An interview with Guilherme Freire, philosopher and founder of a Brazilian company that trains business owners in philosophy applied to business

Guilherme Freire argues that Western civilization can be restored by forming a new elite. He defines this elite in the classical sense: rule by the best. His company trains Brazilian business owners in classical philosophy, with the aim of changing their companies, families, and, eventually, their communities and country. In an interview conducted in Brazil, Freire described the premise, the diagnosis behind it, and the method of his program.

Aristocracy in the Classical Sense

Freire states that aristocracy, as Aristotle used the term, means the government of the best. Modern audiences often reject the word because they associate it with inherited privilege. Freire says the concept refers to a culture of excellence in which the most capable people hold authority.

He argues that the foundation of an aristocracy is personal virtue. He lists the four cardinal virtues:

• Temperance: self-control over pleasure
• Fortitude: the capacity to face adversity, including increasing adversity
• Justice: proportion and the performance of one's duty
• Prudence: practical wisdom

Freire holds that a person who develops these virtues gains self-mastery. That self-mastery allows the person to achieve more and to transmit these values to the next generation within a family. He describes the family as one of the foremost schools of leadership since Roman times, because raising the next generation requires a sense of duty.

The Company as a School of Self-Sacrifice

Freire applies this framework to the business company. He argues that prosperity comes from labor, work, and people who sacrifice for excellence in order to build things. In his view, a company that is led by someone striving for virtue can assemble capable people around him.

He proposes that a company can take the form of what Aristotle called a mixed monarchy, with three elements:

1. Monarchy: the owner or chief executive, who holds final authority
2. Aristocracy: high-capacity people working next to the chief executive
3. Republic: a merit system in which responsibility increases with service to the organization and with merit

According to Freire, such a company functions as a school of self-sacrifice. It must also remain agile and deliver results, because a company that does not deliver goes bankrupt.

Entrepreneurs and Broader Institutions

Freire argues that if leaders in companies live these virtues and develop capable people, entrepreneurs can work together to change other institutions. He names four areas:

• Media, which he says should tell the truth
• Education institutions
• Human resources systems, which he describes as currently oriented toward bureaucracy and cancellation
• Local and national politics

He states that a new aristocracy selects people for positions of power based on how much they want to improve things and accept responsibility for them. He rejects the image of an aristocracy as "people with wigs in 18th century France."

Diagnosis: Bureaucracy and the Managerial Elite

The interviewer summarized Freire's diagnosis. Society suffers from over-bureaucratization. The wrong class of people holds authority, namely bureaucrats of the kind associated with human resources. This managerial, consensus-driven order, which the interviewer linked to human rights discourse and the United Nations, appears in political institutions and in corporations alike. The interviewer described an alternative: an older form of capitalism in which the founder, owner, or director holds greater political and organizational influence. According to this view, a class of capable people could be elevated, taught the necessary virtues and skills, and then improve the governance of their companies. Through this process, they would also rise as a class relative to the bureaucratic class.

Freire agreed with this summary and added several arguments.

Bureaucracy in companies. Freire says that if bureaucrats run a company, they ruin it. He makes the same claim about families. Delegating a child's education to a random public school, in his view, produces poorly educated children. He also argues that outsourcing national responsibilities destroys a country.

Tocqueville. Freire cites the second part of Democracy in America, in which Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that America needed an aristocracy to protect it from the subtle tyranny that could arise from Washington. Freire argues that aristocracy protects freedom. People with capacity and power can protect others' freedom and the common good. He adds that a company's monarch has the same protective function. Aristotle addresses this in the Politics. According to Freire, the monarch must shield people who pursue the common good from bad elements that lie, manipulate, and destroy.

The managerial elite. Freire refers to James Burnham's The Managerial Elite. Once oligarchy takes hold, Freire says, it is very difficult to remove. Oligarchs attract people who avoid hard work and seek influence instead. Removing them requires a monarch with strong inner resilience. Freire describes this task as continuous, because it requires constant resistance to entropy within the company, the family, and the self.

Historical Precedents

Freire compares the formation of elites with several historical cases.

• Alexander the Great. Freire describes Greece as decadent and in continual civil war at the time of Aristotle. Aristotle became Alexander's private tutor, and Freire argues that Alexander changed the course of history. He cites the Book of Maccabees, which begins by describing Alexander, and the Hellenistic world that followed. He notes that Greek culture became dominant about 300 years after Alexander and that Greek coins circulated in India. Freire acknowledges that Alexander had serious flaws.
• Steve Jobs. Freire reports that when asked what he wanted from artificial intelligence, Jobs spoke about the mentorship Aristotle gave Alexander.
• Julius Caesar. Freire says Caesar modeled his conception of the Roman Empire on Alexander.
• Prussia. Freire describes the Prussian concept of bilden, meaning to forge people. The Junkers, a young aristocratic class, worked in industry and the military. Freire argues that this approach allowed Prussia to exceed its size and weight among powers.
• China. Freire says Confucius established a system that later decayed into bureaucracy. At certain moments, such as the Song dynasty, the system focused on forging virtues to produce the best people to govern, and China became a dominant power.
• The American Gilded Age. Freire cites it as an example of business leaders forming an aristocracy.
• Brazil and Dom Pedro. The interviewer noted that Pedro II abdicated without fighting the bureaucrats opposing him. Freire's program, the interviewer suggested, reverses that abdication. Freire also describes Dom Pedro as an appeaser who was exiled. He argues that the Portuguese tradition of appeasement weakened the heroic spirit of the Portuguese past. After Brazil lost its monarchy, Freire says, the country entered a decadent, oligarchical, agricultural, and stagnant structure. He describes it as a rich country governed by a mob mentality hostile to entrepreneurs.

Decline and the Company Life Cycle

Freire describes a cycle in which companies move through stages.

1. Heroic monarchy: A company begins under a leader who must act heroically. Virtue and the company's success are closely linked.
2. Mixed monarchy: The company reaches its peak with a chief executive, an engineering team, a board of directors, and a merit hierarchy.
3. Oligarchy: As the company declines, it becomes oligarchical.
4. Democracy: In the late stages, it becomes democratic. Groups fight one another. Each sector defends its own interests.

Freire cites an anecdote, which he says may be a myth, about a union connected to Alphabet that broke toilets to demand Japanese automatic toilets. He uses it to illustrate what he calls hyper-democracy, in which employees believe the company owes them everything. He says he sees this attitude among some members of Generation Z employed in companies. He adds that most of his own students belong to Generation Z and that he supports them.

Freire argues that a democratic company eventually goes bankrupt or is sold to private equity. Its managers focus on stock value and acquisitions rather than on results and products. He concludes that heroic culture must be restored within an organization as early as possible, because otherwise the organization enters the democratic phase and self-destructs.

He states that countries follow the same cycle. Figures such as George Washington lead the founding, followed by a mixed system, then decline and growing democracy. Plato holds that the last stage of decline is tyranny. Polybius identifies kleptocracy, rule by organized crime, as a terminal condition. Freire says Brazil shows signs of kleptocracy. He also says that many people are now becoming aware of the problem.

Coordination Among Business Elites

The interviewer raised a question based on Peter Thiel's observations about PayPal. Thiel has argued that companies can attract exceptional individuals, but usually only one per organization, because such individuals struggle to coordinate with one another. The interviewer asked how business elites can act together as an aristocracy rather than as isolated, self-interested actors.

Freire gave the following account of his program's results:

• About 2,000 business owners have attended as students.
• 12 of the 20 largest entrepreneurial families in Brazil have completed the classes.
• The company opened its headquarters on Faria Lima, the financial district of São Paulo, which Freire compares to Wall Street. A participant at a dinner told him the district was lost. Freire chose the location deliberately.

Freire contrasted his approach with the theme of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, in which productive people withdraw from society. He calls this the opposite of the Socratic ethos. In Plato's cave allegory, a person who leaves the cave returns to free others. Freire argues that withdrawal does not solve the problem. Businesses exist within countries, and countries exist within civilizations. He gave the example of people who move from New York to Texas, then to Montana, and then leave Montana as well, because each place declines in turn. He says that this pattern never ends.

Freire also addressed how leaders deal with human resources. He says that some students dismissed their human resources directors after starting the program. He states that this step is not required. However, a company cannot have a human resources director who opposes virtue, excellence, and human capital. Freire says that many talented people leave companies because bureaucracies oppose them. He argues that the entrepreneur should defend such people against the bureaucracy.

According to Freire, students who remove obstructive managers can then hire capable people who were previously excluded. He lists the values he teaches as restored in the company: sales, merit, and virtue.

Expanding the Effort to Schools, Media, and Local Politics

Freire describes a sequence of actions that his students have taken:

1. Students who share a shared formation purchase or create schools. They remove teachers whom they consider to be indoctrinating children and teach mathematics, classics, and other subjects. Freire says children in these schools play classical music, practice jujitsu, read great books, and study difficult mathematics.
2. Students purchase local media outlets, hire qualified journalists, and aim for truthful reporting.
3. Students press local politicians to select competent people rather than ideologues.

Freire says these changes can happen quickly at the local level, but they require serious study. He argues that leaders need the right theory and the ability to justify their actions.

He cites Plato's dialogue Laches. Laches, a brave general, lives courage but cannot defend it in argument. A sophist defeats him in debate. Freire reads the dialogue as an argument for philosophical education.

Freire also explains his use of the word "formation." He says the German term bilden means to forge people and assemble them. He contrasts it with the term's common military connotation in the United States.

He argues that presenting these ideas in the language of contemporary politics makes them less effective and draws more attention. He says that presenting them in an intellectually refined manner, as Aristotle would, is more effective.

Practical Philosophy Rather than Academic Study

Freire says the students are not interested in philosophy as an abstract academic pursuit. They read Plato and Spengler and apply their ideas to business.

Elite Formation and Mass Movements

The interviewer asked how Freire's approach relates to mass movements that address the same problems. The interviewer named Partido Missão, a Brazilian party led by Renan Santos, which the interviewer described as a vertically integrated mass movement built largely among young people.

Freire responded that the two approaches complement each other. He argues that focusing on elites produces faster results. He gave an example. One student works in mining rare minerals used in microchips. Freire says many of these minerals are found in Brazil, and China seeks to acquire them. This student created a school from scratch in one month, because he had capital, contacts, and business experience.

Freire then described a coordination problem that he calls an inverted prisoner's dilemma. In the standard dilemma, silence is the rational choice. In Freire's version, individuals are protected if they speak. Yet no one wants to speak alone, because the person who speaks alone risks persecution. Freire argues that this fear is self-fulfilling. He states that entrepreneurs who fear acting alone are often unaware that their peers share the same fear, and that coordination is possible. He says his program creates the environment and brings together the elements that connect these individuals.

Freire also argues that mass movements alone cannot overcome established institutions. He states that business owners control media and other institutions, and that mass movements will be shaped by existing institutions. He notes that people in Montana do not have the means to compete with institutions such as Harvard or The New York Times. He describes mass movements and elite formation as operating in different worlds.

Freire criticized consulting advice that tells business owners to leave their companies and let bureaucrats run them. He says that people who have built companies know that this approach fails in practice.

Virtue Through Practice

Freire ties the virtues to physical practice. He describes jujitsu as a means of forming fortitude. He says that he trains in jujitsu not because he enjoys being choked but because he is trying to build fortitude for the purpose of changing his country. He says that he trains with fighters from the Ultimate Fighting Championship, who are among his students. He also says that people who change their diets are developing temperance, and that reading Plato develops prudence.

Freire argues that the warrior, intellectual, entrepreneurial, and other social castes have become separated in modern society. When these virtues are fragmented, people lose a sense of unity and of leadership. He describes the program as a means of rejoining them.

He also describes an Aristotelian observation. Aristocracy and oligarchy are two sides of the same condition. A person who becomes an aristocrat can also become an oligarch. Which path a person takes depends on character.

Health and Demographic Claims

Freire links the program to physical health and demographics. He cites several figures:

• Testosterone levels in the United States are declining by about 1 percent per year.
• An American today has roughly 50 percent of the sperm count of an American in the 1960s.

He presents these figures as indicators of a serious problem. He also argues that individuals with high competence who limit their number of children contribute to demographic collapse. Freire says that some of his students have had large families. He states that fertility is linked to creating companies, which is linked to restoring countries.

Language and the Spiral of Silence

Freire argues that leaders must use accurate terms. He says that people avoid the word "aristocracy" and the phrase "monarchy" in companies, and that this avoidance is a mistake. He argues that teaching correct terms is better than managing incorrect ones.

He cites Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann's theory of the spiral of silence. Freire describes it as a process in which people stay silent about a bad idea. Silence allows the idea to grow stronger. He argues that the solution is to use accurate terms.

Freire also says that egalitarian ideology in universities, which Eric Voegelin called a political religion, is in decline. He describes it as a dying religion and compares it to a ghost dance and a cargo cult.

Metaphysical Orientation

Freire says the decline of religion and the loss of a sense of mystery, in Spengler's terms, have produced a society that fears death above all. In his view, people who do not see beyond death cannot take the risks that building a company requires. He cites Plato's teaching on the immortality of the soul. He compares the founding of a startup to a cycle of death and renewal, in which founders must repeatedly abandon and rebuild their work.

He describes his program as having a metaphysical component but not a religious one. He says that students are taught to think in terms of purpose. He argues that a family or a company cannot be sustained without a higher purpose.

Freire also discusses the concept of magnificence. He says Aristotle describes magnificence as making great sacrifices with private money for the public good. He distinguishes it from magnanimity. He says that entrepreneurs often strive for great achievements but do not necessarily consider the common good. He cites Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter as an example of magnificence, and he says such behavior would be transformative if it were the rule rather than the exception.

Great Men and Historical Examples

Freire discusses Plutarch's concept of great men, whom he describes as people who changed history.

He makes several historical claims:

• Charlemagne was influenced by Saint Augustine.
• Julius Caesar received mentorship on the Greek island of Rhodes, according to Freire.
• Oligarchic figures such as Sulla opposed Greek philosophy, which they believed would bring monarchical ideas back to Rome.
• Charles Martel preceded Charlemagne, and the empire fragmented before Charlemagne's rule.
• Alfred the Great unified the old kingdoms that became England.

Freire recommends Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, which he calls Commentaries on Livy, over The Prince. He argues that a great man in the past studied Roman history to learn how regimes rise and fall. He says he applies this lesson when investing and that his students use it as well.

He compares Pompey and Caesar. He describes Pompey as insecure, seeking approval from his wife and the oligarchs, and reluctant to lead from the front. He describes Caesar as decisive. Freire says Caesar's troops included scarred veterans, whom he placed against Pompey's polished forces, and that this choice contributed to Caesar's victory. He describes Augustus as a successor who was not expected to succeed but who proved the best candidate. He compares the insecure heirs in the television series Succession to Pompey.

Freire states that Peter Thiel has suggested that people with autistic traits make strong founders today. Freire argues that in a world of sophists, a founder must be obsessed with truth in order to persevere in it. He says that political leadership lacks this quality.

Conclusion

The interviewer concluded that Freire's approach is elitist and aristocratic, focused on forming a small number of powerful people who can reform society. The interviewer contrasted it with mass movements.

Freire described his company as the result of a deliberate choice. He said he believes in companies rather than nongovernmental organizations, because NGOs depend on donations. He argues that his program needs self-sufficiency, and that is why he reinvests most of the company's revenue into the company and into the search for talent. He also said that the company recruits talented people from finance, arguing that they can choose between bureaucracy and changing the world.

Freire said his program has a three-year timeline. He described the program's structure: a two-day immersion, followed by membership in a club. Members attend meetings for people in financial markets and industry, read the books, attend classes, and take part in one-on-one sessions to develop concrete projects. The company has begun offering classes in other Brazilian cities. Freire says the company focuses on people who make decisions, because a person without decision-making authority cannot apply the material.

Freire also described a case in which a hedge fund manager who said he had no time for Plato later reported reading a sixth book by Plato. Freire says the anecdote illustrates how the program motivates leaders to apply philosophy in practice.

The interviewer closed by stating that the program's expansion beyond Brazil would be valuable, particularly for the United States. Freire said he intends to spread these ideas further.