The Fragility of Public Service: A Leadership Study of Richard II & Measure for Measure

This paper examines how a sustainable ideal of public service and leadership depends upon the attributes and relations among human beings. I will assume that human nature does have substantive referents using the insights of modern cognitive sciences. I will also assume that not only science but also texts and stories can illuminate the constancy of certain attributes of human nature. In particular literature has the capacity to engrave knowledge by uniting the cognitive and emotional dimensions of comprehension. As modern cognitive science and literature studies demonstrate, story telling has the ability to claim attention, engrave knowledge with cognitive and emotional power and provide a forum to expand reflection and possibilities of understanding. Engaging stories bond human minds at multiple levels and permit persons to learn new details and insights about life and themselves. Strong narratives can transform people’s understandings of the world and possibility. Stories also augment people’s theories of mind that enable them to understand other people and actions. The paper examines Shakespeare’s observations about the qualities of persons involved in politics and the tensions that arise between Shakespeare’s models of action and the demands that public service and leadership place upon individuals. Using Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Measure for Measure and Richard II, I examine the attributes of humanity that Shakespeare identifies that make the exercise of public service leadership so fraught; I will examine the dynamics of power and institutions that freight politics and complicate dedication to a public service ideal; I will examine the temptations and distortions of the moral ideal of public service that humans introduce; Finally the paper discusses some ways in which the ideal of public service and leadership can be supplemented with both wider conceptions of the virtue needed by public servants but also institutional constraints upon it.