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Leading and Leadership by Timothy Fuller
Love, teaching, work, and death are subjects of the other volumes in the Ethics of Everyday Live series, published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Each contains a variety of readings, from ancient and contemporary sources, reaching across cultures and disciplines. Each has a distinguished editor or editors—Leon and Amy Kass, Mark Schwehn, Gilbert C. Meilaender, and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. These are volumes rich in instruction.
Editor Timothy Fuller proceeds from the "premise…that we must become more thoughtful and more philosophical about the meaning of leadership." That the volume is not one on citizenship—hence no readings from Aristotle-is already a cause for concern. It is also the most secular volume of the series. But Fuller's carefully chosen selections let us rise above the vulgar Führer prinzip: "seek to be worthy of recognition," sage council from Confucius, begins the volume. Sections on classical, heroic, democratic, and contemporary leadership follow. Readers will see that the "more philosophical" approach to leadership turns it into a question of statesmanship, and then of political philosophy. So understood, the mundane points to the wonderful.
—Ken Masugi
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This article appeared in the Winter 2002 issue of the Claremont Review of Books
