Loving humanity, learning, and being honored : the foundations of leadership in Xenophon's Education of Cyrus / Norman B. Sandridge.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sandridge, Norman B., author.

Contributor:

Center for Hellenic Studies (Washington, D.C.)

Series:

Hellenic studies ; 55.

Hellenic studies ; 55

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Xenophon. Cyropaedia.

Xenophon.

Leadership.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (139 pages).

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University, 2012.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Xenophon is generally thought to have done his best theorizing on leadership through his portrayal Gyrus the Great, the first king of the Persian Empire. This book argues that Xenophon actually reduces his Theory of Leadership to a set of fundamental trails, namely, the love of humanity, the love of learning, and the love of being honored. These so-called fundamental traits are the product of several rich contexts across culture and across time: the portrait of Cyrus seems as much a composite of Persian, folklore as a pointed response to Plato's Philosopher King. This book further argues that Xenophon's. Theory of Leadership is effective for addressing many problems of leadership that were familiar to Xenophon and his fourth-century Athenian contemporaries, notably Plato and Isocrales. By looking at the contexts in which Xenophon's Theory was conceived, as well as the problems of leadership he sought to address, this book, sees Xenophon as attempting a sincerely laudatory-though not ideal-portrait of Cyrus. The study thus falls in between interpretations of the Education of Cyrus that have seen Cyrus as either a perfect leader or an ironically flawed one.

On the cover: Alexander the Great mourns the dying Darius. Illumination from an early seventeenth-century manuscript of the Book of Kings (Shahnama) by the Persian, poet Firdawsi (d. ca. 1020). The Walters Art Museum, manuscript W.602, fol. 423b.

Used under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Book jacket.

Contents:

Philanthrōpia and philotimia as reciprocal fondness

Curiosity, aptitude, and intense awareness

On the fundamentality of philanthrōpia, philomatheia, and philotimia

Problems with loving humanity

Problems with loving to learn

Problems with wanting to be honored.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Sandridge, Norman B. Loving humanity, learning, and being honored

OCLC:

944076916

Publisher Number:

40021376393