An “Uneducated Leader” Cannot Govern Themselves
Plutarch. How to Be a Leader: An Ancient Guide to Wise Leadership. $16.95. 416pp, 4.5X6.75”, hardback. ISBN: 978-0691192116. Princeton: Princeton University Press, November 5, 2019.
*****
The first thing that stands out about this book are the two other texts included in this collection aside for the one the book is titled after: “To an Uneducated Leader” and “Should an Old Man Engage in Politics?” While the main essay sounds inspiring, these two seem more useful for our modern leadership vacuum. The introduction to the first of these essays from the editor restates a note from the previous book in this review set regarding terrorism. Plutarch admonishes those who jump into leadership merely to “exercise power”, viewing such leaders “as insecure and afraid of the people they govern. Educated leaders, conversely, are primarily concerned with the welfare of their constituents, even at the expense of their own power or safety” (1). Elizabeth I and James I need for ghostwriters and advisors was an outcome of their gaps in education; the same lack allowed Dyer to persuade them of invisible enemies including witches and religious zealots. If they were capable of independent research and writing, they would have uncovered Dyer’s deceptions, but instead he stressed that they were retaining power as proof of his strategy’s success. Our current world has become so corrupt that we have had uneducated puppets at the helm even when they purchased degrees from Ivy League universities that appeared to reflect an education. Plutarch argues that by “letting go of the excessive and absolute character of his office, he escaped envy and so avoided danger” (7). If “Reason” guides a leader, he or she can avoid rebellion by sharing power and wealth to help the greater good; but if “paranoia” or terror guides actions, the leader attacks friends and foes alike to instill fear of tyrannical power in others. It is mesmerizing that Plutarch makes these direct accusations against foolish leaders thousands of years ago, and just the other day I heard Republican politicians saying that the FBI calling Trump stupid in the communications means they are biased and their investigation cannot be trusted. If investigators call a leader idiotic after a close analysis of the facts: only seeing the same idiocy in yourself can prevent a politician from conferring. Plutarch stresses that “most leaders” think “that the greatest benefit in governing is the freedom from being governed themselves”, but the “ungoverned” cannot “govern” (12-3). Then, Plutarch explains how Reason is a type of god that guides great leaders by instructing them on what is logical as well as what is moral. In contrast, he concludes the piece by explaining that it is “impossible for vices to go unnoticed when people hold positions of power…. Fortune… after elevating uneducated and unlearned people to even slight prominence through some wealth or glory or political office, immediately makes a show of their downfall” (37). The increase of corruption cases across America is a reflection of this growing stupidity at the top because the fame that comes with power draws the attention of scholars or reporters who describe these vices for a living. Trump has been suffering from this “downfall” since shortly after he inherited his wealth and then promptly mis-invested it; he has just been surviving despite constant descent to new levels of depravity and misery by unprecedented levels of corruption, including financial and electoral fraud. The statement that “presidents are not kings” echoing in the press lately is particularly suitable because while a tyrant can attempt to retain power by increasingly psychotic murderous reign, a president will leave office in no more than eight years, and at that point he or she would be facing the death penalty or life in prison if his belief in his own “freedom from being governed” exceeded the limits of the written law.
The second of these curiously titled essays is referring to men who are over fifty, and answers in the affirmative that they make particularly good leaders because of their wisdom and a great interest in the needs of the people they govern (191-3). The fifty cut-off point is very different to our current election where all of the top runners are in their seventies; while the average lifespan has increased so that this is now the point where we consider the cut off for a man to be “old”, the capacity of men over fifty versus over seventy to perform logical tasks has remained significantly different, so that Plutarch might have adjusted his essay to exclude the senile…
The central essay in this collection is a lecture addressed to Plutarch’s student, Menemachus, at the start of this political career, but unwilling as Plutarch was advising to “apprentice to an experienced leader” for guidance; instead, Plutarch decided to offer examples from several good leaders in this essay that Menemachus might read to learn similar lessons in a more expedited timeframe and without having to serve under another. “Topics… discussed include personal integrity, the importance of friendships, how best to persuade one’s fellow citizens, how not to provoke one’s superiors, and the dangers inherent in rivalry and envy” (41-2). Plutarch warns against entering “public affairs as a money-making occupation”: a good lesson for Trump’s continuing attempts to divert government funds to his private businesses (51). Plutarch also stresses that “those who create personas for themselves to enter political contests and early glory, as actors do for the theater, are guaranteed to suffer a change of heat, either because they have become enslaved to the people they thought they would rule, or because they have clashed with the people they wished to please” (53). Trump has managed to climb into his deep well via this type of theatrical acting. My research into “Shakespeare’s” and Defoe’s” ghostwriters demonstrates how the separation between the logical thinkers drafting the words a ruler is saying (similarly to Trump’s ghostwritten books) and the actor dressed as a ruler who delivers these speeches creates a fatal flaw when the actor goes off-script and acts like him or her self; for example, after Dyer’s death Playfere appeared to go insane as he was no longer capable of delivering logical sermons, but this madness was the result of his loss of the ghostwriter who had been feeding his content. And in the eighteenth century, my “Defoe” study uncovered that Curll got his government-agent patron fired by the Queen in part because he composed scathing reports regarding a court lady’s overspending without realizing that his patron had been spending still more irresponsibly and was also a womanizer and a drunkard; if the two were one and the same, the critical note either would not have been written, or he would not have been overspending, and both of these outcomes might have helped to maintain power.
According to the publisher, this collection is by and about the “ancient biographer and essayist Plutarch”, who wrote more extensively on “the leadership qualities of the eminent Greeks and Romans he profiled in his famous—and massive—Lives, including politicians and generals such as Pericles, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony. Luckily for us, Plutarch distilled what he learned about wise leadership in a handful of essays, which are filled with essential lessons for experienced and aspiring leaders in any field today… Plutarch explains the characteristics of successful leaders, from being guided by reason and exercising self-control to being free from envy and the love of power, illustrating his points with memorable examples drawn from legendary Greco-Roman lives. He also explains how to train for leadership, persuade and deal with colleagues, manage one’s career, and much more.”
Having gradually read philosophy since high school, these ideas seem very familiar, but perhaps my love of knowledge in this regard is not shared by the majority of modern leaders. But if these leaders are inheriting a fictitious War on Terror that has killed over 800,000 people directly and around 3.1 million indirectly according to a 2019 Brown University study, a reasonable leader would stand in direct opposition to the interests of those involved in this and other corruptions. WWII, the deadliest conflict on earth yet killed 70-85 million, but this total was split between the warring countries, whereas the War of Terror has only claimed around 6,797 American soldier casualties or .2%. An equivalent might be if after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and after all of the forces on the other side officially surrendered, the US kept killing millions because while they were continuing this killing a few of their own soldiers were being retaliated against by those afraid for their lives. There was much more to be terrorized by in the Nazi’s indiscriminate murders in concentration camps, so why did the U.S. stop being afraid of a Nazi resurgence enough to stop active warfare? Whereas Germany was shortchanged in land and resources after WWI (this being blamed for its entrance into WWII), it was fairly dealt with in WWII; so, if we look at this conflict with reason, what is preventing a similarly peaceful end to warfare in these new wars. Only absolute corruption explains the stubbornness of condemnation of the “other” without “understanding”. Well, Plutarch has helped me understand our modern politics a bit better, so perhaps he will have individual lessons to teach all students who approach him for free lectures despite the timing of his death.

This book is part of the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series of Princeton University Press, which aims to make the practical wisdom of the ancient world available to modern readers through lively, new translations of classical thinkers. In the present instalment, Jeffrey Beneker turns to Plutarch of Chaeronea as an ancient expert on wise leadership. This is an excellent choice given Plutarch’s profound engagement with the subject, not only in his massive biographical project, the Parallel Lives, but also in his Moralia. In How to Be a Leader, Beneker provides fresh translations of Plutarch’s three most important political essays: To an Uneducated Ruler (Πρὸς ἡγεμόνα ἀπαίδευτον), Precepts of Statecraft (Πολιτικὰπαραγγέλματα) and Whether an Old Man Should Engage in Public Affairs (Εἰ πρεσβυτέρῳ πολιτευτέον). The book offers the Greek text, taken from the Loeb Classical Library, and a facing translation in English. Each text is accompanied by a short introduction and a section with explanatory notes.