As with the idea of liberalism, leadership has connoted different purposes and principles at different times. In the modern era the preferred ruler became one who provided the best, most efficient, most advanced management. Or, put another way, the ancients might choose between the philosopher-king and the heroric warrior, while the Christians would want one who is saintly and prudent, and the moderns, later still, look for the manager and the technocrat. These different expectations for leaders are themselves elements of much wider, encompassing claims about what is good and natural, bad or evil, just and true. In our post-modern times leadership of any sort often seems implausible.
Modern leadership is inevitably also bureaucratic and procedural.
Even if a modern regime does not descend into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science , its softer versions of governing remain dystopic, aiming toward homogenisation and efficiency. And we know, too well, that leaderships have indeed brought upon their societies, via the instruments of modernity, horrific tyrannies. We appreciate, too, that benign versions of rulership offer banalities and comfort. In the first section of the course we review some of the key problems of systematically understanding leadership. In the second section of the course we turn to political thought to deepen our sense of what today s dilemmae are about.