ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of the inward imperative in the lives of historical leaders. The sample size is small and highly selective: three dead White males from within the Western tradition, and martyrs all. Here one have three different types of leader from three entirely different time periods under different contextual pressures and constraints. Socrates was known for his dialogues, of course, though one relied more on his criminal defense. Using the framework, one could classify Hitler with Socrates, Lincoln, and Pato-ika, which sounds obscene. Chinese leadership philosophy has long taught the yin-yang of duality, or what Mao Zedong would later describe as a dialectic. As F. Scott Fitzgerald once put it, “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”.
