Brent Cusher, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Leadership and American Studies at Christopher Newport University, where he teaches courses in the Leadership Studies and Honors programs. His teaching and research interests are on the intersection of leadership and the history of political philosophy, specifically focusing on models of leadership in classical Greek philosophy. His work can be found in the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Leadership Education, Law, Culture, and the Humanities, and The Political Science Reviewer. He has held appointments at Carleton College, Rhodes College, and the University of Alaska (Anchorage). He and his wife live in Newport News, VA with their children, Violet, Zooey, and Axel.
Mark A. Menaldo, Ph.D., is the Department Head and Associate Professor of Liberal Studies. He started at Texas A&M-Commerce in 2017 after spending seven years at Texas A&M International University. He attended Colorado College as an undergraduate student, and it was here that Menaldo discovered the art of close reading and the power of interdisciplinary scholarship. He took these skills with him to Michigan State University where he earned his Ph.D. in Political Science. When he is not teaching, he can usually be found drinking coffee at the local cafe, reading a book, or talking to friends. He and his wife are the proud parents of three children, Oliver, Henry, and Ava. They live in Greenville, TX.
Book - Philosophy and Leadership: Three Classical Models and Cases
Connecting with Mark and Brent
Quotes From This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Connect with Scott Allen
Brent Cusher, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Leadership and American Studies at Christopher Newport University, where he teaches courses in the Leadership Studies and Honors programs. His teaching and research interests are on the intersection of leadership and the history of political philosophy, specifically focusing on models of leadership in classical Greek philosophy. His work can be found in the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Leadership Education, Law, Culture, and the Humanities, and The Political Science Reviewer. He has held appointments at Carleton College, Rhodes College, and the University of Alaska (Anchorage). He and his wife live in Newport News, VA with their children, Violet, Zooey, and Axel.
Mark A. Menaldo, Ph.D., is the Department Head and Associate Professor of Liberal Studies. He started at Texas A&M-Commerce in 2017 after spending seven years at Texas A&M International University. He attended Colorado College as an undergraduate student, and it was here that Menaldo discovered the art of close reading and the power of interdisciplinary scholarship. He took these skills with him to Michigan State University where he earned his Ph.D. in Political Science. When he is not teaching, he can usually be found drinking coffee at the local cafe, reading a book, or talking to friends. He and his wife are the proud parents of three children, Oliver, Henry, and Ava. They live in Greenville, TX.
Book - Philosophy and Leadership: Three Classical Models and Cases
Connecting with Mark and Brent
Quotes From This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Connect with Scott Allen
Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate.
Scott Allen 0:04
Okay, everybody. Today on the podcast, we have Mark Menaldo, an associate professor of liberal studies. He's at Texas A&M Commerce. And then we have Brent Cusher, who is an associate professor in the Department of leadership and American Studies at Christopher Newport University. And they literally just put out a book Philosophy and Leadership: Three Classical Models and Cases. Brent, maybe we'll start with you, sir. What blanks do we need to fill in about your background?
Brent Cusher 2:02
Well, let me just say, Scott, that it's really nice to be here and a real pleasure to be part of the podcast. Yeah, so so I'm in the department of leadership in American Studies at Christopher Newport University. And that was a real blessing for me about 1010 years ago, my whole background is in political science and specifically political theory, that's, you know, the study of philosophic texts from a political point of view, as I'm sure a lot of people know listeners when you're on the academic job market, you apply for anything and everything that seems to be a good fit and got sort of word of this job in Leadership Studies at Christopher Newport University I looked at I said, goodness gracious, that seems to check a lot of the boxes for me a lot of my research was on the concept of foundational law giving and the figure of this sort of crazy mythical figure of the lawgiver, in the writings of Plato and Jacques Rousseau and 18th-century philosopher from Geneva. So generally, this figure sets down foundational laws for a group of people with a very loose sort of association with one another and kind of stamps on this group a sense of peoplehood a sense of nationhood, bringing them together. And I thought, Well, that seems like leadership to me. And I use the word blessing a moment ago. And it really is, I just consider myself lucky every day to have found this field to be able to stretch out a little bit to learn from people from management, psychology, history, classics are all kinds of different fields.
Scott Allen 3:39
Right? It's amazing. Biology, sociology, anthropology, I mean, the list and the lenses adult learning adult development. It's really such a fascinating space. Awesome. Thank you for being here, sir. Mark
Mark Menaldo 3:52
Brent and I have something parallel in our PhDs. I also have a Ph.D. in political science, with an emphasis in political theory of political philosophy. I sort of happened upon leadership because of my dissertation, which was a sort of cockamamie idea. I had presented my dissertation advisor, like, I'm going to do anything I want.
Scott Allen 4:23
Those are the words? I'm going to do anything I want?!
Mark Menaldo 4:25
It was kind of risky, there was no track, there was no sort of path for it. So I took I married my interest in international relations and political philosophy. And I realized that this sort of the gap, you know, what we do as scholars, we look for this gap somewhat. And that gap was leadership, or agency, or individuals. If you know enough about social science, you know that individuals matter very little, nobody cares. At best individuals are simply whatever incentives or disincentives are pushing them in the moment to make this very constrained decision. So I thought, well, isn't it possible to think of individuals risen to certain occasions in there and actually being the sort of at the forefront of change rather than simply reacting to change. So I use political philosophy to inform international relations theory about individuals throughout history that may be are the, you know, the sort of idealized types who actualize change and therefore are our leaders in their own right. And at the time, I was still, pretty much a political scientist. And I talked about blessings. I somehow ended up in contention for the Jablin Dissertation Award.
Scott Allen 5:34
You did? Yes.
Mark Menaldo 5:39
And they flew me to London. It was great. And I had never heard of Leadership Studies.
Scott Allen 5:44
Well, and I believe it's Jepsen that sponsors that award, isn't it?
Mark Menaldo 5:48
Yeah, they paid for the flight. They gave me some money. I took my wife, she was happy. But that's sort of kind of flung me into the leadership world. And I published a book and Joanne Julia's leadership series. Yeah, never since. And that's, and I met Brent through I LA. And from that moment forward, we became good friends. And we've been collaborating ever since. And so all my work in some sense, you know, I want to say I'm Leadership Studies heavy. But yeah, everything I write is for a, I think, a leadership audience.
Scott Allen 6:18
Mark, would you explain this kind of concept to me, I had a colleague, history professor at my institution once say because I said, You teach history, what you must talk about leadership? And he said, No, we really don't talk about leadership. And that really kind of it took me aback. Would you talk about some of the historical roots behind that for listeners? Because you mentioned it a little bit ago, it's, it's, again, the individual is kind of thrust into the context, right the situation and has little agency,
Mark Menaldo 6:48
I think that you know, from a very ordinary language perspective, any listener might understand. I think, if you talk start talking about the importance of individuals in history, in politics in life, from an academic perspective, you might sound naive, what are you missing, you're missing complexity, you're missing nuance, you're missing context, you're missing, which is absolutely true, you should look into all these things. And the more nuance you get, however, the more you are less willing to grant that an individual matters beyond the very constrained choice box, we'll call it right. So that Do you really think that Pericles, sort of transformed Athens and produced a whole new type of way of thinking and living so that the Athenians would absolutely change their mind about war and not and not meet the Spartans on land in a failings to failings combat? No, you know, it's, it's gonna be far more complex than that, then one person running the show one person having the attributes or intelligence or foresight or imagination charisma, to actually move an entire society to a moment and actually changing the rules of the game. So in the past, I guess people would call this great man theory or seems very heroic, but in present-day academia, it's I think people think it's kind of naive. And it's silly to think such it's kind of a fairy tale way of seeing the world. So leadership doesn't matter, for the most part in most academic disciplines.
Scott Allen 8:30
I see that's so interesting to me, because like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, they were fought they are or were in some cases, forces of nature that I don't know that we would be where we are without Elon musk and space travel, I don't know that absent that individual, someone would have come along and said, I'm going to start my own rocket company. Right? It's at least rare that that individual can move forward. So it's such an interesting and different way of thinking about it. Brent, how do you think about it? Do you agree it's naive? Or do you see it as a both-and or what's your perspective?
Brent Cusher 9:08
I suppose if I had to choose, I would probably say more of a both and I mean, I agree with basically everything that Mark had had said the extent to which it seems natural nowadays, to identify sort of forces of history or forces in the system outside of us, you know, controlling things that happen as opposed to individuals with agency individuals making decisions. And I guess I say both and because I do think that one of the lessons of philosophy and one of the things that we try to accomplish with the book is that you know, human life is so nuanced human life is so complex and so complicated, and oftentimes there is no one perfect answer to these questions. And it's, you know, it's important to I think, keep some of those tensions alive to embed some Like Paracles of Athens inside of the context in which he lived, what was the Athenian system of government? Like what was Athenian society? Like? What was he dealing with in terms of the wider global situation? What was the culture like that, that sort of thing, but not to swing too far to the side of, you know, it's all just sort of historically determined, but to try to really hone in on what leadership is doing? I mean, I think it can be tough, but I think it's definitely, definitely worthwhile to a worthwhile project.
Scott Allen 10:29
Barbara Kellerman calls it the leadership system, right. It's a relationship between the individual, the leader, and the followers and the context. And it's probably true that you know, it's a, it's a, it's a mixture of those with an infinite number of variables. And in some instances, it probably was the context. And in some instances, it was probably follower-driven. And the figurehead was only that, in another context, maybe it was that individual that really dragged things forward, or, or, you know, and did great good or great harm in history. Absent that personality, maybe we wouldn't have gone there, or that wouldn't have occurred. So it's so much fun. Let's talk a little bit about Aristotle, Plato, and Machiavelli. But first, I'd love to hear a little bit more about why this book?
Brent Cusher 11:15
We wanted to write a book that really demonstrated a couple of things. First of all, the usefulness of philosophy for having a much more capacious understanding of leadership having a much more, much more interesting understanding of leadership. And ultimately, for certain practical purposes, one of the things that we tried to tackle in the introduction is to say, we know that philosophy can kind of have a reputation, be it these are a lot of thick, extremely difficult books, by authors who, you know, what, what is it, Emmanuel Kant. And what does Martin Heidegger think of, you know, X, Y, and Z. And we want to say that in many respects, that opinion is probably a like a bad and kind of an unfair rap that a lot of philosophic texts if studied properly, if read properly, if read carefully, are easy to access, you're not dealing with pie in the sky issues, but dealing with very practical issues? And in fact, much more than this is beautifully written, and engaging, and worth a second and a third read. And we really feel that Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and Machiavelli's The Prince are our three texts that sort of fit that description to a team. And I think what we wanted to do was to present them in such a way as to say, Oh, you know, it might not be the hardest thing to sit down and read Plato's Republic and think about it from a leadership angle, that it might actually be quite a worthwhile project.
Scott Allen 12:50
Mark, anything to add, sir.
Mark Menaldo 12:52
I think I'll add that one thing that separates this book, from what you might conceive as philosophy is that if you read the chapters, and you read the way we write about philosophy, in some sense, separate ourselves from what you might consider academic philosophy. And I think that is probably one of the barriers of entry in especially into Leadership Studies, because academic philosophy, you get very much lost in that sort of almost sort of these definitional, separate categories, that separate philosophy into fields. So you really, you know, it really is, you kind of have to learn the tools and the trade if you want to participate in academic philosophy or into metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, more on social-political philosophy, logic, and by the time you just remember those five, you're exhausted, Brent and I approach philosophy in the same way, which is we see philosophy as one big conversation amongst individuals across time, what we want to do is invite people to that conversation.
Scott Allen 13:55
That was really, really beautifully said.
Brent Cusher 13:58
Yeah, I think I think that's right, I'd be loath to add anything to that wonderful thing, but I just think one of the barriers to access is just the extent to which academics speak in terms of jargon, at some point, you know, a person simply can express what they're thinking clearly with basic language that everybody can understand. And, and I, you know, I think we both believe that all three of these books do precisely that, and we're hoping to demonstrate it.
Scott Allen 14:27
Well, you all start out with Plato. So let's talk a little bit about Plato. And what were a couple of insights from that chapter two, and that listeners could kind of whet the appetite for listeners when it comes to his work?
Brent Cusher 14:42
Well, I think I'll start by saying that I don't mind putting all of my cards on the table in saying that I think that Plato is the most interesting philosopher that there was for a number of reasons. One most important one is that he never wrote in his own voice. He only wrote dialogues. And the Republic, the book that we explore is in fact, a dialogue. It's a conversation among a number of men in Athens, it takes place in this area of Athens called the Piraeus. It's the port, of Athens. And Socrates, of course, is the main speaker and, and the main character of this dialogue, but there's a whole constellation of characters in this, in this dialogue, a bunch of young men who, you know, who come from some of the aristocratic classes in the city, some of the people who could have assumed have been assumed to, to go on to lead lives and public leadership in the city of Athens, you know, people who would eventually be stepping into a role where they would be making real decisions about the way that the city was moving. You have another character, the dialogue, a man named Thrasymachus, who's a real figure in the ancient world, he was a Sophos, he traveled around, and he sold his services, which was to teach students how to basically speak and gain control in the city, he was essentially a teacher for hire. And so there's this wonderful interplay between characters, Socrates and Thrasymachus sort of fighting it out to try to influence these young individuals. And so just to kind of loop back around and to kind of close this, this thought, one of the most interesting things about exploring an author like Plato, is that you really get roped into this conversation yourself, you know, you say, like, Well, why did Socrates respond in this way? Should he have responded in this way? Should he have said something different? If I were this other character? Glaucon? Let's say Glaucon is one of the young men that he speaks with the most, you know, what would I have said something different? or Why did he say this at this particular point in time? And so and so that that kind of model of education, I think, is really important with understanding what Plato is trying to do?
Scott Allen 16:56
Mark, anything you want to add on Plato,
Mark Menaldo 16:58
Just to agree with Brent, that part of the joy of reading Plato is being part of his be, it's almost as if you're in a theater, watching a drama, take place on the edge of your seat. And so Adeimantus and Glaucon on these brothers are just waiting because Socrates is going to pull this off? Is he gonna be able to define justice? Even though it seems like it's impossible? Is he right, and so the story is just unfolding these waves of drama. And it's, it's very much Socrates, the sort of hero anti-hero punching, punching his way to making possible that these brothers or Plato get the depth the view of justice that they desperately also need, or else they're gonna end up like Thrasymachus. Yet the thing about Plato is, I mean, I became a philosophy student, because I read the Republic, there's something transhistorical about the way he invites you to the conversation.
Brent Cusher 17:57
And I'm like, jump off of this, if if you don't mind to just kind of indicate that in the book, we present something of the outside of the box reading of what the leadership implications of Plato's Republic are, I mean, one first thing to say very directly is that the whole subject of the book is on justice on the theme of justice. And if justice is not related to Leadership Studies, then I don't know what it is, you know, I mean, you know, what, when we think about leaders acting in the world, we tend to presume leadership for the good for just ends, you know, for the right way of living, that that sort of thing. And, and these individuals explore exploring that. And so that's maybe the first thing to say, but to explain what I mean, by the outside of the box comment, I think that the easiest way to look at Plato's Republic and say this is relevant to leadership is to say that Socrates in this dialogue gives us a model of the philosopher King, as the most important leader where he says that unless philosophy and political power come together at a, at a certain point in time, there will be no end to the ills in cities and an individual lives. And so it's and I think a lot of people who approach this dialog from a Leadership Studies lens would say, well, that's what Plato wants to wants to say. And it very much sounds kind of like Thomas Carlisle's great man idea, you know that that one sort of superhuman figure, right? This superhuman philosopher kind of comes onto the scene and solves everybody's problems. But what Mark and I tried to argue is that careful reading of the dialog would suggest that Socrates means that not so much as a practical model, sort of a practical blueprint for how we should sort of shape leadership in the here and now, but rather kind of a heuristic device to think about other things and think about other problems related to leadership. And what turns out to be much more interesting. Is that in the dialogue, education and leadership seemed to be somehow synonymous or, or linked together in a way that I think is much more relevant to how we, we might think about leadership in the here? And now as opposed to saying, you know, we're going to need to bring somebody in to be a philosopher King and rule, everybody. What Socrates does in that dialogue is to really indicate what the connections are between leadership and education.
Scott Allen 20:22
Well, and at one point, you all even begin to define, and I may not get this exactly correct. But did you take the roots of educate? And basically, it's to lead forward or lead out? It's almost like the notion of the cave, too. Would you talk a little bit about that?
Brent Cusher 20:38
Yeah, I think I think that's precisely Right. I mean, if you look at the etymology of education, "e" or "x" from "out" from, and then comes from the word ducere, which means to lead. So education is leading out from out of from one's incorrect, or incoherent or incomplete opinions about the world into a much more, you know, robust, clear understanding of how things are, you mentioned Scott a moment ago, that the cave, I mean, this is the most famous analogy, and in the dialogue, the allegory of the cave, where, you know, we are all prisoners at the beginning, in chained looking at shadows on the wall that are being cast on the wall, by a lot of people we tend to think of when we think of Leadership Studies, you know, media, authoritative figures, our parents or our other educators, that sort of thing. And education becomes the process, then of liberating oneself from those chains, turning around and moving out into the light of the day, all the metaphor of Of course, and so that that opens up a whole host of possibilities. When we think about leadership, I would say,
Scott Allen 21:43
You use Bill Gates as almost a modern-day example of some of what was being discussed. Right.
Mark Menaldo 21:52
Yeah. You know, one of the things about talking about the cases and Brent and I said, look, we all we know, is politics, let's, let's try to do something different. babes in the woods, politics, it's gotta be someone out there that, you know, if not, platonic resembles something like a someone who aspires to use reason as, as their North Star, and looking through the examples is just Bill Gates, the odd duck that he is there are these on the surface? He's not, you know, he's got this foundation, and he was Microsoft. But if you see the process that he takes both as he won when he was an entrepreneur, and as a philanthropist, philanthropist, he really is an outlier, I believe, right? He's an outlier because he has a deliberative mode of engaging the world, you would think he Oh, he's an empiricist and very data-driven. But in fact, he's very contemplating about it. He in fact in this platonic mode has to distance himself from let's call it the cave. So to engineer a new solution to an existing problem. And we know that existing problems continue to be problems, usually, because of the sort of inertia of institutions or you know, the things seem too costly. And we're just used to doing certain things in certain ways. Bill Gates is one of these people who, let's think let's find a new path to the waterfall.
Scott Allen 23:25
There's a great show on Netflix, I'm sure the two of you have watched it Inside Bill's Brain, but it does a beautiful job of helping you understand just even his approach to learning. I mean, he carries around a bag of books on all of these different topics, whether it's nuclear energy, or toilets because he's constantly working to educate himself and learn and try and better understand. And then to your point, Mark, and this may not have been your point. So please, by all means, say it wasn't, you know, he's coming to the conclusion that nuclear energy is potentially a good thing, just how we did it wasn't the correct way. And we can update that and make it much safer, and still harness a lot of the power from it. But then he's trying to then influence others through data and logic that this is the best path forward, if you look across the board at our options, but he's done the research. He's studied the problem he's talked with the people really investigated it in a very systematic way.
Mark Menaldo 24:23
Right. And in some sense, he goes beyond the sort of taken for granted, nuclear has to be bad, right? We just you have to presume it's bad. Why? Because everybody says it's bad, bad, it's bad. It's bad. And you know, something about Gators. Well, have we thought about it in a different way. And it may not be that he on and on his own solves these problems. He obviously doesn't. But he's willing to, he's willing to look at an old problem in a new way. And I find that to be just in terms of leadership, for today's world especially seems like a valuable and useful the way that you know, I don't necessarily want to be Bill Gates, we say this at the end of the session on gates, there's something still a little too I think he utility maximize them about and that he there's something that he doesn't want to give up. He's not willing to cede and get away with it, you know, there may be reasons to look at problems and in in a way that is simply for the sake of their interest or beauties. He's very hung up on this view of optimization. But I do think he is a pathbreaking person when it comes to looking at especially the problems that confront us today from an almost contemplated point of view, in addition to a technical
Scott Allen 25:39
Well, he's steps ahead just steps ahead in his logic and his thinking, whether it was the TED talk about pandemics or this whole concept of nuclear, or I mean, we can go down the list of what the Gates Foundation has worked on. I think his challenge is how do we influence now and truly shift some of those gigantic systems and move past some of those barriers that are going to be very, very difficult, even in people's minds? Like you said, nuclear. That's just bad. How do you begin to shift the mindset of millions of people and decision-makers on some of those topics? That's, it's complex.
Brent Cusher 26:16
And if I may add one thing really, really briefly here, it seems to me that Gates is a great example to try to you hammer home what the use of maybe the AR book itself is insofar as Plato's analysis of leadership, Plato's analysis of you know, the human world in human affairs and how we operate with each other, seems to shed light on a character like gates, you know, it's not one of these things, where it's going to be a guidebook to turn you into the next Bill Gates, right, even if you wanted to, even if you wanted to do that. But it helps us as critical thinkers and people who are engaging with these ideas and trying to make sense of them to perhaps see them a little bit more clearly or, or a little bit more in the light of day, as opposed to in the shadows. And you know, I use those metaphors, obviously, very, very much intentionally, because that's precisely what Socrates is trying to say in the book,
Scott Allen 27:15
You know, we have worked a little bit close on time, we've been going for about 35 minutes, is there something else that you want to share with listeners a reflection you have in the process of writing the book? Or is there some other lesson that kind of really maybe struck either one of you that you'd like to highlight before we wind down,
Mark Menaldo 27:33
You know, in the chapters on Aristotle and Machiavelli part of the reason, the reasoning is, well, how do you then move on from Plato, from the Philosopher King from the center, sort of grand notions of education, and seeing the truth and reality and leadership? Well, Aristotle, although he's close and very much close in time to Plato, in fact, provides, in fact, the sort of second thrust of philosophy in history, which seems to be a very grounded view of philosophy, especially in the view of morality and character and building leadership through an education that is built not necessarily on the process of reasoning and philosophy and education, but the process of the correct formation through what is called character formation, doing the good thing and the right thing in the right way in the right place. And Aristotle's understanding this is done simply through a sort of habitual practice of things that the people who are going to do it already sort of know, it's a very odd way of looking at leadership. But that seems to be Aristotle's main thrust and our point in Aristotle, pinpoint one of these virtues who's just called Great Britain as a soul. And I just want to mention that the reason that why we bring Machiavelli in third is not only because he's historically one of the most important philosophers for the modern era because he's the first modern philosopher would say that he's directly engaging with Plato and Aristotle in the sense of saying, I am, you could almost call Machiavelli, the anti philosopher. All this claptrap about a play about philosopher-kings and moral virtue is making leaders people who care about leadership go nuts. You're they're going nuts because they don't know what they're talking about. And they're going to end up in a worse situation worrying about highfalutin ideas on the one hand, and try and be good on the other. Machiavelli says it very frankly, those who try to be good amongst all these other people who are bad end up ruined. So what he's trying to do is absolutely redefine the woof and warp of philosophy so as so that peoples in the spirit of your podcasts, their practical outcomes are actually practices actually good for them for a change rather than the end up, mucking things up.
Brent Cusher 29:58
Yeah, I like that. As a description, and maybe what I'll add is is very brief. We like Aristotle and Machiavelli as you know, consecutive chapters. Because there is such a neat disagreement between the two characters. Aristotle is all about moral character and promoting moral character and explaining how leaders must, you know, must have the right moral character, and he numerate he enumerates, all of these different virtues. And Machiavelli is precisely the opposite, you know, you know, so Aristotle would say that our leaders must be generous must be liberal individuals must give of themselves of their resources in the proper way, you know, to the right people in the right way at the right time in the right amount, that sort of this middle measuring measured way of Aristotle. Machiavelli takes that and he says, Well, if you actually practice that virtue, you develop a reputation for the vise, no, why is that because if you continue to be generous, if you give all of your things away, in order to continue doing it, you're going to have to start taking from people, you know, raising taxes or, or however, that that works. And then your followers are upset with you, you know, and so Machiavelli has this kind of wonderful, and also, in some ways sinister, you know, way, way of thinking about the questions of morality that just makes it such an interesting pairing with Aristotle. And, and I think if we want to do anything in that with this book, it's not to provide the clear cut answers, but again, to kind of raise the question of these tensions in this complicated business of, of leadership and humanity, and we hope that maybe, you know, something like the Aristotle, Machiavelli pairing, can do something like that,
Scott Allen 31:47
Mark, anything else?
Mark Menaldo 31:48
Sure. And I'll add, I'll add the following. I think if you read our book, and are at the same time steeped in leadership, studies literature, I think you're, and this is a bold claim. But being that we are writing about bold thinkers who will make a bold claim, you're going to start to understand why Leadership Studies sounds a little cacophonous, right? There are all these distinctive theories, right? All these theories seem to be, we need transformational leadership, because there's transactional leadership and transactional leadership isn't good enough. Or we need authentic leadership because it seems like we need good leaders and authentic leaders to help us out. We need servant leadership because we need to see South self-sacrificial leadership, but all these sorts of siloed notions, theories, and leadership, if you go back to the roots, which is philosophy, you will see that these ideas in a non-sort of modern language have already been thought they're embedded in the history of philosophy. They've been articulated in different languages in different ways by Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli. And that's why as we started if we bring you into this conversation, it may be helpful then when we look at Leadership Studies today, ability to organize our thoughts, right, and ask ourselves, are these theories in some sense, new? Are these theories and sometimes helpful? Do they? Do they make sense? And are they what we actually want to engage with? Or should we dump them? We bring Leadership Studies into the conversation with philosophy, I think we'll all be better off in some way, we'll all get a sort of a sense of direction
Scott Allen 33:30
I often will end the podcast asking listeners what they're reading or listening or streaming or something like that. I'm going to end it in a little bit of a different way today. So who was right? So, Brent, you are first up to the table?
Brent Cusher 33:44
Well, I think I mean, in some ways, I'm going to take the cowardly way out to suggest that the question of who is right is maybe not exactly the way that I tend to think of it, you know, who is the most interesting, or who's the most useful for us and thinking about how this, this works. And maybe I'm going to take even a second cowardly way out to say that, too. It's not just one person. It's a group of people. And that is to say, the ancient philosophers are, to me, the more interesting and the more useful way of looking at philosophy as applied to leadership. And why is that? Well, first of all, they're writing when philosophy was new and fresh, and something that needed to be defended and vigorously argued for. And so you get some really meaty arguments in the ancient philosophers. But I think much more importantly, taking yourself outside of your own particular context in this modern world in which we live, and trying to think about these problems that confront us in a completely different way, you know, in from different assumptions about what human beings are for and about and, and what human nature is and what we should do with each other and how we should relate to each other and that sort of thing can really widen one scope and can force you to, to be a lot more self-critical. And so that that's what draws me to somebody like Plato or Aristotle or a few cities or an author like that. Great, Mark.
Mark Menaldo 35:15
I think I'll take a different tack, which is a sort of cowardly tack to I don't want Matthew voted to be right. Because I think, again, a superficial reading of Machiavelli is this is a handbook for gangsters. A thorough reading of Machiavelli says, Holy smokes, if this guy is right, I think we're, at least the things that we want in our lives are in trouble. And the kind of person you wish to be and hope to be and long to seem like, it's a sad little fairy tale that you've been telling yourself, your whole life. So in my heart, I feel very Aristotelian, to be completely honest, I absolutely love Aristotle's ethics. I live Aristotle's ethics when I teach it. And my students when they when I go through it with them, feel inspired by Aristotle's ethics, so I want him to be right. I want goodness and nobility and you know, aspirational views of leadership. But I think it's up to our audience to decide for themselves who is right and walk through the paths, beaten by great men says Machiavelli in his book, and those are the ones that are Plato, Aristotle, Machiavellian, our summation.
Scott Allen 36:33
Awesome. Gentlemen, I hope this conversation continues, I hope we can have you back, I hope you will, will help us better understand this space better help us join the conversation, which I thought was a really, really nice way to put that. Because I think you're right, it can feel a little intimidating. And some of the writings can feel a little bit thick, your enthusiasm, your inspiration for, for me personally, to dig into some of this material. I've read two chapters of the book so far. And I'm excited to read more, I really am because I want to learn this space, I want to understand some of these foundational ways of thinking, because I think you're exactly right, a lot of that thinking has been done, and how do we help that inform how we're thinking as leading scholars, gentlemen, have a wonderful day. Thank you so much for being with us. Brant, Mark, I really, really appreciate your work.
Brent Cusher 37:27
Thank you, Scott. It's been a real pleasure.
Mark Menaldo 37:29
Thank you, Scott.