Wisdom of the Moment: Pre‐modern Perspectives on Organizational Action

Abstract

Although wisdom might be considered a quaint concept in a post‐industrialised, instrumental and secular world, it deserves serious consideration. This is done primarily from a philosophical perspective and is intended to encourage the reintroduction of wisdom into educational and developmental programmes, especially for managers and leaders. Mindful of the potential naïvete of transplanting systems of thinking from one epoch to another, we nonetheless examine the relevance of pre‐modern thought to the post‐modern condition. This is done by radically reinterpreting classical Greek texts as Pierre Hadot has done to derive a meaning of “philosophy” and the place of wisdom in the ancient world. The concepts of wisdom, virtue and enacted ethics derived from this re‐interpretation are then applied to an ethnographic case study involving a senior executive. This study suggests that a Stoical “wisdom of the moment” philosophy may characterize contemporary leadership practice.

Keywords:

• Buddhism
• Enactment
• Ethics
• Ethnography
• Post‐structuralism
• Pre‐modern
• Stoicism
• Wisdom

Notes

[1] Lynch and Lynch (1999) offer an extensive critique of both modernist and postmodernist conceptions of wisdom.

[2] Having made this claim we note, however, that Judge (2003) has put together a compendium of the uses of the term “wisdom” within a range of contemporary intellectual and educational discourses. For example, he points to a 1998 UNESCO report entitled World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty First Century: Vision and Action (Article 6d) which asserts that: “Ultimately, higher education should aim at the creation of a new society—non‐violent and non‐exploitative—consisting of highly cultivated, motivated and integrated individuals, inspired by love for humanity and guided by wisdom” (quoted in Judge 2003). While such noble sentiments may be relatively common (as Judge aptly documents) turning them into practicable programmes of education is quite another matter. Moreover, there seems to be rather few individuals willing to take up the challenge of delivering a higher education agenda based on these principles.

[3] See, inter alia, Baltes and Kunzmann (2003), Baltes and Smith (2003), Sternberg (2003a, 2003b). Takahashi and Bordia (2000) relate the results of a comparative cross‐cultural study of the “meaning of wisdom” that suggest significant differences between “eastern” and “western” understandings of the term.

[4] Rooney and McKenna (this issue) have made an excellent contribution to such a project with their broad ranging scholarly critique of the development of the concept of “wisdom” in the western world. In particular, they set out a convincing line of argument concerning the post‐Renaissance occlusion of wisdom from Enlightenment discourse and the modern scientific canon. This historical analysis sets a context within which to understand the influence of scientific management over the development of organization theory and practice in the twentieth century. It also helps explain why, “the required non‐technical attributes of wisdom—the capacity for, and habits of, reflexivity, virtue, intuition and imagination—have been minimized in the dominant discourse and practice of contemporary mainstream management” (this issue, 125).

[5] See Carrette and King (2005) and Roberts (2002) for incisive critiques of the rise of spirituality in the contemporary corporate world.

[6] The social theoretical impetus underlying this aspect of our argument comes from a sympathetic reading of the genealogical method advocated by Michel Foucault. For discussions of his genealogical approach see, inter alia, Foucault (1980), Burrell (1996, 1998), Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982, 104–125) Calas and Smircich (1999, 655–658).

[7] As Hadot asserts: “[W]e can say that philosophy in the Middle Ages had become a purely theoretical and abstract activity. It was no longer a way of life. Ancient spiritual exercises were no longer a part of philosophy but found themselves integrated into Christian spirituality” (Hadot 1995, 270).

[8] This is how Hadot rather disparagingly frames the situation: “Modern students study philosophy only because it is a required course… it is chance that decides whether the student will encounter a professor who belongs to some particular ‘school’, be it phenomenological, existentialist, deconstructionist, structuralist or Marxist. Perhaps, someday, he will pledge intellectual allegiance to one or these ‘isms’; in any case, his adherence will be intellectual and will not engage his way of life… For us moderns, the notion of a philosophical school evokes only the idea of a doctrinal tendency or theoretical position” (2002, 97–98).

[9] Niebuhr (1892–1971) held a chair in ethics and the philosophy of religion at Union Theological Seminary, New York City from 1928 to 1960 but is best remembered for his popular prayer which, as Harle (2004, 2) wryly observes, “has made the liturgical leap from seminary to fridge magnet”. Niebuhr’s claim to have composed the prayer has not gone uncontested. There is some evidence to suggest that the prayer is apocryphal and may even have originated in Indian or Greek antiquity. There is a chance, therefore, that the prayer’s Stoical qualities result directly from Stoical influence; in which case, the comparison we make here reduces to pure tautology. For a discussion of the prayer’s origins, see http://www.aahistory.com/prayer.html (accessed 15 June 2005).

[10] For example, Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic Roman emperor (161–180 AD), offers the following analytical advice regarding the contemplation of pleasures in order to establish detachment from and hence power over personal cravings, “When meat and other dainties are before you, you reflect: This is dead fish, or fowl, or pig; or… my purple robe is sheep’s wool stained with the little gore from a shellfish; copulation is friction of the members and an ejaculatory discharge. Reflections of this kind go to the bottom of things, penetrating into them and exposing their real nature. The same process should be applied to the whole of life. When a thing’s credentials look most plausible, lay it bare, observe its triviality, and strip it of the cloak of verbiage that dignifies it” (Aurelius 167 AD/ 2003 , 13, Meditations, IV, 92–93).

[11] The Stoic Chrysippus (c.250 BC) observed: “If one has wisdom for one moment, one will not be less happy than a person who has it throughout all eternity” (quoted in Hadot 2002, 194).

[12] As a one‐time colleague of Michel Foucault at the Collège de France, Hadot is said to have introduced the former to alternative readings of ancient Greek philosophy and hence exerted a significant influence over his later work (Davidson, 1997; Infinito 2002; Thompson 2003). Volume 3 of The History of Sexuality (Foucault, 1986) is dedicated to a consideration of how the Greek notion of “care of the self” impacted on emerging attitudes toward sexuality in the early part of the first millennium AD. For his part, Hadot (1995, 206–213) contested aspects of Foucault’s interpretation, claiming that he transformed “spiritual exercises” into “practices of the self” that were far too narrow, neglecting both their communitarian and transcendental dimensions. Also see O’Leary (1998) for a critical comparison of Foucault and Hadot on the “care of the self”.

[13] There is a certain degree of resonance between Stoic prescriptions and comparatively recent developments in the field of North American theories of leadership and governance. The work of Greenleaf (1977) on servant‐leadership draws on a Christian ethical framework to advocate the inversion of the pyramidal organizational chart, as it were, so that those in positions of authority (or, indeed, at any organizational level) may re‐fashion their sense of purpose in terms of “service to others” as opposed to the brute exercise of power and control. The Greenleaf Centre for Servant‐Leadership website describes the approach thus: “Servant‐Leadership is a practical philosophy which supports people who choose to serve first, and then lead as a way of expanding service to individuals and institutions… Servant‐leadership encourages collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and the ethical use of power and empowerment” (see http://www.greenleaf.org/leadership/servant‐leadership/What‐is‐Servant‐Leadership.html, accessed 8 June 2005). Prescriptions similar to this can also be found in the literature on “Leaderful organizations” (Raelin 2004), which also makes the case for the distribution of leadership and power sharing within organizations.

[14] For example, Spohn (2003) undertakes a comparative study of the evangelical Christian teachings of Jonathan Edwards and ancient Greek spiritual exercises using Hadot’s work.

[15] In the field of organization studies, Chia (2003) and Prince (2005) consider how oriental philosophies offer alternative perspectives that may be usefully brought to bear on contemporary western management and governance practices.

[16] Laughlin (1994, 129), for example, develops a biogenetic argument to explain the “structural invariance” in reports of spiritual experiences that appear to transcend history and culture. On the “cultural influence” side of the argument, McEvilley (2002) argues that the seemingly autonomous and separate metaphysical schemes of Greek and Indian philosophy have exerted a prolonged and mutual influence on one another dating back to antiquity.

[17] Further elaboration of the meditation exercises introduced here may be found in Nāmoli (1979).

[18] Following a course of meditative training, wisdom (pannā) is said to arise on the basis of an immediate and intuitive perception of the impermanence (annica), unsatisfactory (dukkha) or non‐self (anattā) nature of conditioned phenomena (Nyanatiloka 1972, 122).

[19] In a general discussion of the eastern formulation of “pure experience”, Chia (2003, 296–270) identifies “three essential characteristics” that shed further light on this process of disillusionment in relation to “care of the self”. As he states: “First, pure experience is realized prior to self‐awareness and the subject/object distinctions. Second, pure experience is active and constructive not passive… Third, in pure experience, knowledge, feeling and volition remain undifferentiated. Ultimate reality is not merely registered cognitively but also felt emotionally and volitionally. These three propositions provide the necessary philosophical grounding for understanding the kind of intuitive metaphysics that underpins the eastern system of self, knowing and performance”.

[20] The observation method and, more specifically, the disciplined enactment and interaction of the observer/observed roles, appears here as a means to the practice of discernment. As such it might well be described as a spiritual exercise particularly adapted to organizational life (Western and Gosling 2004).

[21] Courtesy is a crucial managerial skill that, we suspect, receives too little scholarly attention.