【喜洋洋杀G大队】wu-intrepi,第六次作业

wu-intrepidUID: 2659758

7月8日Issue 43 "To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards."



From Plato's The Republic to Kant's Critique Of Practical Reason, Every philosopher tried to find out what kinds of morality should a effective leader has. Despite kinds of ideas to the contrary, at least there is one consensus that a leader should assume the moral responsebility to his people, to nature laws, and to God he believes. Meanwhile, relativism and pragmatism may query that is there any highest ethical standards? Therefore, the complexity of this statement need a more carefull discussion.

Firstly, moral and ethical standards insure a leader keep his or her position and work effectively. People always respect and appreciate who has a strong moral responsebility and highly etical standars. As a leader, his or her power comes from people, so morality is needed. Otherwise the fonudation will be shakede. A famous example is watergate scandal. RIchard Nixon, a president of United Stated in 1970s, once assigned five men to break into democratic national committee headsquarters at the watergate complex and unfortunately they were arrested. Although Nixon won the election in 1973, later evidences reveal that he obstructed justice and attempt to cover the conspiracy. Facing the anger of American people and impeachment in the House Of Representatives, Nixon became the only president in the America to resign from office. This example proves that if a leader cannot obey moral standards, he is unqualified. Someone may argues that Bill Clinton did not resign even he is the protagonist of the sexual scandal. However, such a great leader, like Clinton, left from the president only with 65% approval rate is a certain evidence to prove that his prestige is influenced by the scandal. It also reveals that morality is one of the most important criterions to elect their leader by people.

However, the term "highest" mentioned in this statement cannot be defended. In human history, there are not any moral laws accepted by all the people. Relativism may argue that each nation has their own morality and nobody has the right to claim which is better, so the highest moral standards do not exist. Pragmatism may argue that we do not need have so-called highest standards at all since useful is enough for human beings. Even ignore such overacademic critiques, we still cannot tell what is highest ethical standards clearly. Actually a leader just need hold some basic ideas such as honesty, democracy, freedom, equal and so on, and the power then can be properly used. For example, Hitler got the power in a legal way, but he brought a disaster to all the people. We accuse him not so much for he is immoral as he do not have the basic idea. Compare to Clinton and Nixon, they may be immoral in some sense, however, they brought peace and economic growth to America so that they are still good leaders. The difference between Nixon or Clinton and Hitler is the latter do not hold basic ideas which are achievements of human civilization.

What is more, some other factors should be considered as a good leader. Tactics, for example, is important according to Mchiavelli, a famous philosopher in renaissance who wrote The Prince. Provided that a leader is too naive, he or she will surely be defeated by opponents. Furthermore, charisma is also important. How can a leader win the election, and how can his or her policy be universally acceptable, charisma is a decisive factor sometimes. Without it , a leader cannot influence anybody. So lots of quality should a leader has.

To sum up, from a practical thinking level, many other factor should be considered for leaders always face a world full of lies, hungers, wars, and morality cannot solve all thers problems. Fundamentally, basic ideas are needed. As a human being, any leader may have mistakes sometimes, and as long as mistakes do not conflict with our basic ideas, it will not be a retrogression of history.        

jahsonUID: 2628322

From Plato's The Republic to Kant's Critique Of Practical Reason, Every philosopher tried to find out what kinds of morality should a effective leader has. Despite kinds of ideas to the contrary, at least there is one consensus that a leader should assume the moral responsebility to his people, to nature laws, and to God he believes. Meanwhile, relativism and pragmatism may query that is there any highest ethical standards? Therefore, the complexity of this statement need a more carefull discussion.

Firstly, moral and ethical standards insure a leader keep his or her position and work effectively. People always respect and appreciate who has a strong moral responsebility and highly etical standars. As a leader, his or her power comes from people, so morality is needed. Otherwise the fonudation will be shakede. A famous example is watergate scandal. RIchard Nixon, a president of United Stated in 1970s, once assigned five men to break into democratic national committee headsquarters at the watergate complex and unfortunately they were arrested. Although Nixon won the election in 1973, later evidences reveal that he obstructed justice and attempt to cover the conspiracy. Facing the anger of American people and impeachment in the House Of Representatives, Nixon became the only president in the America to resign from office. This example proves that if a leader cannot obey moral standards, he is unqualified. Someone may argues that Bill Clinton did not resign even he is the protagonist of the sexual scandal. However, such a great leader, like Clinton, left from the president only with 65% approval rate is a certain evidence to prove that his prestige is influenced by the scandal. It also reveals that morality is one of the most important criterions to elect their leader by people.

However, the term "highest" mentioned in this statement cannot be defended. In human history, there are not any moral laws accepted by all the people. Relativism may argue that each nation has their own morality and nobody has the right to claim which is better, so the highest moral standards do not exist.（我觉得从最高道德标准不需要这点说更好，而不是最高不存在） Pragmatism may argue that we do not need have so-called highest standards at all since useful is enough for human beings. Even ignore such overacademic critiques, we still cannot tell what is highest ethical standards clearly. Actually a leader just need hold some basic ideas such as honesty, democracy, freedom, equal and so on, and the power then can be properly used. For example, Hitler got the power in a legal way, but he brought a disaster to all the people. We accuse him not so much for he is immoral as he do not have the basic idea. Compare to Clinton and Nixon, they may be immoral in some sense, however, they brought peace and economic growth to America so that they are still good leaders. The difference between Nixon or Clinton and Hitler is the latter do not hold basic ideas which are achievements of human civilization.

What is more, some other factors should be considered as a good leader. Tactics, for example, is important according to Mchiavelli, a famous philosopher in renaissance who wrote The Prince. Provided that a leader is too naive, he or she will surely be defeated by opponents. Furthermore, charisma is also important. How can a leader win the election, and how can his or her policy be universally acceptable, charisma is a decisive factor sometimes. Without it , a leader cannot influence anybody. So lots of quality should a leader has.

To sum up, from a practical thinking level, many other factor should be considered for leaders always face a world full of lies, hungers, wars, and morality cannot solve all thers problems. Fundamentally, basic ideas are needed. As a human being, any leader may have mistakes sometimes, and as long as mistakes do not conflict with our basic ideas, it will not be a retrogression of history.   
思路不错。
除了那个反击最高的那个地方感觉别扭，因为毕竟题中明确给了最高是存在     



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