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The Prince, Plato's Republic, And Marcus Aurelius Meditations

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An Ideal Leader:
An analysis of Machiavelli’s The Prince, Plato’s Republic, and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations

Leadership strategies are a source of great debate in the discussion of Marcus Aurelius, Machiavelli’s Prince, and Plato’s Republic when considering the pedagogic approach of each writer or thinker in their ideal understanding of the leadership role in a country or state. Messick agrees with this concept that leadership is hotly discoursed, “Leadership is indisputable one of the most discussed, studies, and written about topics in our society. A keyword search in the Expanded Academic Index for occurrences of the word “leadership” in a title or abstract reveals over 12,000 citation sin the year 2000 alone.” Every country has some sort …show more content…
For lack of a better statement, this system of government will be extrapolated back to the individual and moreover, society and the way a certain society runs. Further investigation of how these three major leadership philosophers describe the ideal leadership or politician requires further investigation which will occur in the following lines. It is imperative to take into account the historical setting of these stories, and from that, learn from history and understand the relation it has to modern-day leadership approaches. Many small pieces put together the ideal leader, though it is not clear whether or not this form of praise-worthy leadership can ever be achieved, for if it were, the world would seem to be a much better place. Examining the fact that all men make mistakes is another crucial component which needs to be taken into account when studying the writings of Plato, Machiavelli, and Marcus Aurelius. Furthermore, the three things which constitute an ideal leadership, derived from the above mentioned ponderers of philosophical thought are first, the idea that a ruler should have patience with ignorance, second that reason is of utmost

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