How to be a good leader? That has been one of the most difficult questions that our society struggled with throughout the years. For me this is a very difficult question since so many elements and qualities contribute to a good and well-functioning leader.
In an attempt to answer this question, I will use two ideas belonging to two of the most famous philosophers: Niccolò Machiavelli who thought it better to be feared than loved, and Friedrich Nietzsche with the concept of the “will to power”. With these two concepts, I hope to create an image of a successful and effective leader.
Machiavelli: Fear vs love. The Foundation: Virtue vs Necessity.
Let’s first start with the question, what is virtue? According to the teachings of Aristotle, virtue is a set of habits of making the right decisions. Every individual has the choice between well and ill, leading to the formation of habits in choosing good and beneficial actions or bad and ineffective actions; this choice is voluntary. A man can choose to be benevolent or malevolent; humans possess ‘free will’. This free will goes harmonious with the “natural and absolute necessity” (absolute necessity can be hunger, thirst, need for companionship, etc). Due to this “nature and absolute necessity,” men tend toward perfection and happiness. Free will is also harmonious with the necessity in which particular good and evil are linked together; if one processes without one or another it is difficult to achieve the desired outcome; a human can choose freely.
But how about the necessity of compulsion, how about when a person is commanded by other factors and agents and acts against his natural tendency? These factors can be laws, life situations, family background, etc. How can this fit in with the concept of free will?
Machiavelli, through his teaching, seems to have taken this matter seriously (Strauss L, 1958). This came from an agreement with another argument that Machiavelli had at the time: he denies and goes against the notion that fate and God rule all beings and things of the world, this idea of God contradicted the notion/idea of Aristotle’s free will and with it born new virtues and reasons. Machiavelli declares that chance/God are only half of life; the other half is ruled over by you or in other words your virtue and reason (Strauss L, 1958). Fate is an irresistible force to everything except for our virtues, if humans know how to use it wisely, it can break limits and to some extent rule over fate/God, a man now can be the master of his fate. So now mankind has beaten fate, yet nature and necessity still rule over us. The question then is not about fate and virtue anymore, but the relation of virtue and nature/necessity, in other words, whether virtue can control nature and necessity just like it was thought fate once did.
If the foundation of virtue is the so-called free will, then we can freely choose the right actions which ultimately lead us to the right and desired goals. This of course needs to go hand in hand with prudence and reason. Actions that are motivated by virtue and actions that are funded by necessity are completely separated. For example: if you are walking on the street and you see a person in need of food, you then voluntarily go to a Subway and buy them a sandwich. The second scenario is: you are walking on the street with your mother and you both see a person who needs food, you personally don’t really want to help the person, but your mom forces you to do it and you do it anyway because you don’t want to disappoint your mom. To act virtuously means to act with reason and logic but it is not compelled by necessity. But for Machiavelli, this cannot be the truth, for men are compelled and ruled over by necessity, and because of it men do many things that violate moral laws and reason. From here actions are mostly reasonable because they are subject to necessity, even if the needs are sinful. Men are and always will be under necessity, completely shattering the idea of free will and the notion that a man can freely choose his pattern of good or bad habits for every action and thoughts that you have (virtue). For every action is affected by a belief or a system or whatever that you serve.
So, for Machiavelli, the answer is no. Virtue cannot control nature and necessity, it is the opposite. But there is an exception: in his teaching Machiavelli mentions an exceptional man, a perfectly prudent man, who acts in accordance with times and is able to consciously change his pattern of actions according to the subject matter. But as we all know this is a very hard thing to do, in order to complete this you will need all the stars to align for you, your family and education needs to be good, and your core personality from childhood needs to be good, the gift from God in order to go against his natural necessity, etc. A truly difficult task if not the most difficult of them all. This is virtue in the highest sense.
For every man is under a natural necessity that is innate in him, deeply and enormously. Machiavelli believed this is the essence of man’s nature. An example we can use is Hitler’s ‘evil’ personality. According to Machiavelli, Hitler is not evil by choice, he did not choose to be evil. Instead, this characteristic was innate deep in him from nature, and adjusted by factors of early childhood education, the place that he grew up, etc. This can now be called the unconscious, a term made popular by the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud.
Which necessity to rule them all?
Since all men as we know are under their necessity completely, Machiavelli raised the question: is it better to be loved or to be feared? Which helps a ruler/leader rule over his man more successfully? This is one of the main concepts that appears throughout his two books, The Prince and The Discourse. This for Machiavelli is core to the ruling man, sparking a debate in philosophy, politics, and business that endures to this day.
Machiavelli provides an answer in chapter 17 of The Prince: “Concerning Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether It Is Better to Be Loved Than Feared” is that it would be nice to have both, a ruler ought to be both, loved and also feared, but in a real-life scenario it is difficult to have both, for it will take an unimaginable effort and luck in order to achieve it. A ruler will need to make a choice, so it is better to be feared by the people than loved. As for all men are under their natural necessity: “…they are ungrateful and unreliable; they lie, they fake, they’re greedy for cash and they melt away in the face of danger. ” said Machiavelli (2011, p.66). Even when they love you, and want to act in a virtuous way, it is impossible and untrustworthy, as from the argument from the last paragraph we know that ‘nature and necessity’ rule over virtue, men will act in a way that benefits them. From here, Machiavelli thought fear could be a good foundation to start with.
A ruler needs to understand this. A specific kind of necessity called fear is necessary to apply for a successful ruling. A fundamental example from Machiavelli was given to further explain this necessity: soldiers that fight against a more supreme army are well-operated if they have only the choice of ‘to fight or to die’; they can also work perfectly if they have the choice ‘to fight or to surrender’. We must understand that all humans are driven and under the inclination, the desire for self-preservation, and the necessity to avoid death at all costs. So, in the second scenario, the enemy had given the choice of surrender, this imposed a better and easier way to escape death, and your army will be distracted and cost mis-formation that may lead to defeat. To use necessity to your advantage is to give the soldiers no choice but only to fight. In the first scenario, soldiers are also driven by the necessity to avoid death, but since you had given them one way and one only and that is to fight, for if they don’t, death is waiting and since all humans are under and serve the ‘Nature and necessity’, they will for sure fight in a most well and operated manner. From here we can say that for any army to operate well, a necessity that is rooted deep in fear of death needs to be applied. This brings us to the conclusion that fear, the fundamental fear, is the thing that makes men obey and operate well.
Nietzsche and his ‘will to power’.
We can first agree that Nietzsche shared the same view on the matter of free will similar to Machiavelli. Again, free will means that a man is fully responsible for every action and causes that he has done and created. For Nietzsche, this is an absolutely illogical way of thinking as it absolves the effect of God, nature, ancestors, etc (Nietzsche F, 1907).
From here, Machiavelli developed his argument through the battle between virtue and necessity. Stated that all men are bowed under their natural necessity, every man is a slave to this. We can proceed to call this the ‘unfree will’ as all men are not free themselves and are under the effect of instinct.
However, Nietzsche wanted to take a step further and examine this contradictory concept. The ‘unfree will’ is also an unnatural way of thinking that human beings ought to abandon. This is where Machiavelli and Nietzsche part ways. For Nietzsche, ‘unfree will’ functions on two bases: the cause and effect. For example: you are the way you are (the effect) because of your family (the cause), a method that modern scientists use to explain the world; in the act of doing so misinterprets the way we view life. This is nothing but stupidity as Nietzsche thought that “cause and effect” are in fact just a concept that humans created for the purpose of designation, and mutual understanding between the world itself and human beings. If one ought to understand the world fully, one must first understand that in this world there is no cause and effect, terms like: follow the cause, follow the law, and the word ‘necessity’ do not exist.
For Machiavelli, necessity rules over all man, and the effect of it causes us humans to work, think, and act in a certain way. On the other side, Nietzsche wanted to remind us, and ultimately free us from the seduction of words, that this is a concept that we humans have fabricated, everything that we in society now had is an imagination: human need, science, compulsion, law, king, prince… are the behaviour that human beings have had since the beginning of time, called mythology. It is a myth belonging to the imagination of the human mind to help us cope with the hard and somewhat impossible-to-understand world. In this logic, even the concept of ‘fear’ is mythology.
So, what is real? In Nietzsche’s philosophy, the answer can only be the ‘will to power’ (Nietzsche F, 1907) as he stated in Beyond Good and Evil line 13 page 44:
“Physiologists should think again before postulating the drive to self-preservation as the cardinal drive in an organic being. A living thing desires above all to vent its strength – life as such is will to power -: self – preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of it…”
What is the ‘will to power’? In philosophy hitherto, a solid definition of this term was never given due to the ambiguity and lack of clarification Nietzche provided on this concept. But throughout his works, the term had been mentioned multiple times through metaphor, specially in his famous book Thus spoke Zarathustra, and even considered the core of Nietzsche’s philosophy.
I will continue the argument using examples from two of his works: Beyond Good and Evil and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In line 19 of Beyond Good and Evil, the mechanism of the ‘will to power’ is shown. This ‘will’ functions according to two motions: command and obey. Let us understand that this ‘will’ happens when a mixture of sensations happens internally in our body. We can put it into two states: “away from which” and “toward which” (William L.L, 1953), these states are accompanied by a muscular sensation that urges us to act even without any motions from any parts of the body and it fixes itself with one thing, one target, the thought of ‘this and nothing else is necessary now’. This is the command of the ‘will’ in each and every human being. Hereupon, if a man who is wise and somehow understands that actions and the ‘command’ from the body are one, he will then obey and carry out this ‘will’. Soon the side of obey shall encounter ‘constraint, compulsion, pressure, resistance’, he must overcome this resistance for an increase in the sensation of power to come with the triumph of the ‘will’.
Nietzche’s Thus spoke Zarathustra, more specifically in the chapter titled ‘Of the Tree on the Mountain’ provides a further exploration of the ‘will to power’. A scenario had been displayed, a young man who desired to grasp and grow into new heights, but he soon struggled with this desire due to his peers and culture. The more he wants and tries to reach his new potential – the more lonely, the more hardship and more trouble he finds. This is the ‘will to power’: it is the urge that every human being had throughout history; it is the desire to be better at something, to be stronger, to be able to take more responsibility; the will to expand more and more in everything we do. This is the core of the human soul and what ultimately rules over all beings on this earth.
“The nobleman wants to create new things and a new virtue. The good man wants the old things and the old things shall be preserved…” Thus spoke Zarathustra.
‘Will to power’ plus Machiavelli’s fear to rule them all.
So how can these concepts help a person to become a better leader? Let us paint a picture for better understanding. If you are in a company and your boss is Machiavelli, he will lead you through the power of fear. He will make you so afraid of him that you will have to give everything to him for time and effort. For if you don’t, he will for sure make you suffer for it, he will give you only the choice of success or get fired, and as we all know that is no choice at all. But if the company is run by Nietzsche, he will help you, as he knows that every single one of us possesses the ‘will to power’, all humans really want is to improve on our craft and be able to take more responsibilities. Nietzsche will approach you and give you advice, and direction and say things like: “You can do better,” and “I believe in you.”
So, the question is again which one is better? I think the combination of both will produce an ideal leader. A leader must first put fear into his/her subjects as this is necessary to produce respect and hence create a function hierarchy. But this cannot be the case for a long time due to if a leader only knows how to lead through the act of putting fear into the people, the creation of tyranny and slavery will take place. If a leader, from here, is not wise enough to stop this creation on time, revolution is the only path that will appear, and with it comes the end of a dynasty.
But if the opposite happens and the leader is wise enough to understand the core of a human soul, that is to say the ‘will to power’, they will know when to take necessary steps and show empathy to help others improve. If a leader does this, he will win the people’s hearts.
References
- Strauss, L 1958, Thoughts on Machiavelli,University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
- Machiavelli, N & Parks, Tim 2011, The prince New ed., Penguin, London.
- Nietzsche, FW 1907, Beyond good and evil, The Macmillan company, 1907, New York (State).
- Nietzsche, FW & Hollingsworth, RJ 2003, Thus spoke Zarathustra : a book for everyone and no one, Penguin, London.
- Williams, LL 1996, “Will to Power in Nietzsche’s Published Works and the Nachlass,” Journal of the history of ideas, vol. 57, no. 3, pp. 447–463.