The ethical issue of what is the uniqueness of a leader which would demonstrate a virtuous personality of management, and to what extent this individuality can be taught has been continuously debated over the last several years.  This issue of what is a virtuous character of leadership has not only been a concern of late, but it has its’ origins in the Greek Philosophic Tradition were, for example, Heraclitus tells us that mankind’s character is based upon it’s hubris, and were Plato tells us in his “Republic” that it is the Philosopher King who would be the ideal leader.  Yet, this philosophic tradition did have its’ practical application in the person of the Stoic Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (1) who did see himself as the Philosopher King.  And, it is to this latter point that I want to address this article as an opening salvo to the overall issue of character education and to whether such a curriculum can be taught to individuals.

Marcus Aurelius saw in his ethics the principles whereby he led his peoples by doing the right act.  Aurelius’ ethics was based upon his perception of mankind’s nature.  Marcus Aurelius tells us in his Meditations the following: 

“This thou must always bear in mind, what is  the nature of the whole, and what is my nature, and how this is related to that, and what kind of a part  it is of what kind of a whole; and that there is no one who hinders thee from always doing and saying the  things which are according to the nature of which thou  art a part (Marcus Aurelius p.243).”

For Aurelius, mankind’s nature was a harmonious whole to which everything was logically interconnected.  And, he further tells us; “Constantly and, if it be possible, on the occasion of every impression on the soul, apply to it the principles of Physic, of Ethic, and of Dialectic (Marcus Aurelius p.271).”  Yet, for Aurelius, this method of decision making was no more than what we are seeing in today’s world.  For Aurelius, no ethical act was worth its’ importance unless the practical applications of the struggle of mankind’s nature was applied as a harmonious whole.

Yet, like today’s world, Aurelius found himself as an leader of a world of mankind which was constantly demonstrating it’s inhumanity, and emperor of an environment which was representative of mankind’s deliberate heartlessness.  And, even though Aurelius had the virtue of compassion, he could not quell mankind’s hubris because as a Stoic he could not transform the man-made struggle to attain personal identity into a natural achievement.  And, this inability to change mankind into a peaceful whole was based not upon as much from any existential alienation, but upon the living of the peoples of the environment into the assimilation of similarity.  This point can be seen in Aurelius’ “Meditations” were he says;

“Of the human life the time is a point, and the  substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and    the composition of the whole body subject to    putrefaction, and the soul of a whirl; and fortune  hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment.    And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is   a dream and vapour, and life is a warfare and a  stranger’s sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion.  What then, is that which is able to conduct a man?  One  thing, and only one-philosophy.  But this consists in keeping the daemon within a man free from violence and  unharmed, superior to pains and pleasures, doing nothing without a purpose, nor yet falsely and with hypocrisy, not feeling the need of another man’s doing or not doing anything; and besides, accepting all that  happens, and all that is allotted, as coming from thence, wherever it is, from whence the he himself  came; and finally, waiting fro death with a cheerful mind, as being nothing else than a dissolution of the  elements of which every living being is compounded.    But if there is no harm to the elements themselves in   each continually changing into another, why should a man have any apprehension about the change and  dissolution of all the elements?  For it is according to nature, and nothing is evil which is according to nature (Marcus Aurelius p. 245).”

Consequently, what Aurelius saw as the Platonic “Philosopher-King” was that all of humanity was interconnected by the very virtuous nature in principle of the Stoic Philosopher by mankind’s sameness of nature.  However, it is this mind-set of “one size fits all” that caused the Stoic Emperor to fail as a man.  For as a man,

He did not bring to the struggle of an individual’s character the creativity of a technique whereby a person could actively be as that self was by nature.  This human failure of Marcus Aurelius should be seen in light of how to approach the idea character education.  For even though one can train an individual to become virtuous, there is no certainty that the schooled person in being active with the rationality of his or her own nature will bring about a novelty to the nature of mankind’s personal identity.  For, even though an individual would not make the natural fallacy of confusing the “ought with the is,” the individual makes the fallacy of thinking that nature is a principle which in-itself cannot be anything else than what nature is, and what this essentially does is to allow for the adaptation of innovation, but not the creativity of becoming an actuality of one’s own personality through the imagination as an explanation of giving meaning to one’s emotional intelligence.

Works Cited

1.  Marcus Aurelius was born in Rome in the year of 121 A.D. of a father’s family whose nationality was that of Spain.  After loosing his father during infancy, his mother and paternal grandfather nurtured Aurelius in the Stoic tradition of education. In the year of 139 A. D. and at the age of 18, Aurelius was given the title of Caesar.  However, his reign as Emperor was anything but of peace and was filled with every natural and unnatural difficulty of life.  And on March 17^th, 180 A .D. while he was on military campaign against the Germans’, he died of natural causes, and was elevated to the ideal perspective of being “The Philosopher King.”

2.  Aurelius, Marcus. “The meditations of marcus aurelius.” Trans. By G. Long. Great books of the western world. Editor in Chief, M. Adler. Bk. 11. Chicago,Ill: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.