8
8“THE END IS NOT KNOWING, BUT ACTION.”
Here’s the conventional wisdom on how to find happiness:
Stop to smell the roses: “Who ever regretted not having spent an extra day in the office?”
Spend more time with family and friends.
Stick to your knitting: Hang in there, do what you do best, hone your skills, and eventually the world will come around to appreciate the value of your special contribution.
Conventional wisdom is useful because, for the most part, it’s true. Aristotle himself not only agrees with the maxims above, he lived his life accordingly, devoting adequate quality time to the enjoyment of nature, family, and friends and holding true to his beliefs and career goals to his dying day. Yet, as accurate and useful as such popular advice was in Aristotle’s day (and is still) he notes that even the few people who follow it faithfully often fail to find deep, lasting, and meaningful happiness. Yes, he concludes, a good life requires leisure/family/work balance, and true satisfaction entails conventional career success, but those are just the obvious things one needs in order to live a good, happy life.
Aristotle says we can’t become truly happy unless and until we apply the fruits of our personal self-development to meeting the needs of others. As we each must find our own route to what the Ancient calls the highest good of self-realization, we also have to choose our own paths to the complete good of using our knowledge, skills, and wisdom to the benefit of our communities, workplaces, nations, and, perhaps, even to humanity. As we cannot begin to achieve self-realization until we acquire sufficient experience, expertise, resources, and judgment, he notes that only mature people can understand the necessity of applying what they have learned to the benefit of others.
We need only observe the behavior of those approaching or having just passed their fiftieth year to understand the nature of the biological and moral imperative Aristotle describes. In their fifties, multimillionaires Michael Bloomberg, John Corzine, and Steve Forbes each decided to leave successful business careers and run for high office. Although not quite as rich as the members of that trio, when approaching their fifties, Dianne Feinstein and Jane Harman chose to forgo lives of leisure in favor of the burdens of service in the United States Congress. Without great personal wealth, mid-centurians Patty Murray, Louise Slaughter, and Blanche Lambert likewise threw their hats into the same Capitol Hill ring. And need I mention the 150 or so boomers (including the winner) who vied against each other in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election? Across the nation, countless other, less well-known men and women in their fifties are running, or are considering a run for, public offices ranging from statewide positions to local school boards. And more impressive to an Aristotelian are the thousands of ordinary men and women who, on reaching their mid-centuries, are stepping out of their lifelong careers to serve in nonprofit organizations or to teach in public schools.
At the same time, many people in and around their fifties who can afford to retire nonetheless are opting to stay in business in search of the traditional career fulfillment still eluding them: among them Scott McNeely (Sun), Carleton “Carly” Fiorina (Hewlett-Packard), John Chambers (Cisco), Steve Jobs (Apple), and Larry Ellison, to cite just high-tech CEOs. Many such businesspeople believe they still can serve society best simply by creating wealth. But in the same industry, hundreds, if not thousands, of wealthy semiretired mid-centurians are turning to philanthropy in search of personal satisfaction, including Netscape’s Jim Barksdale, International Data Group’s Patrick and Lore Harp-McGovern, Microsoft’s Paul Allen, PeopleSoft’s Dave and Cheryl Duffield, and Jim Clark.
Like you and me, each of these boomers has an itch to scratch. What we don’t know is which tree—public office, business leadership, or philanthropy—is likely to provide the most effective scratching post. This is a practical question even for someone like me who has no bent for high office, will never be a CEO of anything, and will never have enough money to qualify as a philanthropist. For in thinking about Aristotle, I was forced to admit that it had been some 20 years since I made an altruistic commitment of time to any community activity, including jury service. The consequences of this hit home in October 2003, when it dawned on me and many other Californians that the cumulative effect of our failures to be involved in our communities was that we were being governed by a “terminator.” My wife’s immediate response was to own up to her civic responsibility and volunteer her time to work in the forthcoming presidential campaign for the candidate she found most virtuous. Me, I hemmed and hawed. How could I decide what was the best contribution I could make to my city, state, and nation? Indeed, the open question is whether members of my generation can find the fulfillment we seek most effectively through community service, wealth creation, charity, or a combination of each.
Aristotle’s view is that it all depends. Clearly, men and women take the first steps toward realizing the complete good when they choose to participate in endeavors that contribute to the public weal, but he says it’s not a foregone conclusion they will achieve their goal. Their happiness ultimately depends upon the degree to which their pursuits, whether in politics, business, or community service, are virtuous. And the complete good of virtuous participation in such activities is no easier to achieve than the highest good of personal development. Both require hard work, and both must start with rigorous thought about the ends one chooses to pursue.
To appreciate why, we first need to review a few pages of rather complex Aristotelian theory. When I recently reviewed it, I not only found it useful in helping me to decide how to act more virtuously in my community, I also was amazed to find that the Ancient resolves the main issue that bedevils students of leadership today: how to evaluate a “great” leader who is obviously effective but clearly a bad person. In doing so, he offers guidelines that help us make meaningful, appropriate, and moral judgments about the leadership of contemporary political and business leaders. After all, Enron’s CEO, Kenneth Lay, was Fortune’s “most respected” CEO! More directly, we can apply Aristotle’s test of leadership virtue to our personal motivations to serve our communities.
Aristotle says the good of a community is “greater and more perfect” than the good of any one individual. What is better, one (or even a few) excellent individual(s) or “a cityful?” he asks. He answers: A good community provides the environment in which everyone has the opportunity to realize his or her personal excellence. Hence, the role of the “statesman” (leader in modern parlance) is to create the conditions in which his fellow citizens all can find happiness. In order to create those conditions, a statesman needs special traits and skills, among which are intelligence and technical knowledge. To gain such intelligence, one needs first to master some discipline, whether a science or an art. People who do so effectively are said to possess intellectual excellence, a trait measured by their skill in calculations (designing a computer chip) or in theoretical reasoning (making investments in futures markets). Possessing, then developing and effectively using, this kind of intelligence is necessary to succeed at work, make contributions to knowledge, create wealth, and realize one’s personal potential. It is also a prerequisite for political leadership. However, Aristotle adds, those necessary technical skills aren’t sufficient.
More important, Aristotle says a leader also needs practical wisdom. Practical wisdom has “nothing to do with calculating magnitudes,” nothing to do with science, theory, disciplinary knowledge, or knowledge of facts in any way. It is concerned “neither with eternal and unchangeable truth nor with anything and everything that comes into being (and passes away again). Instead, it deals with matters where doubt and deliberation are possible.” In particular, practical wisdom is not concerned with the way things are but with “how things can be other than they are.” In other words, it is about how conditions in society and organizations could be made better. And “it implies the use of one’s faculty of opinion in judging matters” relating to what is right and wrong for a group, or society as a whole.
In Aristotle’s eyes, such practical wisdom is the prerequisite of “moral excellence,” the sine qua non of leadership: “That is why we say Pericles and men like him have practical wisdom. They have the capacity to see what is good for themselves and for humankind.” The practical wisdom possessed by Pericles, Athens’ most brilliant and virtuous leader, had nothing to do with his ability to calculate or even his ability to administer; instead, it related to his moral excellence, his capacity for effective deliberation about human affairs. Practical wisdom is the skill Pericles used to identify the policies and programs that would make Athenians collectively happy, the actions required to create a good society characterized by justice for all. Hence, though virtuous leaders have skill-based intellectual excellence, more important, they possess the moral excellence that derives from practical wisdom.
Aristotle concludes that virtuous leaders in the Periclean mold are rare, but their scarcity is not due to a shortage of leadership capacity in the human race. Instead, he believes the virtue manifested by those rare leaders is an acquired trait; he believes leaders are made, not born. Indeed, they are self-made. He concedes that many leaders aren’t virtuous and even grants that it is possible for leaders entirely lacking in virtue to be successful. Today, we need only check the daily paper to find examples of leaders who lack virtue but who do the right thing, at least on occasion. But, Aristotle adds, “While people may perform just acts without actually being just themselves, they do so either involuntarily or through ignorance.” Such leaders are neither virtuous nor can they be depended on to do the right thing again tomorrow.
Aristotle also acknowledges that leaders lacking in virtue can be effective. His pupil, Alexander, was an effective conqueror as, in modern times, Mussolini was noted for having made Italy’s notoriously inefficient railroads run on time. Yes, a morally weak or even bad person blessed with great intellect (Osama bin Laden, perhaps) might effectively calculate how to achieve a bad end and might even attain a good end by the wrong means. But Aristotle argues there will be no virtue in either act because effectiveness is not the sole measure of leadership. Instead, virtuous leaders are those who are effective at pursuing a moral end. At all times, the conscious goal of a just leader is to help followers achieve what is good for them, which, on occasion, may be something different from what they think they want. Hence, in addition to effectiveness, leadership has a moral dimension: the capacity to discern and provide justice.
In Aristotle’s view, justice is the virtue associated with achieving the complete good. Indeed, justice is “the complete virtue,” the measure of all public actions, not only the actions of leaders but of every action people take in relationship to their community. All public actions must be for the benefit of others if they are to be considered virtuous: “Justice alone of all the virtues is thought to be the good of others.” Even the virtue of friendship has self-serving elements, because friends provide that “mirror reflection” of our own behavior. In contrast, the goal of justice is solely to benefit others. But Aristotle fears he will be misunderstood. We might think he means that leaders cannot or should not derive personal satisfaction from their virtuous public acts. But who will act justly if such acts involve no pleasure or, worse, if they are painful? He thus amends his assertion slightly, saying justice is the “complete virtue because he who possesses it can make use of his virtue not only for himself but also in his relations with his fellow man.” Virtuous leaders like Pericles, Gandhi, Lincoln, and Churchill govern for the good of others; yet, and this is Aristotle’s point, they are not entirely selfless because they become happy in the process.
But what is justice? To Aristotle, justice has to do with people getting their fair share of goods: their just proportion of money, power, honor, and all other social rewards and benefits. Unfortunately, there is no simple or mechanical way to calculate the just proportions of such goods. He says an equal distribution of goods will not be just because the social contributions of individuals aren’t equal; clearly, he is no Marxist. And basing the distribution of social goods on heredity isn’t fair, either. He would ask why unqualified sons of Yalies should be entitled to attend Poppy’s alma mater. So Aristotle goes down the list of possible principles of distribution and concludes that the fairest is merit. Ergo, individuals deserve rewards proportionate to the contributions they make to society. Alas, he admits such a reckoning is easier said than made.
Because social contribution is a complex, multifaceted concept, evaluating it fairly requires reasoned deliberation, the exercise of practical wisdom. When they undertake such deliberations, leaders are “the guardians of what is just.” When allocating social goods, virtuous leaders make their decisions based on reason and not on self-interest. Virtuous Yale alumni don’t attempt to get their own low-achieving kids admitted ahead of better students. Especially, just leaders don’t take for themselves disproportionate shares of social and economic benefits; instead, they are recompensed for their efforts in terms of due “honor and privilege.” For example, the president of the United States is not the highest paid person in America; instead, he gets the honor of being addressed, respectfully, as “Mr. President” and the privilege of living in a big house, rent free. But those honors and privileges adhere to the office, not to the person, and they are revoked at the end of service. But even those relatively great honors are a small thing to “the magnanimous man,” the true leader who derives happiness from serving the common good. Indeed, service to others comes close to being Aristotle’s definition of leadership. Leaders give: like good friends, they are generous to others. In contrast, injustice occurs when leaders take more than their share of the good and less than their share of the bad, taking as much power, praise, and compensation as they can, and avoiding responsibility by passing the blame when things go wrong.
Justice, Aristotle notes, is one of the few virtues that cannot be measured with reference to his golden mean: It is impossible for a person to be “too just.” Too much leadership, however, can be bad. When one person has too much power, Aristotle says the overall interests of the community are harmed. Measured on his scale of moderation, a society in which power is concentrated in one person is out of balance, and the result is the excessive condition called tyranny:
| DEFECT | VIRTUE | EXCESS |
 |
||
| PASSIVITY | LEADERSHIP | TYRANNY |
In a tyranny, the populace is justified in ousting its leader. Because the good of the community has priority over the interests of any individual, Aristotle says even a benevolent dictator—one who has no evil intent but who nevertheless exercises too much power—should be ostracized (exiled from society). He concedes there can be extremely wise and benevolent dictators, but he adds such persons are not easy to find. Even when found, the very nature of benevolent dictatorship hinders the development of the citizenry because people are political animals who need to participate in their own governance in order to realize their full humanness. Because all people have the capacity to reason, he concludes they all need the opportunity to exercise it. Thus, paternalistic leaders lack virtue because they impede the development of those dependent upon them. In Aristotle’s view, such leaders forfeit their right to lead when they deny the citizenry the political power they need to grow through the process of making moral choices for themselves.
Aristotle sees leadership as a duty rather than a privilege, a duty of the best and brightest individuals. Since such individuals must forgo their self-interest while governing, the duties of leadership can be burdensome. Hence, he proposes that the burden should not be exercised by a single individual but, instead, rotated among all those qualified to lead, among the circle of virtuous friends described in the preceding chapter. This would prevent not only tyranny but also an unfair distribution of responsibility in society. And if there are personal benefits to leadership, like the opportunity to learn by making important decisions, those opportunities should be shared, as well.
And where does leadership begin? Because the purpose of governance is to serve the needs of the citizenry and not the ruler’s interests, virtuous leaders must have a clear view of community needs and goals: the common good. The leaders of Sparta, much like Napoleon and Hitler in later eras, thought military conquest was the goal of the state. Consequently, they made decisions designed to attain it: for example, funding military training. Had they, instead, viewed the end of the state as the development of its citizenry, they might have made quite different policy choices, like funding the arts and sciences.
While it is essential for leaders not only to identify a goal worth pursuing, they must also communicate it clearly and constantly to their followers. That’s why Jefferson wrote (in the second paragraph of the Declaration) that the goal of the country being founded in 1776 was to provide conditions in which all its citizens could pursue happiness—realize their full potential—and that the justice of its government would be measured by the extent to which it facilitated that end. Those virtuous goals were quite different from the ends of power and aristocratic privilege sought by Britain’s George III and, in Jefferson’s Aristotelian eyes, justified ostracizing the king.
Like friendship, Aristotle says, “Justice in political matters is found among people who are free and equal and who share a common life in order that their association will bring self-sufficiency.” So the role of a just leader is to create the conditions in which a community of free and equal people may work together for the common good, conditions in which each and all can find happiness. In sum, virtuous leaders create justice, defined as the opportunity for all members of the community to realize their potential. As Aristotle explains, “Things that are just create happiness for the social and political community.” One can see how Jefferson found his inspiration for the Declaration in Aristotle.
There is an important principle implied in all Aristotle has to say about leadership: The activity has two dimensions, practical and moral. He recognizes that most leaders are measured by the practical yardstick of effectiveness. In his day, that usually meant effectiveness at obtaining and maintaining power. He does not deny that effectiveness is a legitimate metric, but he argues it is not the only standard by which one should take the measure of leaders. In addition to effectiveness, there is a moral dimension: Virtuous political leaders also are concerned with providing justice. The tyrant who ruled Sparta was effective; Pericles was effective and just; hence, Pericles was virtuous. Measuring political leadership both by a standard of effectiveness and one of justice makes it possible to clarify the difference between the performances of leaders who would otherwise seem to be equal: Mao was effective; Gandhi was just. The application of the Aristotelian principle to contemporary leadership allows us to raise useful questions. For example, in 2004, when U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft justified the Patriot Act, he did so in terms of its effectiveness in fighting terrorism. Aristotle would ask, to what extent did Ashcroft also weigh issues of justice in his evaluation of the law? As we see in the following chapter, Aristotle’s principle is also useful in evaluating the virtue of contemporary business leadership.
Appropriate motivation is also inherent in what Aristotle says about the practical wisdom of leaders. Much as right desire is the primary measure of virtue in one’s private life, desiring the good for others is the primary metric of public virtue. In his view, leaders cannot be “accidentally just,” nor can they be just if they merely appear to be serving the interests of followers when, in fact, they are not. To illustrate the ethical centrality of right motivation, Aristotle cites a fragment of brilliant dialogue from a lost play by Euripides:
Character A: I killed my mother, brief is my report.
Character B: Were you both willing, or neither she nor you?
As difficult as it is to set aside the relevance of this 2,500-year-old exchange to the current debate about the morality of physician-assisted suicide, we need to focus on the reason Aristotle cited it: to call attention to the significance of motivation as a factor in ethical analysis. In this ethical mini-case, Euripides implies three different situations, each morally quite distinct from the others:
First Situation: A mother is murdered [“in cold blood”] by her child. Second Situation: A mother’s request for a mercy killing is granted by an [unloving] child who is only too happy to comply.
Third Situation: A mother [perhaps dying from a terrible disease] asks her child to end her pain. [With great sadness and reluctance] the child grants the mother’s wish.
Only the latter situation contains the possibility of ethical virtue. Although the moral choices most of us face are less dramatic than these, Aristotle says motivation is a powerful indicator of the degree to which virtue is present in all our social acts. For example, one might say, “Michael Bloomberg serves as mayor of New York, brief is my report.” But is Bloomberg’s service virtuous? To answer that question fairly and properly, we would need to know the unknowable: his motivations. Is he serving for his own sake or the sake of others? Is his goal the good of the New York citizenry, or is it to satisfy his own needs for fame, power, praise, or whatever? Similarly, did Steve Forbes and John Corzine run for office in order to enhance the good of the citizenry, or did they run in order to enact legislation to serve their own interests or the interests of members of their tax bracket? Obviously, no one but Bloomberg, Forbes, and Corzine could answer such questions with certainty. Aristotle’s point is not that we should assess their virtue, but that they should engage in the introspection and ethical analysis involved in assessing their own motivations. Especially, we each should question our own motivations whenever we choose to run for office or engage in other community activities “for the good of others.”
However, when it came to evaluating the candidacies of those three gentle billionaires, it’s safe to assume that many voters wondered about their respective motivations for wanting higher office because followers know motivation has a powerful impact on the behavior of their leaders. Sooner or later, the reasons a leader chooses to serve become apparent to all. For example, Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia is, by all accounts, not in the political game for the money. In general, he is an extremely thoughtful and courageous representative of the citizens of his state and nation. Yet there are indications that he harbors desires for undue honor and recognition. In displays of narcissism unusual even by the ego-inflated standards of the U.S. Senate, Byrd has managed to have nearly three dozen federally funded public projects named after him. Although West Virginia’s state policy dictates that individuals must be dead for 50 years before their statues can grace the state-house, Byrd is the sole exception, as he is with the two Robert C. Byrd courthouses, four Robert C. Byrd highways, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank telescope, the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dams, and 20-plus other products of federal pork bearing his name. While Byrd has mastered the technical skills of leadership and most often does the right thing, he seems to fall a bit short of possessing Aristotelian moral virtue.
Motivation also is related to the exercise of political decision-making. Aristotle asks if a leader’s motivation is the desire to create a good society for the benefit of others, or is it the desire for the personal satisfaction derived from solving problems? While those may not be mutually exclusive activities, Aristotle says that a problem solver, at best, may stumble on the good, while a leader with practical wisdom is focused at all times on the good of the community and, thus, is more likely to achieve it. Of course, when leaders are engaged in decision making, observers can’t tell if they are merely exercising intellectual excellence (treating social issues as technical problems with calculable solutions) or utilizing practical wisdom (asking what is best for society and engaging in the tough moral deliberations attendant to such choices). Only the latter is virtuous in Aristotle’s eyes.
Consider Michael Bloomberg. In a 2002 article in the New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert portrays the mayor as a quintessential problem solver who sees “his primary role as managerial” and measures his political success by the same calculations he formerly used to assess his performance as a businessman. According to Kolbert, the mayor treats each problem on his agenda as technical and discrete, and the measure of his performance is the degree of his effectiveness in solving it: “As far as he is concerned, the only reason to talk about a problem is to solve it, the corollary of which is that only problems that can be solved are really worth talking about.”
When presenting his first city budget, Mayor Bloomberg said, “I am going to show you how we got into this situation … and a solution to work our way out of this situation.” The mayor’s motivation for public service seems to be, in part at least, gaining pleasure from solving problems (like a budget deficit). Aristotle says there is nothing wrong with that; indeed, by applying the financial skills Bloomberg developed in his business career to the problems of his city, he may be halfway along the road to virtuous leadership.
What seems missing is the exercise of practical wisdom, the conscious deliberations about justice and what constitutes a good end from the perspective of others, the citizens of New York. According to Kolbert, the mayor “rarely addresses the emotional or moral complexities of life in the city.” Which isn’t to say he doesn’t entertain diverse, even opposing, views about what the policies of the city should and should not be. To his credit, he holds regular salons at his Manhattan townhouse, where it is said he carefully sounds out the opinions of influential people on the pressing issues of the day. Nonetheless, published reports about those salons describe them more as networking opportunities than Aristotelian seminars among true friends. Apparently, what doesn’t occur at the salons is candid discussion about why or why not the mayor is effective or whether or not he has a clear concept of the good.
Bloomberg donates his own money generously to worthy causes, but he seems less giving of himself. For example, in his first year in office, when he spoke in public, he typically cited a few numbers and facts, then abruptly left without engaging in discussion with his constituencies. He seldom attempted to address the needs of his various audiences and seemed not to inquire what those needs might be. He brings to mind King Creon, the tragic hero in one of Aristotle’s favorite plays, Antigone. Creon’s flaw was a lack of empathy, a trait that begins with listening. In the end, Creon brings down his own throne because he cannot hear what his people want; he is too sure that he is right. The message Bloomberg often sends to the citizenry is that the mayoralty is about him and not about them. In this way, his behavior in public office is a continuation of the way he ran his company, Bloomberg L.P., as a former employee explained to Kolbert: “When you get hired, you get this stack of publicity. Every single article is about Mike Bloomberg. Every article … it’s all about Mike, and it always has been about him.”
To summarize and oversimplify, in his first year in office, Michael Bloomberg displayed uncommon intellectual excellence but seemed not yet to have acquired the proper motivation and practical wisdom needed to be a virtuous leader by Aristotle’s standards. Even though he is in his sixties, it is not too late for him to grow and develop his capacity to put his followers’ needs first. To do so would require some introspection on his part, beginning with asking himself some hard questions about the choices he makes. In particular, he would have to ask, For whose good do I serve? There were signs he was growing in office in this second year. His decision to ban smoking in restaurants and bars was morally courageous, and, while we cannot know his motivation, a strong case can be made that he acted for the welfare of others.
Another prominent New Yorker, Bill Clinton, often displays a lack of practical wisdom and adamant resistance to the self-analysis needed to acquire it. In 2002, even some of the best Friends of Bill were observed shaking their heads in dismay when it was revealed the former president was entertaining the idea of becoming a television talk show host. In so doing, he provided additional grist for his continuing ridicule by critics. David Letterman mused that Clinton “could become the first president ever to be impeached and canceled”; and Maureen Dowd opined “the spectacle of Bill” on daily TV would be “gratifying for him, giving him all the attention and love he craves.” She pictured him “ordering a vente white chocolate extra-whip mocha at the Starbucks in Harlem, complaining to the cashiers that his post-presidential life is not being taken seriously enough.” To that very point, friends and foes alike were left wondering why, with Jimmy Carter serving as a living example of virtuous ex-presidential behavior, the undisciplined Clinton would choose, instead, to model his post–White House life on show biz celebrities.
On this score, most Americans appear to be unconsciously Aristotelian: In their judgment, Clinton’s behavior manifests “wrong desire.” Although he is in his late fifties, many see him as immaturely chasing sensual pleasure, cheap fame, and easy money. They are waiting for him to grow up and become the statesman he is capable of becoming, to serve others, and to promote the collective good at home and in the world. Given Clinton’s manifest intellectual excellence and potential for working for the benefit of his nation and humankind, it hurts us to see continuing evidence that his leadership is still all about him.
In 2001, a friend sent me the following e-mail:
It’s a pity for the country that Bill Clinton wasn’t mature enough to be President when he was elected in ’92, or even in ’96. Imagine how great a president he would have been if he had been sworn in for the first time in 2001. Given what he’s learned, what he’s been through, he may now be wise enough to meet the challenge of the job. Maybe we should change the Constitution to bar anyone under the age of fifty from serving as President. Wasn’t it Plato who said the earliest one can become wise—and be a good leader—is age fifty-five?
To Clinton’s credit, when his autobiography was published in 2004, he began to show some insight into his own motivations. When asked why he had risked everything on the fling with Monica Lewinsky, he answered, “Because I could.” He went on to admit that it was “the worst possible reason” because it represented an abuse of the power of high office. He finally seemed to recognize that virtuous leaders are not voluptuaries or sultans; instead, they are temperate, self-disciplined individuals who serve for the good of others. He seemed to be growing up.
Aristotle raises the important issue of maturity in the context of the behavior of leaders and their pursuit of the complete good. On Aristotle’s long list of instrumental goods, youth is a missing element. Today, we say, “You can never be too rich, too beautiful, too thin, or too young,” but Aristotle saw youth mainly as a phase one should seriously endeavor to outgrow. His low opinion of youth was doubtless influenced by his relationship with the young Alexander. Try as Aristotle might to instill an ethical conscience in the young prince, Alexander went to his early grave giving in to every temptation that came along. If ever there was a slave to animal instinct and passion, it was the young master from Macedonia. Alexander wanted nothing but fame, power, wealth, and sex; and those who resisted his desires, he slaughtered. As he dashed across the world indiscriminately slaying and/or screwing nearly everyone he encountered, he was a lousy advertisement for Aristotelianism.
From his bad experience with the Great One, Aristotle concluded that philosophy is wasted on the young. The teenage Alexander lacked the experience to make sense of his teacher’s complex moral arguments. Alexander was a brilliant lad who, with but little effort, could repeat back to his teacher whatever he had been taught, be it history, Greek grammar, or geometry. But he was not mature enough to internalize moral lessons. He lacked the experience needed to link Aristotle’s discussions of virtue to his own behavior and thus failed to retain what he had been taught. Fifteen centuries later, Shakespeare read Aristotle’s thoughts on the subject of youth and, in Troilus and Cressida, summarized poetically the Ancient’s timeless insights:
Paris and Troilus, you have both said well;
And on the cause and question now in hand
Have glozed, but superficially; not much
Unlike the young men, whom Aristotle thought
Unfit to hear moral philosophy.
Even Aristotle’s best young students, the class stars most proficient in the abstractions of mathematics, were unable to understand issues of ethical conduct. After observing his brightest students’ moral failures, he concludes that finding the good is not like finding answers to math problems. While Aristotle considers mathematics atop the hierarchy of intellectual disciplines because it requires the highest-order abstract reasoning, he also sees it as a young person’s game requiring the creative application of rules and principles, an exercise at which facile, energetic young minds are especially adept. In contrast, the pursuit of the good requires experience rather than rules and moral deliberation rather than principles. Further, and counter to the essence of mathematics, it requires right desire. Developing the kind of practical reasoning used in math and science will not lead to virtuous behavior until and unless it is directed toward the achievement of some good. Aristotle explains the complex relationship between practical and ethical forms of reasoning:
The element of desire partakes of reason in so far as it listens to and obeys it; this is the sense in which we speak of paying heed to one’s father, or to one’s friends—and not that in which we speak of the rational in mathematics.
I think he means that well-brought-up young people will apply moral rules and do the right thing because that is what their parents told them to do. But, only later, when they have sufficient life experience, will they learn how to apply their reasoning abilities to ethical concerns and thus be able to choose aright. The two rational processes are related but not the same. In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., “Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.”
And philosophy is about making distinctions between things that seem to be the same but aren’t. We all use words in a general fashion, which is fine in daily discourse but dangerous when it comes to public matters. Unless leaders are precise, they will not know what ends to pursue or what to do to obtain them. Nonetheless, when engaged in making necessary distinctions, leaders must be careful not to slip into sophistry, that subtle, tricky, superficially clever way of making a fallacious argument. Aristotle calls our attention to the difference between being clever and being wise. He says we should not confuse clever reasoning, calculating, and logic on the one hand, with wisdom, judgment, and understanding on the other. Alexander was extremely clever: When attracting followers to join him in making war, he overwhelmed his opposition with brilliance. He had a high IQ, but he asked the wrong questions, omitted matters he couldn’t calculate, and ignored inconvenient consequences and costs. He was the Classical era equivalent of an analytical whiz kid logically demonstrating with pie charts and overheads the most effective way to commit mayhem. Since clever men can fool us with bad arguments, Aristotle advises that we should look instead to “sympathetic judges,” wise people who in their deliberations about public affairs look to fairness as well as efficiency, explore both long- and short-term consequences, and consider the costs and benefits to all those who may be affected.
In particular, he says we should be wary of young people who varnish foolishness with impressive displays of data and clever arguments. Ever since Donald Rumsfeld and I were both young men in the Nixon administration, I have marveled (usually at a safe distance) at how he uses his quickness of mind to run intellectual roughshod over men and women who, in my opinion, hold more ethical positions. According to Chuck Colson, another Nixon staffer, in seeking to ingratiate himself with the president in 1971, Rumsfeld volunteered to be the White House’s “go between” with the respected polling organization run by his Princeton classmate, George Gallup Jr. Rumsfeld wouldn’t actually ask Gallup to juggle the numbers in national polls, mind you; he would try only to influence the way questions were asked and when results were released! Indeed, few who have served in high public office in my lifetime have been as good at splitting ethical hairs as Rumsfeld. Who else could so confidently and quickly draw distinctions between prisoner “abuse” and “torture” and between “prisoners of war” and “unlawful combatants”? The issue isn’t politics: Rumsfeld’s parsing of the truth reminds one of nothing more than Bill Clinton’s explication of the verb “is.” Plato taught Aristotle that you can’t win an argument with a sophist, and Aristotle later added that being smart isn’t the same as being good, or doing good.
Examples of immoral cleverness are found at both ends of the ideological spectrum. Throughout the 1990s, the majority on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors were moral relativists who advanced postmodernist arguments for why the city should allow “street people” to sleep on its sidewalks, in public places, and in private doorways and why it should support them with regular cash payments. In question were thousands of drug and alcohol addicts, able-bodied people capable of making reasoned choices, not the mentally ill or those temporarily homeless for economic reasons. The majority on the board argued that the desire of the addicts to live on the streets was as legitimate as the desire of the majority to live under a permanent roof, and that neither choice (or “lifestyle”) can, or should, be assumed “normal.”
In contrast, the Aristotelian minority on the board had few qualms about calling the desire to sleep on the street abnormal behavior because a basic characteristic of Homo sapiens at all times and in all cultures has been to seek shelter. All normal humans need shelter, so it follows that people who do not have shelter cannot be happy, and it is the responsibility of those with the authority and wherewithal in society to give those without sufficient power and wealth the opportunity to pursue happiness. Thus, they argued, if San Francisco were a Good Society, it would provide shelter and addiction treatment for all those who seek it. Of course, no one would be forced to seek the things needed by all normal humans, and, indeed, some lone wolves would choose not to. The choice would be theirs; but, if they chose to stand alone, they would not be allowed to infringe on others’ pursuits of happiness (they would not be allowed to urinate in public, sleep on private property, aggressively cadge for drug money, and engage in other forms of behavior that transferred the costs of their chosen lifestyle to others). In particular, the city wouldn’t continue to give them the cash that subsidized their chosen way of life.
These politically incorrect conclusions were unpalatable to the majority of supervisors, who cleverly argued that there is no such thing as “normal” behavior and that it was impossible to make normative generalizations about all of humanity (“Who are we to say they are wrong?”). Basing their decision on such moral relativism, the city fathers and mothers defended the rights of the homeless to sleep wherever they chose and, for over a decade, refused to enforce statutes relating to trespassing, vagrancy, and loitering. The young chairman of the board was so adept at making these arguments that, in 2003, he was almost elected mayor in the closest election in my beloved home-town’s history. Aristotle reminds us that when leaders reason well but lack an ethical core, they are smart but not virtuous. In my view, a great many San Francisco voters didn’t make that distinction.
Only after years of observing the actions of others, experiencing the consequences of our own actions, studying and discussing the customs and habits of society—and through repeated efforts to find and do the good—are we finally able to overcome our immature impulse to deal with ethical issues as if they were practical problems solvable by the logic that informs mathematics. The intelligent but immature person might conclude, logically, “We would all have more money in our pockets if we didn’t pay taxes.” But justice, the goal of leadership, is not so easily arrived at. Justice is not the product of a facile mind but, rather, the result of wisdom. Good moral judgment is displayed by mature people who are able to bring together all they have learned and then to apply it imaginatively to issues for which there were easy answers when they were young. Lingering immaturity shows when individuals of great intellect fail to consider the effects on others of their public acts, when they fail to consider the moral as well as technical implications of the choices they make.
To illustrate, many wealthy and powerful people who have lobbied successfully for a reduction in taxation have not stepped forward to volunteer their time and talent to take up the slack in community services resulting from budget cuts in federal, state, and local agencies. Despite repeated calls from both Presidents Bush, Colin Powell, Nancy Reagan, and other influential advocates of a “thousand points of light,” Americans seem not to be stepping to the plate to volunteer their time and money to offset the shortfalls in essential public services. In fact, most of our volunteering is of the once-a-year kind we are all proud and guilty of: slicing turkeys for the poor on Thanksgiving (my own last benevolent act). Convenience seems to be the prime criterion for our volunteerism. MSNBC’s Eric Alterman observes that most of the effort and time volunteered by wealthy people goes to help local operas, museums, hospitals, and, particularly, their children’s schools: “In this respect, volunteerism helps the rich get richer.” Arianna Huffington sees things similarly, explaining she once believed “the private sector—especially conservative multimillionaires who want less government involvement—would rise to the occasion and provide the funding needed to replicate the programs that work, sustain them, and bring them to market.” But now she has concluded that such individuals were not interested in supporting “groups who were good at saving lives but not at raising funds,” and says she “sadly discovered how much easier it was raising money for the opera or a fashionable museum.”
In Aristotle’s view, the pursuit of the complete good entails more than service in public office. The virtuous person needs to be an “enlightened seeker” of happiness. Men and women who are just, who possess practical wisdom, consider the consequences of all their actions on the good of others and adjust their behavior accordingly. To get to the point where one acts virtuously as a matter of course takes time and hard work because there is no way to shortcut the process of maturation. Happily, Aristotle claims it is never too late for us to begin, although he implies that maturation gets harder as we enter old age. The obvious question is, How old do we have to be to begin the process?
People in midlife may experience deep regret when they look back to discover that, in their youth, they unwittingly had laid the foundation for their present unhappiness. Indeed, through a lengthy process of youthful error and subsequent reinforcement, we build layers of defenses that prevent us from learning how to behave virtuously. But Aristotle believes there isn’t much one can do about avoiding the follies of youth while one is young. Instead, we must learn later from those experiences, then devote years of conscious effort to overcoming their residual effects. In midlife and in the company of true friends, we need to reflect on our experiences in order to discover why acting on the certainties of our youth didn’t lead us to where we now need to be. Out of that often-saddening process comes wisdom.
Leadership is beyond the grasp of the young, Aristotle concludes, largely because the essence of leadership is acting for the good of others, and the chief characteristic of immaturity is narcissism. Years after his tutoring experience at the Macedonian royal palace, Aristotle finally came to understand why the teenage Alexander hadn’t gotten it. When he had explained to his famous student that virtuous leaders create conditions under which their followers can realize their potential, those were just words to the adolescent’s ears. Indeed, almost all of moral philosophy is nothing but words until one has lived long enough to be able to reflect on the consequences of one’s own habitual actions. Alexander died at age 33 and, thus, didn’t live long enough to look back in horror at the consequences of his monstrous behavior, behavior in no small part responsible for his early death. The modern mystery is why so many of us, as we push on toward our sixties, don’t learn more from the, albeit smaller, mistakes of our own immature actions.
At midlife, when we have the intellectual skills and experience needed to participate effectively in public affairs, evaluating the behavior of leaders like Clinton, Rumsfeld, and San Francisco’s supervisors may help us to plan our own future courses of public action and to define what we should be doing now to prepare ourselves for pursuing the complete good. While most of us act on smaller stages than presidents and mayors, let alone world conquerors, Aristotle says the challenges that the famous and powerful face are, in essence, the same as those before us all. The process of ethical analysis is the same for Bill and Hillary Clinton as it is for you in deciding whether to lead the local United Way campaign, or for me as I decide whether to run for the school board. As we each plan how best to scratch our own itch for public service, the questions we need to ask about our goals, motivations, and behavior are identical to those Bloomberg, Corzine, and Forbes asked, or should have asked, before choosing to run for office:
Am I engaging in political actions for my personal benefit or for the benefit of others?
Do I have some notion of the good that I am trying to help my community to realize?
How can I best apply my technical knowledge for the benefit of the community? How can I make sure I am using those technical skills to achieve a higher end, and not just using them as an end in itself to keep me busily employed in an ego-satisfying activity?
For the mature man or woman who has developed moral excellence, answering such questions is not difficult. I once worked for the distinguished public servant Elliot Richardson, who served his nation as Undersecretary of State; Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare; Secretary of Defense; and Secretary of Commerce. I observed that he was a true Aristotelian: a skilled leader, lawyer, writer, and artist constantly engaged in learning and doing new things. He was also an appropriately ambitious politician who made no bones about his desire to be president. Yet he would not sacrifice virtue for the honor he so passionately desired. Rather than obey President Nixon’s order to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, Richardson resigned as Attorney General of the United States, saying that it was “one of the easiest decisions in my life.” It also ended his political career.
As philosopher W. F. R. Hardie summarizes, the ethical distinction Aristotle draws between one person’s search for the complete good and another’s “is the difference between the objects which they value and seek to achieve.” Virtuous leaders discipline themselves to put good ends ahead of their ambitions for power and honor. In this regard, Elliot Richardson had done his moral exercises.
Few of us have Richardson’s level of talent, ambition, and opportunities for service. Though most of us want to serve our communities, we don’t want to run for public office, and we don’t hanker for the spotlight. Most of us are more like David Guggenhime, my former classmate at San Francisco’s Lowell High School, who could be an inspiration to all boomers who aspire to achieve Aristotelian excellence through public service. I remember admiring Dave’s energy and enthusiasm when I last saw him back in the early 1960s; nonetheless, until I recently learned what he has been up to, I would have considered him an unlikely candidate for Aristotelian virtue. Indeed, he struck me then as one of those slightly overprivileged nice guys who at that time were routinely admitted to Stanford. After graduating from The Farm, he confirmed my prejudices when he pursued a conventional career in investment management.
However, in his late forties, he underwent a remarkable change. In 1991, he abandoned his business career in order to make a 12-year commitment to enriching the education of 29 underprivileged children, pledging to help them get the brand of first-rate schooling he had enjoyed while growing up in toney Pacific Heights. Working with these youngsters as their tutor, mentor, and counselor throughout their elementary and high school years, Dave also met monthly with their parents to reaffirm their commitment to the educational goals of his program. Obviously, this job is too big for any one person, and Dave has recruited some 60 volunteers to help, each of whom dedicates three or four afternoons a week to afterschool mentoring and tutoring. Dave also has hired a few college students to tutor advanced subjects. Depending on how well Dave’s students are doing in school, they spend from 6 to 9 hours per week with their tutors. Saturday sessions are arranged for those who need additional help, and during the summer, all the kids attend a 6-week program tailored to each of their needs. For his efforts, Dave has received the Marin County Martin Luther King Humanitarian Award and the 2000 United Way of the Bay Area Volunteer Merit Award. To those I would add the highest compliment I can think of: Dave is the truest Aristotelian I know.
Clearly, it was easier for Aristotle than it is for me to participate in virtuous public activities. He lived in a small-scale community where the opportunity for meaningful political participation was far greater than it is for one living in a modern, impersonal metropolis. To participate, all he had to do was head to the local acropolis and engage directly in the democratic process with his fellow citizens. I couldn’t do the same with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; they are unlikely to welcome the unsolicited sharing of my Aristotelian ideas about the city’s homeless problem. Indeed, true citizen participation in political processes is extremely rare today in all large societies. Perhaps the best opportunity for ordinary individuals to effectively participate in philosophy and politics is the way Aristotle himself engaged with his own community: as a teacher. For boomers, teaching in an elementary or high school is the most practical way in which those of us currently working in technical, managerial, and professional jobs might simultaneously develop our potential and make our greatest contribution to our communities. That assertion is based on several assumptions:
A critical shortage of teachers, particularly in urban schools, and primarily but not exclusively those skilled in math and science.
Most smart, educated people can be effective when teaching small groups of students. Chris Cecil, for 16 years a Manhattan commodity trader, gave up his six-figure salary to teach science to kids, no more than 20 at a time, in a suburban elementary school. Says Cecil, “I had been thinking of going into teaching for 5 years, then my father died suddenly of a heart attack. He had told me, ‘Do it now.’ My income has been reduced, but the rewards are more time with my family and less stress. Most of all I’m having a good time.” Cecil probably wouldn’t be having so much fun if he were facing 37 kids in a class, as some teachers do in inner-city schools.
Good teaching is not correlated with having a degree from a school of education. Instead, teachers’ outlooks and attitudes are more important than training. In general, good teachers are those who are enthusiastic about their subjects and who believe in the capacity of their students to learn. In his mid-forties, Tom Meschery (also a Lowellite, I’m proud to say) decided he wanted to teach high school English. Although his first love was poetry, he had rather unorthodox credentials to teach the subject. His résumé consisted of 10 years in the NBA, during which the 6-foot-6 forward averaged 12.9 points and 8.6 rebounds per game. Good stats, but not the sort most school districts are looking for in one applying to teach Eliot and Pound. Yet Nevada school officials were willing to take the gamble and hire a long shot. They did so and, some 20 years later, big Tom is still teaching English and is one of the most popular teachers in his high school, particularly effective with kids who think poetry (and learning) is for sissies.
Many boomers who, in their twenties, chose teaching as a profession are now burnt out and ready to retire. I recently met a 55-year-old who had spent his entire professional career teaching high school math. He confided he simply had had enough after 30 years in the classroom and had recently retired to become chief financial officer for a start-up business. He explained, “I’m having a ball keeping the books, managing the company’s funds, and providing a little gray-haired wisdom to the two 25-year-old techies who own the business.” There’s an important Aristotelian lesson here: The process of continuing development differs according to individual experiences and needs.
Many more boomers who, in their twenties, chose careers other than teaching are now more than willing to relieve their age peers who have been at it for the last 3 decades. However, to draw on this reserve army of teachers, state legislatures and local school boards would have to change many outdated administrative policies, including an array of union, licensing, and credentialing barriers.
But the main barrier discouraging mature men and women from making the switch to teaching is the job itself, as now constituted. Natalia Mehlman recently left a career in investment banking to teach in the New York City public schools. She admits that she has had, literally, one hell of a time in the classroom:
Lack of parental support, lack of experienced teachers, lack of a safe environment for teachers and students: these are terrible and familiar problems in the city schools, and for all these reasons this first year of teaching will be my last.
Three thousand miles away in inner-city Los Angeles, new teacher Jeff Porter discovered that his charges had never done any homework:
I expected them to read at night, so we could discuss in class. It never happened. I assigned them two chapters to read over Christmas vacation. When they returned only two students had done the work … The kids are adaptable and smart enough, but they had never been pushed hard enough.
Building on what Dave Guggenhime has done, I believe it’s possible to overcome these and other barriers that currently prevent experienced and knowledgeable individuals who want to teach from doing so. Many thoughtful and mature boomers currently burned out in other careers would love to teach—if the students involved want to learn and if there are none of the discipline problems associated with a large classroom of unruly kids. Indeed, most boomers are appalled that public schools fail to teach so many young boys and girls how to read, write, and compute. The source of our collective dismay is the conviction many of us have that, if we were charged with teaching just one or two young people, we could teach them to read; many of us taught our own kids to do so even before they went to kindergarten. Moreover, many of us believe that, given a few uninterrupted hours each week over a couple of years, we could teach almost any youngster arithmetic and, with a little more time, algebra and geometry, as well. Those of us who have engineering and science backgrounds know how fast young people can pick up statistics and even calculus—if they are not in a large classroom, if there are not too many nonacademic distractions to compete against, and if the teacher understands the subject matter and how to apply it to real problems.
That’s where Guggenhime’s program comes in. I believe it succeeds for three reasons: First, he and his tutors work with their students on a one-to-one basis (or in small groups). Second, they set challenging academic goals, refusing to believe that poor kids are necessarily poor students (in Robert Hutchins’s Aristotelian words, the program is predicated on the belief that “the best education for the best is the best education for all”). Finally, Dave and his tutors are supported by their students’ parents.
Dave’s model might serve as a challenge to others of our generation to create variations on what he has done, perhaps to find ways of overcoming some of the barriers even his fine program has failed to surmount. Politically skilled boomers might be able to convince school boards to allow mature, experienced volunteers to come into schools in the mornings (when kids are fresh) to tutor small groups on academic subjects. The regular teachers could monitor and coordinate this activity. Moreover, relieved of the impossible task of teaching 30 kids at a time, the regular teachers might have the pleasure themselves of teaching one child or a small group of children. The problem isn’t that most current, professional teachers are incompetent; they are simply overwhelmed and worn down. When the real work of learning was done, the volunteer teachers could go home, and the afternoons at school could be dedicated to the countless nonacademic activities and programs that don’t require high levels of concentration.
One can imagine dozens of variations of Dave’s program. It might become possible in some states and districts for skilled people in their thirties and forties who aren’t credentialed by schools of education to be licensed to teach and, perhaps, to be paid for it. I don’t pretend to understand all the problems involved, let alone to have the answers. But I know one thing: Nothing will happen unless many more of us follow Dave Guggenhime’s example and commit ourselves to the true pursuit of virtue, excellence, and happiness. I now see that it is what I have to do in the long term (in the short term, in 2004, I signed up for jury duty and decided to work alongside my wife in the upcoming presidential campaign).
As Aristotle causes us to rethink conventional distinctions between work and leisure, Guggenhime’s efforts instructively blur common demarcations between virtuous leadership in public service, paid work, and philanthropy. In the following chapters, we see how all those activities require the identical element of practical wisdom, no matter how rich we are, or what our profession may be.