ABSTRACT
Auguste Rodin’s 1904 sculpture, which came to be known as “The Thinker,” features a nude muscular male sitting on a rock. His right elbow rests on his left thigh, just above his knee, with his chin resting on his hand, while his left arm also rests on the same knee. This work of art has become a powerful and ubiquitous representation or symbol of the act of thinking. Interestingly, a modified version of this image appears on the front cover of Ladkin’s Rethinking Leadership (2010): the figure appears here on its side, with the whole body construed as a jigsaw puzzle; the piece representing the brain/mind is not in its place but is located near it. We may interpret this “missing piece of the puzzle” as somehow representing a gap or lack of critical reflection about leadership, suggesting that the book is an effort to redress it (and to the extent that the text may be understood in this way, it’s a fine effort). While leading is observed or experienced, it hasn’t been sufficiently contemplated – hence, the need to rethink it. Further examples of the appropriation and modification of “The Thinker” are found, for example, on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy websites: the former re-inscribes the image as a sideways scribble, while the latter re-figures it as a sideways silhouette.
