Course Details

Course offered Autumn 2007

H A&S 261 D: Leadership, Democracy, and a More Thoughtful Public

H A&S 261 D: Leadership, Democracy, and a More Thoughtful Public

SLN 13874 (View UW registration info »)

Roger Soder (Education)
Office: MGH 211, Box 353600
Email: rsoder@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 25 students

We will consider the following propositions: (1) Leadership always has a political context; leadership in a democracy is necessarily different than leadership in other political regimes. (2) Leadership involves at its base the creation of a persuaded audience, but, more than persuasion, involves the creation and sustaining of a more thoughtful public, a public capable of rising above itself. (3) Distinctions must be made in the leadership functions of (a) initiating, (b) sustaining, (©) recovering and reconstituting, i.e., what it takes for leader to sustain isn’t quite the same as what it takes to initiate, and neither of these approach what it takes to recover and reconstitute when the organization or regime falls apart.

Among the topics to be considered: Elements of leadership. Nature of persuasion. Ethics and ecology of rhetoric. Necessary conditions for democracy and the good political regime. Freedom and the tension between freedom and order. Necessary conditions for a more thoughtful public. Distinctive demands of initiating, sustaining, and recovering/reconstituting. Leadership and the costs and politics of information seeking and exchange.

Sources of texts to be interrogated in the course will include, but not be limited to: Thucydides, Sophocles, Machiavelli, Burke, Lincoln, the Tao-Te-Ching, the Huainanzi, Kauthilya, Dostoevsky, as well as contemporary works of Nathan Tarcov, Mary Ann Glendon, Roger Soder, Ralph Lerner, Danielle Allen, and James Boyd White, among others.

Method of instruction: close readings of texts, coupled with written short (1-2 page) papers on the texts and small and large group discussions. There will be an additional paper (4-7 pages) along with a final written exam (short essay).