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Thinking Paths · Beta

Power & Leadership

Who should lead, how power works, and what keeps it accountable.

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Rulers and responsibility

Ten readings on wisdom, trust, counsel, preparation, and accountable leadership.

10 readings

What you will practice: Compare wisdom, influence, advice, and accountability using specific details from more than one author.

  • The Republic · Plato
  • The Prince · Niccolò Machiavelli
  • The Art of War · Sun Tzu
  • The Republic · Plato
  • Cyropaedia · Xenophon
  • The New State · Mary Parker Follett
  • The Prince · Niccolò Machiavelli
  • The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral · Francis Bacon
  • On the Duty of Civil Disobedience · Henry David Thoreau
  • The Art of War · Sun Tzu
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Leading without force

Move from personal conviction to persuasion, cooperation, and responsibility for others.

10 readings

What you will practice: Use contrasting passages to explain when influence is legitimate and what limits it needs.

  • Essays — First Series · Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Aesop’s Fables · Aesop (fable tradition)
  • The New State · Mary Parker Follett
  • The New State · Mary Parker Follett
  • Cyropaedia · Xenophon
  • Cyropaedia · Xenophon
  • The Analects · Confucius
  • Essays — First Series · Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • The Wealth of Nations · Adam Smith
  • The Republic · Plato
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Advice, dissent, and changing course

Test advisers, disagreement, majority opinion, and the reasons a leader should revise a decision.

10 readings

What you will practice: Distinguish justified revision from inconsistency by tracing whose evidence and interests a decision includes.

  • Essays — First Series · Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • The Prince · Niccolò Machiavelli
  • The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral · Francis Bacon
  • Novum Organum · Francis Bacon
  • Discourse on the Method · René Descartes
  • On Liberty · John Stuart Mill
  • On the Duty of Civil Disobedience · Henry David Thoreau
  • The Social Contract and Discourses · Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  • How We Think · John Dewey
  • A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Mary Wollstonecraft
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