Facing Evil in Ourselves

Leaders must know themselves in order to measure their limitations as well as their capacity for evil. Such knowledge can be a corrective for leaders’ behavior, as it appears to have been in the case of George Washington’s treatment of prisoners of war. It can also be grounds for compassion over the wrongdoing of others, as illustrated (by its absence) in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Compassion is compatible with justice; it differs from clemency and pity and consists in an understanding of other people’s feelings. Compassion is easily lost by people in authority. And it is easily blocked toward a group’s outsiders. Leaders are responsible for failures of compassion in their teams (as occurred at Abu Ghraib). Socrates dedicated his life to the pursuit of self-knowledge and helped others along the way to realizing their own ignorance.