to prove the rule. But anyone hoping for truly virtuous leaders is naive at best. What do you think you Massimo?

Massimo Pigliucci
Well, I’ll take the charge of naivete, that’s fine with me. But look, there are interesting cases which I discussed in the book where Socrates actually goes on Round, according to Xenophon, in his memorabilia, advising potential politicians to either do it or not do it I mean, the subtitle of the book is about Socrates and Alcibiades. Socrates very clearly told Alcibiades don’t do it. You’re not the right kind of person to do it. But there are also examples that Xenophon teaches us, where Socrates actually said, yeah, go ahead and do it. One of them was Commodus, for instance, who was cloud was sun and black on itself was Plato’s brother, just if you’re interested in the genealogy here. And communists did go into politics, he was initially actually shy, didn’t want to do it. And indeed, it did pretty pretty well. So it depends. You can have people in this case, Socrates, I guess, I can imagine easily somebody with a philosophical and psychological background that can advise people early on and say, Look, this is something that you want to do or No, don’t, don’t do it. And that will change, hopefully, the percentage of people of a certain kind that we find among politicians,

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re asking about how to create virtuous leaders with Massimo Pigliucci. From the City University of New York, author of “The Quest for Character.”

Ray Briggs
Should we make our politicians take a crash course in ethics? Or should we forgive their little peccadilloes? Could being a worse person even make you a better leader?

Josh Landy
Doing good by being bad—plus commentary from Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher,when Philosophy Talk continues,

Carole King
If you need me to be with you, I will follow where you lead.

Josh Landy
If you found a virtuous leader, would you follow them to the ends of the earth? I’m Josh Landy and this is Philosophy Talk, the program of questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs, our guest is Masimo pull up from the City University of New York. And we’re thinking about how to create virtuous leaders.

Josh Landy
Massimo, we’re going to appoint you philosopher king. I know you probably don’t want that power. But that’s precisely what’s going to make you so good at it. So with the powers now vested in you, what is the first thing you’re going to do to make sure that more politicians turn out to be virtuous people?

Massimo Pigliucci
Well, the first thing to do would be to follow the example of that document that I mentioned earlier played a young Plato, that is we should be teaching and training people kids in virtue of since elementary and middle school. And no, we shouldn’t expose them just to a crash course. Because the whole point of philosophy as a way of life is that this isn’t a question of, Oh, you do it for a few hours a day, and then you’re done for it for a few weeks. And you’re done. Now, yeah, it’s a lifelong thing. So I would completely change the way in which we teach young kids and introduce a good amount of ethics, not just theoretical ethics, but practical ethics. Now, of course, the problem with that approach is that it will take at least 20 years to bear fruit, right? And but since I’m philosopher king, I don’t have to run for reelection, I think that will work.

Ray Briggs
So right now kids have courses in like mathematics and English, which has like reading and writing, and like, hopefully, Spanish if they’re in the US, and you need to be able to communicate with people. So so we just have like, a, an ethics curriculum, is that the idea and they’d have another class called ethics.

Massimo Pigliucci
Yes, except that I think an ethics curriculum wouldn’t really be a separate class, it would be kind of spread out throughout, it might be useful to have a certain number of hours, you know, in a week, devoted specifically to ethics. But the general idea is to point out to kids at everything they do has to do with ethics. Here, I’m using the word ethics as the Greco Romans did not just the study of right and wrong or answering whether this particular action is right and wrong, but the study of how to live your entire life, to how to set your priorities, how to do things in general. So in that sense, it’s not just a specific course, is really everywhere.

Ray Briggs
So I have a little bit of a worry about that, which is like I have opinions about how to live your entire life. And I know that like a lot of the people around me have very different opinions about how to live your entire life, such that I’m not sure that I want those opinions taught to kids, like if the kids were my kids, and we’re being told things about how to live their lives that I strongly disagreed with, maybe I’d send them to a different school. So given that there’s not this kind of consensus, how do we decide what to teach them about how to live their lives?

Massimo Pigliucci
That is an excellent question. In fact, a lot of the resistance when this has been tried a lot of resistance to teach ethics to kids come from two sources, politicians and parents. And why is that because those are the the authority figures that like to have control over kids. But look, you could raise the same objection and in fact people do to other you know, I could I make pursuits in among kids. I mean, there are lots of parents in the United States, for instance, who really don’t like their kids to be exposed to science, you know, to evolutionary biology, for instance, or to the notion of the Big Bang in physics and so on and so forth. But, you know, what we do in those cases is we say, well, that’s too bad. If you want public education they the kids have to be exposed to, to those notions, because that is what it’s part of the accepted general scientific outlook or thinks, similarly with ethics. I mean, do we not want our kids to question authority to learn how to think critically to value things like temperance and courage and justice, that that seems like an odd objection on the part of a parent?

Josh Landy
I mean, I personally agree, I think those are very important personal virtues and leadership virtues. And I, you know, I’m really delighted that you know, to see you putting this focus this this belief in the existence of character, and also the importance of character, but I have a different kind of worry, which is, aren’t there is that you might think this is necessary, but not sufficient. In other words, okay, good. Let’s let’s build our future leaders to have honesty, practical wisdom, moral bravery, a sense of justice, but don’t they also need vision, right? So to be able to imagine their way into a different future, don’t they also need confidence to be able to lead people skills of coordination, eloquence, super important skill within a democracy, because you don’t just want them ordering people about that you want to persuading people? I, it seems to me, there’s a lot of skills that leaders need, that ordinary folks like, like the three of us maybe don’t need, right? And we don’t, you know, we don’t need to be eloquent unnecessarily,

Ray Briggs
I have to stand up in front of a classroom.

Josh Landy
So for teachers fairpoint, and you do have it absolutely, but you know, but we’re not leaders, we don’t need the the ability to fill a room full of supporters and galvanize them to a cause. And, and we, you know, have the that confidence to be able to stand there and do that. And, and all of that, and the vision to to imagine a new world so. So is there really a total overlap between the set of virtues that a just a regular person needs and the set that a good leader needs?

Massimo Pigliucci
No, I think you’re absolutely right. There’s no total overlap. In fact, arguably, one of the Greek Romans do understood this best was Cicero, who lived in at the end of the Roman Republic, he was not only a philosopher, he was also a statesman. And he was a advocate, he was a lawyer. And so he understood, for instance, he disagreed vehemently with his friend, the Cato, the younger, who was a stoic, and he disagreed vehemently on the kindness skill sets, that isn’t that are necessary to be a good politician insisted, unlike Cato, that rhetoric, the art of persuasion is important, because otherwise, you’re absolutely right, you don’t get people to rally around around your cars. So you want to be both virtues, so that you pick the right cause, so that you pick things that actually worth fighting for. But also you want to be persuasive. You want to you want to actually be able to talk to people and running them to your cars. So absolutely, there are some skills that are specific to politics, and a few other things like teaching that don’t necessarily everybody needs, but but everybody, I think does need a little bit of temperance and courage and justice and practical wisdom.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, I want to jump in and maybe defend you Masimo a little bit. Great, thank you. Whichever side is losing. So if we want virtuous leaders, it doesn’t seem like trying to teach leadership skills to only the people who are going to become leaders is necessarily the right way to go. Like, I think we should be teaching everybody, partly because in order to have citizens who pick the right leaders, and who hold their leaders to standards, once their leaders are in power, we need those citizens to be virtuous, like you mentioned, questioning authority. And like, one reason you might think that’s really important is so that the leaders don’t get just like power drunk and tyrannical. So I want to kind of agree with you Massimo.

Massimo Pigliucci
Thank you. And you know, an analogy there might be for instance, we do teach the basics of let’s say, economics to our kids, even though very few of them are going to become economists. Well, why do you want to do that? Well, because first of all those skills, those that knowledge will have some application in their in their own lives at a smaller scale, but also because we want them to understand what economists are doing and what their politicians are doing when they make large scale economic decisions.

Josh Landy
Okay, so okay, I want to raise it. It’s becoming way too kumbaya out here. Another challenge for you. What happens when a virtue becomes a vise or maybe that’s too strong way when I’m sort of virtue becomes a, an impediment to good leadership. So so I can think of a couple of examples. So one is, you know, open mindedness is a virtue. But that can lead to a lack of effectiveness. You know, authoritarian movements, tragically, are pretty likely to succeed because they keep everybody in line. And so you rally all your people behind you, and they do what you say they vote when you tell them to vote, and they march when you tell them in March, whereas if you open mind, you’re like, Well, if you don’t want to come to the March, that’s okay. So that’s one case where a virtue can become a liability. Here’s another case that I think about quite a bit. The notion of the wartime can ciliary to quote the godfather. So Churchill was pretty good as a leader during World War Two, not that great as a leader in peacetime Odysseus in The Odyssey, actually, interestingly, kind of the same, at least for a while and Coriolanus, in Shakespeare, you know, some of the things that are going to make somebody a good warrior or leader in a situation, either of literal war of metaphorical, you know, just of conflict might not make them a good leader in others, which may make no worse leader in other situations. So what should we say about those cases?

Massimo Pigliucci
Well, a couple of things. First of all, luckily for us, we still again live in a sort of somewhat democratic situation. So if a leader becomes ineffective, because the situation changes, we can recall it right, which is what the Greco Romans themselves did. In fact, they change leadership on a regular basis. But the other thing is, your aren’t your own example point to why the stoic was on his roof was whom I mentioned earlier, thought that Temperance is the most important of the virtues, right? I mean, a lot of the cases you mentioned are people who actually become intemperate, they they do too much of a thing, or too little of a thing. And then therefore they missed the mark. Or if you prefer, another way to put it is the way in which it startled thought about virtues as kind of middle points between extremes. And if you think of it that way, then then you understand why it is that a virtuous behavior is strikes exactly the right chord, if it’s too much, then it’s not virtuous anymore.

Josh Landy
But I wonder if there’s another way of characterizing it, which is that there are just some specific talents that a really good military commander has. And that really, they don’t translate in any meaningful way to a civilian context. And it’s, that’s it’s just as simple as that. So it’s not like, Well, you take the same virtue, and you apply it on the battlefield. And then at home, you apply it to solving the budget or something. No, it’s more like, well, you know, what the talent you need to solve the budget is actually a really different one from the talent you need on the battlefield. And so maybe we can’t have all the virtues bundled into one person we’re going to need good military leaders, and good economists, and good everything. Yeah, good secretary of education, should we really expect that one person is going to combine all of the necessary talents and skills?

Massimo Pigliucci
Well, I think you’re making an interesting distinction over here between virtues and talents, what you’re calling talents or skills. Now, of course, for the Greco Romans virtues, moral virtues are a type of skill. And it’s a technique it’s a technique so you can you can learn it, but they are they are identified by the modifier moral precisely for that reason. You’re absolutely right, of course, something you know, the kind of skills and make a good geminal effective in battle are not the same kind of skills that make for a good peacetime, you know, leader. Nevertheless, I think we want both the general and the peacetime leader to be temperate, courageous, just etc. We don’t want our generals just to be efficient in battle, we also want them to be efficient in battle, and ethical. That’s the basic point.

Ray Briggs
So Massimo we’re almost out of time. So if you can leave our listeners with one piece of concrete advice about how to be virtuous leaders or encouraged their leaders to be virtuous? What would you tell them?

Massimo Pigliucci
Well start with yourself. And one way to start with yourself is to start keeping a philosophical journal. If you want an example that Marcus Aurelius is meditations are a great one and of course, he was a leader. So start by self analyzing and start by working on your own character that will do two things, not only it will make you a better person, they will also make you understand what you’re looking for in a leader. If you want that leader to be a better person,

Josh Landy
Massimo you, you are a person with all the virtues including the virtue of being an excellent conversation partners. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Massimo Pigliucci
It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Josh Landy
Our guest has been Massimo Pigliucci, professor of philosophy at the City University of New York and author of “The Quest for Character: What the story of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches us about our Search for Good Leaders.” So Ray, what are you thinking now?

Ray Briggs
So I feel really inspired by Massimo is defense of virtuous leaders, but they’re really ideal holistic part of me thinks what would what would it look like if we didn’t have leaders and we were just all virtuous co creators of society. Because I think that’s the world like I really dream about. And I still think that’s a real world with a lot of room for virtue.

Josh Landy
Well, but in the meantime, I would definitely settle for our military commanders and our prime ministers and our presses everybody else getting a little bit more vigorous. We’re gonna put links to everything we’ve mentioned today on our website, Philosophy Talk dot ORG, where you can also become a subscriber and gain access to our library of more than 500 episodes.

Ray Briggs
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send it to us at comments at Philosophy Talk dot ORG and we may feature it on the blog.

Josh Landy
Now a man who leads with speed—it’s Ian Shoales, the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… When I was a boy, I was fascinated by manly men. I had a big crush on Audie Murphy who was not only a war hero, he made westerns. Wow. I also used to collect toy soldiers, and stage battles with them. The toymaker Marx had a series of warriors from the past, Roman generals in particular, painted and given a little placard to elevate their status as major guys who saved Rome’s bacon in some Gallic campaign or other. There was also a Civil War series, with Confederate generals who were much more dashing than Union generals. They had swords and feathers and splendid horses. Those were the aristocrats. The confederate grunts were all barefoot, and had to make their own bullets out of mud and grease. Also it was drilled into us, what a shame it was that a handsome and noble man like Robert E. Lee was brought down by Grant, who was a slob and a drunk. I also gleaned from movies that the southern leadership was much better educated than the north. They spoke Greek, and had piano recitals and balls. They had a certain mainly sadness, as if they knew their antebellum days were truly gone with the wind. Nothing to be done, but read Keats and Aeschylus, then ride forth into battle. Sure there were psycho rebel hillbillies, but the grey elite kept them in line to defend the magnolias and belles from the rampaging Shermans staggering down upon them. The southern leaders too were big on Roman generals, unlike the north, who were just ambitious bureaucrats corrupt and incompetent and drunk. Until I grew up and realized the true role of alcoholic beverages in adult decision making. But even before that, the bloom was coming off the manly rose. The 300 Spartans! What a story that was! And a great movie, with Richard Egan. Remade later with Gerald Butler, it had lost its appeal. 300 was like looking over somebody’s shoulder as they played a video game they couldn’t win. And there was the story about the Spartan boy who hid a fox under his tunic. Stopped by authorities, he let the fox gnaw at his stomach, never wincing, until he could get away. We were supposed to admire this Spartan boy, but I just couldn’t do it. I felt sorry for him because he was too poor to afford a fox, I guess, but why did he want a fox in the first place? What do you do with a fox? He’s not like Lassie or Old Yeller. First chance he gets he’ll make a bee line for the hen house. I grew up in the country. I knoiw what I’m talking about. And you had Alcibiades before that, a Greek hero who defected to Sparta, and then defected from Sparta to Persia, and then back to Greece, and he finally died in exile, in a shower of arrows. What kind of leader is that? In Shakespeare, the losers often fall on their swords, or have someone hold a sword while they run into it, then lie on the ground, and expire meaningfully and at length. With the Enlightenment, these lofty heroes were transmuted into Americans, English, and French. Parson Weems, the worlds’ first unabashed secular propagandist, gave us the best known stories about George Washington, that he chopped down a cherry tree, and threw a dollar across a river. Again, the point to these stories were somewhat lost on a growing lad, who just wanted to see Audie Murphy machine gunning Germans from a flaming half track. There’s your leadership skills. Don’t get me started on Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon. Nonetheless I understand the impulse to admire and emulate leaders of olden times. Modern leaders seem somewhat… paltry. Puny. And maybe this is all part of what the Internet tells me is the Crisis of the American Man. I know Elon’s worried about it. Tucker Carlson. Apparently American men have a low sperm count and a kind of blah feeling. Does Tucker Carlson though? I’ll bet he doesn’t. He’s trying to help us be more like him. I don’t know if manliness is worth that price. I was holding out for more of a hands on hips roaring with laughter Henry VIII type of manly leadership, you know. I guess in these end times you gotta take what’s offered. Benefit of the doubt, maybe Tucker’s got a critter underneath his blazer. Tucker always seems a little, um, whiny. Maybe that’s because he’s got a fox gnawing at his stomach. You never know with Spartans.I gotta go.

Josh Landy
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW local public radio San Francisco Bay area and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. Copyright 2022.

Ray Briggs
Our executive producer is Ben Trefny. The senior producer is Devon Strolovitch. Laura Maguire is our Director of Research

Josh Landy
Thanks also Yiqi Chi, Merle Kessler, and Angela Johnston

Ray Briggs
support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University. And from the partners that are online community of thinkers.

Josh Landy
The views expressed (mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or other funders.

Ray Briggs
Not even when they’re true and reasonable!

Josh Landy
The conversation continues on our website to philosophy RG where you can become a subscriber and gain access to our library of more than 500 episodes. I’m Josh Landy

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. Thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking.

To Hell And Back
He’s got more guts than sense—that tank is loaded with gas and ammo, it could blow up any minute! Murph, get outta there—Murph!!