Samenvatting

This essay aims to examine leadership questions from the perspective of practical wisdom, a classic concept from the philosophical tradition. Erik Pool’s argument is based on a combination of subjective experience and objectified knowledge from forty years of personal and professional development. Because this lays the foundation for this story, he first briefly explains the professional paths along which he came to understand how Pool knows how to get things done. Particularly in his government work, he came across public leadership in three guises. They bear the traces of the heavy weather through which the Ship of State had to be piloted, which he sketches with a few brushstrokes but, despite that light touch, still appears very heavy. The urgency and weight characterise public leadership, which Erik Pool further explains with five crucial ‘capabilities’: (1) act when you have to (‘kairos’); (2) reflective capacity (‘eidos’-’skopea’); (3) learning ability (‘gnosis’); (4) justice (‘dikaiosunè’); and (5) practical wisdom (‘phronesis’). This essay ends with a plea for justice as a building block for ‘practical wisdom’, with which public leaders can raise their moral and material capacity to act. A society will not become heaven on earth, but a vital democratic constitutional state should at least be the ambitious and honourable commitment of ‘radical leadership in public service’.